LEAVE IT TO PSMITH

At the open window of the great library of Blandings Castle, drooping like a wet sock, as was his habit when he had nothing to prop his spine against, the Earl of Emsworth, that amiable and boneheaded peer, stood gazing out over his domain.

It was a lovely morning and the air was fragrant with gentle summer scents. Yet in his lordship’s pale blue eyes there was a look of melancholy. His brow was furrowed, his mouth peevish. And this was all the more strange in that he was normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be. A writer, describing Blandings Castle in a magazine article, had once said: “Tiny mosses have grown in the cavities of the stones, until, viewed near at hand, the place seems shaggy with vegetation.” It would not have been a bad description of the proprietor. Fifty-odd years of serene and unruffled placidity had given Lord Emsworth[p. 8] a curiously moss-covered look. Very few things had the power to disturb him. Even his younger son, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, could only do it occasionally.

Yet now he was sad. And—not to make a mystery of it any longer—the reason of his sorrow was the fact that he had mislaid his glasses and without them was as blind, to use his own neat simile, as a bat. He was keenly aware of the sunshine that poured down on his gardens, and was yearning to pop out and potter among the flowers he loved. But no man, pop he never so wisely, can hope to potter with any good result if the world is a mere blur.

The door behind him opened, and Beach the butler entered, a dignified procession of one.

“Who’s that?” inquired Lord Emsworth, spinning on his axis.

“It is I, your lordship—Beach.”

“Have you found them?”

“Not yet, your lordship,” sighed the butler.

“You can’t have looked.”

“I have searched assiduously, your lordship, but without avail. Thomas and Charles also announce non-success. Stokes has not yet made his report.”

“Ah!”

“I am re-despatching Thomas and Charles to your lordship’s bedroom,” said the Master of the Hunt. “I trust that their efforts will be rewarded.”

Beach withdrew, and Lord Emsworth turned to the window again. The scene that spread itself beneath him—though he was unfortunately not able to see it—was a singularly beautiful one, for the castle, which is one of the oldest inhabited houses in England, stands upon a knoll of rising ground at the southern end of the celebrated Vale of Blandings in the county of Shropshire. Away in the blue distance wooded hills ran down to[p. 9] where the Severn gleamed like an unsheathed sword; while up from the river rolling park-land, mounting and dipping, surged in a green wave almost to the castle walls, breaking on the terraces in a many-coloured flurry of flowers as it reached the spot where the province of Angus McAllister, his lordship’s head gardener, began. The day being June the thirtieth, which is the very high-tide time of summer flowers, the immediate neighbourhood of the castle was ablaze with roses, pinks, pansies, carnations, hollyhocks, columbines, larkspurs, London pride, Canterbury bells, and a multitude of other choice blooms of which only Angus could have told you the names. A conscientious man was Angus; and in spite of being a good deal hampered by Lord Emsworth’s amateur assistance, he showed excellent results in his department. In his beds there was much at which to point with pride, little to view with concern.

Scarcely had Beach removed himself when Lord Emsworth was called upon to turn again. The door had opened for the second time, and a young man in a beautifully-cut suit of grey flannel was standing in the doorway. He had a long and vacant face topped by shining hair brushed back and heavily brilliantined after the prevailing mode, and he was standing on one leg. For Freddie Threepwood was seldom completely at his ease in his parent’s presence.

“Hallo, guv’nor.”

“Well, Frederick?”

It would be paltering with the truth to say that Lord Emsworth’s greeting was a warm one. It lacked the note of true affection. A few weeks before he had had to pay a matter of five hundred pounds to settle certain racing debts for his offspring; and, while this had not actually dealt an irretrievable blow[p. 10] at his bank account, it had undeniably tended to diminish Freddie’s charm in his eyes.

“Hear you’ve lost your glasses, guv’nor.”

“That is so.”

“Nuisance, what?”

“Undeniably.”

“Ought to have a spare pair.”

“I have broken my spare pair.”

“Tough luck! And lost the other?”

“And, as you say, lost the other.”

“Have you looked for the bally things?”

“I have.”

“Must be somewhere, I mean.”

“Quite possibly.”

“Where,” asked Freddie, warming to his work, “did you see them last?”

“Go away!” said Lord Emsworth, on whom his child’s conversation had begun to exercise an oppressive effect.

“Eh?”

“Go away!”

“Go away?”

“Yes, go away!”

“Right ho!”

The door closed. His lordship returned to the window once more.

He had been standing there some few minutes when one of those miracles occurred which happen in libraries. Without sound or warning a section of books started to move away from the parent body and, swinging out in a solid chunk into the room, showed a glimpse of a small, study-like apartment. A young man in spectacles came noiselessly through and the books returned to their place.

The contrast between Lord Emsworth and the[p. 11] new-comer, as they stood there, was striking, almost dramatic. Lord Emsworth was so acutely spectacle-less; Rupert Baxter, his secretary, so pronouncedly spectacled. It was his spectacles that struck you first as you saw the man. They gleamed efficiently at you. If you had a guilty conscience, they pierced you through and through; and even if your conscience was one hundred per cent. pure you could not ignore them. “Here,” you said to yourself, “is an efficient young man in spectacles.”

In describing Rupert Baxter as efficient, you did not overestimate him. He was essentially that. Technically but a salaried subordinate, he had become by degrees, owing to the limp amiability of his employer, the real master of the house. He was the Brains of Blandings, the man at the switch, the person in charge, and the pilot, so to speak, who weathered the storm. Lord Emsworth left everything to Baxter, only asking to be allowed to potter in peace; and Baxter, more than equal to the task, shouldered it without wincing.

Having got within range, Baxter coughed; and Lord Emsworth, recognising the sound, wheeled round with a faint flicker of hope. It might be that even this apparently insoluble problem of the missing pince-nez would yield before the other’s efficiency.

“Baxter, my dear fellow, I’ve lost my glasses. My glasses. I have mislaid them. I cannot think where they can have gone to. You haven’t seen them anywhere by any chance?”

“Yes, Lord Emsworth,” replied the secretary, quietly equal to the crisis. “They are hanging down your back.”

“Down my back? Why, bless my soul!” His lordship tested the statement and found it—like all Baxter’s statements—accurate. “Why, bless my soul,[p. 12] so they are! Do you know, Baxter, I really believe I must be growing absent-minded.” He hauled in the slack, secured the pince-nez, adjusted them beamingly. His irritability had vanished like the dew off one of his roses. “Thank you, Baxter, thank you. You are invaluable.”

And with a radiant smile Lord Emsworth made buoyantly for the door, en route for God’s air and the society of McAllister. The movement drew from Baxter another cough—a sharp, peremptory cough this time; and his lordship paused, reluctantly, like a dog whistled back from the chase. A cloud fell over the sunniness of his mood. Admirable as Baxter was in so many respects, he had a tendency to worry him at times; and something told Lord Emsworth that he was going to worry him now.

“The car will be at the door,” said Baxter with quiet firmness, “at two sharp.”

“Car? What car?”

“The car to take you to the station.”

“Station? What station?”

Rupert Baxter preserved his calm. There were times when he found his employer a little trying, but he never showed it.

“You have perhaps forgotten, Lord Emsworth, that you arranged with Lady Constance to go to London this afternoon.”

“Go to London!” gasped Lord Emsworth, appalled. “In weather like this? With a thousand things to attend to in the garden? What a perfectly preposterous notion! Why should I go to London? I hate London.”

“You arranged with Lady Constance that you would give Mr. McTodd lunch to-morrow at your club.”

“Who the devil is Mr. McTodd?”

“The well-known Canadian poet.”

[p. 13]“Never heard of him.”

“Lady Constance has long been a great admirer of his work. She wrote inviting him, should he ever come to England, to pay a visit to Blandings. He is now in London and is to come down to-morrow for two weeks. Lady Constance’s suggestion was that, as a compliment to Mr. McTodd’s eminence in the world of literature, you should meet him in London and bring him back here yourself.”

Lord Emsworth remembered now. He also remembered that this positively infernal scheme had not been his sister Constance’s in the first place. It was Baxter who had made the suggestion, and Constance had approved. He made use of the recovered pince-nez to glower through them at his secretary; and not for the first time in recent months was aware of a feeling that this fellow Baxter was becoming a dashed infliction. Baxter was getting above himself, throwing his weight about, making himself a confounded nuisance. He wished he could get rid of the man. But where could he find an adequate successor? That was the trouble. With all his drawbacks, Baxter was efficient. Nevertheless, for a moment Lord Emsworth toyed with the pleasant dream of dismissing him. And it is possible, such was his exasperation, that he might on this occasion have done something practical in that direction, had not the library door at this moment opened for the third time, to admit yet another intruder—at the sight of whom his lordship’s militant mood faded weakly.

“Oh—hallo, Connie!” he said, guiltily, like a small boy caught in the jam cupboard. Somehow his sister always had this effect upon him.

Of all those who had entered the library that morning the new arrival was the best worth looking at. Lord[p. 14] Emsworth was tall and lean and scraggy; Rupert Baxter thick-set and handicapped by that vaguely grubby appearance which is presented by swarthy young men of bad complexion; and even Beach, though dignified, and Freddie, though slim, would never have got far in a beauty competition. But Lady Constance Keeble really took the eye. She was a strikingly handsome woman in the middle forties. She had a fair, broad brow, teeth of a perfect even whiteness, and the carriage of an empress. Her eyes were large and grey, and gentle—and incidentally misleading, for gentle was hardly the adjective which anybody who knew her would have applied to Lady Constance. Though genial enough when she got her way, on the rare occasions when people attempted to thwart her she was apt to comport herself in a manner reminiscent of Cleopatra on one of the latter’s bad mornings.

“I hope I am not disturbing you,” said Lady Constance with a bright smile. “I just came in to tell you to be sure not to forget, Clarence, that you are going to London this afternoon to meet Mr. McTodd.”

“I was just telling Lord Emsworth,” said Baxter, “that the car would be at the door at two.”

“Thank you, Mr. Baxter. Of course I might have known that you would not forget. You are so wonderfully capable. I don’t know what in the world we would do without you.”

The Efficient Baxter bowed. But, though gratified, he was not overwhelmed by the tribute. The same thought had often occurred to him independently.

“If you will excuse me,” he said, “I have one or two things to attend to . . .”

“Certainly, Mr. Baxter.”

The Efficient One withdrew through the door in[p. 15] the bookshelf. He realised that his employer was in fractious mood, but knew that he was leaving him in capable hands.

Lord Emsworth turned from the window, out of which he had been gazing with a plaintive detachment.

“Look here, Connie,” he grumbled feebly. “You know I hate literary fellows. It’s bad enough having them in the house, but when it comes to going to London to fetch ’em . . .”

He shuffled morosely. It was a perpetual grievance of his, this practice of his sister’s of collecting literary celebrities and dumping them down in the home for indeterminate visits. You never knew when she was going to spring another on you. Already since the beginning of the year he had suffered from a round dozen of the species at brief intervals; and at this very moment his life was being poisoned by the fact that Blandings was sheltering a certain Miss Aileen Peavey, the mere thought of whom was enough to turn the sunshine off as with a tap.

“Can’t stand literary fellows,” proceeded his lordship. “Never could. And, by Jove, literary females are worse. Miss Peavey . . .” Here words temporarily failed the owner of Blandings. “Miss Peavey . . .” he resumed after an eloquent pause. “Who is Miss Peavey?”

“My dear Clarence,” replied Lady Constance tolerantly, for the fine morning had made her mild and amiable, “if you do not know that Aileen is one of the leading poetesses of the younger school, you must be very ignorant.”

“I don’t mean that. I know she writes poetry. I mean who is she? You suddenly produced her here like a rabbit out of a hat,” said his lordship, in a tone of strong resentment. “Where did you find her?”

[p. 16]“I first made Aileen’s acquaintance on an Atlantic liner when Joe and I were coming back from our trip round the world. She was very kind to me when I was feeling the motion of the vessel. . . . If you mean what is her family, I think Aileen told me once that she was connected with the Rutlandshire Peaveys.”

“Never heard of them!” snapped Lord Emsworth. “And, if they’re anything like Miss Peavey, God help Rutlandshire!”

Tranquil as Lady Constance’s mood was this morning, an ominous stoniness came into her grey eyes at these words, and there is little doubt that in another instant she would have discharged at her mutinous brother one of those shattering come-backs for which she had been celebrated in the family from nursery days onward; but at this juncture the Efficient Baxter appeared again through the bookshelf.

“Excuse me,” said Baxter, securing attention with a flash of his spectacles. “I forgot to mention, Lord Emsworth, that, to suit everybody’s convenience, I have arranged that Miss Halliday shall call to see you at your club to-morrow after lunch.”

“Good Lord, Baxter!” The harassed peer started as if he had been bitten in the leg. “Who’s Miss Halliday? Not another literary female?”

“Miss Halliday is the young lady who is coming to Blandings to catalogue the library.”

“Catalogue the library? What does it want cataloguing for?”

“It has not been done since the year 1885.”

“Well, and look how splendidly we’ve got along without it,” said Lord Emsworth acutely.

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Clarence,” said Lady Constance, annoyed. “The catalogue of a great library like this must be brought up to date.” She moved[p. 17] to the door. “I do wish you would try to wake up and take an interest in things. If it wasn’t for Mr. Baxter, I don’t know what would happen.”

And with a beaming glance of approval at her ally she left the room. Baxter, coldly austere, returned to the subject under discussion.

“I have written to Miss Halliday suggesting two-thirty as a suitable hour for the interview.”

“But look here . . .”

“You will wish to see her before definitely confirming the engagement.”

“Yes, but look here, I wish you wouldn’t go tying me up with all these appointments.”

“I thought that as you were going to London to meet Mr. McTodd . . .”

“But I’m not going to London to meet Mr. McTodd,” cried Lord Emsworth with weak fury. “It’s out of the question. I can’t possibly leave Blandings. The weather may break at any moment. I don’t want to miss a day of it.”

“The arrangements are all made.”

“Send the fellow a wire . . . ‘unavoidably detained.’”

“I could not take the responsibility for such a course myself,” said Baxter coldly. “But possibly if you were to make the suggestion to Lady Constance . . .”

“Oh, dash it!” said Lord Emsworth unhappily, at once realising the impossibility of the scheme. “Oh, well, if I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go,” he said after a gloomy pause. “But to leave my garden and stew in London at this time of the year . . .”

There seemed nothing further to say on the subject. He took off his glasses, polished them, put them on again, and shuffled to the door. After all, he reflected, even though the car was coming for him at two, at[p. 18] least he had the morning, and he proposed to make the most of it. But his first careless rapture at the prospect of pottering among his flowers was dimmed, and would not be recaptured. He did not entertain any project so mad as the idea of defying his sister Constance, but he felt extremely bitter about the whole affair. Confound Constance! . . . Dash Baxter! . . . Miss Peavey . . .

The door closed behind Lord Emsworth.

Lady Constance meanwhile, proceeding downstairs, had reached the big hall, when the door of the smoking-room opened and a head popped out. A round, grizzled head with a healthy pink face attached to it.

“Connie!” said the head.

Lady Constance halted.

“Yes, Joe?”

“Come in here a minute,” said the head. “Want to speak to you.”

Lady Constance went into the smoking-room. It was large and cosily book-lined, and its window looked out on to an Italian garden. A wide fire-place occupied nearly the whole of one side of it, and in front of this, his legs spread to an invisible blaze, Mr. Joseph Keeble had already taken his stand. His manner was bluff, but an acute observer might have detected embarrassment in it.

“What is it, Joe?” asked Lady Constance, and smiled pleasantly at her husband. When, two years previously, she had married this elderly widower, of whom the world knew nothing beyond the fact that he had amassed a large fortune in South African diamond mines, there had not been wanting cynics to set the match down as one of convenience, a purely[p. 19] business arrangement by which Mr. Keeble exchanged his money for Lady Constance’s social position. Such was not the case. It had been a genuine marriage of affection on both sides. Mr. Keeble worshipped his wife, and she was devoted to him, though never foolishly indulgent. They were a happy and united couple.

Mr. Keeble cleared his throat. He seemed to find some difficulty in speaking. And when he spoke it was not on the subject which he had intended to open, but on one which had already been worn out in previous conversations.

“Connie, I’ve been thinking about that necklace again.”

Lady Constance laughed.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Joe. You haven’t called me into this stuffy room on a lovely morning like this to talk about that for the hundredth time.”

“Well, you know, there’s no sense in taking risks.”

“Don’t be absurd. What risks can there be?”

“There was a burglary over at Winstone Court, not ten miles from here, only a day or two ago.”

“Don’t be so fussy, Joe.”

“That necklace cost nearly twenty thousand pounds,” said Mr. Keeble, in the reverent voice in which men of business traditions speak of large sums.

“I know.”

“It ought to be in the bank.”

“Once and for all, Joe,” said Lady Constance, losing her amiability and becoming suddenly imperious and Cleopatrine, “I will not keep that necklace in a bank. What on earth is the use of having a beautiful necklace if it is lying in the strong-room of a bank all the time? There is the County Ball coming on, and the Bachelors’ Ball after that, and . . . well, I need it. I will send the thing to the bank when we pass through London on our way to Scotland, but not till then.[p. 20] And I do wish you would stop worrying me about it.”

There was a silence. Mr. Keeble was regretting now that his unfortunate poltroonery had stopped him from tackling in a straightforward and manly fashion the really important matter which was weighing on his mind: for he perceived that his remarks about the necklace, eminently sensible though they were, had marred the genial mood in which his wife had begun this interview. It was going to be more difficult now than ever to approach the main issue. Still, ruffled though she might be, the thing had to be done: for it involved a matter of finance, and in matters of finance Mr. Keeble was no longer a free agent. He and Lady Constance had a mutual banking account, and it was she who supervised the spending of it. This was an arrangement, subsequently regretted by Mr. Keeble, which had been come to in the early days of the honeymoon, when men are apt to do foolish things.

Mr. Keeble coughed. Not the sharp, efficient cough which we have heard Rupert Baxter uttering in the library, but a feeble, strangled thing like the bleat of a diffident sheep.

“Connie,” he said. “Er—Connie.”

And at the words a sort of cold film seemed to come over Lady Constance’s eyes: for some sixth sense told her what subject it was that was now about to be introduced.

“Connie, I—er—had a letter from Phyllis this morning.”

Lady Constance said nothing. Her eyes gleamed for an instant, then became frozen again. Her intuition had not deceived her.

Into the married life of this happy couple only one shadow had intruded itself up to the present. But[p. 21] unfortunately it was a shadow of considerable proportions, a kind of super-shadow; and its effect had been chilling. It was Phyllis, Mr. Keeble’s stepdaughter, who had caused it—by the simple process of jilting the rich and suitable young man whom Lady Constance had attached to her (rather in the manner of a conjurer forcing a card upon his victim) and running off and marrying a far from rich and quite unsuitable person of whom all that seemed to be known was that his name was Jackson. Mr. Keeble, whose simple creed was that Phyllis could do no wrong, had been prepared to accept the situation philosophically; but his wife’s wrath had been deep and enduring. So much so that the mere mentioning of the girl’s name must be accounted to him for a brave deed, Lady Constance having specifically stated that she never wished to hear it again.

Keenly alive to this prejudice of hers, Mr. Keeble stopped after making his announcement, and had to rattle his keys in his pocket in order to acquire the necessary courage to continue. He was not looking at his wife, but he knew just how forbidding her expression must be. This task of his was no easy, congenial task for a pleasant summer morning.

“She says in her letter,” proceeded Mr. Keeble, his eyes on the carpet and his cheeks a deeper pink, “that young Jackson has got the chance of buying a big farm . . . in Lincolnshire, I think she said . . . if he can raise three thousand pounds.”

He paused, and stole a glance at his wife. It was as he had feared. She had congealed. Like some spell, the name Jackson had apparently turned her to marble. It was like the Pygmalion and Galatea business working the wrong way round. She was presumably breathing, but there was no sign of it.

[p. 22]“So I was just thinking,” said Mr. Keeble, producing another obbligato on the keys, “it just crossed my mind . . . it isn’t as if the thing were a speculation . . . the place is apparently coining money . . . present owner only selling because he wants to go abroad . . . it occurred to me . . . and they would pay good interest on the loan . . .”

“What loan?” inquired the statue icily, coming to life.

“Well, what I was thinking . . . just a suggestion, you know . . . what struck me was that if you were willing we might . . . good investment, you know, and nowadays it’s deuced hard to find good investments . . . I was thinking that we might lend them the money.”

He stopped. But he had got the thing out and felt happier. He rattled his keys again, and rubbed the back of his head against the mantelpiece. The friction seemed to give him confidence.

“We had better settle this thing once and for all, Joe,” said Lady Constance. “As you know, when we were married, I was ready to do everything for Phyllis. I was prepared to be a mother to her. I gave her every chance, took her everywhere. And what happened?”

“Yes, I know. But . . .”

“She became engaged to a man with plenty of money . . .”

“Shocking young ass,” interjected Mr. Keeble, perking up for a moment at the recollection of the late lamented, whom he had never liked. “And a rip, what’s more. I’ve heard stories.”

“Nonsense! If you are going to believe all the gossip you hear about people, nobody would be safe. He was a delightful young man and he would have made Phyllis perfectly happy. Instead of marrying him, she[p. 23] chose to go off with this—Jackson.” Lady Constance’s voice quivered. Greater scorn could hardly have been packed into two syllables. “After what has happened, I certainly intend to have nothing more to do with her. I shall not lend them a penny, so please do not let us continue this discussion any longer. I hope I am not an unjust woman, but I must say that I consider, after the way Phyllis behaved . . .”

The sudden opening of the door caused her to break off. Lord Emsworth, mould-stained and wearing a deplorable old jacket, pottered into the room. He peered benevolently at his sister and his brother-in-law, but seemed unaware that he was interrupting a conversation.

“‘Gardening As A Fine Art,’” he murmured. “Connie, have you seen a book called ‘Gardening As A Fine Art’? I was reading it in here last night. ‘Gardening As A Fine Art.’ That is the title. Now, where can it have got to?” His dreamy eye flitted to and fro. “I want to show it to McAllister. There is a passage in it that directly refutes his anarchistic views on . . .”

“It is probably on one of the shelves,” said Lady Constance shortly.

“On one of the shelves?” said Lord Emsworth, obviously impressed by this bright suggestion. “Why, of course, to be sure.”

Mr. Keeble was rattling his keys moodily. A mutinous expression was on his pink face. These moments of rebellion did not come to him very often, for he loved his wife with a dog-like affection and had grown accustomed to being ruled by her, but now resentment filled him. She was unreasonable, he considered. She ought to have realised how strongly he felt about poor little Phyllis. It was too infernally[p. 24] cold-blooded to abandon the poor child like an old shoe simply because . . .

“Are you going?” he asked, observing his wife moving to the door.

“Yes. I am going into the garden,” said Lady Constance. “Why? Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

“No,” said Mr. Keeble despondently. “Oh, no.”

Lady Constance left the room, and a deep masculine silence fell. Mr. Keeble rubbed the back of his head meditatively against the mantelpiece, and Lord Emsworth scratched among the book-shelves.

“Clarence!” said Mr. Keeble suddenly. An idea—one might almost say an inspiration—had come to him.

“Eh?” responded his lordship absently. He had found his book and was turning its pages, absorbed.

“Clarence, can you . . .”

“Angus McAllister,” observed Lord Emsworth bitterly, “is an obstinate, stiff-necked son of Belial. The writer of this book distinctly states in so many words . . .”

“Clarence, can you lend me three thousand pounds on good security and keep it dark from Connie?”

Lord Emsworth blinked.

“Keep something dark from Connie?” He raised his eyes from his book in order to peer at this visionary with a gentle pity. “My dear fellow, it can’t be done.”

“She would never know. I will tell you just why I want this money . . .”

“Money?” Lord Emsworth’s eye had become vacant again. He was reading once more. “Money? Money, my dear fellow? Money? Money? What money? If I have said once,” declared Lord Emsworth, “that Angus McAllister is all wrong on the subject of hollyhocks, I’ve said it a hundred times.”

“Let me explain. This three thousand pounds . . .”

[p. 25]“My dear fellow, no. No, no. It was like you,” said his lordship with a vague heartiness, “it was like you—good and generous—to make this offer, but I have ample, thank you, ample. I don’t need three thousand pounds.”

“You don’t understand. I . . .”

“No, no. No, no. But I am very much obliged, all the same. It was kind of you, my dear fellow, to give me the opportunity. Very kind. Very, very, very kind,” proceeded his lordship, trailing to the door and reading as he went. “Oh, very, very, very . . .”

The door closed behind him.

“Oh, damn!” said Mr. Keeble.

He sank into a chair in a state of profound dejection. He thought of the letter he would have to write to Phyllis. Poor little Phyllis . . . he would have to tell her that what she asked could not be managed. And why, thought Mr. Keeble sourly, as he rose from his seat and went to the writing-table, could it not be managed? Simply because he was a weak-kneed, spineless creature who was afraid of a pair of grey eyes that had a tendency to freeze.

“My dear Phyllis,” he wrote.

Here he stopped. How on earth was he to put it? What a letter to have to write! Mr. Keeble placed his head between his hands and groaned aloud.

“Hallo, Uncle Joe!”

The letter-writer, turning sharply, was aware—without pleasure—of his nephew Frederick, standing beside his chair. He eyed him resentfully, for he was not only exasperated but startled. He had not heard the door open. It was as if the smooth-haired youth had popped up out of a trap.

“Came in through the window,” explained the Hon. Freddie. “I say, Uncle Joe.”

[p. 26]“Well, what is it?”

“I say, Uncle Joe,” said Freddie, “can you lend me a thousand quid?”

Mr. Keeble uttered a yelp like a pinched Pomeranian.

As Mr. Keeble, red-eyed and overwrought, rose slowly from his chair and began to swell in ominous silence, his nephew raised his hand appealingly. It began to occur to the Hon. Freddie that he had perhaps not led up to his request with the maximum of smooth tact.

“Half a jiffy!” he entreated. “I say, don’t go in off the deep end for just a second. I can explain.”

Mr. Keeble’s feelings expressed themselves in a loud snort.

