Pelham Wodehouse - The Little Nugget

'One moment,' I said. 'Would it surprise you to hear that my name is Burns, and that I am a master at the school?'

He expectorated admirably.

'Hell, no!' he said. 'Gee, it's just what you would be, Sam. I always heard youse had been one of dese rah-rah boys oncest. Say, it's mighty smart of youse to be a perfessor. You're right in on de ground floor.'

His voice became appealing.

'Say, Sam, don't be a hawg. Let's go fifty-fifty in dis deal. My bunch and me has come a hell of a number of miles on dis proposition, and dere ain't no need for us to fall scrappin' over it. Dere's plenty for all of us. Old man Ford'll cough up enough for every one, and dere won't be any fuss. Let's sit in togedder on dis nuggett'ing. It ain't like as if it was an ornery two-by-four deal. I wouldn't ask youse if it wasn't big enough fir de whole bunch of us.'

As I said nothing, he proceeded.

'It ain't square, Sam, to take advantage of your having education. If it was a square fight, and us bote wit de same chance, I wouldn't say; but you bein' a dude perfessor and gettin' right into de place like dat ain't right. Say, don't be a hawg, Sam. Don't swipe it all. Fifty-fifty! Does dat go?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'You had better ask the real Sam. Good night.'

I walked past him and made for the school gates at my best pace. He trotted after me, pleading.

'Sam, give us a quarter, then.'

I walked on.

'Sam, don't be a hawg!'

He broke into a run.

'Sam!' His voice lost its pleading tone and rasped menacingly.

'Gee, if I had me canister, youse wouldn't be so flip! Listen here, you big cheese! You t'ink youse is de only t'ing in sight, huh? Well, we ain't done yet. You'll see yet. We'll fix you! Youse had best watch out.'

I stopped and turned on him. 'Look here, you fool,' I cried. 'I tell you I am not Sam Fisher. Can't you understand that you have got hold of the wrong man? My name is Burns— Burns .'

He expectorated—scornfully this time. He was a man slow by nature to receive ideas, but slower to rid himself of one that had contrived to force its way into what he probably called his brain. He had decided on the evidence that I was Smooth Sam Fisher, and no denials on my part were going to shake his belief. He looked on them merely as so many unsportsmanlike quibbles prompted by greed.

'Tell it to Sweeney!' was the form in which he crystallized his scepticism.

'May be you'll say youse ain't trailin' de Nugget, huh?'

It was a home-thrust. If truth-telling has become a habit, one gets slowly off the mark when the moment arrives for the prudent lie. Quite against my will, I hesitated. Observant Mr MacGinnis perceived my hesitation and expectorated triumphantly.

'Ah ghee!' he remarked. And then with a sudden return to ferocity, 'All right, you Sam, you wait! We'll fix you, and fix you good! See? Dat goes. You t'ink youse kin put it across us, huh? All right, you'll get yours. You wait!'

And with these words he slid off into the night. From somewhere in the murky middle distance came a scornful 'Hawg!' and he was gone, leaving me with a settled conviction that, while I had frequently had occasion, since my expedition to Sanstead began, to describe affairs as complex, their complexity had now reached its height. With a watchful Pinkerton's man within, and a vengeful gang of rivals without, Sanstead House seemed likely to become an unrestful place for a young kidnapper with no previous experience.

The need for swift action had become imperative.

White, the butler, looking singularly unlike a detective—which, I suppose, is how a detective wants to look—was taking the air on the football field when I left the house next morning for a before-breakfast stroll. The sight of him filled me with a desire for first-hand information on the subject of the man Mr MacGinnis supposed me to be and also of Mr MacGinnis himself. I wanted to be assured that my friend Buck, despite appearances, was a placid person whose bark was worse than his bite.

White's manner, at our first conversational exchanges, was entirely that of the butler. From what I came to know of him later, I think he took an artistic pride in throwing himself into whatever role he had to assume.

At the mention of Smooth Sam Fisher, however, his manner peeled off him like a skin, and he began to talk as himself, a racy and vigorous self vastly different from the episcopal person he thought it necessary to be when on duty.

'White,' I said, 'do you know anything of Smooth Sam Fisher?'

He stared at me. I suppose the question, led up to by no previous remark, was unusual.

'I met a gentleman of the name of Buck MacGinnis—he was our visitor that night, by the way—and he was full of Sam. Do you know him?'

'Buck?'

'Either of them.'

'Well, I've never seen Buck, but I know all about him. There's pepper to Buck.'

'So I should imagine. And Sam?'

'You may take it from me that there's more pepper to Sam's little finger than there is to Buck's whole body. Sam could make Buck look like the last run of shad, if it came to a showdown. Buck's just a common roughneck. Sam's an educated man. He's got brains.'

'So I gathered. Well, I'm glad to hear you speak so well of him, because that's who I'm supposed to be.'

'How's that?'

'Buck MacGinnis insists that I am Smooth Sam Fisher. Nothing I can say will shift him.'

White stared. He had very bright humorous brown eyes. Then he began to laugh.

'Well, what do you know about that?' he exclaimed. 'Wouldn't that jar you!'

'It would. I may say it did. He called me a hog for wanting to keep the Little Nugget to myself, and left threatening to “fix me”. What would you say the verb “to fix” signified in Mr MacGinnis's vocabulary?'

White was still chuckling quietly to himself.

'He's a wonder!' he observed. 'Can you beat it? Taking you for Smooth Sam!'

'He said he had never seen Smooth Sam. Have you?'

'Lord, yes.'

'Does he look like me?'

'Not a bit.'

'Do you think he's over here in England?'

'Sam? I know he is.'

'Then Buck MacGinnis was right?'

'Dead right, as far as Sam being on the trail goes. Sam's after the Nugget to get him this time. He's tried often enough before, but we've been too smart for him. This time he allows he's going to bring it off.'

'Then why haven't we seen anything of him? Buck MacGinnis seems to be monopolizing the kidnapping industry in these parts.'

'Oh, Sam'll show up when he feels good and ready. You can take it from me that Sam knows what he is doing. Sam's a special pet of mine. I don't give a flip for Buck MacGinnis.'

'I wish I had your cheery disposition! To me Buck MacGinnis seems a pretty important citizen. I wonder what he meant by “fix”?'

White, however, declined to leave the subject of Buck's more gifted rival.

'Sam's a college man, you know. That gives him a pull. He has brains, and can use them.'

'That was one of the points on which Buck MacGinnis reproached me. He said it was not fair to use my superior education.'

He laughed.

'Buck's got no sense. That's why you find him carrying on like a porch-climber. It's his only notion of how to behave when he wants to do a job. And that's why there's only one man to keep your eye on in this thing of the Little Nugget, and that's Sam. I wish you could get to know Sam. You'd like him.'

'You seem to look on him as a personal friend. I certainly don't like Buck.'

'Oh, Buck!' said White scornfully.

We turned towards the house as the sound of the bell came to us across the field.

'Then you think we may count on Sam's arrival, sooner or later, as a certainty?' I said.

'Surest thing you know.'

'You will have a busy time.'