Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

"By the way, Spink, you remember asking me the other day to do something for that nephew of yours, the actor? Roland Winter, didn't you say his name was?"

"Roland Winter, yes, sir."

"Is he fixed up just now?"

"No, sir. He is at present at liberty."

"Well, I've got something for him in this thing I'm writing. It's an odd thing, my dear Shortlands," said Cosmo Blair, drawing at his cigarette, "how one forgets people. This nephew of our good friend Spink. I've been trying ever since he spoke to me to think why the name Roland Winter was familiar, and I only remembered this afternoon. I had him in a show of mine last year, and he was quite—"

He had been about to say "good," but the word changed on his lips to a startled exclamation. The motorcycle had fallen from Mervyn Spink's nerveless fingers with a crash.

"You know my nephew, sir?"

"Oh, rather. Tall, thin chap with a slight squint and a funny-shaped mouth. Red hair hasn't he got? Yes, now I recall it, red hair. Well, tell him to go and see Charlie Cockburn at the St. George's. I'll drop Charlie a line."

Cosmo Blair went on his way, conscious of a good deed done, and Lord Shortlands uttered an explosive "Ha!"

"Now how about it, you Spink?" he cried exultantly.

Mervyn Spink did not speak. His face was very sad.

"If this blighter Blair knows your blighted nephew so well," proceeded Lord Shortlands, elaborating his point and making it clear to the meanest intelligence, "how the dickens do you propose to introduce him into the place as this blighted Rossiter? You're pipped, Spink. Your whole vile scheme strikes a snag."

Mervyn Spink did not deign to reply. Sombrely he picked up the motorcycle, sombrely mounted it, sombrely opened the throttle and rode off in the direction of the village.

His heart, so light before, was heavy now. He looked at the blue skies and fleecy clouds and took an instant dislike to them. He resented the presence of the fluttering butterflies. The fields of wheat jarred upon his eye. There are few things which more speedily modify the Pippa Passes outlook on life of a butler who has been congratulating himself on having formulated a cast-iron scheme for putting large sums of money in his pocket than the discovery that that scheme, through the most capricious and unforeseeable of chances, has come unstuck.

"Hell!" mused Mervyn Spink, brooding darkly.

At the post office he alighted and dispatched a telegram to his nephew, briefly canceling all arrangements; then rode sombrely back to the castle and sought refuge in the seclusion of his pantry.

He had been sitting there for some little time, feeling with the poet that of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these—It might have been, when the bell of Lady Adela's room rang.

Bells must be answered, though the heart is aching.

"M'lady?"

"Oh, Spink, Mr. Cobbold has arrived. Will you go and see that he has everything he wants."

"Very good, m'lady."

"Did you find Mr. Rossiter?"

"No, m'lady. I regret to say that the gentleman is not at the moment in London."

"But you will be able to get in touch with him?"

"No doubt, m'lady."

Mervyn Spink departed on his errand. He experienced no soaring of the spirits at the prospect of renewing his acquaintance with one with whom his relations had once been cordial. During their association in Mr. Ellery Cobbold's palatial home at Great Neck he had found Stanwood a pleasant and congenial companion, practically a buddy; for Stanwood, a gregarious soul, had often dropped in on him for a drink and a chat and on several occasions they had attended prize fights together.

But as he approached the Blue Room his heart was still heavy.

In the Blue Room, Mike, dressed and ready for dinner, was thoroughly approving of his quarters. To Lord Shortlands, that modern Prisoner of Chillon, everything connected with Beevor Castle might be the abomination of desolation, but to Mike, coming to it with a fresh eye, the Blue Room seemed about as satisfactory a Blue Room as a man could wish for.

Its windows, as his hostess had stated, looked out upon the rose garden and beyond it on a pleasing panorama of woods and fields, rooks cawing in the former, rabbits moving briskly to and fro in the latter, and its interior was comfortable, even luxurious. He particularly like the easy chair. Too often in

English country-house bedrooms the guest finds himself fobbed off with something hard and upright constructed to the order of some remote ancestor by the upholsterer of the Spanish Inquisition, but this one invited repose.

He was reclining in it with his feet on the table, thinking long, lingering thoughts of Terry, when his reverie was interrupted. The door had opened, to reveal a handsome stranger, from his dress and deportment apparently the castle butler. He eyed him with interest. This, then, was the Spink whose rivalry had caused Lord Shortlands so much concern, the cork-drawing Adonis who had threatened at one time to play the Serpent in his lordship's Garden of Eden. He could understand how any earl might have feared such a man.

"Good evening, sir."

"Good evening."

On Spink's mobile lips, in spite of his heaviness of heart, there had appeared a faint, respectful smile; the smile of a butler who sees that an amusing blunder has been made by those higher up. G.H.Q. had told him that he would find Stanwood Cobbold in the Blue Room. This was unquestionably the Blue Room, but the man before him was not his old buddy.

"Excuse me, sir, I must have misunderstood her ladyship. I supposed her to say that Mr. Cobbold was occupying this apartment."

"I'm Mr. Cobbold."

Butlers do not start. Spink merely rippled a little.

"Mr. Stanwood Cobbold?"

"That's right."

There was a short pause. Then Spink said, "Indeed, sir?"

It is a very unintelligent butler who, expecting to see in a Blue Room a Stanwood Cobbold with a face like a hippopotamus and finding himself confronted by one with a face like a Greek god, does not suspect that there is funny business afoot. To Spink, who was highly intelligent, the very air seemed thick with funny business, and his eye grew stern and bleak.

And simultaneously there came to him, for his was a mind that worked like a steel spring where his financial interests were concerned, the thought that here was where he might be able to do something towards repairing the ruin of his fortunes. Young men who come to castles calling themselves Stanwood Cobbold when they are not Stanwood Cobbold not do so without an important reason, and a butler who knows their secret may reasonably expect to exact the price of his silence. It seemed to Mervyn Spink that things were looking up.

"I wonder if I might make an observation, sir?"

"Go ahead."

"I would merely wish to remark that I know Mr. Stanwood Cobbold extremely well."

Mike saw that he had made a mistake about that easy chair. He had supposed it comfortable, and in reality it was red hot. He left it quickly.

"You do?"

"Yes, sir. I was for nearly a year in the employment of Mr. Cobbold senior at his home in Great Neck, Long Island, and saw Mr. Stanwood daily."

Mike ran a finger around the inside of his collar. It had seemed, when he put it on, a well-fitting collar, but now it felt unpleasantly tight.

"This opens a new line of thought," he said.

"I fancied it might, sir."

"A new and very interesting line of thought."

"Yes, sir."

The fact that he was still calling him "sir" suggested to Mike that the other had not, as a lesser butler would have done, leaped immediately to the conclusion that he was visiting Beevor Castle in the hope of making away with the spoons. No doubt some subtle something in his appearance, some touch of natural dignity in his bearing, had caused the man to reject what on the face of it would have been the obvious explanation of his presence.