“Explain!”

“Well, I can. Whole trouble was, I started at the wrong end. Shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. The fact is, Uncle Joe, I’ve got a scheme. I give you my word that, if you’ll only put off having apoplexy for about three minutes,” said Freddie, scanning his fermenting relative with some anxiety, “I can shove you on to a good thing. Honestly I can. And all I say is, if this scheme I’m talking about is worth a thousand quid to you, will you slip it across? I’m game to spill it and leave it to your honesty to cash up if the thing looks good to you.”

“A thousand pounds!”

“Nice round sum,” urged Freddie ingratiatingly.

“Why,” demanded Mr. Keeble, now somewhat recovered, “do you want a thousand pounds?”

“Well, who doesn’t, if it comes to that?” said Freddie. “But I don’t mind telling you my special[p. 27] reason for wanting it at just this moment, if you’ll swear to keep it under your hat as far as the guv’nor is concerned.”

“If you mean that you wish me not to repeat to your father anything you may tell me in confidence, naturally I should not dream of doing such a thing.”

Freddie looked puzzled. His was no lightning brain.

“Can’t quite work that out,” he confessed. “Do you mean you will tell him or you won’t?”

“I will not tell him.”

“Good old Uncle Joe!” said Freddie, relieved. “A topper! I’ve always said so. Well, look here, you know all the trouble there’s been about my dropping a bit on the races lately?”

“I do.”

“Between ourselves, I dropped about five hundred of the best. And I just want to ask you one simple question. Why did I drop it?”

“Because you were an infernal young ass.”

“Well, yes,” agreed Freddie, having considered the point, “you might put it that way, of course. But why was I an ass?”

“Good God!” exclaimed the exasperated Mr. Keeble. “Am I a psycho-analyst?”

“I mean to say, if you come right down to it, I lost all that stuff simply because I was on the wrong side of the fence. It’s a mug’s game betting on horses. The only way to make money is to be a bookie, and that’s what I’m going to do if you’ll part with that thousand. Pal of mine, who was up at Oxford with me, is in a bookie’s office, and they’re game to take me in too if I can put up a thousand quid. Only I must let them know quick, because the offer’s not going to be open for ever. You’ve no notion what a deuce of a lot of competition there is for that sort of job.”

[p. 28]Mr. Keeble, who had been endeavouring with some energy to get a word in during this harangue, now contrived to speak.

“And do you seriously suppose that I would . . . But what’s the use of wasting time talking? I have no means of laying my hands on the sum you mention. If I had,” said Mr. Keeble wistfully. “If I had . . .” And his eye strayed to the letter on the desk, the letter which had got as far as “My dear Phyllis” and stuck there.

Freddie gazed upon him with cordial sympathy.

“Oh, I know how you’re situated, Uncle Joe, and I’m dashed sorry for you. I mean, Aunt Constance and all that.”

“What!” Irksome as Mr. Keeble sometimes found the peculiar condition of his financial arrangements, he had always had the consolation of supposing that they were a secret between his wife and himself. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I know that Aunt Constance keeps an eye on the doubloons and checks the outgoings pretty narrowly. And I think it’s a dashed shame that she won’t unbuckle to help poor old Phyllis. A girl,” said Freddie, “I always liked. Bally shame! Why the dickens shouldn’t she marry that fellow Jackson? I mean, love’s love,” said Freddie, who felt strongly on this point.

Mr. Keeble was making curious gulping noises.

“Perhaps I ought to explain,” said Freddie, “that I was having a quiet after-breakfast smoke outside the window there and heard the whole thing. I mean, you and Aunt Constance going to the mat about poor old Phyllis and you trying to bite the guv’nor’s ear and so forth.”

Mr. Keeble bubbled for awhile.

“You—you listened!” he managed to ejaculate at length.

[p. 29]“And dashed lucky for you,” said Freddie with a cordiality unimpaired by the frankly unfriendly stare under which a nicer-minded youth would have withered; “dashed lucky for you that I did. Because I’ve got a scheme.”

Mr. Keeble’s estimate of his young relative’s sagacity was not a high one, and it is doubtful whether, had the latter caught him in a less despondent mood, he would have wasted time in inquiring into the details of this scheme, the mention of which had been playing in and out of Freddie’s conversation like a will-o’-the-wisp. But such was his reduced state at the moment that a reluctant gleam of hope crept into his troubled eye.

“A scheme? Do you mean a scheme to help me out of—out of my difficulty?”

“Absolutely! You want the best seats, we have ’em. I mean,” Freddie went on in interpretation of these peculiar words, “you want three thousand quid, and I can show you how to get it.”

“Then kindly do so,” said Mr. Keeble; and, having opened the door, peered cautiously out, and closed it again, he crossed the room and shut the window.

“Makes it a bit fuggy, but perhaps you’re right,” said Freddie, eyeing these manœuvres. “Well, it’s like this, Uncle Joe. You remember what you were saying to Aunt Constance about some bird being apt to sneak up and pinch her necklace?”

“I do.”

“Well, why not?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why don’t you?”

Mr. Keeble regarded his nephew with unconcealed astonishment. He had been prepared for imbecility, but this exceeded his expectations.

“Steal my wife’s necklace!”

[p. 30]“That’s it. Frightfully quick you are, getting on to an idea. Pinch Aunt Connie’s necklace. For, mark you,” continued Freddie, so far forgetting the respect due from a nephew as to tap his uncle sharply on the chest, “if a husband pinches anything from a wife, it isn’t stealing. That’s law. I found that out from a movie I saw in town.”

The Hon. Freddie was a great student of the movies. He could tell a super-film from a super-super-film at a glance, and what he did not know about erring wives and licentious clubmen could have been written in a sub-title.

“Are you insane?” growled Mr. Keeble.

“It wouldn’t be hard for you to get hold of it. And once you’d got it everybody would be happy. I mean, all you’d have to do would be to draw a cheque to pay for another one for Aunt Connie—which would make her perfectly chirpy, as well as putting you one up, if you follow me. Then you would have the other necklace, the pinched one, to play about with. See what I mean? You could sell it privily and by stealth, ship Phyllis her three thousand, push across my thousand, and what was left over would be a nice little private account for you to tuck away somewhere where Aunt Connie wouldn’t know anything about it. And a dashed useful thing,” said Freddie, “to have up your sleeve in case of emergencies.”

“Are you . . . ?”

Mr. Keeble was on the point of repeating his previous remark when suddenly there came the realisation that, despite all preconceived opinions, the young man was anything but insane. The scheme, at which he had been prepared to scoff, was so brilliant, yet simple, that it seemed almost incredible that its sponsor could have worked it out for himself.

[p. 31]“Not my own,” said Freddie modestly, as if in answer to the thought. “Saw much the same thing in a movie once. Only there the fellow, if I remember, wanted to do down an insurance company, and it wasn’t a necklace that he pinched but bonds. Still, the principle’s the same. Well, how do we go, Uncle Joe? How about it? Is that worth a thousand quid or not?”

Even though he had seen in person to the closing of the door and the window, Mr. Keeble could not refrain from a conspirator-like glance about him. They had been speaking with lowered voices, but now words came from him in an almost inaudible whisper.

“Could it really be done? Is it feasible?”

“Feasible? Why, dash it, what the dickens is there to stop you? You could do it in a second. And the beauty of the whole thing is that, if you were copped, nobody could say a word, because husband pinching from wife isn’t stealing. Law.”

The statement that in the circumstances indicated nobody could say a word seemed to Mr. Keeble so at variance with the facts that he was compelled to challenge it.

“Your aunt would have a good deal to say,” he observed ruefully.

“Eh? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Well, you would have to risk that. After all, the chances would be dead against her finding out.”

“But she might.”

“Oh, well, if you put it like that, I suppose she might.”

“Freddie, my boy,” said Mr. Keeble weakly, “I daren’t do it!”

The vision of his thousand pounds slipping from his grasp so wrought upon Freddie that he expressed himself in a manner far from fitting in one of his years towards an older man.

[p. 32]“Oh, I say, don’t be such a rabbit!”

Mr. Keeble shook his head.

“No,” he repeated, “I daren’t.”

It might have seemed that the negotiations had reached a deadlock, but Freddie, with a thousand pounds in sight, was in far too stimulated a condition to permit so tame an ending to such a promising plot. As he stood there, chafing at his uncle’s pusillanimity, an idea was vouchsafed to him.

“By Jove! I’ll tell you what!” he cried.

“Not so loud!” moaned the apprehensive Mr. Keeble. “Not so loud!”

“I’ll tell you what,” repeated Freddie in a hoarse whisper. “How would it be if I did the pinching?”

“What!”

“How would it . . .”

“Would you?” Hope, which had vanished from Mr. Keeble’s face, came flooding back. “My boy, would you really?”

“For a thousand quid you bet I would.”

Mr. Keeble clutched at his young relative’s hand and gripped it feverishly.

“Freddie,” he said, “the moment you place that necklace in my hands, I will give you not a thousand but two thousand pounds.”

“Uncle Joe,” said Freddie with equal intensity, “it’s a bet!”

Mr. Keeble mopped at his forehead.

“You think you can manage it?”

“Manage it?” Freddie laughed a light laugh. “Just watch me!”

Mr. Keeble grasped his hand again with the utmost warmth.

“I must go out and get some air,” he said. “I’m all upset. May I really leave this matter to you, Freddie?”

[p. 33]

“Rather!”

“Good! Then to-night I will write to Phyllis and say that I may be able to do what she wishes.”

“Don’t say ‘may,’” cried Freddie buoyantly. “The word is ‘will.’ Bally will! What ho!”

Exhilaration is a heady drug; but, like other drugs, it has the disadvantage that its stimulating effects seldom last for very long. For perhaps ten minutes after his uncle had left him, Freddie Threepwood lay back in his chair in a sort of ecstasy. He felt strong, vigorous, alert. Then by degrees, like a chilling wind, doubt began to creep upon him—faintly at first, then more and more insistently, till by the end of a quarter of an hour he was in a state of pronounced self-mistrust. Or, to put it with less elegance, he was suffering from an exceedingly severe attack of cold feet.

The more he contemplated the venture which he had undertaken, the less alluring did it appear to him. His was not a keen imagination, but even he could shape with a gruesome clearness a vision of the frightful bust-up that would ensue should he be detected stealing his Aunt Constance’s diamond necklace. Common decency would in such an event seal his lips as regarded his Uncle Joseph’s share in the matter. And even if—as might conceivably happen—common decency failed at the crisis, reason told him that his Uncle Joseph would infallibly disclaim any knowledge of or connection with the rash act. And then where would he be? In the soup, undoubtedly. For Freddie could not conceal it from himself that there was nothing in his previous record to make it seem inconceivable to his nearest and dearest that he should steal the jewellery of a female relative for purely personal ends. The[p. 34] verdict in the event of detection would be one of uncompromising condemnation.

And yet he hated the idea of meekly allowing that two thousand pounds to escape from his clutch . . .

A young man’s cross-roads.

*       *       *       *       *

The agony of spirit into which these meditations cast him had brought him up with a bound from the comfortable depths of his arm-chair and had set him prowling restlessly about the room. His wanderings led him at this point to collide somewhat painfully with the long table on which Beach the butler, a tidy soul, was in the habit of arranging in a neat row the daily papers, weekly papers, and magazines which found their way into the castle. The shock had the effect of rousing him from his stupor, and in an absent way he clutched the nearest daily paper, which happened to be the Morning Globe, and returned to his chair in the hope of quieting his nerves with a perusal of the racing intelligence. For, though far removed now from any practical share in the doings of the racing world, he still took a faint melancholy interest in ascertaining what Captain Curb, the Head Lad, Little Brighteyes, and the rest of the newspaper experts fancied for the day’s big event. He lit a cigarette and unfolded the journal.

The next moment, instead of passing directly, as was his usual practice, to the last page, which was devoted to sport, he was gazing with a strange dry feeling in his throat at a certain advertisement on page one.

It was a well-displayed advertisement, and one that had caught the eye of many other readers of the paper that morning. It was worded to attract attention, and it had achieved its object. But where others who read it had merely smiled and marvelled idly how anybody[p. 35] could spend good money putting nonsense like this in the paper, to Freddie its import was wholly serious. It read to him like the Real Thing. His motion-picture-trained mind accepted this advertisement at its face-value.

It ran as follows:—

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Psmith Will Help You

Psmith Is Ready For Anything

DO YOU WANT

Someone To Manage Your Affairs?

Someone To Handle Your Business?

Someone To Take The Dog For A Run?

Someone To Assassinate Your Aunt?

PSMITH WILL DO IT

CRIME NOT OBJECTED TO

Whatever Job You Have To Offer

(Provided It Has Nothing To Do With Fish)

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Address Applications To ‘R. Psmith, Box 365’

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Freddie laid the paper down with a deep intake of breath. He picked it up again, and read the advertisement a second time. Yes, it sounded good.

More, it had something of the quality of a direct answer to prayer. Very vividly now Freddie realised that what he had been wishing for was a partner to share the perils of this enterprise which he had so rashly undertaken. In fact, not so much to share them as to take them off his shoulders altogether. And such a partner he was now in a position to command. Uncle Joe was going to give him two thousand if he brought the thing off. This advertisement fellow[p. 36] would probably be charmed to come in for a few hundred . . .

*       *       *       *       *

Two minutes later, Freddie was at the writing-desk, scribbling a letter. From time to time he glanced furtively over his shoulder at the door. But the house was still. No footsteps came to interrupt him at his task.

Freddie went out into the garden. He had not wandered far when from somewhere close at hand there was borne to him on the breeze a remark in a high voice about Scottish obstinacy, which could only have proceeded from one source. He quickened his steps.

“Hallo, guv’nor.”

“Well, Frederick?”

Freddie shuffled.

“I say, guv’nor, do you think I might go up to town with you this afternoon?”

“What!”

“Fact is, I ought to see my dentist. Haven’t been to him for a deuce of a time.”

“I cannot see the necessity for you to visit a London dentist. There is an excellent man in Shrewsbury, and you know I have the strongest objection to your going to London.”

“Well, you see, this fellow understands my snappers. Always been to him, I mean to say. Anybody who knows anything about these things will tell you greatest mistake go buzzing about to different dentists.”

Already Lord Emsworth’s attention was wandering back to the waiting McAllister.

[p. 37]“Oh, very well, very well.”

“Thanks awfully, guv’nor.”

“But on one thing I insist, Frederick. I cannot have you loafing about London the whole day. You must catch the twelve-fifty train back.”

“Right ho. That’ll be all right, guv’nor.”

“Now, listen to reason, McAllister,” said his lordship. “That is all I ask you to do—listen to reason . . .”

At about the hour when Lord Emsworth’s train, whirling him and his son Freddie to London, had reached the half-way point in its journey, a very tall, very thin, very solemn young man, gleaming in a speckless top hat and a morning-coat of irreproachable fit, mounted the steps of Number Eighteen, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, and rang the front-door bell. This done, he removed the hat; and having touched his forehead lightly with a silk handkerchief, for the afternoon sun was warm, gazed about him with a grave distaste.

“A scaly neighbourhood!” he murmured.

The young man’s judgment was one at which few people with an eye for beauty would have cavilled. When the great revolution against London’s ugliness really starts and yelling hordes of artists and architects, maddened beyond endurance, finally take the law into their own hands and rage through the city burning and destroying, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, will surely not escape the torch. Long since it must have been marked down for destruction. For, though it possesses certain merits of a low practical kind, being inexpensive in the matter of rents and handy for the buses and the Underground, it is a peculiarly beastly little street. Situated in the middle of one of those[p. 39] districts where London breaks out into a sort of eczema of red brick, it consists of two parallel rows of semi-detached villas, all exactly alike, each guarded by a ragged evergreen hedge, each with coloured glass of an extremely regrettable nature let into the panels of the front door; and sensitive young impressionists from the artists’ colony up Holland Park way may sometimes be seen stumbling through it with hands over their eyes, muttering between clenched teeth “How long? How long?”

A small maid-of-all-work appeared in answer to the bell, and stood transfixed as the visitor, producing a monocle, placed it in his right eye and inspected her through it.

“A warm afternoon,” he said cordially.

“Yes, sir.”

“But pleasant,” urged the young man. “Tell me, is Mrs. Jackson at home?”

“No, sir.”

“Not at home?”

“No, sir.”

The young man sighed.

“Ah well,” he said, “we must always remember that these disappointments are sent to us for some good purpose. No doubt they make us more spiritual. Will you inform her that I called? The name is Psmith. P-smith.”

“Peasmith, sir?”

“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name[p. 40] on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“You don’t think,” he said anxiously, “that I did wrong in pursuing this course?”

“N-no, sir.”

“Splendid!” said the young man, flicking a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve. “Splendid! Splendid!”

And with a courteous bow he descended the steps and made his way down the street. The little maid, having followed him with bulging eyes till he was out of sight, closed the door and returned to her kitchen.

Psmith strolled meditatively on. The genial warmth of the afternoon soothed him. He hummed lightly—only stopping when, as he reached the end of the street, a young man of his own age, rounding the corner rapidly, almost ran into him.

“Sorry,” said the young man. “Hallo, Smith.”

Psmith gazed upon him with benevolent affection.

“Comrade Jackson,” he said, “this is well met. The one man of all others whom I would have wished to encounter. We will pop off somewhere, Comrade Jackson, should your engagements permit, and restore our tissues with a cup of tea. I had hoped to touch the Jackson family for some slight refreshment, but I was informed that your wife was out.”

Mike Jackson laughed.

“Phyllis isn’t out. She . . .”

“Not out? Then,” said Psmith, pained, “there has been dirty work done this day. For I was turned from the door. It would not be exaggerating to say that I was given the bird. Is this the boasted Jackson hospitality?”

[p. 41]“Phyllis is giving a tea to some of her old school pals,” explained Mike. “She told the maid to say she wasn’t at home to anybody else. I’m not allowed in myself.”

“Enough, Comrade Jackson!” said Psmith agreeably. “Say no more. If you yourself have been booted out in spite of all the loving, honouring, and obeying your wife promised at the altar, who am I to complain? And possibly, one can console oneself by reflecting, we are well out of it. These gatherings of old girls’-school chums are not the sort of function your man of affairs wants to get lugged into. Capital company as we are, Comrade Jackson, we should doubtless have been extremely in the way. I suppose the conversation would have dealt exclusively with reminiscences of the dear old school, of tales of surreptitious cocoa-drinking in the dormitories and what the deportment mistress said when Angela was found chewing tobacco in the shrubbery. Yes, I fancy we have not missed a lot. . . . By the way, I don’t think much of the new home. True, I only saw it from the outside, but . . . no, I don’t think much of it.”

“Best we can afford.”

“And who,” said Psmith, “am I to taunt my boyhood friend with his honest poverty? Especially as I myself am standing on the very brink of destitution.”

“You?”

“I in person. That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.”

“But I thought your uncle gave you rather a good salary.”

“So he did. But my uncle and I are about to part company. From now on he, so to speak, will take the high road and I’ll take the low road. I dine with him[p. 42] to-night, and over the nuts and wine I shall hand him the bad news that I propose to resign my position in the firm. I have no doubt that he supposed he was doing me a good turn by starting me in his fish business, but even what little experience I have had of it has convinced me that it is not my proper sphere. The whisper flies round the clubs ‘Psmith has not found his niche!’

“I am not,” said Psmith, “an unreasonable man. I realise that humanity must be supplied with fish. I am not averse from a bit of fish myself. But to be professionally connected with a firm that handles the material in the raw is not my idea of a large life-work. Remind me to tell you some time what it feels like to sling yourself out of bed at four a.m. and go down to toil in Billingsgate Market. No, there is money in fish—my uncle has made a pot of it—but what I feel is that there must be other walks in life for a bright young man. I chuck it to-night.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“That, Comrade Jackson, is more or less on the knees of the gods. To-morrow morning I think I will stroll round to an employment agency and see how the market for bright young men stands. Do you know a good one?”

“Phyllis always goes to Miss Clarkson’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. But . . .”

“Miss Clarkson’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. I will make a note of it . . . Meanwhile, I wonder if you saw the Morning Globe to-day?”

“No. Why?”

“I had an advertisement in it, in which I expressed myself as willing—indeed, eager—to tackle any undertaking that had nothing to do with fish. I am confidently expecting shoals of replies. I look forward[p. 43] to winnowing the heap and selecting the most desirable.”

“Pretty hard to get a job these days,” said Mike doubtfully.

“Not if you have something superlatively good to offer.”

“What have you got to offer?”

“My services,” said Psmith with faint reproach.

“What as?”

“As anything. I made no restrictions. Would you care to take a look at my manifesto? I have a copy in my pocket.”

Psmith produced from inside his immaculate waistcoat a folded clipping.

“I should welcome your opinion of it, Comrade Jackson. I have frequently said that for sturdy common sense you stand alone. Your judgment should be invaluable.”

The advertisement, which some hours earlier had so electrified the Hon. Freddie Threepwood in the smoking-room at Blandings Castle, seemed to affect Mike, whose mind was of the stolid and serious type, somewhat differently. He finished his perusal and stared speechlessly.

“Neat, don’t you think?” said Psmith. “Covers the ground adequately? I think so, I think so.”

“Do you mean to say you’re going to put drivel like that in the paper?” asked Mike.

“I have put it in the paper. As I told you, it appeared this morning. By this time to-morrow I shall no doubt have finished sorting out the first batch of replies.”

Mike’s emotion took him back to the phraseology of school days.

“You are an ass!”

Psmith restored the clipping to his waistcoat pocket.

[p. 44]“You wound me, Comrade Jackson,” he said. “I had expected a broader outlook from you. In fact, I rather supposed that you would have rushed round instantly to the offices of the journal and shoved in a similar advertisement yourself. But nothing that you can say can damp my buoyant spirit. The cry goes round Kensington (and district) ‘Psmith is off!’ In what direction the cry omits to state: but that information the future will supply. And now, Comrade Jackson, let us trickle into yonder tea-shop and drink success to the venture in a cup of the steaming. I had a particularly hard morning to-day among the whitebait, and I need refreshment.”

After Psmith had withdrawn his spectacular person from it, there was an interval of perhaps twenty minutes before anything else occurred to brighten the drabness of Wallingford Street. The lethargy of afternoon held the thoroughfare in its grip. Occasionally a tradesman’s cart would rattle round the corner, and from time to time cats appeared, stalking purposefully among the evergreens. But at ten minutes to five a girl ran up the steps of Number Eighteen and rang the bell.

She was a girl of medium height, very straight and slim; and her fair hair, her cheerful smile, and the boyish suppleness of her body all contributed to a general effect of valiant gaiety, a sort of golden sunniness—accentuated by the fact that, like all girls who looked to Paris for inspiration in their dress that season, she was wearing black.

The small maid appeared again.

“Is Mrs. Jackson at home?” said the girl. “I think she’s expecting me. Miss Halliday.”

[p. 45]“Yes, miss?”

A door at the end of the narrow hall had opened.

“Is that you, Eve?”

“Hallo, Phyl, darling.”

Phyllis Jackson fluttered down the passage like a rose-leaf on the wind, and hurled herself into Eve’s arms. She was small and fragile, with great brown eyes under a cloud of dark hair. She had a wistful look, and most people who knew her wanted to pet her. Eve had always petted her, from their first days at school together.

“Am I late or early?” asked Eve.

“You’re the first, but we won’t wait. Jane, will you bring tea into the drawing-room.”

“Yes’m.”

“And, remember, I don’t want to see anyone for the rest of the afternoon. If anybody calls, tell them I’m not at home. Except Miss Clarkson and Mrs. McTodd, of course.”

“Yes’m.”

“Who is Mrs. McTodd?” inquired Eve. “Is that Cynthia?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know she had married Ralston McTodd, the Canadian poet? You knew she went out to Canada?”

“I knew that, yes. But I hadn’t heard that she was married. Funny how out of touch one gets with girls who were one’s best friends at school. Do you realise it’s nearly two years since I saw you?”

“I know. Isn’t it awful! I got your address from Elsa Wentworth two or three days ago, and then Clarkie told me that Cynthia was over here on a visit with her husband, so I thought how jolly it would be to have a regular reunion. We three were such friends in the old days. . . . You remember Clarkie, of course? Miss[p. 46] Clarkson, who used to be English mistress at Wayland House.”

“Yes, of course. Where did you run into her?”

“Oh, I see a lot of her. She runs a Domestic Employment Agency in Shaftesbury Avenue now, and I have to go there about once a fortnight to get a new maid. She supplied Jane.”

“Is Cynthia’s husband coming with her this afternoon?”

“No. I wanted it to be simply us four. Do you know him? But of course you don’t. This is his first visit to England.”

“I know his poetry. He’s quite a celebrity. Cynthia’s lucky.”

They had made their way into the drawing-room, a gruesome little apartment full of all those antimacassars, wax flowers, and china dogs inseparable from the cheaper type of London furnished house. Eve, though the exterior of Number Eighteen should have prepared her for all this, was unable to check a slight shudder as she caught the eye of the least prepossessing of the dogs, goggling at her from the mantelpiece.

“Don’t look at them,” recommended Phyllis, following her gaze. “I try not to. We’ve only just moved in here, so I haven’t had time to make the place nice. Here’s tea. All right, Jane, put it down there. Tea, Eve?”

Eve sat down. She was puzzled and curious. She threw her mind back to the days at school and remembered the Phyllis of that epoch as almost indecently opulent. A millionaire stepfather there had been then, she recollected. What had become of him now, that he should allow Phyllis to stay in surroundings like this? Eve scented a mystery, and in her customary straightforward way went to the heart of it.

[p. 47]“Tell me all about yourself,” she said, having achieved as much comfort as the peculiar structure of her chair would permit. “And remember that I haven’t seen you for two years, so don’t leave anything out.”

“It’s so difficult to know where to start.”

“Well, you signed your letter ‘Phyllis Jackson.’ Start with the mysterious Jackson. Where does he come in? The last I heard about you was an announcement in the Morning Post that you were engaged to—I’ve forgotten the name, but I’m certain it wasn’t Jackson.”

“Rollo Mountford.”

“Was it? Well, what has become of Rollo? You seem to have mislaid him. Did you break off the engagement?”

