“goo!” observed freddie. he removed the bag from his midriff and began to massage the stricken spot. then suddenly perceiving that he was not alone he looked up and saw psmith.
“goo!” said freddie, and sat staring wildly.
nobody is more alive than we are to the fact that the dialogue of frederick threepwood, recorded above, is not bright. nevertheless, those were his opening remarks, and the excuse must be that he had passed through a trying time and had just received two shocks, one after the other. from the first of these, the physical impact of the suit-case, he was recovering; but the second had simply paralysed him. when, the mists of sleep having cleared away, he saw sitting but a few[p. 119] feet away from him on the train that was carrying him home the very man with whom he had plotted in the lobby of the piccadilly palace hotel, a cold fear gripped freddie’s very vitals.
freddie’s troubles had begun when he just missed the twelve-fifty train. this disaster had perturbed him greatly, for he could not forget his father’s stern injunctions on the subject. but what had really upset him was the fact that he had come within an ace of missing the five o’clock train as well. he had spent the afternoon in a motion-picture palace, and the fascination of the film had caused him to lose all sense of time, so that only the slow fade-out on the embrace and the words “the end” reminded him to look at his watch. a mad rush had got him to paddington just as the five o’clock express was leaving the station. exhausted, he had fallen into a troubled sleep, from which he had been aroused by a violent blow in the waistcoat and the nightmare vision of psmith in the seat across the compartment. one cannot wonder in these circumstances that freddie did not immediately soar to the heights of eloquence.
the picture which the hon. frederick threepwood had selected for his patronage that afternoon was the well-known super-super-film, “fangs of the past,” featuring bertha blevitch and maurice heddlestone—which, as everybody knows, is all about blackmail. green-walled by primeval hills, bathed in the golden sunshine of peace and happiness, the village of honeydean slumbered in the clear morning air. but off the train from the city stepped a stranger—(the stranger—maxwell bannister). he inquired of a passing rustic—(the passing rustic—claude hepworth)—the way to the great house where myrtle dale, the lady bountiful of the village . . . well,[p. 120] anyway, it is all about blackmail, and it had affected freddie profoundly. it still coloured his imagination, and the conclusion to which he came the moment he saw psmith was that the latter had shadowed him and was following him home with the purpose of extracting hush-money.
while he was still gurgling wordlessly, psmith opened the conversation.
“a delightful and unexpected pleasure, comrade. i thought you had left the metropolis some hours since.”
as freddie sat looking like a cornered dormouse a voice from the corridor spoke.
“ah, there you are, my dear fellow!”
lord emsworth was beaming in the doorway. his slumbers, like those of freddie, had not lasted long. he had been aroused only a few minutes after psmith’s departure by the arrival of the retriever from the next compartment, which, bored by the society of its owner, had strolled off on a tour of investigation and, finding next door an old acquaintance in the person of his lordship, had jumped on the seat and licked his face with such hearty good will that further sleep was out of the question. being awake, lord emsworth, as always when he was awake, had begun to potter.
when he saw freddie his amiability suffered a shock.
“frederick! i thought i told you to be sure to return on the twelve-fifty train!”
“missed it, guv’nor,” mumbled freddie thickly. “not my fault.”
“h’mph!” his father seemed about to pursue the subject, but the fact that a stranger and one who was his guest was present apparently decided him to avoid anything in the shape of family wrangles. he peered from freddie to psmith and back again. “do you two know each other?” he said.
[p. 121]“not yet,” said psmith. “we only met a moment ago.”
“my son frederick,” said lord emsworth, rather in the voice with which he would have called attention to the presence of a slug among his flowers. “frederick, this is mr. mctodd, the poet, who is coming to stay at blandings.”
freddie started, and his mouth opened. but, meeting psmith’s friendly gaze, he closed the orifice again without speaking. he licked his lips in an overwrought way.
“you’ll find me next door, if you want me,” said lord emsworth to psmith. “just discovered that george willard, very old friend of mine, is in there. never saw him get on the train. his dog came into my compartment and licked my face. one of my neighbours. a remarkable rose-grower. as you are so interested in flowers, i will take you over to his place some time. why don’t you join us now?”
“i would prefer, if you do not mind,” said psmith, “to remain here for the moment and foster what i feel sure is about to develop into a great and lasting friendship. i am convinced that your son and i will have much to talk about together.”
“very well, my dear fellow. we will meet at dinner in the restaurant-car.”
lord emsworth pottered off, and psmith rose and closed the door. he returned to his seat to find freddie regarding him with a tortured expression in his rather prominent eyes. freddie’s brain had had more exercise in the last few minutes than in years of his normal life, and he was feeling the strain.
“i say, what?” he observed feebly.
“if there is anything,” said psmith kindly, “that[p. 122] i can do to clear up any little difficulty that is perplexing you, call on me. what is biting you?”
freddie swallowed convulsively.
“i say, he said your name was mctodd!”
“precisely.”
“but you said it was psmith.”
“it is.”
“then why did father call you mctodd?”
“he thinks i am. it is a harmless error, and i see no reason why it should be discouraged.”
“but why does he think you’re mctodd?”
“it is a long story, which you may find tedious. but, if you really wish to hear it . . .”
nothing could have exceeded the raptness of freddie’s attention as he listened to the tale of the encounter with lord emsworth at the senior conservative club.
“do you mean to say,” he demanded at its conclusion, “that you’re coming to blandings pretending to be this poet blighter?”
“that is the scheme.”
“but why?”
“i have my reasons, comrade—what is the name? threepwood? i thank you. you will pardon me, comrade threepwood, if i do not go into them. and now,” said psmith, “to resume our very interesting chat which was unfortunately cut short this morning, why do you want me to steal your aunt’s necklace?”
freddie jumped. for the moment, so tensely had the fact of his companion’s audacity chained his interest, he had actually forgotten about the necklace.
