Ukridge Stories · Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner (2/3)

For a man like myself, who finds at least eight hours of sleep essential if that schoolgirl complexion is to be preserved, it was unfortunate that Leonard the parrot should have proved to be a bird of high-strung temperament, easily upset. The experiences which he had undergone since leaving home had, I was to discover, jarred his nervous system. He was reasonably tranquil during the hours preceding bedtime, and had started his beauty-sleep before I myself turned in; but at two in the morning something in the nature of a nightmare must have attacked him, for I was wrenched from slumber by the sound of a hoarse soliloquy in what I took to be some native dialect. This lasted without a break till two-fifteen, when he made a noise like a steam-riveter for some moments; after which, apparently soothed, he fell asleep again. I dropped off at about three, and at three-thirty was awakened by the strains of a deep-sea chanty. From then on our periods of sleep never seemed to coincide. It was a wearing night, and before I went out after breakfast I left imperative instructions with Bowles for Ukridge, on arrival, to be informed that, if anything went wrong with his plans for removing my guest that day, the mortality statistics among parrots would take an up-curve. Returning to my rooms in the evening, I was pleased to see that this manifesto had been taken to heart. The hatbox was gone, and about six o’clock Ukridge appeared, so beaming and effervescent that I understood what had happened before he spoke. “Corky, my boy,” he said, vehemently, “this is the maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year, and you can quote me as saying so!”

“Lady Lakenheath has given her consent?”

“Not merely given it, but bestowed it blithely, jubilantly.”

“It beats me,” I said.

“What beats you?” demanded Ukridge, sensitive to the jarring note.

“Well, I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but I should have thought the first thing she would have done would be to make searching enquiries about your financial position.”

“My financial position? What’s wrong with my financial position? I’ve got considerably over fifty quid in the bank, and I’m on the eve of making an enormous fortune out of this Peppo stuff.”

“And that satisfied Lady Lakenheath?” I said, incredulously.

Ukridge hesitated for a moment.

“Well, to be absolutely frank, laddie,” he admitted, “I have an idea that she rather supposes that in the matter of financing the venture my aunt will rally round and keep things going till I am on my feet.”

“Your aunt! But your aunt has finally and definitely disowned you.”

“Yes. To be perfectly accurate, she has. But the old lady doesn’t know that. In fact, I rather made a point of keeping it from her. You see, I found it necessary, as things turned out, to play my aunt as my ace of trumps.”

“You told me the parrot was your ace of trumps.”

“I know I did. But these things slip up at the last moment. She seethed with gratitude about the bird, but when I seized the opportunity to ask her for her blessing I was shocked to see that she put her ears back and jibbed. Got that nasty steely look in her eyes and began to talk about clandestine meetings and things being kept from her. It was an occasion for the swiftest thinking, laddie. I got an inspiration. I played up my aunt. It worked like magic. It seems the old lady has long been an admirer of her novels, and has always wanted to meet her. She went down and out for the full count the moment I introduced my aunt into the conversation, and I have had no trouble with her since.”

“Have you thought what is going to happen when they do meet? I can’t see your aunt delivering a striking testimonial to your merits.”

“That’s all right. The fact of the matter is, luck has stood by me in the most amazing way all through. It happens that my aunt is out of town. She’s down at her cottage in Sussex finishing a novel, and on Saturday she sails for America on a lecturing tour.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Another bit of luck. I ran into her new secretary, a bloke named Wassick, at the Savage smoker last Saturday. There’s no chance of their meeting. When my aunt’s finishing a novel, she won’t read letters or telegrams, so it’s no good the old lady trying to get a communication through to her. It’s Wednesday now, she sails on Saturday, she will be away six months⁠—why, damme, by the time she hears of the thing I shall be an old married man.”

It had been arranged between my employer and myself during the preliminary negotiations that I should give up my afternoons to the memoirs and that the most convenient plan would be for me to present myself at Thurloe Square daily at three o’clock. I had just settled myself on the following day in the ground-floor study when the girl Millie came in, carrying papers.

“My aunt asked me to give you these,” she said. “They are Uncle Rupert’s letters home for the year 1889.”

I looked at her with interest and something bordering on awe. This was the girl who had actually committed herself to the appalling task of going through life as Mrs. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge⁠—and, what is more, seemed to like the prospect. Of such stuff are heroines made.

“Thank you,” I said, putting the papers on the desk. “By the way, may I⁠—I hope you will⁠—What I mean is, Ukridge told me all about it. I hope you will be very happy.”

Her face lit up. She really was the most delightful girl to look at I had ever met. I could not blame Ukridge for falling in love with her.