“Well, it—sort of broke itself off. I mean, you see, I went and married Mike.”

“Eloped with him, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Good heavens!”

“I’m awfully ashamed about that, Eve. I suppose I treated Rollo awfully badly.”

“Never mind. A man with a name like that was made for suffering.”

“I never really cared for him. He had horrid swimmy eyes . . .”

“I understand. So you eloped with your Mike. Tell me about him. Who is he? What does he do?”

“Well, at present he’s master at a school. But he doesn’t like it. He wants to get back to the country again. When I met him, he was agent on a place in the country belonging to some people named Smith. Mike had been at school and Cambridge with the son. They were very rich then and had a big estate. It was the next place to the Edgelows. I had gone to stay with[p. 48] Mary Edgelow—I don’t know if you remember her at school? I met Mike first at a dance, and then I met him out riding, and then—well, after that we used to meet every day. And we fell in love right from the start and we went and got married. Oh, Eve, I wish you could have seen our darling little house. It was all over ivy and roses, and we had horses and dogs and . . .”

Phyllis’ narrative broke off with a gulp. Eve looked at her sympathetically. All her life she herself had been joyously impecunious, but it had never seemed to matter. She was strong and adventurous, and revelled in the perpetual excitement of trying to make both ends meet. But Phyllis was one of those sweet porcelain girls whom the roughnesses of life bruise instead of stimulating. She needed comfort and pleasant surroundings. Eve looked morosely at the china dog, which leered back at her with an insufferable good-fellowship.

“We had hardly got married,” resumed Phyllis, blinking, “when poor Mr. Smith died and the whole place was broken up. He must have been speculating or something, I suppose, because he hardly left any money, and the estate had to be sold. And the people who bought it—they were coal people from Wolverhampton—had a nephew for whom they wanted the agent job, so Mike had to go. So here we are.”

Eve put the question which she had been waiting to ask ever since she had entered the house.

“But what about your stepfather? Surely, when we were at school, you had a rich stepfather in the background. Has he lost his money, too?”

“No.”

“Well, why doesn’t he help you, then?”

“He would, I know, if he was left to himself. But it’s Aunt Constance.”

[p. 49]“What’s Aunt Constance? And who is Aunt Constance?”

“Well, I call her that, but she’s really my stepmother—sort of. I suppose she’s really my step-stepmother. My stepfather married again two years ago. It was Aunt Constance who was so furious when I married Mike. She wanted me to marry Rollo. She has never forgiven me, and she won’t let my stepfather do anything to help us.”

“But the man must be a worm!” said Eve indignantly. “Why doesn’t he insist? You always used to tell me how fond he was of you.”

“He isn’t a worm, Eve. He’s a dear. It’s just that he has let her boss him. She’s rather a terror, you know. She can be quite nice, and they’re awfully fond of each other, but she is as hard as nails sometimes.” Phyllis broke off. The front door had opened, and there were footsteps in the hall. “Here’s Clarkie. I hope she has brought Cynthia with her. She was to pick her up on her way. Don’t talk about what I’ve been telling you in front of her, Eve, there’s an angel.”

“Why not?”

“She’s so motherly about it. It’s sweet of her, but . . .”

Eve understood.

“All right. Later on.”

The door opened to admit Miss Clarkson.

The adjective which Phyllis had applied to her late schoolmistress was obviously well chosen. Miss Clarkson exuded motherliness. She was large, wholesome, and soft, and she swooped on Eve like a hen on its chicken almost before the door had closed.

“Eve! How nice to see you after all this time! My dear, you’re looking perfectly lovely! And so prosperous. What a beautiful hat!”

[p. 50]“I’ve been envying it ever since you came, Eve,” said Phyllis. “Where did you get it?”

“Madeleine Sœurs, in Regent Street.”

Miss Clarkson, having acquired and stirred a cup of tea, started to improve the occasion. Eve had always been a favourite of hers at school. She beamed affectionately upon her.

“Now doesn’t this show—what I always used to say to you in the dear old days, Eve—that one must never despair, however black the outlook may seem? I remember you at school, dear, as poor as a church mouse, and with no prospects, none whatever. And yet here you are—rich . . .”

Eve laughed. She got up and kissed Miss Clarkson. She regretted that she was compelled to strike a jarring note, but it had to be done.

“I’m awfully sorry, Clarkie dear,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ve misled you. I’m just as broke as I ever was. In fact, when Phyllis told me you were running an Employment Agency, I made a note to come and see you and ask if you had some attractive billet to dispose of. Governess to a thoroughly angelic child would do. Or isn’t there some nice cosy author or something who wants his letters answered and his press-clippings pasted in an album?”

“Oh, my dear!” Miss Clarkson was deeply concerned. “I did hope . . . That hat . . . !”

“The hat’s the whole trouble. Of course I had no business even to think of it, but I saw it in the shop-window and coveted it for days, and finally fell. And then, you see, I had to live up to it—buy shoes and a dress to match. I tell you it was a perfect orgy, and I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself now. Too late, as usual.”

“Oh, dear! You always were such a wild, impetuous[p. 51] child, even at school. I remember how often I used to speak to you about it.”

“Well, when it was all over and I was sane again, I found I had only a few pounds left, not nearly enough to see me through till the relief expedition arrived. So I thought it over and decided to invest my little all.”

“I hope you chose something safe?”

“It ought to have been. The Sporting Express called it ‘To-day’s Safety Bet.’ It was Bounding Willie for the two-thirty race at Sandown last Wednesday.”

“Oh, dear!”

“That’s what I said when poor old Willie came in sixth. But it’s no good worrying, is it? What it means is that I simply must find something to do that will carry me through till I get my next quarter’s allowance. And that won’t be till September. . . . But don’t let’s talk business here. I’ll come round to your office, Clarkie, to-morrow. . . . Where’s Cynthia? Didn’t you bring her?”

“Yes, I thought you were going to pick Cynthia up on your way, Clarkie,” said Phyllis.

If Eve’s information as to her financial affairs had caused Miss Clarkson to mourn, the mention of Cynthia plunged her into the very depths of woe. Her mouth quivered and a tear stole down her cheek. Eve and Phyllis exchanged bewildered glances.

“I say,” said Eve after a moment’s pause and a silence broken only by a smothered sob from their late instructress, “we aren’t being very cheerful, are we, considering that this is supposed to be a joyous reunion? Is anything wrong with Cynthia?”

So poignant was Miss Clarkson’s anguish that Phyllis, in a flutter of alarm, rose and left the room swiftly in search of the only remedy that suggested itself to her—her smelling-salts.

[p. 52]“Poor dear Cynthia!” moaned Miss Clarkson.

“Why, what’s the matter with her?” asked Eve. She was not callous to Miss Clarkson’s grief, but she could not help the tiniest of smiles. In a flash she had been transported to her school-days, when the other’s habit of extracting the utmost tragedy out of the slimmest material had been a source of ever-fresh amusement to her. Not for an instant did she expect to hear any worse news of her old friend than that she was in bed with a cold or had twisted her ankle.

“She’s married, you know,” said Miss Clarkson.

“Well, I see no harm in that, Clarkie. If a few more Safety Bets go wrong, I shall probably have to rush out and marry someone myself. Some nice, rich, indulgent man who will spoil me.”

“Oh, Eve, my dear,” pleaded Miss Clarkson, bleating with alarm, “do please be careful whom you marry. I never hear of one of my girls marrying without feeling that the worst may happen and that, all unknowing, she may be stepping over a grim precipice!”

“You don’t tell them that, do you? Because I should think it would rather cast a damper on the wedding festivities. Has Cynthia gone stepping over grim precipices? I was just saying to Phyllis that I envied her, marrying a celebrity like Ralston McTodd.”

Miss Clarkson gulped.

“The man must be a fiend!” she said brokenly. “I have just left poor dear Cynthia in floods of tears at the Cadogan Hotel—she has a very nice quiet room on the fourth floor, though the carpet does not harmonise with the wall-paper. . . . She was broken-hearted, poor child. I did what I could to console her, but it was useless. She always was so highly strung. I must be getting back to her very soon. I only came on here[p. 53] because I did not want to disappoint you two dear girls . . .”

“Why?” said Eve with quiet intensity. She knew from experience that Miss Clarkson, unless firmly checked, would pirouette round and round the point for minutes without ever touching it.

“Why?” echoed Miss Clarkson, blinking as if the word was something solid that had struck her unexpectedly.

“Why was Cynthia in floods of tears?”

“But I’m telling you, my dear. That man has left her!”

“Left her!”

“They had a quarrel, and he walked straight out of the hotel. That was the day before yesterday, and he has not been back since. This afternoon the curtest note came from him to say that he never intended to return. He had secretly and in a most underhand way arranged for his luggage to be removed from the hotel to a District Messenger office, and from there he has taken it no one knows where. He has completely disappeared.”

Eve stared. She had not been prepared for news of this momentous order.

“But what did they quarrel about?”

“Cynthia, poor child, was too overwrought to tell me!”

Eve clenched her teeth.

“The beast! . . . Poor old Cynthia. . . . Shall I come round with you?”

“No, my dear, better let me look after her alone. I will tell her to write and let you know when she can see you. I must be going, Phyllis dear,” she said, as her hostess re-entered, bearing a small bottle.

[p. 54]“But you’ve only just come!” said Phyllis, surprised.

“Poor old Cynthia’s husband has left her,” explained Eve briefly. “And Clarkie’s going back to look after her. She’s in a pretty bad way, it seems.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes, indeed. And I really must be going at once,” said Miss Clarkson.

Eve waited in the drawing-room till the front door banged and Phyllis came back to her. Phyllis was more wistful than ever. She had been looking forward to this tea-party, and it had not been the happy occasion she had anticipated. The two girls sat in silence for a moment.

“What brutes some men are!” said Eve at length.

“Mike,” said Phyllis dreamily, “is an angel.”

Eve welcomed the unspoken invitation to return to a more agreeable topic. She felt very deeply for the stricken Cynthia, but she hated aimless talk, and nothing could have been more aimless than for her and Phyllis to sit there exchanging lamentations concerning a tragedy of which neither knew more than the bare outlines. Phyllis had her tragedy, too, and it was one where Eve saw the possibility of doing something practical and helpful. She was a girl of action, and was glad to be able to attack a living issue.

“Yes, let’s go on talking about you and Mike,” she said. “At present I can’t understand the position at all. When Clarkie came in, you were just telling me about your stepfather and why he wouldn’t help you. And I thought you made out a very poor case for him. Tell me some more. I’ve forgotten his name, by the way.”

“Keeble.”

[p. 55]“Oh? Well, I think you ought to write and tell him how hard-up you are. He may be under the impression that you are still living in luxury and don’t need any help. After all, he can’t know unless you tell him. And I should ask him straight out to come to the rescue. It isn’t as if it was your Mike’s fault that you’re broke. He married you on the strength of a very good position which looked like a permanency, and lost it through no fault of his own. I should write to him, Phyl. Pitch it strong.”

“I have. I wrote to-day. Mike’s just been offered a wonderful opportunity. A sort of farm place in Lincolnshire. You know. Cows and things. Just what he would like and just what he would do awfully well. And we only need three thousand pounds to get it. . . . But I’m afraid nothing will come of it.”

“Because of Aunt Constance, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“You must make something come of it.” Eve’s chin went up. She looked like a Goddess of Determination. “If I were you, I’d haunt their doorstep till they had to give you the money to get rid of you. The idea of anybody doing that absurd driving-into-the-snow business in these days! Why shouldn’t you marry the man you were in love with? If I were you, I’d go and chain myself to their railings and howl like a dog till they rushed out with cheque-books just to get some peace. Do they live in London?”

“They are down in Shropshire at present at a place called Blandings Castle.”

Eve started.

“Blandings Castle? Good gracious!”

“Aunt Constance is Lord Emsworth’s sister.”

“But this is the most extraordinary thing. I’m going to Blandings myself in a few days.”

[p. 56]“No!”

“They’ve engaged me to catalogue the castle library.”

“But, Eve, were you only joking when you asked Clarkie to find you something to do? She took you quite seriously.”

“No, I wasn’t joking. There’s a drawback to my going to Blandings. I suppose you know the place pretty well?”

“I’ve often stayed there. It’s beautiful.”

“Then you know Lord Emsworth’s second son, Freddie Threepwood?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he’s the drawback. He wants to marry me, and I certainly don’t want to marry him. And what I’ve been wondering is whether a nice easy job like that, which would tide me over beautifully till September, is attractive enough to make up for the nuisance of having to be always squelching poor Freddie. I ought to have thought of it right at the beginning, of course, when he wrote and told me to apply for the position, but I was so delighted at the idea of regular work that it didn’t occur to me. Then I began to wonder. He’s such a persevering young man. He proposes early and often.”

“Where did you meet Freddie?”

“At a theatre party. About two months ago. He was living in London then, but he suddenly disappeared and I had a heart-broken letter from him, saying that he had been running up debts and things and his father had snatched him away to live at Blandings, which apparently is Freddie’s idea of the Inferno. The world seems full of hard-hearted relatives.”

“Oh, Lord Emsworth isn’t really hard-hearted.[p. 57] You will love him. He’s so dreamy and absent-minded. He potters about the garden all the time. I don’t think you’ll like Aunt Constance much. But I suppose you won’t see a great deal of her.”

“Whom shall I see much of—except Freddie, of course?”

“Mr. Baxter, Lord Emsworth’s secretary, I expect. I don’t like him at all. He’s a sort of spectacled cave-man.”

“He doesn’t sound attractive. But you say the place is nice?”

“It’s gorgeous. I should go, if I were you, Eve.”

“Well, I had intended not to. But now you’ve told me about Mr. Keeble and Aunt Constance, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have to look in at Clarkie’s office to-morrow and tell her I’m fixed up and shan’t need her help. I’m going to take your sad case in hand, darling. I shall go to Blandings, and I will dog your stepfather’s footsteps. . . . Well, I must be going. Come and see me to the front door, or I’ll be losing my way in the miles of stately corridors. . . . I suppose I mayn’t smash that china dog before I go? Oh, well, I just thought I’d ask.”

Out in the hall the little maid-of-all-work bobbed up and intercepted them.

“I forgot to tell you, mum, a gentleman called. I told him you was out.”

“Quite right, Jane.”

“Said his name was Smith, ’m.”

Phyllis gave a cry of dismay.

“Oh, no! What a shame! I particularly wanted you to meet him, Eve. I wish I’d known.”

“Smith?” said Eve. “The name seems familiar. Why were you so anxious for me to meet him?”

“He’s Mike’s best friend. Mike worships him.[p. 58] He’s the son of the Mr. Smith I was telling you about—the one Mike was at school and Cambridge with. He’s a perfect darling, Eve, and you would love him. He’s just your sort. I do wish we had known. And now you’re going to Blandings for goodness knows how long, and you won’t be able to see him.”

“What a pity,” said Eve, politely uninterested.

“I’m so sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“He’s in the fish business.”

“Ugh!”

“Well, he hates it, poor dear. But he was left stranded like all the rest of us after the crash, and he was put into the business by an uncle who is a sort of fish magnate.”

“Well, why does he stay there, if he dislikes it so much?” said Eve with indignation. The helpless type of man was her pet aversion. “I hate a man who’s got no enterprise.”

“I don’t think you could call him unenterprising. He never struck me like that. . . . You simply must meet him when you come back to London.”

“All right,” said Eve indifferently. “Just as you like. I might put business in his way. I’m very fond of fish.”

What strikes the visitor to London most forcibly, as he enters the heart of that city’s fashionable shopping district, is the almost entire absence of ostentation in the shop-windows, the studied avoidance of garish display. About the front of the premises of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe, for instance, who sell coal in Dover Street, there is as a rule nothing whatever to attract fascinated attention. You might give the place a glance as you passed, but you would certainly not pause and stand staring at it as at the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal. Yet at ten-thirty on the morning after Eve Halliday had taken tea with her friend Phyllis Jackson in West Kensington, Psmith, lounging gracefully in the smoking-room window of the Drones Club, which is immediately opposite the Thorpe & Briscoe establishment, had been gazing at it fixedly for a full five minutes. One would have said that the spectacle enthralled him. He seemed unable to take his eyes off it.

There is always a reason for the most apparently inexplicable happenings. It is the practice of Thorpe (or Briscoe) during the months of summer to run out an awning over the shop. A quiet, genteel awning, of course, nothing to offend the eye—but an awning which offers a quite adequate protection against those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant[p. 60] feature of the English summer: one of which had just begun to sprinkle the West End of London with a good deal of heartiness and vigour. And under this awning, peering plaintively out at the rain, Eve Halliday, on her way to the Ada Clarkson Employment Bureau, had taken refuge. It was she who had so enchained Psmith’s interest. It was his considered opinion that she improved the Thorpe & Briscoe frontage by about ninety-five per cent.

Pleased and gratified as Psmith was to have something nice to look at out of the smoking-room window, he was also somewhat puzzled. This girl seemed to him to radiate an atmosphere of wealth. Starting at farthest south and proceeding northward, she began in a gleam of patent-leather shoes. Fawn stockings, obviously expensive, led up to a black crêpe frock. And then, just as the eye was beginning to feel that there could be nothing more, it was stunned by a supreme hat of soft, dull satin with a black bird of Paradise feather falling down over the left shoulder. Even to the masculine eye, which is notoriously to seek in these matters, a whale of a hat. And yet this sumptuously upholstered young woman had been marooned by a shower of rain beneath the awning of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe. Why, Psmith asked himself, was this? Even, he argued, if Charles the chauffeur had been given the day off or was driving her father the millionaire to the City to attend to his vast interests, she could surely afford a cab-fare? We, who are familiar with the state of Eve’s finances, can understand her inability to take cabs, but Psmith was frankly perplexed.

Being, however, both ready-witted and chivalrous, he perceived that this was no time for idle speculation. His not to reason why; his obvious duty was to take[p. 61] steps to assist Beauty in distress. He left the window of the smoking-room, and, having made his way with a smooth dignity to the club’s cloak-room, proceeded to submit a row of umbrellas to a close inspection. He was not easy to satisfy. Two which he went so far as to pull out of the rack he returned with a shake of the head. Quite good umbrellas, but not fit for this special service. At length, however, he found a beauty, and a gentle smile flickered across his solemn face. He put up his monocle and gazed searchingly at this umbrella. It seemed to answer every test. He was well pleased with it.

“Whose,” he inquired of the attendant, “is this?”

“Belongs to the Honourable Mr. Walderwick, sir.”

“Ah!” said Psmith tolerantly.

He tucked the umbrella under his arm and went out.

*       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Eve Halliday, lightening up the sombre austerity of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe’s shop-front, continued to think hard thoughts of the English climate and to inspect the sky in the hope of detecting a spot of blue. She was engaged in this cheerless occupation when at her side a voice spoke.

“Excuse me!”

A hatless young man was standing beside her, holding an umbrella. He was a striking-looking young man, very tall, very thin, and very well dressed. In his right eye there was a monocle, and through this he looked down at her with a grave friendliness. He said nothing further, but, taking her fingers, clasped them round the handle of the umbrella, which he had obligingly opened, and then with a courteous bow proceeded to dash with long strides across the road, disappearing through the doorway of a gloomy building[p. 62] which, from the number of men who had gone in and out during her vigil, she had set down as a club of some sort.

A good many surprising things had happened to Eve since first she had come to live in London, but nothing quite so surprising as this. For several minutes she stood where she was without moving, staring round-eyed at the building opposite. The episode was, however, apparently ended. The young man did not reappear. He did not even show himself at the window. The club had swallowed him up. And eventually Eve, deciding that this was not the sort of day on which to refuse umbrellas even if they dropped inexplicably from heaven, stepped out from under the awning, laughing helplessly, and started to resume her interrupted journey to Miss Clarkson’s.

*       *       *       *       *

The offices of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau (“Promptitude—Courtesy—Intelligence”) are at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, a little way past the Palace Theatre. Eve, closing the umbrella, which had prevented even a spot of rain falling on her hat, climbed the short stair leading to the door and tapped on the window marked “Enquiries.”

“Can I see Miss Clarkson?”

“What name, please?” responded Enquiries promptly and with intelligent courtesy.

“Miss Halliday.”

Brief interlude, involving business with speaking-tube.

“Will you go into the private office, please,” said Enquiries a moment later, in a voice which now added respect to the other advertised qualities, for she had had time to observe and digest the hat.

Eve passed in through the general waiting-room with[p. 63] its magazine-covered table, and tapped at the door beyond marked “Private.”

“Eve, dear!” exclaimed Miss Clarkson the moment she had entered, “I don’t know how to tell you, but I have been looking through my books and I have nothing, simply nothing. There is not a single place that you could possibly take. What is to be done?”

“That’s all right, Clarkie.”

“But . . .”

“I didn’t come to talk business. I came to ask after Cynthia. How is she?”

Miss Clarkson sighed.

“Poor child, she is still in a dreadful state, and no wonder. No news at all from her husband. He has simply deserted her.”

“Poor darling! Can’t I see her?”

“Not at present. I have persuaded her to go down to Brighton for a day or two. I think the sea air will pick her up. So much better than mooning about in a London hotel. She is leaving on the eleven o’clock train. I gave her your love, and she was most grateful that you should have remembered your old friendship and be sorry for her in her affliction.”

“Well, I can write to her. Where is she staying?”

“I don’t know her Brighton address, but no doubt the Cadogan Hotel would forward letters. I think she would be glad to hear from you, dear.”

Eve looked sadly at the framed testimonials which decorated the wall. She was not often melancholy, but it was such a beast of a day and all her friends seemed to be having such a bad time.

“Oh, Clarkie,” she said, “what a lot of trouble there is in the world!”

“Yes, yes!” sighed Miss Clarkson, a specialist on this subject.

[p. 64]“All the horses you back finish sixth and all the girls you like best come croppers. Poor little Phyllis! weren’t you sorry for her?”

“But her husband, surely, is most devoted?”

“Yes, but she’s frightfully hard up, and you remember how opulent she used to be at school. Of course, it must sound funny hearing me pitying people for having no money. But somehow other people’s hard-upness always seems so much worse than mine. Especially poor old Phyl’s, because she really isn’t fit to stand it. I’ve been used to being absolutely broke all my life. Poor dear father always seemed to be writing an article against time, with creditors scratching earnestly at the door.” Eve laughed, but her eyes were misty. “He was a brick, wasn’t he? I mean, sending me to a first-class school like Wayland House when he often hadn’t enough money to buy tobacco, poor angel. I expect he wasn’t always up to time with fees, was he?”

“Well, my dear, of course I was only an assistant mistress at Wayland House and had nothing to do with the financial side, but I did hear sometimes. . .”

“Poor darling father! Do you know, one of my earliest recollections—I couldn’t have been more than ten—is of a ring at the front-door bell and father diving like a seal under the sofa and poking his head out and imploring me in a hoarse voice to hold the fort. I went to the door and found an indignant man with a blue paper. I prattled so prettily and innocently that he not only went away quite contentedly but actually patted me on the head and gave me a penny. And when the door had shut father crawled out from under the sofa and gave me twopence, making threepence in all—a good morning’s work. I bought father a diamond ring with it at a shop down the street, I[p. 65] remember. At least I thought it was a diamond. They may have swindled me, for I was very young.”

“You have had a hard life, dear.”

“Yes, but hasn’t it been a lark! I’ve loved every minute of it. Besides, you can’t call me really one of the submerged tenth. Uncle Thomas left me a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and mercifully I’m not allowed to touch the capital. If only there were no hats or safety bets in the world, I should be smugly opulent. . . . But I mustn’t keep you any longer, Clarkie dear. I expect the waiting-room is full of dukes who want cooks and cooks who want dukes, all fidgeting and wondering how much longer you’re going to keep them. Good-bye, darling.”

And, having kissed Miss Clarkson fondly and straightened her hat, which the other’s motherly embrace had disarranged, Eve left the room.

Meanwhile, at the Drones Club, a rather painful scene had been taking place. Psmith, regaining the shelter of the building, had made his way to the wash-room, where, having studied his features with interest for a moment in the mirror, he smoothed his hair, which the rain had somewhat disordered, and brushed his clothes with extreme care. He then went to the cloak-room for his hat. The attendant regarded him as he entered with the air of one whose mind is not wholly at rest.

“Mr. Walderwick was in here a moment ago, sir,” said the attendant.

“Yes?” said Psmith, mildly interested. “An energetic, bustling soul, Comrade Walderwick. Always somewhere. Now here, now there.”

“Asking about his umbrella, he was,” pursued the attendant with a touch of coldness.

“Indeed? Asking about his umbrella, eh?”

“Made a great fuss about it, sir, he did.”

“And rightly,” said Psmith with approval. “The good man loves his umbrella.”

“Of course I had to tell him that you had took it, sir.”

“I would not have it otherwise,” assented Psmith heartily. “I like this spirit of candour. There must be no reservations, no subterfuges between you and Comrade Walderwick. Let all be open and above-board.”

[p. 67]“He seemed very put out, sir. He went off to find you.”

“I am always glad of a chat with Comrade Walderwick,” said Psmith. “Always.”

He left the cloak-room and made for the hall, where he desired the porter to procure him a cab. This having drawn up in front of the club, he descended the steps and was about to enter it, when there was a hoarse cry in his rear, and through the front door there came bounding a pinkly indignant youth, who called loudly:

“Here! Hi! Smith! Dash it!”

Psmith climbed into the cab and gazed benevolently out at the new-comer.

“Ah, Comrade Walderwick!” he said. “What have we on our mind?”

“Where’s my umbrella?” demanded the pink one. “The cloak-room waiter says you took my umbrella. I mean, a joke’s a joke, but that was a dashed good umbrella.”

“It was, indeed,” Psmith agreed cordially. “It may be of interest to you to know that I selected it as the only possible one from among a number of competitors. I fear this club is becoming very mixed, Comrade Walderwick. You with your pure mind would hardly believe the rottenness of some of the umbrellas I inspected in the cloak-room.”

“Where is it?”

“The cloak-room? You turn to the left as you go in at the main entrance and . . .”

“My umbrella, dash it! Where’s my umbrella?”

