Ukridge Stories · The Level Business Head (3/3)

“Ah?” I said. “Then, of course, you’ll be willing to pay large sums to anyone who helps you to get there. I don’t mind lending you a hand, if it’s made worth my while. Removing dogs from cars is highly specialized work, and I’ll have to insist on specialist’s prices. Shall we say fifty quid for the job?”

He yammered a good deal, but I cut him short.

“Take it or leave it,” I said. “It’s all the same to me.”

Whereupon he produced the stipulated sum, and I opened the door and hauled the dog out. And Joe got in without a word and drove off. And that, Corky, is the last I have seen of the man. Nor do I wish to see him again. He is slippery, Corky. Not honest. A man to avoid.

I took the dog back to the cottage, and bellowed for the bearded cove.

“I shan’t want this, after all,” I said. “You can have him.”

“Ah?”

“I don’t want this dog.”

“Ah! Well, you won’t get your five shillings back.”

“God bless you, my merry peasant,” I said, slapping the cove genially abaft the collar-stud. “Keep it with my blessing. I toss such sums to the birds.”

And he said “Ah” and pushed off; and I toddled along to see if I could find a station. And I sang, Corky, old boy. Yes, laddie, your old friend, as he strode through those country lanes, trilled like a bally linnet.

Next day I looked in at the pawnbroker’s, shelled out the requisite cash, recovered the brooch, and bunged it back into the bureau drawer.

And on the following morning my aunt turned up in a taxi and, having paid it its legal fare, backed me into the library and fixed me with a burning eye.

“Stanley,” she said.

“Say on, Aunt Julia,” I said.

“Stanley, Miss Vining tells me you refused to allow her to obtain my diamond brooch.”

“Quite right, Aunt Julia. She wanted to break open your bureau drawer, but I would have none of it.”

“Shall I tell you why?”

“It was because she had lost the key.”

“I am not referring to that, as you know very well. Shall I tell you why you would not let her break open the drawer?”

“Because I respected your property too much.”

“Indeed? I incline to think that it was because you knew the brooch was not there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I, on the contrary, did⁠—the moment I received Miss Vining’s letter. I saw it all. You pawned that brooch, Stanley! I know you so well.”

I drew myself up.

“You cannot know me very well, Aunt Julia,” I said, coldly, “if you think that of me. And allow me to say, while on this subject, that your suspicions are unworthy of an aunt.”

“Never mind what they’re unworthy of. Open that drawer.”

“Break it open?”

“Break it open.”

“With a poker?”

“With anything you please. But opened it shall be, now, and in my presence.”

I gazed at her haughtily.

“Aunt Julia,” I said, “let us get this thing straight. You wish me to take a poker or some other blunt instrument and smash that bureau?”

“I do.”

“Think well.”

“I have done all the thinking necessary.”

“So be it!” I said.

So I took the poker, and I set about that bureau as probably no bureau has ever been set about since carpentry first began. And there, gleaming in the ruins, was the brooch.

“Aunt Julia,” I said, “a little trust, a little confidence, a little faith, and this might have been avoided.”

She gulped pretty freely.

“Stanley,” she said at last, “I wronged you.”

“You did.”

“I⁠—I⁠—well, I’m sorry.”

“You may well be, Aunt Julia,” I said.

And, pursuing my advantage, I ground the woman into apologetic pulp beneath what practically amounted to an iron heel. And in that condition, Corky, she still remains. How long it will last one cannot say, but for the time being I am the blue-eyed boy and I have only to give utterance to my lightest whim to have her jump six feet to fulfil it. So, when I said I wanted to ask you to dinner here tonight, she practically smiled. Let us go into the library, old horse, and trifle with the cigars. They are some special ones I had sent up from that place in Piccadilly.