“Thank you very much,” she said. She sat in the huge armchair, looking very small. “Stanley has been telling me what friends you and he are. He is devoted to you.”

“Great chap!” I said, heartily. I would have said anything which I thought would please her. She exercised a spell, this girl. “We were at school together.”

“I know. He is always talking about it.” She looked at me with round eyes exactly like a Persian kitten’s. “I suppose you will be his best man?” She bubbled with happy laughter. “At one time I was awfully afraid there wouldn’t be any need for a best man. Do you think it was very wrong of us to steal Aunt Elizabeth’s parrot?”

“Wrong?” I said, stoutly. “Not a bit of it. What an idea!”

“She was terribly worried,” argued the girl.

“Best thing in the world,” I assured her. “Too much peace of mind leads to premature old age.”

“All the same, I have never felt so wicked and ashamed of myself. And I know Stanley felt just like that, too.”

“I bet he did!” I agreed, effusively. Such was the magic of this Dresden china child that even her preposterous suggestion that Ukridge possessed a conscience could not shake me.

“He’s so wonderful and chivalrous and considerate.”

“The very words I should have used myself!”

“Why, to show you what a beautiful nature he has, he’s gone out now with my aunt to help her do her shopping.”

“You don’t say so!”

“Just to try to make it up to her, you see, for the anxiety we caused her.”

“It’s noble! That’s what it is. Absolutely noble!”

“And if there’s one thing in the world he loathes it is carrying parcels.”

“The man,” I exclaimed, with fanatical enthusiasm, “is a perfect Sir Galahad!”

“Isn’t he? Why, only the other day⁠—”

She was interrupted. Outside, the front door slammed. There came a pounding of large feet in the passage. The door of the study flew open, and Sir Galahad himself charged in, his arms full of parcels.

“Corky!” he began. Then, perceiving his future wife, who had risen from the chair in alarm, he gazed at her with a wild pity in his eyes, as one who has bad news to spring. “Millie, old girl,” he said, feverishly, “we’re in the soup!”

The girl clutched the table.

“Oh, Stanley, darling!”

“There is just one hope. It occurred to me as I was⁠—”

“You don’t mean that Aunt Elizabeth has changed her mind?”

“She hasn’t yet. But,” said Ukridge, grimly, “she’s pretty soon going to, unless we move with the utmost despatch.”

“But what has happened?”

Ukridge shed the parcels. The action seemed to make him calmer.

“We had just come out of Harrod’s,” he said, “and I was about to leg it home with these parcels, when she sprang it on me! Right out of a blue sky!”

“What, Stanley, dear? Sprang what?”

“This ghastly thing. This frightful news that she proposes to attend the dinner of the Pen and Ink Club on Friday night. I saw her talking to a pug-nosed female we met in the fruit, vegetable, birds, and pet dogs department, but I never guessed what they were talking about. She was inviting the old lady to that infernal dinner!”

“But, Stanley, why shouldn’t Aunt Elizabeth go to the Pen and Ink Club dinner?”

“Because my aunt is coming up to town on Friday specially to speak at that dinner, and your aunt is going to make a point of introducing herself and having a long chat about me.”

We gazed at one another silently. There was no disguising the gravity of the news. Like the coming together of two uncongenial chemicals, this meeting of aunt with aunt must inevitably produce an explosion. And in that explosion would perish the hopes and dreams of two loving hearts.

“Oh, Stanley! What can we do?”

If the question had been directed at me, I should have been hard put to it to answer; but Ukridge, that man of resource, though he might be down, was never out.

“There is just one scheme. It occurred to me as I was sprinting along the Brompton Road. Laddie,” he proceeded, laying a heavy hand on my shoulder, “it involves your cooperation.”

“Oh, how splendid!” cried Millie.

It was not quite the comment I would have made myself. She proceeded to explain.

“Mr. Corcoran is so clever. I’m sure, if it’s anything that can be done, he will do it.”

This ruled me out as a potential resister. Ukridge I might have been able to withstand, but so potently had this girl’s spell worked upon me that in her hands I was as wax.

Ukridge sat down on the desk, and spoke with a tenseness befitting the occasion.

“It’s rummy in this life, laddie,” he began in moralising vein, “how the rottenest times a fellow goes through may often do him a bit of good in the end. I don’t suppose I have ever enjoyed any period of my existence less than those months I spent at my aunt’s house in Wimbledon. But mark the sequel, old horse! It was while going through that ghastly experience that I gained a knowledge of her habits which is going to save us now. You remember Dora Mason?”

“Who is Dora Mason?” enquired Millie, quickly.

“A plain, elderly sort of female who used to be my aunt’s secretary,” replied Ukridge, with equal promptness.

