“So you’re R. Psmith?” said the young man, when they had made their way to a remote corner of the lobby, apart from the throng. “The same.”
“I say, dash it, you’re frightfully late, you know.[p. 88] I told you to be here at twelve sharp. It’s nearly twelve past.”
“You wrong me,” said Psmith. “I arrived here precisely at twelve. Since when, I have been standing like Patience on a monument. . . .”
“Like what?”
“Let it go,” said Psmith. “It is not important.”
“I asked you to wear a pink chrysanthemum. So I could recognise you, you know.”
“I am wearing a pink chrysanthemum. I should have imagined that that was a fact that the most casual could hardly have overlooked.”
“That thing?” The other gazed disparagingly at the floral decoration. “I thought it was some kind of cabbage. I meant one of those little what-d’you-may-call-its that people do wear in their button-holes.”
“Carnation, possibly?”
“Carnation! That’s right.”
Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind his chair. He looked at his companion reproachfully.
“If you had studied botany at school, comrade,” he said, “much misery might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony I suffered, trailing through the metropolis behind that shrub.”
Whatever decent sympathy and remorse the other might have shown at these words was swept away in the shock resultant on a glance at his watch. Not for an instant during this brief return of his to London had Freddie Threepwood been unmindful of his father’s stern injunction to him to catch the twelve-fifty train back to Market Blandings. If he missed it, there would be the deuce of a lot of unpleasantness, and unpleasantness in the home was the one thing Freddie wanted to avoid nowadays; for, like a prudent convict in a prison, he[p. 89] hoped by exemplary behaviour to get his sentence of imprisonment at Blandings Castle reduced for good conduct.
“Good Lord! I’ve only got about five minutes. Got to talk quick. . . . About this thing. This business. That advertisement of yours.”
“Ah, yes. My advertisement. It interested you?”
“Was it on the level?”
“Assuredly. We Psmiths do not deceive.”
Freddie looked at him doubtfully.
“You know, you aren’t a bit like I expected you’d be.”
“In what respect,” inquired Psmith, “do I fall short of the ideal?”
“It isn’t so much falling short. It’s—oh, I don’t know . . . Well, yes, if you want to know, I thought you’d be a tougher specimen altogether. I got the impression from your advertisement that you were down and out and ready for anything, and you look as if you were on your way to a garden-party at Buckingham Palace.”
“Ah!” said Psmith, enlightened. “It is my costume that is causing these doubts in your mind. This is the second time this morning that such a misunderstanding has occurred. Have no misgivings. These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”
“Are you really broke?”
“As broke as the Ten Commandments.”
“I’m hanged if I can believe it.”
“Suppose I brush my hat the wrong way for a moment?” said Psmith obligingly. “Would that help?”
His companion remained silent for a few moments. In spite of the fact that he was in so great a hurry and that every minute that passed brought nearer the moment when he would be compelled to tear himself away and make a dash for Paddington Station, Freddie[p. 90] was finding it difficult to open the subject he had come there to discuss.
“Look here,” he said at length, “I shall have to trust you, dash it.”
“You could pursue no better course.&r............