Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

A greenish pallor had manifested itself on Stanwood's face.

"Oh, gosh!"

"You may well say 'Gosh!', though I'm not sure as I'd pass the expression, coming as it does under the 'ead of Language, or something very like it."

"But how can I get photographs of the inside of this foul castle?"

"R. That's what we'd all like to know, isn't it? Properly up against it, you are, ain't you? The Wages of Sin you might call it. Seems to me the only thing you can do is 'urry and catch Mr. Cardinal before he starts and tell him you're going to this Beevor Castle, after all. Look slippy, I should."

Stanwood looked slippy. He was out of the flat in five seconds. A swift taxi took him to Barribault's Hotel. He shot from its interior and grasped the arm of the ornate attendant at the door, a man who knew both Mike and himself well.

"Say, listen," he gasped. "Have you seen Mr. Cardinal?"

"Why, yes, sir," said the attendant. "He's just this minute left, Mr. Cob-bold. Went off in a car with an elderly gent and a young lady."

It seemed to Stanwood that there was but one thing to do. He tottered to the small bar, and feebly asked Aloysius McGuffy for one of his Specials. As he consumed it, staring with haggard eyes into the murky future, he looked like something cast up by the tide, the sort of flotsam and jetsam that is passed over with a disdainful jerk of the beak by the discriminating sea gull.

The car rolled in through the great gates of Beevor Castle, rolled up the winding drive, crossed the moat and drew up at the front door; and Mike, looking out, heaved a sentimental sigh.

"How all this takes me back," he said. "It was here that I saw you for the first time."

"Was it?" said Terry. "I don't remember."

"I do. A big moment, that. You were leaning out of that window up there."

"The schoolroom."

"So I deduced from the fact that there was jam on your face. It hinted at schoolroom tea."

"I never had jam on my face."

"Yes, you did. Raspberry jam. I loved every pip of it. It seemed to set off to perfection the exquisite fairness of your skin."

Lord Shortlands heaved like an ocean billow, preparatory to alighting. For the last twenty miles he had been sitting in a sort of stupor, engrossed in thought, but before that, and during the luncheon which had preceded the drive, he had been very communicative. There was nothing now that Mike did not know concerning the Shortlands-Punter romance and the rivalry, happily no longer dangerous, of Spink, the butler. He could also have passed an examination with regard to the stamp.

The stamp, Lord Shortlands had told him, not once but many times, was a Spanish 1851 dos reales blue unused. Desborough, whose industry and acumen could not in his opinion be overpraised, had happened upon it just as the luncheon gong was sounding, with such stirring effects on his morale that for the first time in his association with his wife Lady Adela he had become the dominant male, stoutly refusing to go to the table until he had telephoned the great news to his father-in-law. According to Desborough, a thousand pounds for such a stamp might be looked upon as a conservative figure. A similar one had sold only the other day for fifteen hundred.

"As far as I could follow him, there's an error in colour or something," said Lord Shortlands, returning to the theme as the car stopped. He had mentioned this before, during lunch at least six times and in the earlier stages of the drive another four, but it seemed to him worth saying again. "An error in colour. Those were the words he used. Why that should make it so valuable I'm blessed if I know."

"From what I recall of my stamp-collecting days," said Mike, "an error in colour was always something to start torchlight processions about."

"Used you to collect stamps?" asked Terry.

"As a boy. Why, don't you remember—"

"What?"

"I forget what I was going to say."

"This is disappointing."

"It was probably nothing of importance."

"But one hangs on your lightest word."

"I know. Still, it can't be helped. It may come back. It'll be something to look forward to."

What he was looking forward to, Lord Shortlands said with a grim smile, was the meeting with the viper Spink. By this time, he explained, the news of his sudden accession to wealth must have seeped through to the Servants Hall, and he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was anticipating considerable entertainment from the sight of his rival's face, the play of expression on which would, no doubt, in the circumstances be well worth watching. He could hardly wait, he said. A mild and kindly man as a rule, Lord Shortlands could be a tough nut in his dealings with vipers.

It was consequently with keen disappointment that he stared at the small maid who had opened the door. To a man who has been expecting to see a butler with heart bowed down, small maids are a poor substitute.

"Hullo! Where's Spink?"

"Mr. Spink's gone off on his motorcycle, m'lord."

"Gone off on his motorcycle?" said Lord Shortlands, obviously disapproving of this athleticism. "What's he gone off on his motorcycle for?"

But the butler, it appeared, was one of those strong, silent butlers. He had not revealed to the maid the motive behind the excursion.

"Oh? Well, all right. Just wanted to see him about something. It'll have to wait. Lady Adela in the drawing room?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"Then come along, Cobbold, my boy. I'll take you to her."

The maid passed out of earshot, and Lord Shortlands seemed to preen himself.

"Notice how I called you Cobbold?"

"Very adroit."

"Can't start too early."

"The start is everything."

"Don't go forgetting."

"Trust me."

"And you, Terry, don't you go forgetting."

"I won't."

"One false step, and ruin stares us in the face."

"Right in the face. But isn't there something you're forfeiting, Shorty?"

"Eh? What's that?"

"The possibility of Adela sticking to this stamp."

Lord Shortlands gaped.

"Sticking to it? You mean keeping it?"

"That's what I mean. I feel I can speak freely before this synthetic Cobbold—"

"Do," said Mike. "Go right ahead. I like this spirit of wholesome confidence."

"—because there isn't much about your private affairs that you haven't already told him. He could write your biography by this time. Suppose she decides to set the stamp against services rendered?"

Lord Shortlands'jaw fell limply.

"She wouldn't do that?"

"She will. I can feel it in my bones."

"And what bones they are!" said Mike cordially. "Small and delicate. When I was a boy, I promised my mother I would never marry a girl who hadn't small, delicate bones."

"You must go and look for one. You and I and Clare between us, Shorty, must owe Desborough well over a thousand pounds by this time for board and lodging, and it isn't a thing Adela is likely to have overlooked."

"Then what the devil are we to do?"

"Would you care to hear my plan?" asked Mike, ever helpful.

"Have you a plan?"

"Cut and dried."

"He always has," said Terry. "They call him the One-Man Brains Trust."

"And not without reason," said Mike. "I'm good. Here is the procedure, as I see it. When we arrive in Lady Adela's presence, you introduce me to her. 'Shake hands with Mr. Cobbold' is a formula that suggests itself."

"'Mitt Mr. Cobbold' would be friendlier."

"She mitts you."

"Exactly. And I hold her hand as in a vise. While she is thus rendered powerless, your father snatches up the album and rushes out and hides it somewhere. This is what is called teamwork."

Lord Shortlands' eyes did not readily sparkle, but they were sparkling now. As far as he was concerned, Mike had got one vote.