“Ah, there,” said Psmith, and there was a touch of manly regret in his voice, “you have me. I gave it to a young lady in the street. Where she is at the present moment I could not say.”

The pink youth tottered slightly.

“You gave my umbrella to a girl?”

[p. 68]“A very loose way of describing her. You would not speak of her in that light fashion if you had seen her. Comrade Walderwick, she was wonderful! I am a plain, blunt, rugged man, above the softer emotions as a general thing, but I frankly confess that she stirred a chord in me which is not often stirred. She thrilled my battered old heart, Comrade Walderwick. There is no other word. Thrilled it!”

“But, dash it! . . .”

Psmith reached out a long arm and laid his hand paternally on the other’s shoulder.

“Be brave, Comrade Walderwick!” he said. “Face this thing like a man! I am sorry to have been the means of depriving you of an excellent umbrella, but as you will readily understand I had no alternative. It was raining. She was over there, crouched despairingly beneath the awning of that shop. She wanted to be elsewhere, but the moisture lay in wait to damage her hat. What could I do? What could any man worthy of the name do but go down to the cloak-room and pinch the best umbrella in sight and take it to her? Yours was easily the best. There was absolutely no comparison. I gave it to her, and she has gone off with it, happy once more. This explanation,” said Psmith, “will, I am sure, sensibly diminish your natural chagrin. You have lost your umbrella, Comrade Walderwick, but in what a cause! In what a cause, Comrade Walderwick! You are now entitled to rank with Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh. The latter is perhaps the closer historical parallel. He spread his cloak to keep a queen from wetting her feet. You—by proxy—yielded up your umbrella to save a girl’s hat. Posterity will be proud of you, Comrade Walderwick. I shall be vastly surprised if you do not go down in legend and song. Children in ages to come[p. 69] will cluster about their grandfather’s knees, saying, ‘Tell us how the great Walderwick lost his umbrella, grandpapa!’ And he will tell them, and they will rise from the recital better, deeper, broader children. . . . But now, as I see that the driver has started his meter, I fear I must conclude this little chat—which I, for one, have heartily enjoyed. Drive on,” he said, leaning out of the window. “I want to go to Ada Clarkson’s International Employment Bureau in Shaftesbury Avenue.”

The cab moved off. The Hon. Hugo Walderwick, after one passionate glance in its wake, realised that he was getting wet and went back into the club.

*       *       *       *       *

Arriving at the address named, Psmith paid his cab and, having mounted the stairs, delicately knuckled the ground-glass window of Enquiries.

“My dear Miss Clarkson,” he began in an affable voice, the instant the window had shot up, “if you can spare me a few moments of your valuable time . . .”

“Miss Clarkson’s engaged.”

Psmith scrutinised her gravely through his monocle.

“Aren’t you Miss Clarkson?”

Enquiries said she was not.

“Then,” said Psmith, “there has been a misunderstanding, for which,” he added cordially, “I am to blame. Perhaps I could see her anon? You will find me in the waiting-room when required.”

He went into the waiting-room, and, having picked up a magazine from the table, settled down to read a story in The Girl’s Pet—the January number of the year 1919, for Employment Agencies, like dentists, prefer their literature of a matured vintage. He was absorbed in this when Eve came out of the private office.

Psmith rose courteously as she entered.

“My dear Miss Clarkson,” he said, “if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time . . .”

“Good gracious!” said Eve. “How extraordinary!”

“A singular coincidence,” agreed Psmith.

“You never gave me time to thank you for the umbrella,” said Eve reproachfully. “You must have thought me awfully rude. But you took my breath away.”

“My dear Miss Clarkson, please do not . . .”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Aren’t you Miss Clarkson either?”

“Of course I’m not.”

“Then,” said Psmith, “I must start my quest all over again. These constant checks are trying to an ardent spirit. Perhaps you are a young bride come to engage her first cook?”

“No. I’m not married.”

“Good!”

Eve found his relieved thankfulness a little embarrassing. In the momentary pause which followed his remark, Enquiries entered alertly.

“Miss Clarkson will see you now, sir.”

“Leave us,” said Psmith with a wave of his hand. “We would be alone.”

[p. 71]Enquiries stared; then, awed by his manner and general appearance of magnificence, withdrew.

“I suppose really,” said Eve, toying with the umbrella, “I ought to give this back to you.” She glanced at the dripping window. “But it is raining rather hard, isn’t it?”

“Like the dickens,” assented Psmith.

“Then would you mind very much if I kept it till this evening?”

“Please do.”

“Thanks ever so much. I will send it back to you to-night if you will give me the name and address.”

Psmith waved his hand deprecatingly.

“No, no. If it is of any use to you, I hope that you will look on it as a present.”

“A present!”

“A gift,” explained Psmith.

“But I really can’t go about accepting expensive umbrellas from people. Where shall I send it?”

“If you insist, you may send it to the Hon. Hugo Walderwick, Drones Club, Dover Street. But it really isn’t necessary.”

“I won’t forget. And thank you very much, Mr. Walderwick.”

“Why do you call me that?”

“Well, you said . . .”

“Ah, I see. A slight confusion of ideas. No, I am not Mr. Walderwick. And between ourselves I should hate to be. His is a very C3 intelligence. Comrade Walderwick is merely the man to whom the umbrella belongs.”

Eve’s eyes opened wide.

“Do you mean to say you gave me somebody else’s umbrella?”

[p. 72]“I had unfortunately omitted to bring my own out with me this morning.”

“I never heard of such a thing!”

“Merely practical Socialism. Other people are content to talk about the Redistribution of Property. I go out and do it.”

“But won’t he be awfully angry when he finds out it has gone?”

“He has found out. And it was pretty to see his delight. I explained the circumstances, and he was charmed to have been of service to you.”

The door opened again, and this time it was Miss Clarkson in person who entered. She had found Enquiries’ statement over the speaking-tube rambling and unsatisfactory, and had come to investigate for herself the reason why the machinery of the office was being held up.

“Oh, I must go,” said Eve, as she saw her. “I’m interrupting your business.”

“I’m so glad you’re still here, dear,” said Miss Clarkson. “I have just been looking over my files, and I see that there is one vacancy. For a nurse,” said Miss Clarkson with a touch of the apologetic in her voice.

“Oh, no, that’s all right,” said Eve. “I don’t really need anything. But thanks ever so much for bothering.”

She smiled affectionately upon the proprietress, bestowed another smile upon Psmith as he opened the door for her, and went out. Psmith turned away from the door with a thoughtful look upon his face.

“Is that young lady a nurse?” he asked.

“Do you want a nurse?” inquired Miss Clarkson, at once the woman of business.

“I want that nurse,” said Psmith with conviction.

[p. 73]“She is a delightful girl,” said Miss Clarkson with enthusiasm. “There is no one in whom I would feel more confidence in recommending to a position. She is a Miss Halliday, the daughter of a very clever but erratic writer, who died some years ago. I can speak with particular knowledge of Miss Halliday, for I was for many years an assistant mistress at Wayland House, where she was at school. She is a charming, warm-hearted, impulsive girl. . . . But you will hardly want to hear all this.”

“On the contrary,” said Psmith, “I could listen for hours. You have stumbled upon my favourite subject.”

Miss Clarkson eyed him a little doubtfully, and decided that it would be best to reintroduce the business theme.

“Perhaps, when you say you are looking for a nurse, you mean you need a hospital nurse?”

“My friends have sometimes suggested it.”

“Miss Halliday’s greatest experience has, of course, been as a governess.”

“A governess is just as good,” said Psmith agreeably.

Miss Clarkson began to be conscious of a sensation of being out of her depth.

“How old are your children, sir?” she asked.

“I fear,” said Psmith, “you are peeping into Volume Two. This romance has only just started.”

“I am afraid,” said Miss Clarkson, now completely fogged, “I do not quite understand. What exactly are you looking for?”

Psmith flicked a speck of fluff from his coat-sleeve.

“A job,” he said.

“A job!” echoed Miss Clarkson, her voice breaking in an amazed squeak.

[p. 74]Psmith raised his eyebrows.

“You seem surprised. Isn’t this a job emporium?”

“This is an Employment Bureau,” admitted Miss Clarkson.

“I knew it, I knew it,” said Psmith. “Something seemed to tell me. Possibly it was the legend ‘Employment Bureau’ over the door. And those framed testimonials would convince the most sceptical. Yes, Miss Clarkson, I want a job, and I feel somehow that you are the woman to find it for me. I have inserted an advertisement in the papers, expressing my readiness to undertake any form of employment, but I have since begun to wonder if after all this will lead to wealth and fame. At any rate, it is wise to attack the great world from another angle as well, so I come to you.”

“But you must excuse me if I remark that this application of yours strikes me as most extraordinary.”

“Why? I am young, active, and extremely broke.”

“But your—er—your clothes . . .”

Psmith squinted, not without complacency, down a faultlessly fitting waistcoat, and flicked another speck of dust off his sleeve.

“You consider me well dressed?” he said. “You find me natty? Well, well, perhaps you are right, perhaps you are right. But consider, Miss Clarkson. If one expects to find employment in these days of strenuous competition, one must be neatly and decently clad. Employers look askance at a baggy trouser-leg. A zippy waistcoat is more to them than an honest heart. This beautiful crease was obtained with the aid of the mattress upon which I tossed feverishly last night in my attic room.”

“I can’t take you seriously.”

“Oh, don’t say that, please.”

[p. 75]“You really want me to find you work?”

“I prefer the term ‘employment.’”

Miss Clarkson produced a notebook.

“If you are really not making this application just as a joke . . .”

“I assure you, no. My entire capital consists, in specie, of about ten pounds.”

“Then perhaps you will tell me your name.”

“Ah! Things are beginning to move. The name is Psmith. P-smith. The p is silent.”

“Psmith?”

“Psmith.”

Miss Clarkson brooded over this for a moment in almost pained silence, then recovered her slipping grip of affairs.

“I think,” she said, “you had better give me a few particulars about yourself.”

“There is nothing I should like better,” responded Psmith warmly. “I am always ready—I may say eager—to tell people the story of my life, but in this rushing age I get little encouragement. Let us start at the beginning. My infancy. When I was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with sixpence an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of the first day she struck for a shilling, and got it. We now pass to my boyhood. At an early age I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. Those were happy days, Miss Clarkson. A merry, laughing lad with curly hair and a sunny smile, it is not too much to say that I was the pet of the place. The old cloisters. . . . But I am boring you. I can see it in your eye.”

“No, no,” protested Miss Clarkson. “But what I meant was . . . I thought you might have had[p. 76] some experience in some particular line of . . . In fact, what sort of work . . . ?”

“Employment.”

“What sort of employment do you require?”

“Broadly speaking,” said Psmith, “any reasonably salaried position that has nothing to do with fish.”

“Fish!” quavered Miss Clarkson, slipping again. “Why fish?”

“Because, Miss Clarkson, the fish trade was until this morning my walk in life, and my soul has sickened of it.”

“You are in the fish trade?” squeaked Miss Clarkson, with an amazed glance at the knife-like crease in his trousers.

“These are not my working clothes,” said Psmith, following and interpreting her glance. “Yes, owing to a financial upheaval in my branch of the family, I was until this morning at the beck and call of an uncle who unfortunately happens to be a Mackerel Monarch or a Sardine Sultan, or whatever these merchant princes are called who rule the fish market. He insisted on my going into the business to learn it from the bottom up, thinking, no doubt, that I would follow in his footsteps and eventually work my way to the position of a Whitebait Wizard. Alas! he was too sanguine. It was not to be,” said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on Miss Clarkson through his eyeglass.

“No?” said Miss Clarkson.

“No. Last night I was obliged to inform him that the fish business was all right, but it wouldn’t do, and that I proposed to sever my connection with the firm for ever. I may say at once that there ensued something in the nature of a family earthquake. Hard words,” sighed Psmith. “Black looks. Unseemly wrangle. And the upshot of it all was that my uncle[p. 77] washed his hands of me and drove me forth into the great world. Hence my anxiety to find employment. My uncle has definitely withdrawn his countenance from me, Miss Clarkson.”

“Dear, dear!” murmured the proprietress sympathetically.

“Yes. He is a hard man, and he judges his fellows solely by their devotion to fish. I never in my life met a man so wrapped up in a subject. For years he has been practically a monomaniac on the subject of fish. So much so that he actually looks like one. It is as if he had taken one of those auto-suggestion courses and had kept saying to himself, ‘Every day, in every way, I grow more and more like a fish.’ His closest friends can hardly tell now whether he more nearly resembles a halibut or a cod. . . . But I am boring you again with this family gossip?”

He eyed Miss Clarkson with such a sudden and penetrating glance that she started nervously.

“No, no,” she exclaimed.

“You relieve my apprehensions. I am only too well aware that, when fairly launched on the topic of fish, I am more than apt to weary my audience. I cannot understand this enthusiasm for fish. My uncle used to talk about an unusually large catch of pilchards in Cornwall in much the same awed way as a right-minded curate would talk about the spiritual excellence of his bishop. To me, Miss Clarkson, from the very start, the fish business was what I can only describe as a wash-out. It nauseated my finer feelings. It got right in amongst my fibres. I had to rise and partake of a simple breakfast at about four in the morning, after which I would make my way to Billingsgate Market and stand for some hours knee-deep in dead fish of every description. A jolly life for a cat,[p. 78] no doubt, but a bit too thick for a Shropshire Psmith. Mine, Miss Clarkson, is a refined and poetic nature. I like to be surrounded by joy and life, and I know nothing more joyless and deader than a dead fish. Multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only a Dante could contemplate with equanimity. My uncle used to tell me that the way to ascertain whether a fish was fresh was to peer into its eyes. Could I spend the springtime of life staring into the eyes of dead fish? No!” He rose. “Well, I will not detain you any longer. Thank you for the unfailing courtesy and attention with which you have listened to me. You can understand now why my talents are on the market and why I am compelled to state specifically that no employment can be considered which has anything to do with fish. I am convinced that you will shortly have something particularly good to offer me.”

“I don’t know that I can say that, Mr. Psmith.”

“The p is silent, as in pshrimp,” he reminded her. “Oh, by the way,” he said, pausing at the door, “there is one other thing before I go. While I was waiting for you to be disengaged, I chanced on an instalment of a serial story in The Girl’s Pet for January, 1919. My search for the remaining issues proved fruitless. The title was ‘Her Honour At Stake,’ by Jane Emmeline Moss. You don’t happen to know how it all came out in the end, do you? Did Lord Eustace ever learn that, when he found Clarice in Sir Jasper’s rooms at midnight, she had only gone there to recover some compromising letters for a girl friend? You don’t know? I feared as much. Well, good morning, Miss Clarkson, good morning. I leave my future in your hands with a light heart.”

“I will do my best for you, of course.”

[p. 79]“And what,” said Psmith cordially, “could be better than Miss Clarkson’s best?”

He closed the door gently behind him, and went out. Struck by a kindly thought, he tapped upon Enquiries’ window, and beamed benevolently as her bobbed head shot into view.

“They tell me,” he said, “that Aspidistra is much fancied for the four o’clock race at Birmingham this afternoon. I give the information without prejudice, for what it is worth. Good day!”

The rain had stopped when Psmith stepped out into the street, and the sun was shining again in that half blustering, half apologetic manner which it affects on its reappearance after a summer shower. The pavements glistened cheerfully, and the air had a welcome freshness. Pausing at the corner, he pondered for a moment as to the best method of passing the hour and twenty minutes which must elapse before he could reasonably think of lunching. The fact that the offices of the Morning Globe were within easy strolling distance decided him to go thither and see if the first post had brought anything in the shape of answers to his advertisements. And his energy was rewarded a few minutes later when Box 365 on being opened yielded up quite a little budget of literary matter. No fewer than seven letters in all. A nice bag.

What, however, had appeared at first sight evidence of a pleasing ebullition of enterprise on the part of the newspaper-reading public turned out on closer inspection, when he had retired to a corner where he could concentrate in peace, a hollow delusion. Enterprising in a sense though the communications were—and they certainly showed the writers as men of considerable ginger and business push—to Psmith they came as a disappointment. He had expected better things. These[p. 81] letters were not at all what he had paid good money to receive. They missed the point altogether. The right spirit, it seemed to him, was entirely absent.

The first envelope, attractive though it looked from the outside, being of an expensive brand of stationery and gaily adorned with a somewhat startling crest merely contained a pleasantly-worded offer from a Mr. Alistair MacDougall to advance him any sum from ten to fifty thousand pounds on his note of hand only. The second revealed a similar proposal from another Scot named Colin MacDonald. While in the third Mr. Ian Campbell was prepared to go as high as one hundred thousand. All three philanthropists had but one stipulation to make—they would have no dealings with minors. Youth, with all its glorious traditions, did not seem to appeal to them. But they cordially urged Psmith, in the event of his having celebrated his twenty-first birthday, to come round to the office and take the stuff away in a sack.

Keeping his head well in the midst of this shower of riches, Psmith dropped the three letters with a sigh into the waste-paper basket, and opened the next in order. This was a bulky envelope, and its contents consisted of a printed brochure entitled, “This Night Shall Thy Soul Be Required Of Thee”—while, by a curious and appropriate coincidence, Number Five proved to be a circular from an energetic firm of coffin-makers offering to bury him for eight pounds ten. Number Six, also printed, was a manifesto from one Howard Hill, of Newmarket, recommending him to apply without delay for “Hill’s Three-Horse Special,” without which—(“Who,” demanded Mr. Hill in large type, “gave you Wibbly-Wob for the Jubilee Cup?”)—no sportsman could hope to accomplish the undoing of the bookmakers.

[p. 82]Although by doing so he convicted himself of that very lack of enterprise which he had been deploring in the great public, Psmith placed this communication with the others in the waste-paper baskets. There now remained only Number Seven, and a slight flicker of hope returned to him when he perceived that this envelope was addressed by hand and not in typescript. He opened it.

Beyond a doubt he had kept the pick of the bunch to the last. Here was something that made up for all those other disappointments. Written in a scrawly and apparently agitated hand, the letter ran as follows:

A pleased smile played about Psmith’s solemn face as he read this communication for the second time. It was much more the sort of thing for which he had been hoping. Although his closest friend, Mike Jackson, was a young man of complete ordinariness, Psmith’s tastes when he sought companionship lay as a rule in the direction of the bizarre. He preferred his humanity eccentric. And “the writer,” to judge him by this specimen of his correspondence, appeared to be eccentric enough for the most exacting taste. Whether this promising person turned out to be a ribald jester or an earnest crank, Psmith felt no doubt whatever as to the advisability of following the matter up.[p. 83] Whichever he might be, his society ought to afford entertainment during the interval before lunch. Psmith glanced at his watch. The hour was a quarter to twelve. He would be able to secure the necessary chrysanthemum and reach the Piccadilly Palace Hotel by twelve sharp, thus achieving the businesslike punctuality on which the unknown writer seemed to set such store.

*       *       *       *       *

It was not until he had entered a florist’s shop on the way to the tryst that it was borne in upon him that the adventure was going to have its drawbacks. The first of these was the chrysanthemum. Preoccupied with the rest of the communication, Psmith, when he had read the letter, had not given much thought to the decoration which it would be necessary for him to wear; and it was only when, in reply to his demand for a chrysanthemum, the florist came forward, almost hidden, like the army at Dunsinane, behind what looked like a small shrubbery, that he realised what he, a correct and fastidious dresser, was up against.

“Is that a chrysanthemum?”

“Yes, sir. Pink chrysanthemum.”

“One?”

“Yes, sir. One pink chrysanthemum.”

Psmith regarded the repellent object with disfavour through his eyeglass. Then, having placed it in his buttonhole, he proceeded on his way, feeling like some wild thing peering through the undergrowth. The distressing shrub completely spoiled his walk.

Arrived at the hotel and standing in the lobby, he perceived the existence of further complications. The lobby was in its usual state of congestion, it being a recognised meeting-place for those who did not find it[p. 84] convenient to go as far east as that traditional rendezvous of Londoners, the spot under the clock at Charing Cross Station; and “the writer,” while giving instructions as to how Psmith should ornament his exterior, had carelessly omitted to mention how he himself was to be recognised. A rollicking, slap-dash conspirator, was Psmith’s opinion.

It seemed best to take up a position as nearly as possible in the centre of the lobby and stand there until “the writer,” lured by the chrysanthemum, should come forward and start something. This he accordingly did, but when at the end of ten minutes nothing had happened beyond a series of collisions with perhaps a dozen hurrying visitors to the hotel, he decided on a more active course. A young man of sporting appearance had been standing beside him for the last five minutes, and ever and anon this young man had glanced with some impatience at his watch. He was plainly waiting for someone, so Psmith tried the formula on him.

“There will be rain,” said Psmith, “in Northumberland to-morrow.”

The young man looked at him, not without interest, certainly, but without that gleam of intelligence in his eye which Psmith had hoped to see.

“What?” he replied.

“There will be rain in Northumberland to-morrow.”

“Thanks, Zadkiel,” said the young man. “Deuced gratifying, I’m sure. I suppose you couldn’t predict the winner of the Goodwood Cup as well?”

He then withdrew rapidly to intercept a young woman in a large hat who had just come through the swing doors. Psmith was forced to the conclusion that this was not his man. He was sorry on the whole, for he had seemed a pleasant fellow.

As Psmith had taken up a stationary position and[p. 85] the population of the lobby was for the most part in a state of flux, he was finding himself next to someone new all the time; and now he decided to accost the individual whom the re-shuffle had just brought elbow to elbow with him. This was a jovial-looking soul with a flowered waistcoat, a white hat, and a mottled face. Just the man who might have written that letter.

The effect upon this person of Psmith’s meteorological remark was instantaneous. A light of the utmost friendliness shone in his beautifully-shaven face as he turned. He seized Psmith’s hand and gripped it with a delightful heartiness. He had the air of a man who has found a friend, and what is more, an old friend. He had a sort of journeys-end-in-lovers’-meeting look.

“My dear old chap!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you to speak for the last five minutes. Knew we’d met before somewhere, but couldn’t place you. Face familiar as the dickens, of course. Well, well, well! And how are they all?”

“Who?” said Psmith courteously.

“Why, the boys, my dear chap.”

“Oh, the boys?”

“The dear old boys,” said the other, specifying more exactly. He slapped Psmith on the shoulder. “What times those were, eh?”

“Which?” said Psmith.

“The times we all used to have together.”

“Oh, those?” said Psmith.

Something of discouragement seemed to creep over the other’s exuberance, as a cloud creeps over the summer sky. But he persevered.

“Fancy meeting you again like this!”

“It is a small world,” agreed Psmith.

“I’d ask you to come and have a drink,” said the jovial one, with the slight increase of tensity which[p. 86] comes to a man who approaches the core of a business deal, “but the fact is my ass of a man sent me out this morning without a penny. Forgot to give me my note-case. Damn’ careless! I’ll have to sack the fellow.”

“Annoying, certainly,” said Psmith.

“I wish I could have stood you a drink,” said the other wistfully.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been,’” sighed Psmith.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the jovial one, inspired. “Lend me a fiver, my dear old boy. That’s the best way out of the difficulty. I can send it round to your hotel or wherever you are this evening when I get home.”

A sweet, sad smile played over Psmith’s face.

“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.

“Eh?”

“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”

Resignation displaced joviality in the other’s countenance.

“Nothing doing?” he inquired.

“Nothing.”

“Well, there was no harm in trying,” argued the other.

“None whatever.”

“You see,” said the now far less jovial man confidentially, “you look such a perfect mug with that eyeglass that it tempts a chap.”

“I can quite understand how it must!”

“No offence.”

“Assuredly not.”

The white hat disappeared through the swing doors, and Psmith returned to his quest. He engaged the attention of a middle-aged man in a snuff-coloured suit who had just come within hail.

[p. 87]“There will be rain in Northumberland to-morrow,” he said.

The man peered at him inquiringly.

“Hey?” he said.

Psmith repeated his observation.

“Huh?” said the man.

Psmith was beginning to lose the unruffled calm which made him such an impressive figure to the public eye. He had not taken into consideration the possibility that the object of his search might be deaf. It undoubtedly added to the embarrassment of the pursuit. He was moving away, when a hand fell on his sleeve.

Psmith turned. The hand which still grasped his sleeve belonged to an elegantly dressed young man of somewhat nervous and feverish appearance. During his recent vigil Psmith had noticed this young man standing not far away, and had had half a mind to include him in the platoon of new friends he was making that morning.

“I say,” said this young man in a tense whisper, “did I hear you say that there would be rain in Northumberland to-morrow?”

“If,” said Psmith, “you were anywhere within the radius of a dozen yards while I was chatting with the recent deaf adder, I think it is possible that you did.”

“Good for the crops,” said the young man. “Come over here where we can talk quietly.”

“So you’re R. Psmith?” said the young man, when they had made their way to a remote corner of the lobby, apart from the throng.

“The same.”

“I say, dash it, you’re frightfully late, you know.[p. 88] I told you to be here at twelve sharp. It’s nearly twelve past.”

“You wrong me,” said Psmith. “I arrived here precisely at twelve. Since when, I have been standing like Patience on a monument. . . .”

“Like what?”

“Let it go,” said Psmith. “It is not important.”

“I asked you to wear a pink chrysanthemum. So I could recognise you, you know.”

“I am wearing a pink chrysanthemum. I should have imagined that that was a fact that the most casual could hardly have overlooked.”

“That thing?” The other gazed disparagingly at the floral decoration. “I thought it was some kind of cabbage. I meant one of those little what-d’you-may-call-its that people do wear in their button-holes.”

“Carnation, possibly?”

“Carnation! That’s right.”

Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind his chair. He looked at his companion reproachfully.

“If you had studied botany at school, comrade,” he said, “much misery might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony I suffered, trailing through the metropolis behind that shrub.”

Whatever decent sympathy and remorse the other might have shown at these words was swept away in the shock resultant on a glance at his watch. Not for an instant during this brief return of his to London had Freddie Threepwood been unmindful of his father’s stern injunction to him to catch the twelve-fifty train back to Market Blandings. If he missed it, there would be the deuce of a lot of unpleasantness, and unpleasantness in the home was the one thing Freddie wanted to avoid nowadays; for, like a prudent convict in a prison, he[p. 89] hoped by exemplary behaviour to get his sentence of imprisonment at Blandings Castle reduced for good conduct.