“great scott!” he exclaimed. “why, of course!”
“you still have not made it quite clear.”
“it fits splendidly.”
“the necklace?”
“i mean to say, the great difficulty would have[p. 123] been to find a way of getting you into the house, and here you are, coming there as this poet bird. topping!”
“if,” said psmith, regarding him patiently through his eyeglass, “i do not seem to be immediately infected by your joyous enthusiasm, put it down to the fact that i haven’t the remotest idea what you’re talking about. could you give me a pointer or two? what, for instance, assuming that i agreed to steal your aunt’s necklace, would you expect me to do with it, when and if stolen?”
“why, hand it over to me.”
“i see. and what would you do with it?”
“hand it over to my uncle.”
“and whom would he hand it over to?”
“look here,” said freddie, “i might as well start at the beginning.”
“an excellent idea.”
the speed at which the train was now proceeding had begun to render conversation in anything but stentorian tones somewhat difficult. freddie accordingly bent forward till his mouth almost touched psmith’s ear.
“you see, it’s like this. my uncle, old joe keeble . . .”
“keeble?” said psmith. “why,” he murmured meditatively, “is that name familiar?”
“don’t interrupt, old lad,” pleaded freddie.
“i stand corrected.”
“uncle joe has a stepdaughter—phyllis her name is—and some time ago she popped off and married a cove called jackson . . .”
psmith did not interrupt the narrative again, but as it proceeded his look of interest deepened. and at the conclusion he patted his companion encouragingly on the shoulder.
“the proceeds, then, of this jewel-robbery, if it comes off,” he said, “will go to establish the jackson home on a firm footing? am i right in thinking that?”
[p. 124]“absolutely.”
“there is no danger—you will pardon the suggestion—of you clinging like glue to the swag and using it to maintain yourself in the position to which you are accustomed?”
“absolutely not. uncle joe is giving me—er—giving me a bit for myself. just a small bit, you understand. this is the scheme. you sneak the necklace and hand it over to me. i push the necklace over to uncle joe, who hides it somewhere for the moment. there is the dickens of a fuss, and uncle joe comes out strong by telling aunt constance that he’ll buy her another necklace, just as good. then he takes the stones out of the necklace, has them reset, and gives them to aunt constance. looks like a new necklace, if you see what i mean. then he draws a cheque for twenty thousand quid, which aunt constance naturally thinks is for the new necklace, and he shoves the money somewhere as a little private account. he gives phyllis her money, and everybody’s happy. aunt constance has got her necklace, phyllis has got her money, and all that’s happened is that aunt constance’s and uncle joe’s combined bank balance has had a bit of a hole knocked in it. see?”
“i see. it is a little difficult to follow all the necklaces. i seemed to count about seventeen of them while you were talking, but i suppose i was wrong. yes, i see, comrade threepwood, and i may say at once that you can rely on my co-operation.”
“you’ll do it?”
“i will.”
“of course,” said freddie awkwardly, “i’ll see that you get a bit all right. i mean . . .”
psmith waved his hand deprecatingly.
[p. 125]“my dear comrade threepwood, let us not become sordid on this glad occasion. as far as i am concerned, there will be no charge.”
“what! but look here . . .”
“any assistance i can give will be offered in a purely amateur spirit. i would have mentioned before, only i was reluctant to interrupt you, that comrade jackson is my boyhood chum, and that phyllis, his wife, injects into my life the few beams of sunshine that illumine its dreary round. i have long desired to do something to ameliorate their lot, and now that the chance has come i am delighted. it is true that i am not a man of affluence—my bank-manager, i am told, winces in a rather painful manner whenever my name is mentioned—but i am not so reduced that i must charge a fee for performing, on behalf of a pal, a simple act of courtesy like pinching a twenty thousand pound necklace.”
“good lord! fancy that!”
“fancy what, comrade threepwood?”
“fancy your knowing phyllis and her husband.”
“it is odd, no doubt. but true. many a whack at the cold beef have i had on sunday evenings under their roof, and i am much obliged to you for putting in my way this opportunity of repaying their hospitality. thank you!”
“oh, that’s all right,” said freddie, somewhat bewildered by this eloquence.
“even if the little enterprise meets with disaster, the reflection that i did my best for the young couple will be a great consolation to me when i am serving my bit of time in wormwood scrubbs. it will cheer me up. the jailers will cluster outside the door to listen to me singing in my cell. my pet rat, as he creeps out to share the crumbs of my breakfast, will wonder why i whistle as i pick the morning’s oakum. i shall join in the[p. 126] hymns on sundays in a way that will electrify the chaplain. that is to say, if anything goes wrong and i am what i believe is technically termed ‘copped.’ i say ‘if,’” said psmith, gazing solemnly at his companion. “but i do not intend to be copped. i have never gone in largely for crime hitherto, but something tells me i shall be rather good at it. i look forward confidently to making a nice, clean job of the thing. and now, comrade threepwood, i must ask you to excuse me while i get the half-nelson on this rather poisonous poetry of good old mctodd’s. from the cursory glance i have taken at it, the stuff doesn’t seem to mean anything. i think the boy’s non compos. you don’t happen to understand the expression ‘across the pale parabola of joy,’ do you? . . . i feared as much. well, pip-pip for the present, comrade threepwood. i shall now ask you to retire into your corner and amuse yourself for awhile as you best can. i must concentrate, concentrate.”
and psmith, having put his feet up on the opposite seat and reopened the mauve volume, began to read. freddie, his mind still in a whirl, looked out of the window at the passing scenery in a mood which was a nice blend of elation and apprehension.
