Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

Augustus Robb turned a cold eye upon him.

"What tools?"

"Your tools."

Augustus Robb stiffened. It was plain that that last unfortunate dip into the creme de menthe bottle had eased him imperceptibly from the sentimental to the peevish stage of intoxication, accentuating his natural touchiness to a dangerous degree.

He directed at Lord Shortlands a misty, but penetrating, stare.

"You let me catch you messing about with my tools, and I'll twist your head off and make you swallow it."

"But you told me to go and look for them," pleaded Lord Shortlands.

"I never!"

"Well, he did," said Lord Shortlands.

Augustus Robb transferred his morose gaze to Mike.

"What's it got to do with him, may I ask?"

"I thought it wisest to start hunting around, Augustus. We want those tools."

"Well, we've got 'em, ain't we? They're under the sofa, where I put 'em, ain't they? Fust thing I done on enterin' this room was to place my tools neatly under the sofa."

"I see. Just a little misunderstanding."

"I don't like little misunderstandings."

"Here you are. All present and correct."

Augustus Robb took the bag of tools absently. He was glaring at Lord Shortlands again. For some reason he seemed to have taken a sudden dislike to that inoffensive peer.

"Earls!" he said disparagingly, and it was plain that by some process not easily understandable the creme de menthe had turned this once staunch supporter of England's aristocracy into a republican with strong leanings towards the extreme left. "Earls aren't everything. They make me sick."

"Earls are all right, Augustus," said Mike, trying to check the drift to Moscow.

"No, they ain't," retorted Augustus Robb hotly. "Swanking about and taking the bread out of the mouths of the widow and the orphan. And, what's more, I don't believe he's a ruddy earl at all."

"Yes, he is. He'll show you his coronet tomorrow, and you can play with it, Augustus."

"Mr. Robb."

"I'm sorry."

"You well may be. Augustus, indeed! If there's one thing I don't 'old with, it's familiarity. I've had to speak to young Cobbold about that. I may not be an earl, but I have my self-respect."

"Quite right, Mr. Robb," said Terry.

"R.," said Augustus Robb.

Lord Shortlands, as if feeling that it had taken an embarrassing turn, changed the conversation.

"I stopped outside Adela's door and listened," he said to Mike. "She seemed to be asleep."

"Good."

"Who's Adela?" asked Augustus Robb.

"My daughter."

Augustus Robb frowned. He knew that for some reason his mind was slightly under a cloud, but he could detect an obvious misstatement when he heard one.

"No, she ain't. This little bit is your daughter."

"There are three of us, Mr. Robb," explained Terry. "Three little bits."

"Ho," said Augustus Robb in the manner of one who, though unconvinced, is too chivalrous to contradict a lady. "Well, let's all go up and 'ave a talk with Adela."

"Later, don't you think?" suggested Mike, touched by Lord Shortlands' almost animal cry of agony. "After you've attended to the safe. It's over by the window."

"To the right of the window," said Terry.

"Over there by the window, slightly to the right," said Lord Shortlands, clarifying the combined message beyond the possibility of mistake.

"R.," said Augustus Robb, comprehending. "If you'd told me that before, we shouldn't have wasted all this ... OUCH!"

His three supporters leaped like one supporter.

"Sh!" said Mike.

"Sh!" said Lord Shortlands.

"Sh!" said Terry.

Augustus Robb glared balefully.

"You say 'Sh' again, and I'll know what to do about it. Touch of cramp, that was," he explained. "Ketches me sometimes."

He heaved himself from his chair, the bag of tools in his hand. After doing a few simple calisthenics to prevent a recurrence of the touch of cramp, he approached the safe and tapped it with an experimental forefinger. Then he sneered at it openly.

"Call this a safe?"

The loftiness of his tone encouraged his supporters greatly. Theirs was the lay outlook, and to them the safe appeared quite a toughish sort of safe. It was stimulating to hear this expert speak of it with so airy a contempt.

"You think you'll be able to bust it?" said Mike. Augustus Robb gave a short, amused laugh.

"Bust it? I could do it with a sardine opener. Go and get me a sardine opener," he said, jerking an authoritative thumb at Lord Shortlands, whom he seemed to have come to regard as a sort of plumber's mate. "No, 'arf a mo'." He scrutinized the despised object more closely. "No, it ain't sporting. Gimme a hairpin."

Lord Shortlands, frankly unequal to the situation, had withdrawn to the sofa, and was sitting on it with his head between his hands. Mike, too, was at a loss for words. It was left to Terry to try to reason with the man of the hour.

"Don't you think you had better use your tools, Mr. Robb?" she said, smiling that winning smile of hers. "It seems a pity not to, after you went to all the trouble of going to London for them."

Augustus Robb, though normally clay in the hands of pleading Beauty, shook his head.

"Gimme a hairpin," he repeated firmly.

There came to Mike the realization of the blunder he had made in not permitting Stanwood Cobbold to take part in these operations. With his direct, forceful methods, Stanwood was just the man this crisis called for. He endeavoured to play an understudy's role, though conscious of being but a poor substitute.

"That'll be all of that," he said crisply and authoritatively. "We don't want any more of this nonsense. Cut the comedy, and get busy."

It was an error in tactics. The honeyed word might have softened Augustus Robb. The harsh tone offended him. He drew himself up haughtily.

"So that's the way you talk, is it? Well, just for that I'm going to chuck the ruddy tools out of the ruddy window."

He turned and raised the hand that held the bag. He started swinging it.

"Mike!" cried Terry.

"Stop him!" cried Lord Shortlands.

Mike sprang forward to do so. Then suddenly he paused.

The reason he paused was that he had heard from the corridor outside a female voice, uttering the words "Who is there?" and it had chilled him to the marrow. But it was an unfortunate thing to have done, for it left him within the orbit of the swinging bag. Full of hard instruments with sharp edges, it struck him on the side of the face, and he reeled back. The next moment there was a crash, sounding in many of its essentials like the end of the world. Augustus Robb had released the bag, and it had passed through the window with a rending noise of broken glass. A distant splash told that it had fallen into the moat.

"Coo!" said Augustus Robb, sobered.

Terry gave a cry.

"Oh, Mike! Are you hurt?"

But Mike had bounded from the room, banging the door behind him.

To the little group he had left in the library this abrupt departure seemed inexplicable. Intent on their own affairs, they had heard no female voice in the corridor, and for some moments they gazed at each other in silent bewilderment.

Lord Shortlands was the first to speak. More and more during the recent proceedings he had been wishing himself elsewhere, and now that the chief executive had created a deadlock by recklessly disposing of his tools there seemed nothing to keep him.

"I'm going to bed," he announced.

"But what made him rush off like that?" asked Terry.

Augustus Robb had found a theory that seemed to cover the facts.

"Went to bathe his eye, ducky. Nasty one he stopped. Only natural his first impulse would be to redooce the swelling. Coo! I wouldn't have had a thing like that happen for a hundred quid."