Personally, I remembered Miss Mason as a rather unusually pretty and attractive girl, but I felt that it would be injudicious to say so. I contented myself with making a mental note to the effect that Ukridge, whatever his drawbacks as a husband, had at any rate that ready tact which is so helpful in the home.

“Miss Mason,” he proceeded, speaking, I thought, in a manner a shade more careful and measured, “used to talk to me about her job from time to time. I was sorry for the poor old thing, you understand, because hers was a grey life, and I made rather a point of trying to cheer her up now and then.”

“How like you, dear!”

It was not I who spoke⁠—it was Millie. She regarded her betrothed with shining and admiring eyes, and I could see that she was thinking that my description of him as a modern Galahad was altogether too tame.

“And one of the things she told me,” continued Ukridge, “was that my aunt, though she’s always speaking at these bally dinners, can’t say a word unless she has her speech written for her and memorises it. Miss Mason swore solemnly to me that she had written every word my aunt had spoken in public in the last two years. You begin to get on to the scheme, laddie? The long and the short of it is that we must get hold of that speech she’s going to deliver at the Pen and Ink Club binge. We must intercept it, old horse, before it can reach her. We shall thus spike her guns. Collar that speech, Corky, old man, before she can get her hooks on it, and you can take it from me that she’ll find she has a headache on Friday night and can’t appear.”

There stole over me that sickening conviction that comes to those in peril that I was for it.

“But it may be too late,” I faltered, with a last feeble effort at self-preservation. “She may have the speech already.”

“Not a chance. I know what she’s like when she’s finishing one of these beastly books. No distractions of any sort are permitted. Wassick, the secretary bloke, will have had instructions to send the thing to her by registered post to arrive Friday morning, so that she can study it in the train. Now, listen carefully, laddie, for I have thought this thing out to the last detail. My aunt is at her cottage at Market Deeping, in Sussex. I don’t know how the trains go, but there’s sure to be one that’ll get me to Market Deeping tonight. Directly I arrive I shall send a wire to Wassick⁠—signed ‘Ukridge,’ ” said the schemer. “I have a perfect right to sign telegrams ‘Ukridge,’ ” he added, virtuously, “in which I tell him to hand the speech over to a gentleman who will call for it, as arrangements have been made for him to take it down to the cottage. All you have to do is to call at my aunt’s house, see Wassick⁠—a splendid fellow, and just the sort of chump who won’t suspect a thing⁠—get the manuscript, and biff off. Once round the corner, you dump it in the nearest garbage-box, and all is well.”

“Isn’t he wonderful, Mr. Corcoran?” cried Millie.

“I can rely on you, Corky? You will not let me down over your end of the business?”

“You will do this for us, Mr. Corcoran, won’t you?” pleaded Millie.

I gave one look at her. Her Persian kitten eyes beamed into mine⁠—gaily, trustfully, confidently. I gulped.

“All right,” I said, huskily.

A leaden premonition of impending doom weighed me down next morning as I got into the cab which was to take me to Heath House, Wimbledon Common. I tried to correct this shuddering panic, by telling myself that it was simply due to my recollection of what I had suffered at my previous visit to the place, but it refused to leave me. A black devil of apprehension sat on my shoulder all the way, and as I rang the front-door bell it seemed to me that this imp emitted a chuckle more sinister than any that had gone before. And suddenly as I waited there I understood.

No wonder the imp had chuckled! Like a flash I perceived where the fatal flaw in this enterprise lay. It was just like Ukridge, poor impetuous, woollen-headed ass, not to have spotted it; but that I myself should have overlooked it was bitter indeed. The simple fact which had escaped our joint attention was this⁠—that, as I had visited the house before, the butler would recognise me. I might succeed in purloining the speech, but it would be reported to the Woman Up Top that the mysterious visitor who had called for the manuscript was none other than the loathly Mr. Corcoran of hideous memory⁠—and what would happen then? Prosecution? Jail? Social ruin?

I was on the very point of retreating down the steps when the door was flung open, and there swept over me the most exquisite relief I have ever known.

It was a new butler who stood before me.

“Well?”

He did not actually speak the word, but he had a pair of those expressive, beetling eyebrows, and they said it for him. A most forbidding man, fully as grim and austere as his predecessor.

“I wish to see Mr. Wassick,” I said, firmly.

The butler’s manner betrayed no cordiality, but he evidently saw that I was not to be trifled with. He led the way down that familiar hall, and presently I was in the drawing-room, being inspected once more by the six Pekingese, who, as on that other occasion, left their baskets, smelt me, registered disappointment, and made for their baskets again.

“What name shall I say, sir?”

I was not to be had like that.

“Mr. Wassick is expecting me,” I replied, coldly.

“Very good, sir.”