T HE golden stillness of a perfect summer morning brooded over Blandings Castle and its adjacent pleasure-grounds. From a sky of unbroken blue the sun poured down its heartening rays on all those roses, pinks, pansies, carnations, hollyhocks, columbines, larkspurs, London pride and Canterbury bells which made the gardens so rarely beautiful. Flannelled youths and maidens in white serge sported in the shade; gay cries arose from the tennis-courts behind the shrubbery; and birds, bees, and butterflies went about their business with a new energy and zip. In short, the casual observer, assuming that he was addicted to trite phrases, would have said that happiness reigned supreme.
But happiness, even on the finest mornings, is seldom universal. The strolling youths and maidens were happy; the tennis-players were happy; the birds, bees, and butterflies were happy. Eve, walking in pleasant meditation on the terrace, was happy. Freddie Threepwood was happy as he lounged in the smoking-room and gloated over the information, received from Psmith in the small hours, that his thousand pounds was safe. Mr. Keeble, writing to Phyllis to inform her that she might clinch the purchase of the Lincolnshire farm, was happy. Even Head-gardener Angus McAllister was as happy as a Scotsman can ever be. But Lord Emsworth,[p. 314] drooping out of the library window, felt only a nervous irritation more in keeping with the blizzards of winter than with the only fine July that England had known in the last ten years.
We have seen his lordship in a similar attitude and a like frame of mind on a previous occasion; but then his melancholy had been due to the loss of his glasses. This morning these were perched firmly on his nose and he saw all things clearly. What was causing his gloom now was the fact that some ten minutes earlier his sister Constance had trapped him in the library, full of jarring rebuke on the subject of the dismissal of Rupert Baxter, the world’s most efficient secretary. It was to avoid her compelling eye that Lord Emsworth had turned to the window. And what he saw from that window thrust him even deeper into the abyss of gloom. The sun, the birds, the bees, the butterflies, and the flowers called to him to come out and have the time of his life, but he just lacked the nerve to make a dash for it.
“I think you must be mad,” said Lady Constance bitterly, resuming her remarks and starting at the point where she had begun before.
“Baxter’s mad,” retorted his lordship, also re-treading old ground.
“You are too absurd!”
“He threw flower-pots at me.”
“Do please stop talking about those flower-pots. Mr. Baxter has explained the whole thing to me, and surely even you can see that his behaviour was perfectly excusable.”
“I don’t like the fellow,” cried Lord Emsworth, once more retreating to his last line of trenches—the one line from which all Lady Constance’s eloquence had been unable to dislodge him.
[p. 315]There was a silence, as there had been a short while before when the discussion had reached this same point.
“You will be helpless without him,” said Lady Constance.
“Nothing of the kind,” said his lordship.
“You know you will. Where will you ever get another secretary capable of looking after everything like Mr. Baxter? You know you are a perfect child, and unless you have someone whom you can trust to manage your affairs I cannot see what will happen.”
Lord Emsworth made no reply. He merely gazed wanly from the window.
“Chaos,” moaned Lady Constance.
His lordship remained mute, but now there was a gleam of something approaching pleasure in his pale eyes; for at this moment a car rounded the corner of the house from the direction of the stables and stood purring at the door. There was a trunk on the car and a suit-case. And almost simultaneously the Efficient Baxter entered the library, clothed and spatted for travel.
“I have come to say good-bye, Lady Constance,” said Baxter coldly and precisely, flashing at his late employer through his spectacles a look of stern reproach. “The car which is taking me to the station is at the door.”
“Oh, Mr. Baxter.” Lady Constance, strong woman though she was, fluttered with distress. “Oh, Mr. Baxter.”
“Good-bye.” He gripped her hand in brief farewell and directed his spectacles for another tense instant upon the sagging figure at the window. “Good-bye, Lord Emsworth.”
“Eh? What? Oh! Ah, yes. Good-bye, my dear fel——, I mean, good-bye. I—er—hope you will have a pleasant journey.”
“Thank you,” said Baxter.
[p. 316]“But, Mr. Baxter,” said Lady Constance.
“Lord Emsworth,” said the ex-secretary icily, “I am no longer in your employment . . .”
“But, Mr. Baxter,” moaned Lady Constance, “surely . . . even now . . . misunderstanding . . . talk it all over quietly . . .”
Lord Emsworth started violently.
“Here!” he protested, in much the same manner as that in which the recent Mr. Cootes had been wont to say “Hey!”
“I fear it is too late,” said Baxter, to his infinite relief, “to talk things over. My arrangements are already made and cannot be altered. Ever since I came here to work for Lord Emsworth, my former employer—an American millionaire named Jevons—has been making me flattering offers to return to him. Until now a mistaken sense of loyalty has kept me from accepting these offers, but this morning I telegraphed to Mr. Jevons to say that I was at liberty and could join him at once. It is too late now to cancel this promise.”
“Quite, quite, oh certainly, quite, mustn’t dream of it, my dear fellow. No, no, no, indeed no,” said Lord Emsworth with an effervescent cordiality which struck both his hearers as in the most dubious taste.
