Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

"It's all very well to say 'Tails up.' I don't like it. Apart from anything else, I don't believe I could ever bring myself to break open an escritoire drawer with a chisel. Anybody's escritoire drawer."

"My dear Shorty, is that what's worrying you? I shall attend to that, of course."

"You will?"

"Naturally. It's young man's work."

"Well, I'm very much obliged to you."

"Not at all."

"I wish to goodness Terry would marry you. She'll never get a better husband."

"Keep telling her that. It's exactly what I've always felt. Has she given you any inkling as to what seems to be the difficulty?"

"Not the slightest."

The door opened. Terry had returned. She sat down, and Mike noticed that her manner, which had been one of radiant confidence, was now subdued. Lord Shortlands would have noticed it, too, had he been in better condition tonight for noticing things.

"Well?" said Mike.

"Well?" said Lord Shortlands.

"Well," said Terry, "I saw Desborough."

"Did you find out what you wanted?"

"I found out something I didn't want."

"Less of the mysterious stuff."

Terry sighed.

"I was only trying to break it gently. If you must have it, Desborough suspects Stanwood."

"Suspects him?" cried Lord Shortlands.

"What of?" said Mike.

"Of not being Rossiter."

"But Spink has given him the okay."

"Yes, and that has made Desborough suspect Spink, too. He thinks it's a plot. 'After all,' he said, 'what do we really know of Spink?', and he quoted authorities to show that in nine cases out of ten the butler at a country house turns out to be one of the Black Onion gang or something. I wish he hadn't read so many detective stories."

"But what on earth has made him suspect Stanwood?"

"He took him off after dinner to talk stamps, and of course Stanwood knew nothing about stamps and gave it away in the first minute. The way Desborough has figured it out is that Stanwood and Spink are working together to loot the house. What a pity it is that Stanwood looks so like something out of a crook play. I never saw anything so obviously criminal as his face during dinner."

"So what steps is he planning to take?"

"I don't know. But a step he has taken is to put the stamp in an envelope and lock it up in the safe."

There was a silence.

"In the safe?" said Mike at length.

"Yes."

"Is there a safe?"

"Yes. In the library."

"Of all silly things to have in a house! Well, this, I admit, is a development which I had not foreseen. I shall have to leave you for a while and ponder apart. You will find me in my room, if you want me. Safes, forsooth!" said Mike bitterly, and went out with knitted brow.

It was clear to him that he had here one of those brain-teasers which Sherlock Holmes used to call three-pipe problems, and he made his way to the Blue Room to get his smoking materials.

As he entered, the vast form of Stanwood Cobbold rose from the easy chair.

Stanwood was not looking his best. Dinner, with its enforced propinquity to a hostess who had scared the daylights out of him at first sight, and the subsequent tete-a-tete with Desborough Topping had taken their toll. There had been moments in his life when, with representatives of Notre Dame and Minnesota walking about on his face or pressing the more jagged parts of their persons into his stomach, Stanwood Cobbold had experienced a certain discomfort, but nothing in his career to date had ever reduced him to such a ruin of a fine young man as the ordeal which had been thrust upon him tonight. Gazing at him, you would have said that his soul had passed through the furnace, and you would have been perfectly correct. Mike's first act, before asking any questions, was to hurry to the chest of drawers, take out a flask and press it upon his friend.

"Thanks," said Stanwood, handing it back empty. "Gosh, I needed that. I've had one hell of a time, Mike."

Mike, having satisfied the humane side of his nature, was now prepared to be stern.

"Well, you asked for it."

"Who's the little guy with the nose glasses?"

"Desborough Topping, your hostess's husband."

"He's been talking stamps to me," said Stanwood with a reminiscent shudder.

"Well, what did you think he would do? If you horn into a house pretending to be a stamp collector and that house contains another stamp collector, you must expect to be talked stamps at."

"It's the darnedest thing. I don't believe I ever met anyone before who collected stamps. I thought only sissies did. And now I don't seem to meet anyone who doesn't. Kind of a loony setup, don't you think?"

Mike was not to be diverted into an academic discussion of the looniness of the conditions prevailing at Beevor Castle.

"What the devil did you come here for? I told you to stay at the inn till you heard from me."

"Sure, I know. But I had a feeling that you weren't going to deliver. Seemed to me you had lost your grip. So when Spink came along with his proposition, I was ready to do business."

"How did you meet Spink?"

"He blew in just after you had left, and we got together. We had known each other before. We used to be buddies over on the other side. He was Father's butler."

"So he told me."

"Well, I gave him the low-down about the cable and the photographs and asked him if he had anything to suggest, and he said it was a pipe. All I had to do was to say I was this bozo Rossiter, and I was set. I would have the run of the joint, and we could fix up the photographs any time that suited me. Naturally I said Check, and he went to the phone and called Her Nibs up, and she told him to tell me to come along and join the gang."

"What did he say about the album?"

"Nothing much. Just that he wanted it."

"You bet he wanted it. There's a stamp in it worth fifteen hundred pounds."

"Gosh! Really?"

"Which belongs to Terry. Of course she can't prove it, and of course Spink, now that you've gone and butted in, can. What you've done, you poor mutt, is to chisel that unhappy child out of fifteen hundred smackers. A girl who has eaten your salt."

"I don't get this."

"I'll explain it in words of one syllable," said Mike, and proceeded to do so. When he had finished, it was plain that Stanwood was feeling the bitter twinges of remorse. You could see the iron twisting about in his soul.

"Why the hell didn't you wise me up about this before?" he said, aggrieved.

"How was I to know you were going to go haywire and come to the castle?"

"Let's get this straight. If Spink has this stamp old Shortlands won't be able to marry that cook of his."

"No."

"Spink will buy her with his gold."

"Yes."

Stanwood wagged his head disapprovingly.

"No nice cook ought to marry a man like Spink. Funny I never got on to him. I always thought him a swell guy. I used to go to his pantry, dying of thirst, and he would dish out the lifesaver. How was I to know he was a fiend in human shape? If a fellow's a fiend in human shape," said Stanwood, with a good deal of justice, "he ought to act like one. Well, it's pretty clear what your next move is, Mike, old man. Only rough stuff will meet the situation. You want to chuck all the lessons you learned at mother's knee into the ash can and get tough. You'll have to swipe that stamp."

"Yes, I thought of that. But it's locked up in a safe."

"Then bust the safe."

"How?"

"Why, get Augustus Robb to do it, of course."

Mike started. An awed look had come into his face; the sort of look which members of garrisons beleaguered by savages give one another when somebody says "Here come the United States Marines."

"Good Lord! I'd clean forgotten that Augustus used to be a burglar."

"It'll be pie to him."