“Good Lord! I’ve only got about five minutes. Got to talk quick. . . . About this thing. This business. That advertisement of yours.”

“Ah, yes. My advertisement. It interested you?”

“Was it on the level?”

“Assuredly. We Psmiths do not deceive.”

Freddie looked at him doubtfully.

“You know, you aren’t a bit like I expected you’d be.”

“In what respect,” inquired Psmith, “do I fall short of the ideal?”

“It isn’t so much falling short. It’s—oh, I don’t know . . . Well, yes, if you want to know, I thought you’d be a tougher specimen altogether. I got the impression from your advertisement that you were down and out and ready for anything, and you look as if you were on your way to a garden-party at Buckingham Palace.”

“Ah!” said Psmith, enlightened. “It is my costume that is causing these doubts in your mind. This is the second time this morning that such a misunderstanding has occurred. Have no misgivings. These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”

“Are you really broke?”

“As broke as the Ten Commandments.”

“I’m hanged if I can believe it.”

“Suppose I brush my hat the wrong way for a moment?” said Psmith obligingly. “Would that help?”

His companion remained silent for a few moments. In spite of the fact that he was in so great a hurry and that every minute that passed brought nearer the moment when he would be compelled to tear himself away and make a dash for Paddington Station, Freddie[p. 90] was finding it difficult to open the subject he had come there to discuss.

“Look here,” he said at length, “I shall have to trust you, dash it.”

“You could pursue no better course.”

“It’s like this. I’m trying to raise a thousand quid . . .”

“I regret that I cannot offer to advance it to you myself. I have, indeed, already been compelled to decline to lend a gentleman who claimed to be an old friend of mine so small a sum as a fiver. But there is a dear, obliging soul of the name of Alistair MacDougall who . . .”

“Good Lord! You don’t think I’m trying to touch you?”

“That impression did flit through my mind.”

“Oh, dash it, no. No, but—well, as I was saying, I’m frightfully keen to get hold of a thousand quid.”

“So am I,” said Psmith. “Two minds with but a single thought. How do you propose to start about it? For my part, I must freely confess that I haven’t a notion. I am stumped. The cry goes round the chancelleries, ‘Psmith is baffled!’”

“I say, old thing,” said Freddie plaintively, “you couldn’t talk a bit less, could you? I’ve only got about two minutes.”

“I beg your pardon. Proceed.”

“It’s so dashed difficult to know how to begin the thing. I mean, it’s all a bit complicated till you get the hang of it. . . . Look here, you said in your advertisement that you had no objection to crime.”

Psmith considered the point.

“Within reason—and if undetected—I see no objection to two-pennorth of crime.”

“Well, look here . . . look here . . . Well, look[p. 91] here,” said Freddie, “will you steal my aunt’s diamond necklace?”

Psmith placed his monocle in his eye and bent gravely toward his companion.

“Steal your aunt’s necklace?” he said indulgently.

“Yes.”

“You do not think she might consider it a liberty from one to whom she has never been introduced?”

What Freddie might have replied to this pertinent question will never be known, for at this moment, looking nervously at his watch for the twentieth time, he observed that the hands had passed the half-hour and were well on their way to twenty-five minutes to one. He bounded up with a cry.

“I must go! I shall miss that damned train!”

“And meanwhile . . . ?” said Psmith.

The familiar phrase—the words “And meanwhile” had occurred at least once in every film Freddie had ever seen—had the effect of wrenching the latter’s mind back to the subject in hand for a moment. Freddie was not a clear-thinking young man, but even he could see that he had left the negotiations suspended at a very satisfactory point. Nevertheless, he had to catch that twelve-fifty.

“Write and tell me what you think about it,” panted Freddie, skimming through the lobby like a swallow.

“You have unfortunately omitted to leave a name and address,” Psmith pointed out, following him at an easy jog-trot.

In spite of his hurry, a prudence born of much movie-seeing restrained Freddie from supplying the information asked for. Give away your name and address and you never knew what might happen.

“I’ll write to you,” he cried, racing for a cab.

“I shall count the minutes,” said Psmith courteously.

[p. 92]“Drive like blazes!” said Freddie to the chauffeur.

“Where?” inquired the man, not unreasonably.

“Eh? Oh, Paddington.”

The cab whirled off, and Psmith, pleasantly conscious of a morning not ill-spent, gazed after it pensively for a moment. Then, with the feeling that the authorities of Colney Hatch or some kindred establishment had been extraordinarily negligent, he permitted his mind to turn with genial anticipation in the direction of lunch. For, though he had celebrated his first day of emancipation from Billingsgate Fish Market by rising late and breakfasting later, he had become aware by now of that not unpleasant emptiness which is the silent luncheon-gong of the soul.

The minor problem now presented itself of where to lunch; and with scarcely a moment’s consideration he dismissed those large, noisy, and bustling restaurants which lie near Piccadilly Circus. After a morning spent with Eve Halliday and the young man who was going about the place asking people to steal his aunt’s necklace, it was imperative that he select some place where he could sit and think quietly. Any food of which he partook must be consumed in calm, even cloistral surroundings, unpolluted by the presence of a first violin who tied himself into knots and an orchestra in whose lexicon there was no such word as piano. One of his clubs seemed indicated.

In the days of his prosperity, Psmith’s father, an enthusiastic clubman, had enrolled his son’s name on the list of several institutions: and now, although the lean years had arrived, he was still a member of six, and would continue to be a member till the beginning of the new year and the consequent call for fresh[p. 93] subscriptions. These clubs ranged from the Drones, frankly frivolous, to the Senior Conservative, solidly worthy. Almost immediately Psmith decided that for such a mood as was upon him at the moment, the latter might have been specially constructed.

Anybody familiar with the interior of the Senior Conservative Club would have applauded his choice. In the whole of London no better haven could have been found by one desirous of staying his interior with excellently-cooked food while passing his soul under a leisurely examination. They fed you well at the Drones, too, no doubt: but there Youth held carnival, and the thoughtful man, examining his soul, was apt at any moment to have his meditations broken in upon by a chunk of bread, dexterously thrown by some bright spirit at an adjoining table. No horror of that description could possibly occur at the Senior Conservative. The Senior Conservative has six thousand one hundred and eleven members. Some of the six thousand one hundred and eleven are more respectable than the others, but they are all respectable—whether they be numbered among the oldest inhabitants like the Earl of Emsworth, who joined as a country member in 1888, or are among the recent creations of the last election of candidates. They are bald, reverend men, who look as if they are on their way to the City to preside at directors’ meetings or have dropped in after conferring with the Prime Minister at Downing Street as to the prospects at the coming by-election in the Little Wabsley Division.

With the quiet dignity which atoned for his lack in years in this stronghold of mellow worth, Psmith mounted the steps, passed through the doors which were obligingly flung open for him by two uniformed dignitaries, and made his way to the coffee-room.[p. 94] Here, having selected a table in the middle of the room and ordered a simple and appetising lunch, he gave himself up to thoughts of Eve Halliday. As he had confessed to his young friend Mr. Walderwick, she had made a powerful impression upon him. He was tearing himself from his day-dreams in order to wrestle with a mutton chop, when a foreign body shot into his orbit and blundered heavily against the table. Looking up, he perceived a long, thin, elderly gentleman of pleasantly vague aspect, who immediately began to apologise.

“My dear sir, I am extremely sorry. I trust I have caused no damage.”

“None whatever,” replied Psmith courteously.

“The fact is, I have mislaid my glasses. Blind as a bat without them. Can’t see where I’m going.”

A gloomy-looking young man with long and disordered hair, who stood at the elderly gentleman’s elbow, coughed suggestively. He was shuffling restlessly, and appeared to be anxious to close the episode and move on. A young man, evidently, of highly-strung temperament. He had a sullen air.

The elderly gentleman started vaguely at the sound of the cough.

“Eh?” he said, as if in answer to some spoken remark. “Oh, yes, quite so, quite so, my dear fellow. Mustn’t stop here chatting, eh? Had to apologise, though. Nearly upset this gentleman’s table. Can’t see where I’m going without my glasses. Blind as a bat. Eh? What? Quite so, quite so.”

He ambled off, doddering cheerfully, while his companion still preserved his look of sulky aloofness. Psmith gazed after them with interest.

“Can you tell me,” he asked of the waiter, who was rallying round with the potatoes, “who that was?”

[p. 95]The waiter followed his glance.

“Don’t know who the young gentleman is, sir. Guest here, I fancy. The old gentleman is the Earl of Emsworth. Lives in the country and doesn’t often come to the club. Very absent-minded gentleman, they tell me. Potatoes, sir?”

“Thank you,” said Psmith.

The waiter drifted away, and returned.

“I have been looking at the guest-book, sir. The name of the gentleman lunching with Lord Emsworth is Mr. Ralston McTodd.”

“Thank you very much. I am sorry you had the trouble.”

“No trouble, sir.”

Psmith resumed his meal.

The sullen demeanour of the young man who had accompanied Lord Emsworth through the coffee-room accurately reflected the emotions which were vexing his troubled soul. Ralston McTodd, the powerful young singer of Saskatoon (“Plumbs the depths of human emotion and strikes a new note”—Montreal Star. “Very readable”—Ipsilanti Herald), had not enjoyed his lunch. The pleasing sense of importance induced by the fact that for the first time in his life he was hob-nobbing with a genuine earl had given way after ten minutes of his host’s society to a mingled despair and irritation which had grown steadily deeper as the meal proceeded. It is not too much to say that by the time the fish course arrived it would have been a relief to Mr. McTodd’s feelings if he could have taken up the butter-dish and banged it down, butter and all, on his lordship’s bald head.

A temperamental young man was Ralston McTodd.[p. 96] He liked to be the centre of the picture, to do the talking, to air his views, to be listened to respectfully and with interest by a submissive audience. At the meal which had just concluded none of these reasonable demands had been permitted to him. From the very beginning, Lord Emsworth had collared the conversation and held it with a gentle, bleating persistency against all assaults. Five times had Mr. McTodd almost succeeded in launching one of his best epigrams, only to see it swept away on the tossing flood of a lecture on hollyhocks. At the sixth attempt he had managed to get it out, complete and sparkling, and the old ass opposite him had taken it in his stride like a hurdle and gone galloping off about the mental and moral defects of a creature named Angus McAllister, who appeared to be his head gardener or something of the kind. The luncheon, though he was a hearty feeder and as a rule appreciative of good cooking, had turned to ashes in Mr. McTodd’s mouth, and it was a soured and chafing Singer of Saskatoon who dropped scowlingly into an arm-chair by the window of the lower smoking-room a few moments later. We introduce Ralston McTodd to the reader, in short, at a moment when he is very near the breaking-point. A little more provocation, and goodness knows what he may not do. For the time being, he is merely leaning back in his chair and scowling. He has a faint hope, however, that a cigar may bring some sort of relief, and he is waiting for one to be ordered for him.

The Earl of Emsworth did not see the scowl. He had not really seen Mr. McTodd at all from the moment of his arrival at the club, when somebody, who sounded like the head porter, had informed him that a gentleman was waiting to see him and had led him up to a shapeless blur which had introduced itself as his[p. 97] expected guest. The loss of his glasses had had its usual effect on Lord Emsworth, making the world a misty place in which indefinite objects swam dimly like fish in muddy water. Not that this mattered much, seeing that he was in London, for in London there was never anything worth looking at. Beyond a vague feeling that it would be more comfortable on the whole if he had his glasses—a feeling just strong enough to have made him send off a messenger boy to his hotel to hunt for them—Lord Emsworth had not allowed lack of vision to interfere with his enjoyment of the proceedings.

And, unlike Mr. McTodd, he had been enjoying himself very much. A good listener, this young man, he felt. Very soothing, the way he had constituted himself a willing audience, never interrupting or thrusting himself forward, as is so often the deplorable tendency of the modern young man. Lord Emsworth was bound to admit that, much as he had disliked the idea of going to London to pick up this poet or whatever he was, the thing had turned out better than he had expected. He liked Mr. McTodd’s silent but obvious interest in flowers, his tacit but warm-hearted sympathy in the matter of Angus McAllister. He was glad he was coming to Blandings. It would be agreeable to conduct him personally through the gardens, to introduce him to Angus McAllister and allow him to plumb for himself the black abysses of that outcast’s mental processes.

Meanwhile, he had forgotten all about ordering that cigar . . .

“In large gardens where ample space permits,” said Lord Emsworth, dropping cosily into his chair and taking up the conversation at the point where it had been broken off, “nothing is more desirable than[p. 98] that there should be some places, or one at least, of quiet greenery alone, without any flowers whatever. I see that you agree with me.”

Mr. McTodd had not agreed with him. The grunt which Lord Emsworth had taken for an exclamation of rapturous adhesion to his sentiments had been merely a sort of bubble of sound rising from the tortured depths of Mr. McTodd’s suffering soul—the cry, as the poet beautifully puts it, “of some strong smoker in his agony.” The desire to smoke had now gripped Mr. McTodd’s very vitals; but, as some lingering remains of the social sense kept him from asking point-blank for the cigar for which he yearned, he sought in his mind for a way of approaching the subject obliquely.

“In no other way,” proceeded Lord Emsworth, “can the brilliancy of flowers be so keenly enjoyed as by . . .”

“Talking of flowers,” said Mr. McTodd, “it is a fact, I believe, that tobacco smoke is good for roses.”

“. . . as by pacing for a time,” said Lord Emsworth, “in some cool, green alley, and then passing on to the flowery places. It is partly, no doubt, the unconscious working out of some optical law, the explanation of which in everyday language is that the eye . . .”

“Some people say that smoking is bad for the eyes. I don’t agree with them,” said Mr. McTodd warmly.

“. . . being, as it were, saturated with the green colour, is the more attuned to receive the others, especially the reds. It was probably some such consideration that influenced the designers of the many old gardens of England in devoting so much attention to the cult of the yew tree. When you come to Blandings, my dear fellow, I will show you our celebrated yew alley. And, when you see it, you will agree that[p. 99] I was right in taking the stand I did against Angus McAllister’s pernicious views.”

“I was lunching in a club yesterday,” said Mr. McTodd, with the splendid McTodd doggedness, “where they had no matches on the tables in the smoking-room. Only spills. It made it very inconvenient . . .”

“Angus McAllister,” said Lord Emsworth, “is a professional gardener. I need say no more. You know as well as I do, my dear fellow, what professional gardeners are like when it is a question of moss . . .”

“What it meant was that, when you wanted to light your after-luncheon cigar, you had to get up and go to a gas-burner on a bracket at the other end of the room . . .”

“Moss, for some obscure reason, appears to infuriate them. It rouses their basest passions. Nature intended a yew alley to be carpeted with a mossy growth. The mossy path in the yew alley at Blandings is in true relation for colour to the trees and grassy edges; yet will you credit it that that soulless disgrace to Scotland actually wished to grub it all up and have a rolled gravel path staring up from beneath those immemorial trees! I have already told you how I was compelled to give in to him in the matter of the hollyhocks—head gardeners of any ability at all are rare in these days and one has to make concessions—but this was too much. I was perfectly friendly and civil about it. ‘Certainly, McAllister,’ I said, ‘you may have your gravel path if you wish it. I make but one proviso, that you construct it over my dead body. Only when I am weltering in my blood on the threshold of that yew alley shall you disturb one inch of my beautiful moss. Try to remember, McAllister,’ I said, still quite cordially, ‘that you are not laying out a recreation ground in a Glasgow suburb—you are proposing to[p. 100] make an eyesore of what is possibly the most beautiful nook in one of the finest and oldest gardens in the United Kingdom.’ He made some repulsive Scotch noise at the back of his throat, and there the matter rests. . . . Let me, my dear fellow,” said Lord Emsworth, writhing down into the depths of his chair like an aristocratic snake until his spine rested snugly against the leather, “let me describe for you the Yew Alley at Blandings. Entering from the west . . .”

Mr. McTodd gave up the struggle and sank back, filled with black and deleterious thoughts, into a tobacco-less hell. The smoking-room was full now, and on all sides fragrant blue clouds arose from the little groups of serious thinkers who were discussing what Gladstone had said in ’78. Mr. McTodd, as he watched them, had something of the emotions of the Peri excluded from Paradise. So reduced was he by this time that he would have accepted gratefully the meanest straight-cut cigarette in place of the Corona of his dreams. But even this poor substitute for smoking was denied him.

Lord Emsworth droned on. Having approached from the west, he was now well inside the yew alley.

“Many of the yews, no doubt, have taken forms other than those that were originally designed. Some are like turned chessmen; some might be taken for adaptations of human figures, for one can trace here and there a hat-covered head or a spreading petticoat. Some rise in solid blocks with rounded roof and stemless mushroom finial. These have for the most part arched recesses, forming arbours. One of the tallest . . . Eh? What?”

Lord Emsworth blinked vaguely at the waiter who had sidled up. A moment before he had been a hundred odd miles away, and it was not easy to adjust[p. 101] his mind immediately to the fact that he was in the smoking-room of the Senior Conservative Club.

“Eh? What?”

“A messenger boy has just arrived with these, your lordship.”

Lord Emsworth peered in a dazed and woolly manner at the proffered spectacle-case. Intelligence returned to him.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. My glasses. Capital! Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He removed the glasses from their case and placed them on his nose: and instantly the world sprang into being before his eyes, sharp and well-defined. It was like coming out of a fog.

“Dear me!” he said in a self-congratulatory voice.

Then abruptly he sat up, transfixed. The lower smoking-room at the Senior Conservative Club is on the street level, and Lord Emsworth’s chair faced the large window. Through this, as he raised his now spectacled face, he perceived for the first time that among the row of shops on the opposite side of the road was a jaunty new florist’s. It had not been there at his last visit to the metropolis, and he stared at it raptly, as a small boy would stare at a saucer of ice-cream if such a thing had suddenly descended from heaven immediately in front of him. And, like a small boy in such a situation, he had eyes for nothing else. He did not look at his guest. Indeed, in the ecstasy of his discovery, he had completely forgotten that he had a guest.

Any flower shop, however small, was a magnet to the Earl of Emsworth. And this was a particularly spacious and arresting flower shop. Its window was gay with summer blooms. And Lord Emsworth, slowly rising[p. 102] from his chair, “pointed” like a dog that sees a pheasant.

“Bless my soul!” he murmured.

If the reader has followed with the closeness which it deserves the extremely entertaining conversation of his lordship recorded in the last few paragraphs, he will have noted a reference to hollyhocks. Lord Emsworth had ventilated the hollyhock question at some little length while seated at the luncheon table. But, as we had not the good fortune to be present at that enjoyable meal, a brief résumé of the situation must now be given and the intelligent public allowed to judge between his lordship and the uncompromising McAllister.

Briefly, the position was this. Many head gardeners are apt to favour in the hollyhock forms that one cannot but think have for their aim an ideal that is a false and unworthy one. Angus McAllister, clinging to the head-gardeneresque standard of beauty and correct form, would not sanction the wide outer petal. The flower, so Angus held, must be very tight and very round, like the uniform of a major-general. Lord Emsworth, on the other hand, considered this view narrow, and claimed the liberty to try for the very highest and truest beauty in hollyhocks. The loosely-folded inner petals of the hollyhock, he considered, invited a wonderful play and brilliancy of colour; while the wide outer petal, with its slightly waved surface and gently frilled edge . . . well, anyway, Lord Emsworth liked his hollyhocks floppy and Angus McAllister liked them tight, and bitter warfare had resulted, in which, as we have seen, his lordship had been compelled to give way. He had been brooding on this defeat ever since, and in the florist opposite he saw a possible sympathiser, a potential ally, an[p. 103] intelligent chum with whom he could get together and thoroughly damn Angus McAllister’s Glaswegian obstinacy.

You would not have suspected Lord Emsworth, from a casual glance, of having within him the ability to move rapidly; but it is a fact that he was out of the smoking-room and skimming down the front steps of the club before Mr. McTodd’s jaw, which had fallen at the spectacle of his host bounding out of his horizon of vision like a jack-rabbit, had time to hitch itself up again. A moment later, Mr. McTodd, happening to direct his gaze out of the window, saw him whiz across the road and vanish into the florist’s shop.

It was at this juncture that Psmith, having finished his lunch, came downstairs to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee. The room was rather crowded, and the chair which Lord Emsworth had vacated offered a wide invitation. He made his way to it.

“Is this chair occupied?” he inquired politely. So politely that Mr. McTodd’s reply sounded by contrast even more violent than it might otherwise have done.

“No, it isn’t!” snapped Mr. McTodd.

Psmith seated himself. He was feeling agreeably disposed to conversation.

“Lord Emsworth has left you then?” he said.

“Is he a friend of yours?” inquired Mr. McTodd in a voice that suggested that he was perfectly willing to accept a proxy as a target for his wrath.

“I know him by sight. Nothing more.”

“Blast him!” muttered Mr. McTodd with indescribable virulence.

Psmith eyed him inquiringly.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” he said, “but I seem to detect in your manner a certain half-veiled annoyance. Is anything the matter?”

[p. 104]Mr. McTodd barked bitterly.

“Oh, no. Nothing’s the matter. Nothing whatever, except that that old beaver—”—here he wronged Lord Emsworth, who, whatever his faults, was not a bearded man—“that old beaver invited me to lunch, talked all the time about his infernal flowers, never let me get a word in edgeways, hadn’t the common civility to offer me a cigar, and now has gone off without a word of apology and buried himself in that shop over the way. I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” raved Mr. McTodd.

“Scarcely the perfect host,” admitted Psmith.

“And if he thinks,” said Mr. McTodd, rising, “that I’m going to go and stay with him at his beastly castle after this, he’s mistaken. I’m supposed to go down there with him this evening. And perhaps the old fossil thinks I will! After this!” A horrid laugh rolled up from Mr. McTodd’s interior. “Likely! I see myself! After being insulted like this . . . Would you?” he demanded.

Psmith gave the matter thought.

“I am inclined to think no.”

“And so am I damned well inclined to think no!” cried Mr. McTodd. “I’m going away now, this very minute. And if that old total loss ever comes back, you can tell him he’s seen the last of me.”

And Ralston McTodd, his blood boiling with justifiable indignation and pique to a degree dangerous on such a warm day, stalked off towards the door with a hard, set face. Through the door he stalked to the cloak-room for his hat and cane; then, his lips moving silently, he stalked through the hall, stalked down the steps, and passed from the scene, stalking furiously round the corner in quest of a tobacconist’s. At the moment of his disappearance, the Earl of Emsworth[p. 105] had just begun to give the sympathetic florist a limpid character-sketch of Angus McAllister.

*       *       *       *       *

Psmith shook his head sadly. These clashings of human temperament were very lamentable. They disturbed the after-luncheon repose of the man of sensibility. He ordered coffee, and endeavoured to forget the painful scene by thinking of Eve Halliday.

The florist who had settled down to ply his trade opposite the Senior Conservative Club was a delightful fellow, thoroughly sound on the hollyhock question and so informative in the matter of delphiniums, achilleas, coreopsis, eryngiums, geums, lupines, bergamot and early phloxes that Lord Emsworth gave himself up whole-heartedly to the feast of reason and the flow of soul; and it was only some fifteen minutes later that he remembered that he had left a guest languishing in the lower smoking-room and that this guest might be thinking him a trifle remiss in the observance of the sacred duties of hospitality.

“Bless my soul, yes!” said his lordship, coming out from under the influence with a start.

Even then he could not bring himself to dash abruptly from the shop. Twice he reached the door and twice pottered back to sniff at flowers and say something he had forgotten to mention about the Stronger Growing Clematis. Finally, however, with one last, longing, lingering look behind, he tore himself away and trotted back across the road.

Arrived in the lower smoking-room, he stood in the doorway for a moment, peering. The place had been a blur to him when he had left it, but he remembered[p. 106] that he had been sitting in the middle window and, as there were only two seats by the window, that tall, dark young man in one of them must be the guest he had deserted. That he could be a changeling never occurred to Lord Emsworth. So pleasantly had the time passed in the shop across the way that he had the impression that he had only been gone a couple of minutes or so. He made his way to where the young man sat. A vague idea came into his head that the other had grown a bit in his absence, but it passed.

“My dear fellow,” he said genially, as he slid into the other chair, “I really must apologise.”

It was plain to Psmith that the other was under a misapprehension, and a really nice-minded young man would no doubt have put the matter right at once. The fact that it never for a single instant occurred to Psmith to do so was due, no doubt, to some innate defect in his character. He was essentially a young man who took life as it came, and the more inconsequently it came the better he liked it. Presently, he reflected, it would become necessary for him to make some excuse and steal quietly out of the other’s life; but meanwhile the situation seemed to him to present entertaining possibilities.

“Not at all,” he replied graciously. “Not at all.”

“I was afraid for a moment,” said Lord Emsworth, “that you might—quite naturally—be offended.”

“Absurd!”

“Shouldn’t have left you like that. Shocking bad manners. But, my dear fellow, I simply had to pop across the street.”

“Most decidedly,” said Psmith. “Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life.”

Lord Emsworth looked at him a little perplexedly, and wondered if he had caught the last remark correctly. But his mind had never been designed for the purpose[p. 107] of dwelling closely on problems for any length of time, and he let it go.

“Beautiful roses that man has,” he observed. “Really an extraordinarily fine display.”

“Indeed?” said Psmith.

“Nothing to touch mine, though. I wish, my dear fellow, you could have been down at Blandings at the beginning of the month. My roses were at their best then. It’s too bad you weren’t there to see them.”

“The fault no doubt was mine,” said Psmith.

“Of course you weren’t in England then.”

“Ah! That explains it.”

“Still, I shall have plenty of flowers to show you when you are at Blandings. I expect,” said Lord Emsworth, at last showing a host-like disposition to give his guest a belated innings, “I expect you’ll write one of your poems about my gardens, eh?”

Psmith was conscious of a feeling of distinct gratification. Weeks of toil among the herrings of Billingsgate had left him with a sort of haunting fear that even in private life there clung to him the miasma of the fish market. Yet here was a perfectly unprejudiced observer looking squarely at him and mistaking him for a poet—showing that in spite of all he had gone through there must still be something notably spiritual and unfishy about his outward appearance.