Baxter merely stiffened haughtily, but Lady Constance was so poignantly affected by the words and the joyous tone in which they were uttered that she could endure her brother’s loathly society no longer. Shaking Baxter’s hand once more and gazing stonily for a moment at the worm by the window, she left the room.
For some seconds after she had gone, there was silence—a silence which Lord Emsworth found embarrassing. He turned to the window again and took in with one wistful glance the roses, the pinks, the pansies, the[p. 317] carnations, the hollyhocks, the columbines, the larkspurs, the London pride and the Canterbury bells. And then suddenly there came to him the realisation that with Lady Constance gone there no longer existed any reason why he should stay cooped up in this stuffy library on the finest morning that had ever been sent to gladden the heart of man. He shivered ecstatically from the top of his bald head to the soles of his roomy shoes, and, bounding gleefully from the window, started to amble across the room.
“Lord Emsworth!”
His lordship halted. His was a one-track mind, capable of accommodating only one thought at a time—if that, and he had almost forgotten that Baxter was still there. He eyed his late secretary peevishly.
“Yes, yes? Is there anything . . . ?”
“I should like to speak to you for a moment.”
“I have a most important conference with McAllister . . .”
“I will not detain you long. Lord Emsworth, I am no longer in your employment, but I think it my duty to say before I go . . .”
“No, no, my dear fellow, I quite understand. Quite, quite, quite. Constance has been going over all that. I know what you are trying to say. That matter of the flower-pots. Please do not apologise. It is quite all right. I was startled at the time, I own, but no doubt you had excellent motives. Let us forget the whole affair.”
Baxter ground an impatient heel into the carpet.
“I had no intention of referring to the matter to which you allude,” he said. “I merely wished . . .”
“Yes, yes, of course.” A vagrant breeze floated in at the window, languid with summer scents, and Lord Emsworth, sniffing, shuffled restlessly. “Of course,[p. 318] of course, of course. Some other time, eh? Yes, yes, that will be capital. Capital, capital, cap——”
The Efficient Baxter uttered a sound that was partly a cry, partly a snort. Its quality was so arresting that Lord Emsworth paused, his fingers on the door-handle, and peered back at him, startled.
“Very well,” said Baxter shortly. “Pray do not let me keep you. If you are not interested in the fact that Blandings Castle is sheltering a criminal . . .”
It was not easy to divert Lord Emsworth when in quest of Angus McAllister, but this remark succeeded in doing so. He let go of the door-handle and came back a step or two into the room.
“Sheltering a criminal?”
“Yes.” Baxter glanced at his watch. “I must go now or I shall miss my train,” he said curtly. “I was merely going to tell you that this fellow who calls himself Ralston McTodd is not Ralston McTodd at all.”
“Not Ralston McTodd?” repeated his lordship blankly. “But——” He suddenly perceived a flaw in the argument. “But he said he was,” he pointed out cleverly. “Yes, I remember distinctly. He said he was McTodd.”
“He is an impostor. And I imagine that if you investigate you will find that it is he and his accomplices who stole Lady Constance’s necklace.”
“But, my dear fellow . . .”
Baxter walked briskly to the door.
“You need not take my word for it,” he said. “What I say can easily be proved. Get this so-called McTodd to write his name on a piece of paper and then compare it with the signature to the letter which the real McTodd wrote when accepting Lady Constance’s invitation to the castle. You will find it filed away in the drawer of that desk there.”
[p. 319]Lord Emsworth adjusted his glasses and stared at the desk as if he expected it to do a conjuring-trick.
“I will leave you to take what steps you please,” said Baxter. “Now that I am no longer in your employment, the thing does not concern me one way or another. But I thought you might be glad to hear the facts.”
“Oh, I am!” responded his lordship, still peering vaguely. “Oh, I am! Oh, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes, yes . . .”
“Good-bye.”
“But, Baxter . . .”
Lord Emsworth trotted out on to the landing, but Baxter had got off to a good start and was almost out of sight round the bend of the stairs.
“But, my dear fellow . . .” bleated his lordship plaintively over the banisters.
From below, out on the drive, came the sound of an automobile getting into gear and moving off, than which no sound is more final. The great door of the castle closed with a soft but significant bang—as doors close when handled by an untipped butler. Lord Emsworth returned to the library to wrestle with his problem unaided.
He was greatly disturbed. Apart from the fact that he disliked criminals and impostors as a class, it was a shock to him to learn that the particular criminal and impostor then in residence at Blandings was the man for whom, brief as had been the duration of their acquaintance, he had conceived a warm affection. He was fond of Psmith. Psmith soothed him. If he had had to choose any member of his immediate circle for the r?le of criminal and impostor, he would have chosen Psmith last.
He went to the window again and looked out. There was the sunshine, there were the birds, there were[p. 320] the hollyhocks, carnations, and Canterbury bells, all present and correct; but now they failed to cheer him. He was wondering dismally what on earth he was going to do. What did one do with criminals and impostors? Had ’em arrested, he supposed. But he shrank from the thought of arresting Psmith. It seemed so deuced unfriendly.
He was still meditating gloomily when a voice spoke behind him.
“Good ............