9

The distance from London to Brinkley Court being a hundred miles or so and not much more than two minutes having elapsed since I had sent off that telegram, the fact that he was now outside the Brinkley front door struck me as quick service. It lowered the record of the chap in the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow he's going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says 'How far is that?' and the fellow says 'Three hundred miles' and the other fellow says 'How long will it take you to get there?' and the fellow says 'Oh, about half an hour, about half an hour.' The What-ho with which I greeted the back of his head as I approached was tinged, accordingly, with a certain bewilderment.

At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad oyster. Guessing now what was biting him, I smiled one of my subtle smiles. I would soon, I told myself, be bringing the roses back to his cheeks.

He gulped a bit, then spoke in a hollow voice, like a spirit at a seance.

'Hullo, Bertie.'

'Hullo.'

'So there you are.'

'Yes, here I am.'

'I was hoping I might run into you.'

'And now the dream's come true.'

'You see, you told me you were staying here.'

'Yes.'

'How's everything?'

'Pretty fruity.'

'Your aunt well?'

'Fine.'

'You all right?'

'More or less.'

'Capital. Long time since I was at Brinkley.'

'Yes.'

'Nothing much changed, I mean.'

'No.'

'Well, that's how it goes.'

He paused and did another splash of gulping, and I could see that we were about to come to the nub, all that had gone before having been merely what they call pour-parlers. I mean the sort of banana oil that passes between statesmen at conferences conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality before they tear their whiskers off and get down to cases.

I was right. His face working as if the first bad oyster had been followed by a second with even more spin on the ball, he said:

'I saw that thing in The Times, Bertie.'

I dissembled. I ought, I suppose, to have started bringing those roses back right away, but I felt it would be amusing to kid the poor fish along for a while, so I wore the mask.

'Ah, yes. In The Times. That thing. Quite. You saw it, did you?'

'At the club, after lunch. I couldn't believe my eyes.'

Well, I hadn't been able to believe mine, either, but I didn't mention this. I was thinking how like Bobbie it was, when planning this scheme of hers, not to have let him in on the ground floor. Slipped her mind, I suppose, or she may have kept it under her hat for some strange reason of her own. She had always been a girl who moved in a mysterious way her wonders to perform.

'And I'll tell you why I couldn't. You'll scarcely credit this, but only a couple of days ago she was engaged to me.'

'You don't say?'

'Yes, I jolly well do.'

'Engaged to you, eh?'

'Up to the hilt. And all the while she must have been contemplating this ghastly bit of treachery.'

'A bit thick.'

'If you can tell me anything that's thicker, I shall be glad to hear it. It just shows you what women are like. A frightful sex, Bertie. There ought to be a law. I hope to live to see the day when women are no longer allowed.'

'That would rather put a stopper on keeping the human race going, wouldn't it?'

'Well, who wants to keep the human race going?'

'I see what you mean. Yes, something in that, of course.'

He kicked petulantly at a passing beetle, frowned awhile and resumed.

'It's the cold, callous heartlessness of the thing that shocks me. Not a hint that she was proposing to return me to store. As short a while ago as last week, when we had a bite of lunch together, she was sketching out plans for the honeymoon with the greatest animation. And now this! Without a word of warning. You'd have thought that a girl who was smashing a fellow's life into hash would have dropped him a line, if only a postcard. Apparently that never occurred to her. She just let me get the news from the morning paper. I was stunned.'

'I bet you were. Did everything go black?'

'Pretty black. I took the rest of the day thinking it over, and this morning wangled leave from the office and got the car out and came down here to tell you…'

He paused, seeming overcome with emotion.

'Yes?'

'To tell you that, whatever we do, we mustn't let this thing break our old friendship.'

'Of course not. Damn silly idea.'

'It's such a very old friendship.'

'I don't know when I've met an older.'

'We were boys together.'

'In Eton jackets and pimples.'

'Exactly. And more like brothers than anything. I would share my last bar of almond rock with you, and you would cut me in fifty-fifty on your last bag of acid drops. When you had mumps, I caught them from you, and when I had measles, you caught them from me. Each helping each. So we must carry on regardless, just as if this had not happened.'

'Quite.'

'The same old lunches.'

'Oh, rather.'

'And golf on Saturdays and the occasional game of squash. And when you are married and settled down, I shall frequently look in on you for a cocktail.'

'Yes, do.'

'I will. Though I shall have to exercise an iron self-restraint to keep me from beaning that pie-faced little hornswoggler Mrs Bertram Wooster, nee Wickham, with the shaker.'

'Ought you to call her a pie-faced little hornswoggler?'

'Why, can you think of something worse?' he said, with the air of one always open to suggestions. 'Do you know Thomas Otway?'

'I don't believe so. Pal of yours?'

'Seventeenth-century dramatist. Wrote The Orphan. In which play these words occur. «What mighty ills have not been done by Woman? Who was't betrayed the Capitol? A woman. Who lost Marc Antony the world? A woman. Who was the cause of a long ten years' war and laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman. Deceitful, damnable, destructive Woman.» Otway knew what he was talking about He had the right slant. He couldn't have put it better if he had known Roberta Wickham personally.'

I smiled another subtle smile. I was finding all this extremely diverting.

'I don't know if it's my imagination, Kipper,' I said, 'but something gives me the impression that at moment of going to press you aren't too sold on Bobbie.'

He shrugged a shoulder.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that. Apart from wishing I could throttle the young twister with my bare hands and jump on the remains with hobnailed boots, I don't feel much about her one way or the other. She prefers you to me, and there's nothing more to be said. The great thing is that everything is all right between you and me.'

'You came all the way here just to make sure of that?' I said, moved.

'Well, there may possibly also have been an idea at the back of my mind that I might get invited to dig in at one of those dinners of Anatole's before going on to book a room at the «Bull and Bush» in Market Snodsbury. How is Anatole's cooking these days?'

'Superber than ever.'

'Continues to melt in the mouth, does it? It's two years since I bit into his products, but the taste still lingers. What an artist!'

'Ah!' I said, and would have bared my head, only I hadn't a hat on.

'Would it run to a dinner invitation, do you think?'

'My dear chap, of course. The needy are never turned from our door.'

'Splendid. And after the meal I shall propose to Phyllis Mills.'

'What!'

'Yes, I know what you're thinking. She is closely related to Aubrey Upjohn, you are saying to yourself. But surely, Bertie, she can't help that.'