“Very possibly,” he said. “Very possibly.”

“I suppose you get ideas for your poetry from all sorts of things,” said Lord Emsworth, nobly resisting the temptation to collar the conversation again. He was feeling extremely friendly towards this poet fellow. It was deuced civil of him not to be put out and huffy at being left alone in the smoking-room.

“From practically everything,” said Psmith, “except fish.”

[p. 108]“Fish?”

“I have never written a poem about fish.”

“No?” said Lord Emsworth, again feeling that a pin had worked loose in the machinery of the conversation.

“I was once offered a princely sum,” went on Psmith, now floating happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, “to write a ballad for the Fishmonger’s Gazette entitled, ‘Herbert the Turbot.’ But I was firm. I declined.”

“Indeed?” said Lord Emsworth.

“One has one’s self-respect,” said Psmith.

“Oh, decidedly,” said Lord Emsworth.

“It was painful, of course. The editor broke down completely when he realised that my refusal was final. However, I sent him on with a letter of introduction to John Drinkwater, who, I believe, turned him out quite a good little effort on the theme.”

At this moment, when Lord Emsworth was feeling a trifle dizzy, and Psmith, on whom conversation always acted as a mental stimulus, was on the point of plunging even deeper into the agreeable depths of light persiflage, a waiter approached.

“A lady to see you, your lordship.”

“Eh? Ah, yes, of course, of course. I was expecting her. It is a Miss —— what is the name? Holliday? Halliday. It is a Miss Halliday,” he said in explanation to Psmith, “who is coming down to Blandings to catalogue the library. My secretary, Baxter, told her to call here and see me. If you will excuse me for a moment, my dear fellow?”

“Certainly.”

As Lord Emsworth disappeared, it occurred to Psmith that the moment had arrived for him to get his hat and steal softly out of the other’s life for ever. Only so could confusion and embarrassing explanations be[p. 109] avoided. And it was Psmith’s guiding rule in life always to avoid explanations. It might, he felt, cause Lord Emsworth a momentary pang when he returned to the smoking-room and found that he was a poet short, but what is that in these modern days when poets are so plentiful that it is almost impossible to fling a brick in any public place without damaging some stern young singer. Psmith’s view of the matter was that, if Lord Emsworth was bent on associating with poets, there was bound to be another one along in a minute. He was on the point, therefore, of rising, when the laziness induced by a good lunch decided him to remain in his comfortable chair for a few minutes longer. He was in one of those moods of rare tranquillity which it is rash to break.

He lit another cigarette, and his thoughts, as they had done after the departure of Mr. McTodd, turned dreamily in the direction of the girl he had met at Miss Clarkson’s Employment Bureau. He mused upon her with a gentle melancholy. Sad, he felt, that two obviously kindred spirits like himself and her should meet in the whirl of London life, only to separate again—presumably for ever—simply because the etiquette governing those who are created male and female forbids a man to cement a chance acquaintanceship by ascertaining the lady’s name and address, asking her to lunch, and swearing eternal friendship. He sighed as he gazed thoughtfully out of the lower smoking-room window. As he had indicated in his conversation with Mr. Walderwick, those blue eyes and that cheerful, friendly face had made a deep impression on him. Who was she? Where did she live? And was he ever to see her again?

He was. Even as he asked himself the question, two figures came down the steps of the club, and paused. One was Lord Emsworth, without his hat. The other—and Psmith’s usually orderly heart gave a spasmodic[p. 110] bound at the sight of her—was the very girl who was occupying his thoughts. There she stood, as blue-eyed, as fair-haired, as indescribably jolly and charming as ever.

Psmith rose from his chair with a vehemence almost equal to that recently displayed by Mr. McTodd. It was his intention to add himself immediately to the group. He raced across the room in a manner that drew censorious glances from the local greybeards, many of whom had half a mind to write to the committee about it.

But when he reached the open air the pavement at the foot of the club steps was empty. The girl was just vanishing round the corner into the Strand, and of Lord Emsworth there was no sign whatever.

By this time, however, Psmith had acquired a useful working knowledge of his lordship’s habits, and he knew where to look. He crossed the street and headed for the florist’s shop.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” said his lordship amiably, suspending his conversation with the proprietor on the subject of delphiniums, “must you be off? Don’t forget that our train leaves Paddington at five sharp. You take your ticket for Market Blandings.”

Psmith had come into the shop merely with the intention of asking his lordship if he happened to know Miss Halliday’s address, but these words opened out such a vista of attractive possibilities that he had abandoned this tame programme immediately. He remembered now that among Mr. McTodd’s remarks on things in general had been one to the effect that he had received an invitation to visit Blandings Castle—of which invitation he did not propose to avail himself; and he argued that if he had acted as substitute for Mr. McTodd at the club, he might well continue the kindly work by officiating for him at Blandings. Looking at the matter altruistically, he would prevent[p. 111] his kind host much disappointment by taking this course; and, looking at it from a more personal viewpoint, only by going to Blandings could he renew his acquaintance with this girl. Psmith had never been one of those who hang back diffidently when Adventure calls, and he did not hang back now.

“At five sharp,” he said. “I will be there.”

“Capital, my dear fellow,” said his lordship.

“Does Miss Halliday travel with us?”

“Eh? No, she is coming down in a day or two.”

“I shall look forward to meeting her,” said Psmith. He turned to the door, and Lord Emsworth with a farewell beam resumed his conversation with the florist.

The five o’clock train, having given itself a spasmodic jerk, began to move slowly out of Paddington Station. The platform past which it was gliding was crowded with a number of the fauna always to be seen at railway stations at such moments, but in their ranks there was no sign of Mr. Ralston McTodd: and Psmith, as he sat opposite Lord Emsworth in a corner seat of a first-class compartment, felt that genial glow of satisfaction which comes to the man who has successfully taken a chance. Until now, he had been half afraid that McTodd, having changed his mind, might suddenly appear with bag and baggage—an event which must necessarily have caused confusion and discomfort. His mind was now tranquil. Concerning the future he declined to worry. It would, no doubt, contain its little difficulties, but he was prepared to meet them in the right spirit; and his only trouble in the world now was the difficulty he was experiencing in avoiding his lordship’s legs, which showed a disposition to pervade the compartment like the tentacles of an octopus. Lord Emsworth rather ran to leg, and his practice of reclining when at ease on the base of his spine was causing him to straddle, like Apollyon in Pilgrim’s Progress, “right across the way.” It became manifest that in a journey lasting[p. 113] several hours his society was likely to prove irksome. For the time being, however, he endured it, and listened with polite attention to his host’s remarks on the subject of the Blandings gardens. Lord Emsworth, in a train moving in the direction of home, was behaving like a horse heading for his stable. He snorted eagerly, and spoke at length and with emotion of roses and herbaceous borders.

“It will be dark, I suppose, by the time we arrive,” he said regretfully, “but the first thing to-morrow, my dear fellow, I must take you round and show you my gardens.”

“I shall look forward to it keenly,” said Psmith. “They are, I can readily imagine, distinctly oojah-cum-spiff.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Lord Emsworth with a start.

“Not at all,” said Psmith graciously.

“Er—what did you say?” asked his lordship after a slight pause.

“I was saying that, from all reports, you must have a very nifty display of garden-produce at your rural seat.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, most,” said his lordship, looking puzzled. He examined Psmith across the compartment with something of the peering curiosity which he would have bestowed upon a new and unclassified shrub. “Most extraordinary!” he murmured. “I trust, my dear fellow, you will not think me personal, but, do you know, nobody would imagine that you were a poet. You don’t look like a poet, and, dash it, you don’t talk like a poet.”

“How should a poet talk?”

“Well . . .” Lord Emsworth considered the point. “Well, Miss Peavey . . . But of course you don’t know Miss Peavey . . . Miss Peavey is a poetess, and[p. 114] she waylaid me the other morning while I was having a most important conference with McAllister on the subject of bulbs and asked me if I didn’t think that it was fairies’ tear-drops that made the dew. Did you ever hear such dashed nonsense?”

“Evidently an aggravated case. Is Miss Peavey staying at the castle?”

“My dear fellow, you couldn’t shift her with blasting-powder. Really this craze of my sister Constance for filling the house with these infernal literary people is getting on my nerves. I can’t stand these poets and what not. Never could.”

“We must always remember, however,” said Psmith gravely, “that poets are also God’s creatures.”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed his lordship, aghast. “I had forgotten that you were one. What will you think of me, my dear fellow! But, of course, as I said a moment ago, you are different. I admit that when Constance told me that she had invited you to the house I was not cheered, but, now that I have had the pleasure of meeting you . . .”

The conversation had worked round to the very point to which Psmith had been wishing to direct it. He was keenly desirous of finding out why Mr. McTodd had been invited to Blandings and—a still more vital matter—of ascertaining whether, on his arrival there as Mr. McTodd’s understudy, he was going to meet people who knew the poet by sight. On this latter point, it seemed to him, hung the question of whether he was about to enjoy a delightful visit to a historic country house in the society of Eve Halliday—or leave the train at the next stop and omit to return to it.

“It was extremely kind of Lady Constance,” he hazarded, “to invite a perfect stranger to Blandings.”

“Oh, she’s always doing that sort of thing,” said[p. 115] his lordship. “It didn’t matter to her that she’d never seen you in her life. She had read your books, you know, and liked them: and when she heard that you were coming to England, she wrote to you.”

“I see,” said Psmith, relieved.

“Of course, it is all right as it has turned out,” said Lord Emsworth handsomely. “As I say, you’re different. And how you came to write that . . . that . . .”

“Bilge?” suggested Psmith.

“The very word I was about to employ, my dear fellow . . . No, no, I don’t mean that . . . I—I . . . Capital stuff, no doubt, capital stuff . . . but . . .”

“I understand.”

“Constance tried to make me read the things, but I couldn’t. I fell asleep over them.”

“I hope you rested well.”

“I—er—the fact is, I suppose they were beyond me. I couldn’t see any sense in the things.”

“If you would care to have another pop at them,” said Psmith agreeably, “I have a complete set in my bag.”

“No, no, my dear fellow, thank you very much, thank you a thousand times. I—er—find that reading in the train tries my eyes.”

“Ah! You would prefer that I read them aloud?”

“No, no.” A look of hunted alarm came into his lordship’s speaking countenance at the suggestion. “As a matter of fact, I generally take a short nap at the beginning of a railway journey. I find it refreshing and—er—in short, refreshing. You will excuse me?”

“If you think you can get to sleep all right without the aid of my poems, certainly.”

“You won’t think me rude?”

“Not at all, not at all. By the way, am I likely to meet any old friends at Blandings?”

[p. 116]“Eh? Oh no. There will be nobody but ourselves. Except my sister and Miss Peavey, of course. You said you had not met Miss Peavey, I think?”

“I have not had that pleasure. I am, of course, looking forward to it with the utmost keenness.”

Lord Emsworth eyed him for a moment, astonished: then concluded the conversation by closing his eyes defensively. Psmith was left to his reflections, which a few minutes later were interrupted by a smart kick on the shin, as Lord Emsworth, a jumpy sleeper, began to throw his long legs about. Psmith moved to the other end of the seat, and, taking his bag down from the rack, extracted a slim volume bound in squashy mauve. After gazing at this in an unfriendly manner for a moment, he opened it at random and began to read. His first move on leaving Lord Emsworth at the florist’s had been to spend a portion of his slender capital on the works of Ralston McTodd in order not to be taken at a disadvantage in the event of questions about them at Blandings: but he speedily realised, as he dipped into the poems, that anything in the nature of a prolonged study of them was likely to spoil his little holiday. They were not light summer reading.

A gurgling snort from the other end of the compartment abruptly detached his mind from its struggle with this mystic line. He perceived that his host had slipped even further down on to his spine and was now lying with open mouth in an attitude suggestive of dislocation. And as he looked, there was a whistling sound, and another snore proceeded from the back of his lordship’s throat.

Psmith rose and took his book of poems out into[p. 117] the corridor with the purpose of roaming along the train until he should find an empty compartment in which to read in peace.

With the two adjoining compartments he had no luck. One was occupied by an elderly man with a retriever, while the presence of a baby in the other ruled it out of consideration. The third, however, looked more promising. It was not actually empty, but there was only one occupant, and he was asleep. He was lying back in the far corner with a large silk handkerchief draped over his face and his feet propped up on the seat opposite. His society did not seem likely to act as a bar to the study of Mr. McTodd’s masterpieces. Psmith sat down and resumed his reading.

Psmith knitted his brow. It was just the sort of line which was likely to have puzzled his patroness, Lady Constance, and he anticipated that she would come to him directly he arrived and ask for an explanation. It would obviously be a poor start for his visit to confess that he had no theory as to its meaning himself. He tried it again.

A sound like two or three pigs feeding rather noisily in the middle of a thunderstorm interrupted his meditations. Psmith laid his book down and gazed in a pained way across the compartment. There came to him a sense of being unfairly put upon, as towards the end of his troubles it might have come upon Job. This, he felt, was too much. He was being harried.

The man in the corner went on snoring.

*       *       *       *       *

[p. 118]There is always a way. Almost immediately Psmith saw what Napoleon would have done in this crisis. On the seat beside the sleeper was lying a compact little suit-case with hard, sharp edges. Rising softly, Psmith edged along the compartment and secured this. Then, having balanced it carefully on the rack above the sleeper’s stomach, he returned to his seat to await developments.

These were not long in coming. The train, now flying at its best speed through open country, was shaking itself at intervals in a vigorous way as it raced along. A few seconds later it apparently passed over some points, and shivered briskly down its whole length. The suit-case wobbled insecurely, hesitated, and fell chunkily in the exact middle of its owner’s waistcoat. There was a smothered gulp beneath the handkerchief. The sleeper sat up with a jerk. The handkerchief fell off. And there was revealed to Psmith’s interested gaze the face of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood.

“Goo!” observed Freddie. He removed the bag from his midriff and began to massage the stricken spot. Then suddenly perceiving that he was not alone he looked up and saw Psmith.

“Goo!” said Freddie, and sat staring wildly.

Nobody is more alive than we are to the fact that the dialogue of Frederick Threepwood, recorded above, is not bright. Nevertheless, those were his opening remarks, and the excuse must be that he had passed through a trying time and had just received two shocks, one after the other. From the first of these, the physical impact of the suit-case, he was recovering; but the second had simply paralysed him. When, the mists of sleep having cleared away, he saw sitting but a few[p. 119] feet away from him on the train that was carrying him home the very man with whom he had plotted in the lobby of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel, a cold fear gripped Freddie’s very vitals.

Freddie’s troubles had begun when he just missed the twelve-fifty train. This disaster had perturbed him greatly, for he could not forget his father’s stern injunctions on the subject. But what had really upset him was the fact that he had come within an ace of missing the five o’clock train as well. He had spent the afternoon in a motion-picture palace, and the fascination of the film had caused him to lose all sense of time, so that only the slow fade-out on the embrace and the words “The End” reminded him to look at his watch. A mad rush had got him to Paddington just as the five o’clock express was leaving the station. Exhausted, he had fallen into a troubled sleep, from which he had been aroused by a violent blow in the waistcoat and the nightmare vision of Psmith in the seat across the compartment. One cannot wonder in these circumstances that Freddie did not immediately soar to the heights of eloquence.

The picture which the Hon. Frederick Threepwood had selected for his patronage that afternoon was the well-known super-super-film, “Fangs Of The Past,” featuring Bertha Blevitch and Maurice Heddlestone—which, as everybody knows, is all about blackmail. Green-walled by primeval hills, bathed in the golden sunshine of peace and happiness, the village of Honeydean slumbered in the clear morning air. But off the train from the city stepped A Stranger—(The Stranger—Maxwell Bannister). He inquired of a passing rustic—(The Passing Rustic—Claude Hepworth)—the way to the great house where Myrtle Dale, the Lady Bountiful of the village . . . well,[p. 120] anyway, it is all about blackmail, and it had affected Freddie profoundly. It still coloured his imagination, and the conclusion to which he came the moment he saw Psmith was that the latter had shadowed him and was following him home with the purpose of extracting hush-money.

While he was still gurgling wordlessly, Psmith opened the conversation.

“A delightful and unexpected pleasure, comrade. I thought you had left the Metropolis some hours since.”

As Freddie sat looking like a cornered dormouse a voice from the corridor spoke.

“Ah, there you are, my dear fellow!”

Lord Emsworth was beaming in the doorway. His slumbers, like those of Freddie, had not lasted long. He had been aroused only a few minutes after Psmith’s departure by the arrival of the retriever from the next compartment, which, bored by the society of its owner, had strolled off on a tour of investigation and, finding next door an old acquaintance in the person of his lordship, had jumped on the seat and licked his face with such hearty good will that further sleep was out of the question. Being awake, Lord Emsworth, as always when he was awake, had begun to potter.

When he saw Freddie his amiability suffered a shock.

“Frederick! I thought I told you to be sure to return on the twelve-fifty train!”

“Missed it, guv’nor,” mumbled Freddie thickly. “Not my fault.”

“H’mph!” His father seemed about to pursue the subject, but the fact that a stranger and one who was his guest was present apparently decided him to avoid anything in the shape of family wrangles. He peered from Freddie to Psmith and back again. “Do you two know each other?” he said.

[p. 121]“Not yet,” said Psmith. “We only met a moment ago.”

“My son Frederick,” said Lord Emsworth, rather in the voice with which he would have called attention to the presence of a slug among his flowers. “Frederick, this is Mr. McTodd, the poet, who is coming to stay at Blandings.”

Freddie started, and his mouth opened. But, meeting Psmith’s friendly gaze, he closed the orifice again without speaking. He licked his lips in an overwrought way.

“You’ll find me next door, if you want me,” said Lord Emsworth to Psmith. “Just discovered that George Willard, very old friend of mine, is in there. Never saw him get on the train. His dog came into my compartment and licked my face. One of my neighbours. A remarkable rose-grower. As you are so interested in flowers, I will take you over to his place some time. Why don’t you join us now?”

“I would prefer, if you do not mind,” said Psmith, “to remain here for the moment and foster what I feel sure is about to develop into a great and lasting friendship. I am convinced that your son and I will have much to talk about together.”

“Very well, my dear fellow. We will meet at dinner in the restaurant-car.”

Lord Emsworth pottered off, and Psmith rose and closed the door. He returned to his seat to find Freddie regarding him with a tortured expression in his rather prominent eyes. Freddie’s brain had had more exercise in the last few minutes than in years of his normal life, and he was feeling the strain.

“I say, what?” he observed feebly.

“If there is anything,” said Psmith kindly, “that[p. 122] I can do to clear up any little difficulty that is perplexing you, call on me. What is biting you?”

Freddie swallowed convulsively.

“I say, he said your name was McTodd!”

“Precisely.”

“But you said it was Psmith.”

“It is.”

“Then why did father call you McTodd?”

“He thinks I am. It is a harmless error, and I see no reason why it should be discouraged.”

“But why does he think you’re McTodd?”

“It is a long story, which you may find tedious. But, if you really wish to hear it . . .”

Nothing could have exceeded the raptness of Freddie’s attention as he listened to the tale of the encounter with Lord Emsworth at the Senior Conservative Club.

“Do you mean to say,” he demanded at its conclusion, “that you’re coming to Blandings pretending to be this poet blighter?”

“That is the scheme.”

“But why?”

“I have my reasons, Comrade—what is the name? Threepwood? I thank you. You will pardon me, Comrade Threepwood, if I do not go into them. And now,” said Psmith, “to resume our very interesting chat which was unfortunately cut short this morning, why do you want me to steal your aunt’s necklace?”

Freddie jumped. For the moment, so tensely had the fact of his companion’s audacity chained his interest, he had actually forgotten about the necklace.

“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “Why, of course!”

“You still have not made it quite clear.”

“It fits splendidly.”

“The necklace?”

“I mean to say, the great difficulty would have[p. 123] been to find a way of getting you into the house, and here you are, coming there as this poet bird. Topping!”

“If,” said Psmith, regarding him patiently through his eyeglass, “I do not seem to be immediately infected by your joyous enthusiasm, put it down to the fact that I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about. Could you give me a pointer or two? What, for instance, assuming that I agreed to steal your aunt’s necklace, would you expect me to do with it, when and if stolen?”

“Why, hand it over to me.”

“I see. And what would you do with it?”

“Hand it over to my uncle.”

“And whom would he hand it over to?”

“Look here,” said Freddie, “I might as well start at the beginning.”

“An excellent idea.”

The speed at which the train was now proceeding had begun to render conversation in anything but stentorian tones somewhat difficult. Freddie accordingly bent forward till his mouth almost touched Psmith’s ear.

“You see, it’s like this. My uncle, old Joe Keeble . . .”

“Keeble?” said Psmith. “Why,” he murmured meditatively, “is that name familiar?”

“Don’t interrupt, old lad,” pleaded Freddie.

“I stand corrected.”

“Uncle Joe has a stepdaughter—Phyllis her name is—and some time ago she popped off and married a cove called Jackson . . .”

Psmith did not interrupt the narrative again, but as it proceeded his look of interest deepened. And at the conclusion he patted his companion encouragingly on the shoulder.

“The proceeds, then, of this jewel-robbery, if it comes off,” he said, “will go to establish the Jackson home on a firm footing? Am I right in thinking that?”

[p. 124]“Absolutely.”

“There is no danger—you will pardon the suggestion—of you clinging like glue to the swag and using it to maintain yourself in the position to which you are accustomed?”

“Absolutely not. Uncle Joe is giving me—er—giving me a bit for myself. Just a small bit, you understand. This is the scheme. You sneak the necklace and hand it over to me. I push the necklace over to Uncle Joe, who hides it somewhere for the moment. There is the dickens of a fuss, and Uncle Joe comes out strong by telling Aunt Constance that he’ll buy her another necklace, just as good. Then he takes the stones out of the necklace, has them reset, and gives them to Aunt Constance. Looks like a new necklace, if you see what I mean. Then he draws a cheque for twenty thousand quid, which Aunt Constance naturally thinks is for the new necklace, and he shoves the money somewhere as a little private account. He gives Phyllis her money, and everybody’s happy. Aunt Constance has got her necklace, Phyllis has got her money, and all that’s happened is that Aunt Constance’s and Uncle Joe’s combined bank balance has had a bit of a hole knocked in it. See?”

“I see. It is a little difficult to follow all the necklaces. I seemed to count about seventeen of them while you were talking, but I suppose I was wrong. Yes, I see, Comrade Threepwood, and I may say at once that you can rely on my co-operation.”

“You’ll do it?”

“I will.”

“Of course,” said Freddie awkwardly, “I’ll see that you get a bit all right. I mean . . .”

Psmith waved his hand deprecatingly.

[p. 125]“My dear Comrade Threepwood, let us not become sordid on this glad occasion. As far as I am concerned, there will be no charge.”

“What! But look here . . .”

“Any assistance I can give will be offered in a purely amateur spirit. I would have mentioned before, only I was reluctant to interrupt you, that Comrade Jackson is my boyhood chum, and that Phyllis, his wife, injects into my life the few beams of sunshine that illumine its dreary round. I have long desired to do something to ameliorate their lot, and now that the chance has come I am delighted. It is true that I am not a man of affluence—my bank-manager, I am told, winces in a rather painful manner whenever my name is mentioned—but I am not so reduced that I must charge a fee for performing, on behalf of a pal, a simple act of courtesy like pinching a twenty thousand pound necklace.”

“Good Lord! Fancy that!”

“Fancy what, Comrade Threepwood?”

“Fancy your knowing Phyllis and her husband.”

“It is odd, no doubt. But true. Many a whack at the cold beef have I had on Sunday evenings under their roof, and I am much obliged to you for putting in my way this opportunity of repaying their hospitality. Thank you!”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Freddie, somewhat bewildered by this eloquence.

“Even if the little enterprise meets with disaster, the reflection that I did my best for the young couple will be a great consolation to me when I am serving my bit of time in Wormwood Scrubbs. It will cheer me up. The jailers will cluster outside the door to listen to me singing in my cell. My pet rat, as he creeps out to share the crumbs of my breakfast, will wonder why I whistle as I pick the morning’s oakum. I shall join in the[p. 126] hymns on Sundays in a way that will electrify the chaplain. That is to say, if anything goes wrong and I am what I believe is technically termed ‘copped.’ I say ‘if,’” said Psmith, gazing solemnly at his companion. “But I do not intend to be copped. I have never gone in largely for crime hitherto, but something tells me I shall be rather good at it. I look forward confidently to making a nice, clean job of the thing. And now, Comrade Threepwood, I must ask you to excuse me while I get the half-nelson on this rather poisonous poetry of good old McTodd’s. From the cursory glance I have taken at it, the stuff doesn’t seem to mean anything. I think the boy’s non compos. You don’t happen to understand the expression ‘Across the pale parabola of Joy,’ do you? . . . I feared as much. Well, pip-pip for the present, Comrade Threepwood. I shall now ask you to retire into your corner and amuse yourself for awhile as you best can. I must concentrate, concentrate.”

And Psmith, having put his feet up on the opposite seat and reopened the mauve volume, began to read. Freddie, his mind still in a whirl, looked out of the window at the passing scenery in a mood which was a nice blend of elation and apprehension.

Although the hands of the station clock pointed to several minutes past nine, it was still apparently early evening when the train drew up at the platform of Market Blandings and discharged its distinguished passengers. The sun, taken in as usual by the never-failing practical joke of the Daylight Saving Act, had only just set, and a golden afterglow lingered on the fields as the car which had met the train purred over the two miles of country road that separated the little[p. 127] town from the castle. As they passed in between the great stone gate-posts and shot up the winding drive, the soft murmur of the engines seemed to deepen rather than break the soothing stillness. The air was fragrant with indescribable English scents. Somewhere in the distance sheep-bells tinkled; rabbits, waggling white tails, bolted across the path; and once a herd of agitated deer made a brief appearance among the trees. The only thing that disturbed the magic hush was the fluting voice of Lord Emsworth, on whom the spectacle of his beloved property had acted as an immediate stimulant. Unlike his son Freddie, who sat silent in his corner wrestling with his hopes and fears, Lord Emsworth had plunged into a perfect Niagara of speech the moment the car entered the park. In a high tenor voice, and with wide, excited gestures, he pointed out to Psmith oaks with a history and rhododendrons with a past: his conversation as they drew near the castle and came in sight of the flower-beds taking on an almost lyrical note and becoming a sort of anthem of gladness, through which, like some theme in the minor, ran a series of opprobrious observations on the subject of Angus McAllister.

Beach, the butler, solicitously scooping them out of the car at the front door, announced that her ladyship and Miss Peavey were taking their after-dinner coffee in the arbour by the bowling-green; and presently Psmith, conducted by his lordship, found himself shaking hands with a strikingly handsome woman in whom, though her manner was friendliness itself, he could detect a marked suggestion of the formidable. Æsthetically, he admired Lady Constance’s appearance, but he could not conceal from himself that in the peculiar circumstances he would have preferred something rather more fragile and drooping. Lady Constance[p. 128] conveyed the impression that anybody who had the choice between stealing anything from her and stirring up a nest of hornets with a short walking-stick would do well to choose the hornets.

“How do you do, Mr. McTodd?” said Lady Constance with great amiability. “I am so glad you were able to come after all.”

Psmith wondered what she meant by “after all,” but there were so many things about his present situation calculated to tax the mind that he had no desire to probe slight verbal ambiguities. He shook her hand and replied that it was very kind of her to say so.

“We are quite a small party at present,” continued Lady Constance, “but we are expecting a number of people quite soon. For the moment Aileen and you are our only guests. Oh, I am sorry, I should have . . . Miss Peavey, Mr. McTodd.”

The slim and willowy female who during this brief conversation had been waiting in an attitude of suspended animation, gazing at Psmith with large, wistful eyes, stepped forward. She clasped Psmith’s hand in hers, held it, and in a low, soft voice, like thick cream made audible, uttered one reverent word.

“Maître!”

“I beg your pardon?” said Psmith. A young man capable of bearing himself with calm and dignity in most circumstances, however trying, he found his poise wobbling under the impact of Miss Aileen Peavey.

Miss Peavey often had this effect on the less soulful type of man, especially in the mornings, when such men are not at their strongest and best. When she came into the breakfast-room of a country house, brave men who had been up a bit late the night before quailed and tried to hide behind newspapers. She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his[p. 129] eyes open with his fingers and endeavouring to correct a headache with strong tea, that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass, and didn’t he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves’ bridal-veils. She had large, fine, melancholy eyes, and was apt to droop dreamily.

“Master!” said Miss Peavey, obligingly translating.

There did not seem to be any immediate come-back to a remark like this, so Psmith contented himself with beaming genially at her through his monocle: and Miss Peavey came to bat again.

“How wonderful that you were able to come—after all!”

Again this “after all” motive creeping into the theme. . . .

“You know Miss Peavey’s work, of course?” said Lady Constance, smiling pleasantly on her two celebrities.

“Who does not?” said Psmith courteously.

“Oh, do you?” said Miss Peavey, gratification causing her slender body to perform a sort of ladylike shimmy down its whole length. “I scarcely hoped that you would know my name. My Canadian sales have not been large.”

“Quite large enough,” said Psmith. “I mean, of course,” he added with a paternal smile, “that, while your delicate art may not have a universal appeal in a young country, it is intensely appreciated by a small and select body of the intelligentsia.”

And if that was not the stuff to give them, he reflected with not a little complacency, he was dashed.

“Your own wonderful poems,” replied Miss Peavey, “are, of course, known the whole world over. Oh, Mr. McTodd, you can hardly appreciate how I feel, meeting you. It is like the realisation of some golden dream of childhood. It is like . . .”

Here the Hon. Freddie Threepwood remarked[p. 130] suddenly that he was going to pop into the house for a whisky and soda. As he had not previously spoken, his observation had something of the effect of a voice from the tomb. The daylight was ebbing fast now, and in the shadows he had contrived to pass out of sight as well as out of mind. Miss Peavey started like an abruptly awakened somnambulist, and Psmith was at last able to release his hand, which he had begun to look on as gone beyond his control for ever. Until this fortunate interruption there had seemed no reason why Miss Peavey should not have continued to hold it till bedtime.

Freddie’s departure had the effect of breaking a spell. Lord Emsworth, who had been standing perfectly still with vacant eyes, like a dog listening to a noise a long way off, came to life with a jerk.

“I’m going to have a look at my flowers,” he announced.

“Don’t be silly, Clarence,” said his sister. “It’s much too dark to see flowers.”

“I could smell ’em,” retorted his lordship argumentatively.

It seemed as if the party must break up, for already his lordship had begun to potter off, when a new-comer arrived to solidify it again.

“Ah, Baxter, my dear fellow,” said Lord Emsworth. “Here we are, you see.”

“Mr. Baxter,” said Lady Constance, “I want you to meet Mr. McTodd.”

“Mr. McTodd!” said the new arrival, on a note of surprise.

“Yes, he found himself able to come after all.”

“Ah!” said the Efficient Baxter.

It occurred to Psmith as a passing thought, to which he gave no more than a momentary attention, that[p. 131] this spectacled and capable-looking man was gazing at him, as they shook hands, with a curious intensity. But possibly, he reflected, this was merely a species of optical illusion due to the other’s spectacles. Baxter, staring through his spectacles, often gave people the impression of possessing an eye that could pierce six inches of harveyised steel and stick out on the other side. Having registered in his consciousness the fact that he had been stared at keenly by this stranger, Psmith thought no more of the matter.

In thus lightly dismissing the Baxterian stare, Psmith had acted injudiciously. He should have examined it more closely and made an effort to analyse it, for it was by no means without its message. It was a stare of suspicion. Vague suspicion as yet, but nevertheless suspicion. Rupert Baxter was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a disposition to suspect their fellows. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime: he simply suspected them. He had not yet definitely accused Psmith in his mind of any specific tort or malfeasance. He merely had a nebulous feeling that he would bear watching.

Miss Peavey now fluttered again into the centre of things. On the arrival of Baxter she had withdrawn for a moment into the background, but she was not the woman to stay there long. She came forward holding out a small oblong book, which, with a languishing firmness, she pressed into Psmith’s hands.

“Could I persuade you, Mr. McTodd,” said Miss Peavey pleadingly, “to write some little thought in my autograph-book and sign it? I have a fountain-pen.”

Light flooded the arbour. The Efficient Baxter, who knew where everything was, had found and pressed the switch. He did this not so much to oblige[p. 132] Miss Peavey as to enable him to obtain a clearer view of the visitor. With each minute that passed the Efficient Baxter was finding himself more and more doubtful in his mind about this visitor.

“There!” said Miss Peavey, welcoming the illumination.

Psmith tapped his chin thoughtfully with the fountain-pen. He felt that he should have foreseen this emergency earlier. If ever there was a woman who was bound to have an autograph-book, that woman was Miss Peavey.

“Just some little thought . . .”

Psmith hesitated no longer. In a firm hand he wrote the words “Across the pale parabola of Joy . . .” added an unfaltering “Ralston McTodd,” and handed the book back.

“How strange,” sighed Miss Peavey.

“May I look?” said Baxter, moving quickly to her side.

“How strange!” repeated Miss Peavey. “To think that you should have chosen that line! There are several of your more mystic passages that I meant to ask you to explain, but particularly ‘Across the pale parabola of Joy’ . . .”

“You find it difficult to understand?”

“A little, I confess.”

“Well, well,” said Psmith indulgently, “perhaps I did put a bit of top-spin on that one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say, perhaps it is a little obscure. We must have a long chat about it—later on.”

“Why not now?” demanded the Efficient Baxter, flashing his spectacles.

“I am rather tired,” said Psmith with gentle reproach, “after my journey. Fatigued. We artists . . .”

“Of course,” said Miss Peavey, with an indignant[p. 133] glance at the secretary. “Mr. Baxter does not understand the sensitive poetic temperament.”

“A bit unspiritual, eh?” said Psmith tolerantly. “A trifle earthy? So I thought, so I thought. One of these strong, hard men of affairs, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Shall we go and find Lord Emsworth, Mr. McTodd?” said Miss Peavey, dismissing the fermenting Baxter with a scornful look. “He wandered off just now. I suppose he is among his flowers. Flowers are very beautiful by night.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Psmith. “And also by day. When I am surrounded by flowers, a sort of divine peace floods over me, and the rough, harsh world seems far away. I feel soothed, tranquil. I sometimes think, Miss Peavey, that flowers must be the souls of little children who have died in their innocence.”

“What a beautiful thought, Mr. McTodd!” exclaimed Miss Peavey rapturously.

“Yes,” agreed Psmith. “Don’t pinch it. It’s copyright.”

The darkness swallowed them up. Lady Constance turned to the Efficient Baxter, who was brooding with furrowed brow.

“Charming, is he not?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said I thought Mr. McTodd was charming.”

“Oh, quite.”

“Completely unspoiled.”

“Oh, decidedly.”

“I am so glad that he was able to come after all. That telegram he sent this afternoon cancelling his visit seemed so curt and final.”

“So I thought it.”

“Almost as if he had taken offence at something and decided to have nothing to do with us.”

[p. 134]“Quite.”

Lady Constance shivered delicately. A cool breeze had sprung up. She drew her wrap more closely about her shapely shoulders, and began to walk to the house. Baxter did not accompany her. The moment she had gone he switched off the light and sat down, chin in hand. That massive brain was working hard.

“Miss Halliday,” announced the Efficient Baxter, removing another letter from its envelope and submitting it to a swift, keen scrutiny, “arrives at about three to-day. She is catching the twelve-fifty train.”

He placed the letter on the pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets. For it was the breakfast hour, and the members of the house party, scattered up and down the long table, were fortifying their tissues against another day. An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.

Lord Emsworth looked up from the seed catalogue in which he was immersed. For some time past his enjoyment of the meal had been marred by a vague sense of something missing, and now he knew what it was.

“Coffee!” he said, not violently, but in the voice of a good man oppressed. “I want coffee. Why have I no coffee? Constance, my dear, I should have coffee. Why have I none?”

“I’m sure I gave you some,” said Lady Constance, brightly presiding over the beverages at the other end of the table.

[p. 136]“Then where is it?” demanded his lordship clinchingly.

Baxter—almost regretfully, it seemed—gave the egg a clean bill of health, and turned in his able way to cope with this domestic problem.

“Your coffee is behind the catalogue you are reading, Lord Emsworth. You propped the catalogue against your cup.”

“Did I? Did I? Why, so I did! Bless my soul!” His lordship, relieved, took an invigorating sip. “What were you saying just then, my dear fellow?”

“I have had a letter from Miss Halliday,” said Baxter. “She writes that she is catching the twelve-fifty train at Paddington, which means that she should arrive at Market Blandings at about three.”

“Who,” asked Miss Peavey, in a low, thrilling voice, ceasing for a moment to peck at her plate of kedgeree, “is Miss Halliday?”

“The exact question I was about to ask myself,” said Lord Emsworth. “Baxter, my dear fellow, who is Miss Halliday?”

Baxter, with a stifled sigh, was about to refresh his employer’s memory, when Psmith anticipated him. Psmith had been consuming toast and marmalade with his customary languid grace and up till now had firmly checked all attempts to engage him in conversation.

“Miss Halliday,” he said, “is a very old and valued friend of mine. We two have, so to speak, pulled the gowans fine. I had been hoping to hear that she had been sighted on the horizon.”

The effect of these words on two of the company was somewhat remarkable. Baxter, hearing them, gave such a violent start that he spilled half the contents of his cup: and Freddie, who had been flitting[p. 137] like a butterfly among the dishes on the sideboard and had just decided to help himself to scrambled eggs, deposited a liberal spoonful on the carpet, where it was found and salvaged a moment later by Lady Constance’s spaniel.

Psmith did not observe these phenomena, for he had returned to his toast and marmalade. He thus missed encountering perhaps the keenest glance that had ever come through Rupert Baxter’s spectacles. It was not a protracted glance, but while it lasted it was like the ray from an oxy-acetylene blowpipe.

“A friend of yours?” said Lord Emsworth. “Indeed? Of course, Baxter, I remember now. Miss Halliday is the young lady who is coming to catalogue the library.”

“What a delightful task!” cooed Miss Peavey. “To live among the stored-up thoughts of dead and gone genius!”

“You had better go down and meet her, my dear fellow,” said Lord Emsworth. “At the station, you know,” he continued, clarifying his meaning. “She will be glad to see you.”

“I was about to suggest it myself,” said Psmith.

“Though why the library needs cataloguing,” said his lordship, returning to a problem which still vexed his soul when he had leisure to give a thought to it, “I can’t . . . However . . .”

He finished his coffee and rose from the table. A stray shaft of sunlight had fallen provocatively on his bald head, and sunshine always made him restive.

“Are you going to your flowers, Lord Emsworth?” asked Miss Peavey.

“Eh? What? Yes. Oh, yes. Going to have a look at those lobelias.”

“I will accompany you, if I may,” said Psmith.

[p. 138]“Eh? Why, certainly, certainly.”

“I have always held,” said Psmith, “that there is no finer tonic than a good look at a lobelia immediately after breakfast. Doctors, I believe, recommend it.”

“Oh, I say,” said Freddie hastily, as he reached the door, “can I have a couple of words with you a bit later on?”

“A thousand if you wish it,” said Psmith. “You will find me somewhere out there in the great open spaces where men are men.”

He included the entire company in a benevolent smile, and left the room.

“How charming he is!” sighed Miss Peavey. “Don’t you think so, Mr. Baxter?”

The Efficient Baxter seemed for a moment to find some difficulty in replying.

“Oh, very,” he said, but not heartily.

“And such a soul! It shines on that wonderful brow of his, doesn’t it?”

“He has a good forehead,” said Lady Constance. “But I wish he wouldn’t wear his hair so short. Somehow it makes him seem unlike a poet.”

Freddie, alarmed, swallowed a mouthful of scrambled egg.

“Oh, he’s a poet all right,” he said hastily.

“Well, really, Freddie,” said Lady Constance, piqued, “I think we hardly need you to tell us that.”

“No, no, of course. But what I mean is, in spite of his wearing his hair short, you know.”

“I ventured to speak to him of that yesterday,” said Miss Peavey, “and he said he rather expected to be wearing it even shorter very soon.”

“Freddie!” cried Lady Constance with asperity. “What are you doing?”

[p. 139]A brown lake of tea was filling the portion of the tablecloth immediately opposite the Hon. Frederick Threepwood. Like the Efficient Baxter a few minutes before, sudden emotion had caused him to upset his cup.

The scrutiny of his lordship’s lobelias had palled upon Psmith at a fairly early stage in the proceedings, and he was sitting on the terrace wall enjoying a meditative cigarette when Freddie found him.

“Ah, Comrade Threepwood,” said Psmith, “welcome to Blandings Castle! You said something about wishing to have speech with me, if I remember rightly?”

The Hon. Freddie shot a nervous glance about him, and seated himself on the wall.

“I say,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

“Like what, Comrade Threepwood?”

“What you said to the Peavey woman.”

“I recollect having a refreshing chat with Miss Peavey yesterday afternoon,” said Psmith, “but I cannot recall saying anything calculated to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty. What observation of mine was it that meets with your censure?”

“Why, that stuff about expecting to wear your hair shorter. If you’re going to go about saying that sort of thing—well, dash it, you might just as well give the whole bally show away at once and have done with it.”

Psmith nodded gravely.

“Your generous heat, Comrade Threepwood, is not unjustified. It was undoubtedly an error of judgment. If I have a fault—which I am not prepared to admit—it is a perhaps ungentlemanly desire to[p. 140] pull that curious female’s leg. A stronger man than myself might well find it hard to battle against the temptation. However, now that you have called it to my notice, it shall not occur again. In future I will moderate the persiflage. Cheer up, therefore, Comrade Threepwood, and let us see that merry smile of yours, of which I hear such good reports.”

The appeal failed to alleviate Freddie’s gloom. He smote morosely at a fly which had settled on his furrowed brow.

“I’m getting as jumpy as a cat,” he said.

“Fight against this unmanly weakness,” urged Psmith. “As far as I can see, everything is going along nicely.”

“I’m not so sure. I believe that blighter Baxter suspects something.”

“What do you think he suspects?”

“Why, that there’s something fishy about you.”

Psmith winced.

“I would be infinitely obliged to you, Comrade Threepwood, if you would not use that particular adjective. It awakens old memories, all very painful. But let us go more deeply into this matter, for you interest me strangely. Why do you think that cheery old Baxter, a delightful personality if ever I met one, suspects me?”

“It’s the way he looks at you.”

“I know what you mean, but I attribute no importance to it. As far as I have been able to ascertain during my brief visit, he looks at everybody and everything in precisely the same way. Only last night at dinner I observed him glaring with keen mistrust at about as blameless and innocent a plate of clear soup as was ever dished up. He then proceeded to shovel it down with quite undisguised relish. So possibly you[p. 141] are all wrong about his motive for looking at me like that. It may be admiration.”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“Nor, from an æsthetic point of view, do I. But we must bear these things manfully. We must remind ourselves that it is Baxter’s misfortune rather than his fault that he looks like a dyspeptic lizard.”

Freddie was not to be consoled. His gloom deepened.

“And it isn’t only Baxter.”

“What else is on your mind?”

“The whole atmosphere of the place is getting rummy, if you know what I mean.” He bent towards Psmith and whispered pallidly. “I say, I believe that new housemaid is a detective!”

Psmith eyed him patiently.

“Which new housemaid, Comrade Threepwood? Brooding, as I do, pretty tensely all the time on deep and wonderful subjects, I have little leisure to keep tab on the domestic staff. Is there a new housemaid?”

“Yes. Susan, her name is.”

“Susan? Susan? That sounds all right. Just the name a real housemaid would have.”

“Did you ever,” demanded Freddie earnestly, “see a real housemaid sweep under a bureau?”

“Does she?”

“Caught her at it in my room this morning.”

“But isn’t it a trifle far-fetched to imagine that she is a detective? Why should she be a detective?”

“Well, I’ve seen such a dashed lot of films where the housemaid or the parlourmaid or what not were detectives. Makes a fellow uneasy.”

“Fortunately,” said Psmith, “there is no necessity to remain in a state of doubt. I can give you an unfailing method by means of which you may discover if she is what she would have us believe her.”

[p. 142]“What’s that?”

“Kiss her.”

“Kiss her!”

“Precisely. Go to her and say, ‘Susan, you’re a very pretty girl . . .’”

“But she isn’t.”

“We will assume, for purposes of argument, that she is. Go to her and say, ‘Susan, you are a very pretty girl. What would you do if I were to kiss you?’ If she is a detective, she will reply, ‘How dare you, sir!’ or, possibly, more simply, ‘Sir!’ Whereas if she is the genuine housemaid I believe her to be and only sweeps under bureaux out of pure zeal, she will giggle and remark, ‘Oh, don’t be silly, sir!’ You appreciate the distinction?”

“How do you know?”

“My grandmother told me, Comrade Threepwood. My advice to you, if the state of doubt you are in is affecting your enjoyment of life, is to put the matter to the test at the earliest convenient opportunity.”

“I’ll think it over,” said Freddie dubiously.

Silence fell upon him for a space, and Psmith was well content to have it so. He had no specific need of Freddie’s prattle to help him enjoy the pleasant sunshine and the scent of Angus McAllister’s innumerable flowers. Presently, however, his companion was off again. But now there was a different note in his voice. Alarm seemed to have given place to something which appeared to be embarrassment. He coughed several times, and his neatly-shod feet, writhing in self-conscious circles, scraped against the wall.

“I say!”

“You have our ear once more, Comrade Threepwood,” said Psmith politely.

“I say, what I really came out here to talk about[p. 143] was something else. I say, are you really a pal of Miss Halliday’s?”

“Assuredly. Why?”

“I say!” A rosy blush mantled the Hon. Freddie’s young cheek. “I say, I wish you would put in a word for me, then.”

“Put in a word for you?”

Freddie gulped.

“I love her, dash it!”

“A noble emotion,” said Psmith courteously. “When did you feel it coming on?”

“I’ve been in love with her for months. But she won’t look at me.”

“That, of course,” agreed Psmith, “must be a disadvantage. Yes, I should imagine that that would stick the gaff into the course of true love to no small extent.”

“I mean, won’t take me seriously, and all that. Laughs at me, don’t you know, when I propose. What would you do?”

“I should stop proposing,” said Psmith, having given the matter thought.

“But I can’t.”

“Tut, tut!” said Psmith severely. “And, in case the expression is new to you, what I mean is ‘Pooh, pooh!’ Just say to yourself, ‘From now on I will not start proposing until after lunch.’ That done, it will be an easy step to do no proposing during the afternoon. And by degrees you will find that you can give it up altogether. Once you have conquered the impulse for the after-breakfast proposal, the rest will be easy. The first one of the day is always the hardest to drop.”

“I believe she thinks me a mere butterfly,” said Freddie, who had not been listening to this most valuable homily.

[p. 144]Psmith slid down from the wall and stretched himself.

“Why,” he said, “are butterflies so often described as ‘mere’? I have heard them so called a hundred times, and I cannot understand the reason. . . . Well, it would, no doubt, be both interesting and improving to go into the problem, but at this point, Comrade Threepwood, I leave you. I would brood.”

“Yes, but, I say, will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Put in a word for me?”

“If,” said Psmith, “the subject crops up in the course of the chit-chat, I shall be delighted to spread myself with no little vim on the theme of your fine qualities.”

He melted away into the shrubbery, just in time to avoid Miss Peavey, who broke in on Freddie’s meditations a moment later and kept him company till lunch.

The twelve-fifty train drew up with a grinding of brakes at the platform of Market Blandings, and Psmith, who had been whiling away the time of waiting by squandering money which he could ill afford on the slot-machine which supplied butter-scotch, turned and submitted it to a grave scrutiny. Eve Halliday got out of a third-class compartment.

“Welcome to our village, Miss Halliday,” said Psmith, advancing.

Eve regarded him with frank astonishment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Lord Emsworth was kind enough to suggest that, as we were such old friends, I should come down in the car and meet you.”

“Are we old friends?”

[p. 145]“Surely. Have you forgotten all those happy days in London?”

“There was only one.”

“True. But think how many meetings we crammed into it.”

“Are you staying at the castle?”

“Yes. And what is more, I am the life and soul of the party. Have you anything in the shape of luggage?”

“I nearly always take luggage when I am going to stay a month or so in the country. It’s at the back somewhere.”

“I will look after it. You will find the car outside. If you care to go and sit in it, I will join you in a moment. And, lest the time hangs heavy on your hands, take this. Butter-scotch. Delicious, and, so I understand, wholesome. I bought it specially for you.”

A few minutes later, having arranged for the trunk to be taken to the castle, Psmith emerged from the station and found Eve drinking in the beauties of the town of Market Blandings.

“What a delightful old place,” she said as they drove off. “I almost wish I lived here.”

“During the brief period of my stay at the castle,” said Psmith, “the same thought has occurred to me. It is the sort of place where one feels that one could gladly settle down into a peaceful retirement and grow a honey-coloured beard.” He looked at her with solemn admiration. “Women are wonderful,” he said.

“And why, Mr. Bones, are women wonderful?” asked Eve.

“I was thinking at the moment of your appearance. You have just stepped off the train after a four-hour journey, and you are as fresh and blooming as—if I may coin a simile—a rose. How do you do it?[p. 146] When I arrived I was deep in alluvial deposits, and have only just managed to scrape them off.”

“When did you arrive?”

“On the evening of the day on which I met you.”

“But it’s so extraordinary. That you should be here, I mean. I was wondering if I should ever see you again.” Eve coloured a little, and went on rather hurriedly. “I mean, it seems so strange that we should always be meeting like this.”

“Fate, probably,” said Psmith. “I hope it isn’t going to spoil your visit?”

“Oh, no.”

“I could have done with a trifle more emphasis on the last word,” said Psmith gently. “Forgive me for criticising your methods of voice production, but surely you can see how much better it would have sounded spoken thus: ‘Oh, no!’”

Eve laughed.

“Very well, then,” she said. “Oh, no!”

“Much better,” said Psmith. “Much better.”

He began to see that it was going to be difficult to introduce a eulogy of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood into this conversation.

“I’m very glad you’re here,” said Eve, resuming the talk after a slight pause. “Because, as a matter of fact, I’m feeling just the least bit nervous.”

“Nervous? Why?”

“This is my first visit to a place of this size.” The car had turned in at the big stone gates, and they were bowling smoothly up the winding drive. Through an avenue of trees to the right the great bulk of the castle had just appeared, grey and imposing against the sky. The afternoon sun glittered on the lake beyond it. “Is everything very stately?”

[p. 147]“Not at all. We are very homely folk, we of Blandings Castle. We go about, simple and unaffected, dropping gracious words all over the place. Lord Emsworth didn’t overawe you, did he?”

“Oh, he’s a dear. And, of course, I know Freddie quite well.”

Psmith nodded. If she knew Freddie quite well, there was naturally no need to talk about him. He did not talk about him, therefore.

“Have you known Lord Emsworth long?” asked Eve.

“I met him for the first time the day I met you.”

“Good gracious!” Eve stared. “And he invited you to the castle?”

Psmith smoothed his waistcoat.

“Strange, I agree. One can only account for it, can one not, by supposing that I radiate some extraordinary attraction. Have you noticed it?”

“No!”

“No?” said Psmith, surprised. “Ah, well,” he went on tolerantly, “no doubt it will flash upon you quite unexpectedly sooner or later. Like a thunderbolt or something.”

“I think you’re terribly conceited.”

“Not at all,” said Psmith. “Conceited? No, no. Success has not spoiled me.”

“Have you had any success?”

“None whatever.” The car stopped. “We get down here,” said Psmith, opening the door.

“Here? Why?”

“Because, if we go up to the house, you will infallibly be pounced on and set to work by one Baxter—a delightful fellow, but a whale for toil. I propose to conduct you on a tour round the grounds, and then we will go for a row on the lake. You will enjoy that.”

“You seem to have mapped out my future for me.”

[p. 148]“I have,” said Psmith with emphasis, and in the monocled eye that met hers Eve detected so beaming a glance of esteem and admiration that she retreated warily into herself and endeavoured to be frigid.

“I’m afraid I haven’t time to wander about the grounds,” she said aloofly. “I must be going and seeing Mr. Baxter.”

“Baxter,” said Psmith, “is not one of the natural beauties of the place. Time enough to see him when you are compelled to . . . We are now in the southern pleasaunce or the west home-park or something. Note the refined way the deer are cropping the grass. All the ground on which we are now standing is of historic interest. Oliver Cromwell went through here in 1550. The record has since been lowered.”

“I haven’t time . . .”

“Leaving the pleasaunce on our left, we proceed to the northern messuage. The dandelions were imported from Egypt by the ninth Earl.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Eve mutinously, “I won’t come on the lake.”

“You will enjoy the lake,” said Psmith. “The newts are of the famous old Blandings strain. They were introduced, together with the water-beetles, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Lord Emsworth, of course, holds manorial rights over the mosquito-swatting.”

Eve was a girl of high and haughty spirit, and as such strongly resented being appropriated and having her movements directed by one who, in spite of his specious claims, was almost a stranger. But somehow she found her companion’s placid assumption of authority hard to resist. Almost meekly she accompanied him through meadow and shrubbery, over velvet lawns and past gleaming flower-beds, and her indignation evaporated as her eyes absorbed the beauty[p. 149] of it all. She gave a little sigh. If Market Blandings had seemed a place in which one might dwell happily, Blandings Castle was a paradise.

“Before us now,” said Psmith, “lies the celebrated Yew Alley, so called from the yews which hem it in. Speaking in my capacity of guide to the estate, I may say that when we have turned this next corner you will see a most remarkable sight.”

And they did. Before them, as they passed in under the boughs of an aged tree lay a green vista, faintly dappled with stray shafts of sunshine. In the middle of this vista the Hon. Frederick Threepwood was embracing a young woman in the dress of a housemaid.

Psmith was the first of the little group to recover from the shock of this unexpected encounter, the Hon. Freddie the last. That unfortunate youth, meeting Eve’s astonished eye as he raised his head, froze where he stood and remained with his mouth open until she had disappeared, which she did a few moments later, led away by Psmith, who, as he went, directed at his young friend a look in which surprise, pain, and reproof were so nicely blended that it would have been hard to say which predominated. All that a spectator could have said with certainty was that Psmith’s finer feelings had suffered a severe blow.

“A painful scene,” he remarked to Eve, as he drew her away in the direction of the house. “But we must always strive to be charitable. He may have been taking a fly out of her eye, or teaching her jiu-jitsu.”

He looked at her searchingly.

“You seem less revolted,” he said, “than one might[p. 150] have expected. This argues a sweet, shall we say angelic disposition and confirms my already high opinion of you.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all. Mark you,” said Psmith, “I don’t think that this sort of thing is a hobby of Comrade Threepwood’s. He probably has many other ways of passing his spare time. Remember that before you pass judgment upon him. Also—Young Blood, and all that sort of thing.”

“I haven’t any intention of passing judgment upon him. It doesn’t interest me what Mr. Threepwood does, either in his spare time or out of it.”

“His interest in you, on the other hand, is vast. I forgot to tell you before, but he loves you. He asked me to mention it if the conversation happened to veer round in that direction.”

“I know he does,” said Eve ruefully.

“And does the fact stir no chord in you?”

“I think he’s a nuisance.”

“That,” said Psmith cordially, “is the right spirit. I like to see it. Very well, then, we will discard the topic of Freddie, and I will try to find others that may interest, elevate, and amuse you. We are now approaching the main buildings. I am no expert in architecture, so cannot tell you all I could wish about the façade, but you can see there is a façade, and in my opinion—for what it is worth—a jolly good one. We approach by a sweeping gravel walk.”

“I am going in to report to Mr. Baxter,” said Eve with decision. “It’s too absurd. I mustn’t spend my time strolling about the grounds. I must see Mr. Baxter at once.”

Psmith inclined his head courteously.

“Nothing easier. That big, open window there is[p. 151] the library. Doubtless Comrade Baxter is somewhere inside, toiling away among the archives.”

“Yes, but I can’t announce myself by shouting to him.”

“Assuredly not,” said Psmith. “No need for that at all. Leave it to me.” He stooped and picked up a large flower-pot which stood under the terrace wall, and before Eve could intervene had tossed it lightly through the open window. A muffled thud, followed by a sharp exclamation from within, caused a faint smile of gratification to illumine his solemn countenance. “He is in. I thought he would be. Ah, Baxter,” he said graciously, as the upper half of a body surmounted by a spectacled face framed itself suddenly in the window, “a pleasant, sunny afternoon. How is everything?”

The Efficient Baxter struggled for utterance.

“You look like the Blessed Damozel gazing down from the gold bar of Heaven,” said Psmith genially. “Baxter, I want to introduce you to Miss Halliday. She arrived safely after a somewhat fatiguing journey. You will like Miss Halliday. If I had a library, I could not wish for a more courteous, obliging, and capable cataloguist.”

This striking and unsolicited testimonial made no appeal to the Efficient Baxter. His mind seemed occupied with other matters.

“Did you throw that flower-pot?” he demanded coldly.

“You will no doubt,” said Psmith, “wish on some later occasion to have a nice long talk with Miss Halliday in order to give her an outline of her duties. I have been showing her the grounds and am about to take her for a row on the lake. But after that she will—and I know I may speak for Miss Halliday in this matter—be entirely at your disposal.”

“Did you throw that flower-pot?”

“I look forward confidently to the pleasantest of[p. 152] associations between you and Miss Halliday. You will find her,” said Psmith warmly, “a willing assistant, a tireless worker.”

“Did you . . . ?”

“But now,” said Psmith, “I must be tearing myself away. In order to impress Miss Halliday, I put on my best suit when I went to meet her. For a row upon the lake something simpler in pale flannel is indicated. I shall only be a few minutes,” he said to Eve. “Would you mind meeting me at the boat-house?”

“I am not coming on the lake with you.”

“At the boat-house in—say—six and a quarter minutes,” said Psmith with a gentle smile, and pranced into the house like a long-legged mustang.

Eve remained where she stood, struggling between laughter and embarrassment. The Efficient Baxter was still leaning wrathfully out of the library window, and it began to seem a little difficult to carry on an ordinary conversation. The problem of what she was to say in order to continue the scene in an agreeable manner was solved by the arrival of Lord Emsworth, who pottered out from the bushes with a rake in his hand. He stood eyeing Eve for a moment, then memory seemed to wake. Eve’s appearance was easier to remember, possibly, than some of the things which his lordship was wont to forget. He came forward beamingly.

“Ah, there you are, Miss . . . Dear me, I’m really afraid I have forgotten your name. My memory is excellent as a rule, but I cannot remember names . . . Miss Halliday! Of course, of course. Baxter, my dear fellow,” he proceeded, sighting the watcher at the window, “this is Miss Halliday.”

“Mr. McTodd,” said the Efficient One sourly, “has already introduced me to Miss Halliday.”

[p. 153]“Has he? Deuced civil of him, deuced civil of him. But where is he?” inquired his lordship, scanning the surrounding scenery with a vague eye.

“He went into the house. After,” said Baxter in a cold voice, “throwing a flower-pot at me.”

“Doing what?”

“He threw a flower-pot at me,” said Baxter, and vanished moodily.

Lord Emsworth stared at the open window, then turned to Eve for enlightenment.

“Why did Baxter throw a flower-pot at McTodd?” he said. “And,” he went on, ventilating an even deeper question, “where the deuce did he get a flower-pot? There are no flower-pots in the library.”

Eve, on her side, was also seeking information.

“Did you say his name was McTodd, Lord Emsworth?”

“No, no. Baxter. That was Baxter, my secretary.”

“No, I mean the one who met me at the station.”

“Baxter did not meet you at the station. The man who met you at the station,” said Lord Emsworth, speaking slowly, for women are so apt to get things muddled, “was McTodd. He’s staying here. Constance asked him, and I’m bound to say when I first heard of it I was not any too well pleased. I don’t like poets as a rule. But this fellow’s so different from the other poets I’ve met. Different altogether. And,” said Lord Emsworth with not a little heat, “I strongly object to Baxter throwing flower-pots at him. I won’t have Baxter throwing flower-pots at my guests,” he said firmly; for Lord Emsworth, though occasionally a little vague, was keenly alive to the ancient traditions of his family regarding hospitality.

“Is Mr. McTodd a poet?” said Eve, her heart beating.

“Eh? Oh yes, yes. There seems to be no doubt[p. 154] about that. A Canadian poet. Apparently they have poets out there. And,” demanded his lordship, ever a fair-minded man, “why not? A remarkably growing country. I was there in the year ’98. Or was it,” he added, thoughtfully passing a muddy hand over his chin and leaving a rich brown stain, “’99? I forget. My memory isn’t good for dates. . . . If you will excuse me, Miss—Miss Halliday, of course—if you will excuse me, I must be leaving you. I have to see McAllister, my head gardener. An obstinate man. A Scotchman. If you go into the house, my sister Constance will give you a cup of tea. I don’t know what the time is, but I suppose there will be tea soon. Never take it myself.”

“Mr. McTodd asked me to go for a row on the lake.”

“On the lake, eh? On the lake?” said his lordship, as if this was the last place in the neighbourhood where he would have expected to hear of people proposing to row. Then he brightened. “Of course, yes, on the lake. I think you will like the lake. I take a dip there myself every morning before breakfast. I find it good for the health and appetite. I plunge in and swim perhaps fifty yards, and then return.” Lord Emsworth suspended the gossip from the training-camp in order to look at his watch. “Dear me,” he said, “I must be going. McAllister has been waiting fully ten minutes. Good-bye, then, for the present, Miss—er—good-bye.”

And Lord Emsworth ambled off, on his face that look of tense concentration which it always wore when interviews with Angus McAllister were in prospect—the look which stern warriors wear when about to meet a foeman worthy of their steel.

There was a cold expression in Eve’s eyes as she made[p. 155] her way slowly to the boat-house. The information which she had just received had come as a shock, and she was trying to adjust her mind to it. When Miss Clarkson had told her of the unhappy conclusion to her old school friend’s marriage to Ralston McTodd, she had immediately, without knowing anything of the facts, arrayed herself loyally on Cynthia’s side and condemned the unknown McTodd uncompromisingly and without hesitation. It was many years since she had seen Cynthia, and their friendship might almost have been said to have lapsed; but Eve’s affection, when she had once given it, was a durable thing, capable of surviving long separation. She had loved Cynthia at school, and she could feel nothing but animosity towards anyone who had treated her badly. She eyed the glittering water of the lake from under lowered brows, and prepared to be frigid and hostile when the villain of the piece should arrive. It was only when she heard footsteps behind her and turned to perceive Psmith hurrying up, radiant in gleaming flannel, that it occurred to her for the first time that there might have been faults on both sides. She had not known Psmith long, it was true, but already his personality had made a somewhat deep impression on her, and she was loath to believe that he could be the callous scoundrel of her imagination. She decided to suspend judgment until they should be out in mid-water and in a position to discuss the matter without interruption.

“I am a little late,” said Psmith, as he came up. “I was detained by our young friend Freddie. He came into my room and started talking about himself at the very moment when I was tying my tie and needed every ounce of concentration for that delicate task. The recent painful episode appeared to be weighing on his mind to some extent.” He helped[p. 156] Eve into the boat and started to row. “I consoled him as best I could by telling him that it would probably have made you think all the more highly of him. I ventured the suggestion that girls worship the strong, rough, dashing type of man. And, after I had done my best to convince him that he was a strong, rough, dashing man, I came away. By now, of course, he may have had a relapse into despair; so, if you happen to see a body bobbing about in the water as we row along, it will probably be Freddie’s.”

“Never mind about Freddie.”

“I don’t if you don’t,” said Psmith agreeably. “Very well, then, if we see a body, we will ignore it.” He rowed on a few strokes. “Correct me if I am wrong,” he said, resting on his oars and leaning forward, “but you appear to be brooding about something. If you will give me a clue, I will endeavour to assist you to grapple with any little problem which is troubling you. What is the matter?”

Eve, questioned thus directly, found it difficult to open the subject. She hesitated a moment, and let the water ripple through her fingers.

“I have only just found out your name, Mr. McTodd,” she said at length.

Psmith nodded.

“It is always thus,” he said. “Passing through this life, we meet a fellow-mortal, chat awhile, and part; and the last thing we think of doing is to ask him in a manly and direct way what his label is. There is something oddly furtive and shamefaced in one’s attitude towards people’s names. It is as if we shrank from probing some hideous secret. We say to ourselves ‘This pleasant stranger may be a Snooks or a Buggins. Better not inquire.’ But in my case . . .”

“It was a great shock to me.”

[p. 157]“Now there,” said Psmith, “I cannot follow you. I wouldn’t call McTodd a bad name, as names go. Don’t you think there is a sort of Highland strength about it? It sounds to me like something out of ‘The Lady of the Lake’ or ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel.’ ‘The stag at eve had drunk its fill adoon the glen beyint the hill, and welcomed with a friendly nod old Scotland’s pride, young Laird McTodd.’ You don’t think it has a sort of wild romantic ring?”

“I ought to tell you, Mr. McTodd,” said Eve, “that I was at school with Cynthia.”

Psmith was not a young man who often found himself at a loss, but this remark gave him a bewildered feeling such as comes in dreams. It was plain to him that this delightful girl thought she had said something serious, even impressive; but for the moment it did not seem to him to make sense. He sparred warily for time.

“Indeed? With Cynthia? That must have been jolly.”

The harmless observation appeared to have the worst effect upon his companion. The frown came back to her face.

“Oh, don’t speak in that flippant, sneering way,” she said. “It’s so cheap.”

Psmith, having nothing to say, remained silent, and the boat drifted on. Eve’s face was delicately pink, for she was feeling extraordinarily embarrassed. There was something in the solemn gaze of the man before her which made it difficult for her to go on. But, with the stout-heartedness which was one of her characteristics, she stuck to her task.

“After all,” she said, “however you may feel about her now, you must have been fond of poor Cynthia at one time, or I don’t see why you should have married her.”

[p. 158]Psmith, for want of conversation, had begun rowing again. The start he gave at these remarkable words caused him to skim the surface of the water with the left oar in such a manner as to send a liberal pint into Eve’s lap. He started forward with apologies.

“Oh, never mind about that,” said Eve impatiently. “It doesn’t matter. . . . Mr. McTodd,” she said, and there was a note of gentleness in her voice, “I do wish you would tell me what the trouble was.”

Psmith stared at the floor of the boat in silence. He was wrestling with a feeling of injury. True, he had not during their brief conversation at the Senior Conservative Club specifically inquired of Mr. McTodd whether he was a bachelor, but somehow he felt that the man should have dropped some hint as to his married state. True, again, Mr. McTodd had not asked him to impersonate him at Blandings Castle. And yet, undeniably, he felt that he had a grievance. Psmith’s was an orderly mind. He had proposed to continue the pleasant relations which had begun between Eve and himself, seeing to it that every day they became a little pleasanter, until eventually, in due season, they should reach the point where it would become possible to lay heart and hand at her feet. For there was no doubt in his mind that in a world congested to overflowing with girls Eve Halliday stood entirely alone. And now this infernal Cynthia had risen from nowhere to stand between them. Even a young man as liberally endowed with calm assurance as he was might find it awkward to conduct his wooing with such a handicap as a wife in the background.

Eve misinterpreted his silence.

“I suppose you are thinking that it is no business of mine?”

Psmith came out of his thoughts with a start.

[p. 159]“No, no. Not at all.”

“You see, I’m devoted to Cynthia—and I like you.”

She smiled for the first time. Her embarrassment was passing.

“That is the whole point,” she said. “I do like you. And I’m quite sure that if you were really the sort of man I thought you when I first heard about all this, I shouldn’t. The friend who told me about you and Cynthia made it seem as if the whole fault had been yours. I got the impression that you had been very unkind to Cynthia. I thought you must be a brute. And when Lord Emsworth told me who you were, my first impulse was to hate you. I think if you had come along just then I should have been rather horrid to you. But you were late, and that gave me time to think it over. And then I remembered how nice you had been to me and I felt somehow that—that you must really be quite nice, and it occurred to me that there might be some explanation. And I thought that—perhaps—if you would let me interfere in your private affairs—and if things hadn’t gone too far—I might do something to help—try to bring you together, you know.”

She broke off, a little confused, for now that the words were out she was conscious of a return of her former shyness. Even though she was an old friend of Cynthia’s, there did seem something insufferably officious in this meddling. And when she saw the look of pain on her companion’s face, she regretted that she had spoken. Naturally, she thought, he was offended.

In supposing that Psmith was offended she was mistaken. Internally he was glowing with a renewed admiration for all those beautiful qualities in her which he had detected, before they had ever met, at several yards’ range across the street from the window[p. 160] of the Drones Club smoking-room. His look of pain was due to the fact that, having now had time to grapple with the problem, he had decided to dispose of this Cynthia once and for all. He proposed to eliminate her for ever from his life. And the elimination of even such a comparative stranger seemed to him to call for a pained look. So he assumed one.

“That,” he said gravely, “would, I fear, be impossible. It is like you to suggest it, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the kindness which has made you interest yourself in my troubles, but it is too late for any reconciliation. Cynthia and I are divorced.”

For a moment the temptation had come to him to kill the woman off with some wasting sickness, but this he resisted as tending towards possible future complications. He was resolved, however, that there should be no question of bringing them together again.

He was disturbed to find Eve staring at him in amazement.

“Divorced? But how can you be divorced? It’s only a few days since you and she were in London together.”

Psmith ceased to wonder that Mr. McTodd had had trouble with his wife. The woman was a perfect pest.

“I used the term in a spiritual rather than a legal sense,” he replied. “True, there has been no actual decree, but we are separated beyond hope of reunion.” He saw the distress in Eve’s eyes and hurried on. “There are things,” he said, “which it is impossible for a man to overlook, however broad-minded he may be. Love, Miss Halliday, is a delicate plant. It needs tending, nursing, assiduous fostering. This cannot be done by throwing the breakfast bacon at a husband’s head.”

[p. 161]“What!” Eve’s astonishment was such that the word came out in a startled squeak.

“In the dish,” said Psmith sadly.

Eve’s blue eyes opened wide.

“Cynthia did that!”

“On more than one occasion. Her temper in the mornings was terrible. I have known her lift the cat over two chairs and a settee with a single kick. And all because there were no mushrooms.”

“But—but I can’t believe it!”

“Come over to Canada,” said Psmith, “and I will show you the cat.”

“Cynthia did that!—Cynthia—why, she was always the gentlest little creature.”

“At school, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That,” said Psmith, “would, I suppose, be before she had taken to drink.”

“Taken to drink!”

Psmith was feeling happier. A passing thought did come to him that all this was perhaps a trifle rough on the absent Cynthia, but he mastered the unmanly weakness. It was necessary that Cynthia should suffer in the good cause. Already he had begun to detect in Eve’s eyes the faint dawnings of an angelic pity, and pity is recognised by all the best authorities as one of the most valuable emotions which your wooer can awaken.

“Drink!” Eve repeated, with a little shudder.

“We lived in one of the dry provinces of Canada, and, as so often happens, that started the trouble. From the moment when she installed a private still her downfall was swift. I have seen her, under the influence of home-brew, rage through the house like a devastating cyclone . . . I hate speaking like this of one who was[p. 162] your friend,” said Psmith, in a low, vibrating voice. “I would not tell these things to anyone but you. The world, of course, supposes that the entire blame for the collapse of our home was mine. I took care that it should be so. The opinion of the world matters little to me. But with you it is different. I should not like you to think badly of me, Miss Halliday. I do not make friends easily—I am a lonely man—but somehow it has seemed to me since we met that you and I might be friends.”

Eve stretched her hand out impulsively.

“Why, of course!”

Psmith took her hand and held it far longer than was strictly speaking necessary.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

He turned the nose of the boat to the shore, and rowed slowly back.

“I have suffered,” said Psmith gravely, as he helped her ashore. “But, if you will be my friend, I think that I may forget.”

They walked in silence up the winding path to the castle.

To Psmith five minutes later, as he sat in his room smoking a cigarette and looking dreamily out at the distant hills, there entered the Hon. Frederick Threepwood, who, having closed the door behind him, tottered to the bed and uttered a deep and discordant groan. Psmith, his mind thus rudely wrenched from pleasant meditations, turned and regarded the gloomy youth with disfavour.

“At any other time, Comrade Threepwood,” he said politely but with firmness, “certainly. But not now. I am not in the vein.”

“What?” said the Hon. Freddie vacantly.

[p. 163]“I say that at any other time I shall be delighted to listen to your farmyard imitations, but not now. At the moment I am deep in thoughts of my own, and I may say frankly that I regard you as more or less of an excrescence. I want solitude, solitude. I am in a beautiful reverie, and your presence jars upon me somewhat profoundly.”

The Hon. Freddie ruined the symmetry of his hair by passing his fingers feverishly through it.

“Don’t talk so much! I never met a fellow like you for talking.” Having rumpled his hair to the left, he went through it again and rumpled it to the right. “I say, do you know what? You’ve jolly well got to clear out of here quick!” He got up from the bed, and approached the window. Having done which, he bent towards Psmith and whispered in his ear. “The game’s up!”

Psmith withdrew his ear with a touch of hauteur, but he looked at his companion with a little more interest. He had feared, when he saw Freddie stagger in with such melodramatic despair and emit so hollow a groan, that the topic on which he wished to converse was the already exhausted one of his broken heart. It now began to appear that weightier matters were on his mind.

“I fail to understand you, Comrade Threepwood,” he said. “The last time I had the privilege of conversing with you, you informed me that Susan, or whatever her name is, merely giggled and told you not to be silly when you embraced her. In other words, she is not a detective. What has happened since then to get you all worked up?”

“Baxter!”

“What has Baxter been doing?”

“Only giving the whole bally show away to me,[p. 164] that’s all,” said Freddie feverishly. He clutched Psmith’s arm violently, causing that exquisite to utter a slight moan and smooth out the wrinkles thus created in his sleeve. “Listen! I’ve just been talking to the blighter. I was passing the library just now, when he popped out of the door and hauled me in. And, dash it, he hadn’t been talking two seconds before I realised that he has seen through the whole dam’ thing practically from the moment you got here. Though he doesn’t seem to know that I’ve anything to do with it, thank goodness.”

“I should imagine not, if he makes you his confidant. Why did he do that, by the way? What made him select you as the recipient of his secrets?”

“As far as I can make out, his idea was to form a gang, if you know what I mean. He said a lot of stuff about him and me being the only two able-bodied young men in the place, and we ought to be prepared to tackle you if you started anything.”

“I see. And now tell me how our delightful friend ever happened to begin suspecting that I was not all I seemed to be. I had been flattering myself that I had put the little deception over with complete success.”

“Well, in the first place, dash it, that dam’ fellow McTodd—the real one, you know—sent a telegram saying that he wasn’t coming. So it seemed rummy to Baxter bang from the start when you blew in all merry and bright.”

“Ah! That was what they all meant by saying they were glad I had come ‘after all.’ A phrase which at the moment, I confess, rather mystified me.”

“And then you went and wrote in the Peavey female’s autograph-book.”

“In what way was that a false move?”

[p. 165]“Why, that was the biggest bloomer on record, as it has turned out,” said Freddie vehemently. “Baxter apparently keeps every letter that comes to the place on a file, and he’d skewered McTodd’s original letter with the rest. I mean, the one he wrote accepting the invitation to come here. And Baxter compared his handwriting with what you wrote in the Peavey’s album, and, of course, they weren’t a dam’ bit alike. And that put the lid on it.”

Psmith lit another cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. He realised that he had made a tactical error in underestimating the antagonism of the Efficient One.

“Does he seem to have any idea why I have come to the castle?” he asked.

“Any idea? Why, dash it, the very first thing he said to me was that you must have come to sneak Aunt Connie’s necklace.”

“In that case, why has he made no move till to-day? I should have supposed that he would long since have denounced me before as large an audience as he could assemble. Why this reticence on the part of genial old Baxter?”

A crimson flush of chivalrous indignation spread itself over Freddie’s face.

“He told me that, too.”

“There seems to have been no reserves between Comrade Baxter and yourself. And very healthy, too, this spirit of confidence. What was his reason for abstaining from loosing the bomb?”

“He said he was pretty sure you wouldn’t try to do anything on your own. He thought you would wait till your accomplice arrived. And, damn him,” cried Freddie heatedly, “do you know who he’s got the infernal gall to think is your accomplice? Miss Halliday! Dash him!”

[p. 166]Psmith smoked in thoughtful silence.

“Well, of course, now that this has happened,” said Freddie, “I suppose it’s no good thinking of going on with the thing. You’d better pop off, what? If I were you, I’d leg it to-day and have your luggage sent on after you.”

Psmith threw away his cigarette and stretched himself. During the last few moments he had been thinking with some tenseness.

“Comrade Threepwood,” he said reprovingly, “you suggest a cowardly and weak-minded action. I admit that the outlook would be distinctly rosier if no such person as Baxter were on the premises, but nevertheless the thing must be seen through to a finish. At least we have this advantage over our spectacled friend, that we know he suspects me and he doesn’t know we know. I think that with a little resource and ingenuity we may yet win through.” He turned to the window and looked out. “Sad,” he sighed, “that these idyllic surroundings should have become oppressed with a cloud of sinister menace. One thinks one sees a faun popping about in the undergrowth, and on looking more closely perceives that it is in reality a detective with a notebook. What one fancied was the piping of Pan turns out to be a police-whistle, summoning assistance. Still, we must bear these things without wincing. They are our cross. What you have told me will render me, if possible, warier and more snake-like than ever, but my purpose remains firm. The cry goes round the castle battlements ‘Psmith intends to keep the old flag flying!’ So charge off and soothe your quivering ganglions with a couple of aspirins, Comrade Threepwood, and leave me to my thoughts. All will doubtless come right in the future.”