' 5
University of Virginia Library
PR6045.053 H39 1927
D e rather enjoyed it,
pi
|
Tr
3 4e?LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
PRESENTED BY
UVa. Hospital AuxiliaryHE RATHER
ENJOYED IT
P. G. WODEHOUSEBy P. G. WODEHOUSE
ae $$ $$$ —$___—_____—«
BILL THE CONQUEROR
GOLF WITHOUT TEARS
JEEVES
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
MOSTLY SALLY
THREE MEN AND A MAID
INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE
THE LITTLE WARRIOR
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESSHe Rather Enjoyed It
By P. G. WODEHOUSE
AUTHOR OF
“Bill the Conqueror,” “Jeeves,” “Golf Without Tears,”
“Mostly Sally,” “Leave It to Psmith,” “Indis-
cretions of Archie,” “The Little Warrior,”
“A Damsel in Distress,” “Three
Men and a Maid,” etc.
Ae. BURT COMPANY
Publishers Des New York
Published by arrangement with George H. Doran Company
Printed in U. S. A.COPYRIGHT, 1925,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
CopyricuHT, 1923
BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY, INC.
(COSMOPOLITAN )
HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
5
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICADEDICATED
WITH
ESTEEM AND GRATITUDE
TO
OLD BILL TOWNEND
MY FRIEND FROM BOYHOOD’S DAYS
WHO
FIRST INTRODUCED ME
TO
STANLEY FEATHERSTONEHAUGH UKRIDGECONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. UxKRripGE’s Doc COLLEGE
II. UKRIDGE’s ACCIDENT SYNDICATE
III]. THe DeEBuT or BATTLING BILLSON .
IV. First Aip ror Dora
V. THE RETURN OF BATTLING BILLSON.
VI. UxKrinpce SEEs HER THROUGH .
VII. No WeEppInNG BELLs For Him .
VIII. Tue Lonc Arm oF Looney COOTE.
IX. THe Exit or BATTLING BILLSON
UKRIDGE Rounps A NAstTy CORNER.
PAGE
11
38
65
98
127
159
188
224
258HE RATHER ENJOYED ITHE RATHER
ENJOYED IT
CHAPTER I
UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE
ADDIE,” said Stanley Featherstonehaugh Uk-
L ridge, that much-enduring man, helping himself
to my tobacco and slipping the pouch absently into
his pocket, “listen to me, you son of Belial.”
“What?” I said, retrieving the pouch.
“Do you want to make an enormous fortune?”
al dors
“Then write my biography. Bung it down on paper,
and we'll split the proceeds. I’ve been making a pretty
close study of your stuff lately, old horse, and it’s all
wrong. The trouble with you is that you don't plumb
the well-springs of human nature and all that. You
just think up some rotten yarn about some-dam-thing-
or-other and shove it down. Now, if you tackled my
life, you’d have something worth writing about. Pots
of money in it, my boy—English serial rights and
American serial rights and book rights, and dramatic
rights and movie rights—well, you can take it from
1112 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
me that, at a conservative estimate, we should clean
up at least fifty thousand pounds apiece.”
“As much as that?”
“Fully that. And listen, laddie, I'll tell you what.
You’re a good chap and we've been pals for years,
so I'll let you have my share of the English serial
rights for a hundred pounds down.”
“What makes you think I’ve got a_ hundred
pounds ?”
“Well, then, I’ll make it my share of the English
and American serial rights for fifty.”
“Your collar’s come off its stud.”
“How about my complete share of the whole dashed
outfit for twenty-five?”
“Not for me, thanks.”
“Then I’ll tell you what, old horse,” said Ukridge, in-
spired. “Just lend me half acrown to be goington with.”
* * * * >
If the leading incidents of S. F. Ukridge’s disrepu-
table career are to be given to the public—and not, as
some might suggest, decently hushed up—I suppose
I am the man to write them. *Ukridge and I had been
intimate since the days of school. Together we sported
on the green, and when he was expelled no one missed
him more than I. An unfortunate business, this ex-
pulsion. Ukridge’s generous spirit, ever ill-attuned
to school rules, caused him eventually to break the
solemnest of them all by sneaking out at night to
try his skill at the coco-nut-shies of the local village
fair; and his foresight in putting on scarlet whiskers
and a false nose for the expedition was completelyUKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 13
neutralised by the fact that he absent-mindedly wore
his school cap throughout the entire proceedings. He
left the next morning, regretted by all.
After this there was a hiatus of some years in our
friendship. JI was at Cambridge, absorbing culture,
and Ukridge, as far as I could gather from his rare
letters and the reports of mutual acquaintances, flit-
ting about the world like a snipe. Somebody met him
in New York, just off a cattle-ship. Somebody else
saw him in Buenos Ayres. Somebody, again, spoke
sadly of having been pounced on by him at Monte
Carlo and touched for a fiver. It was not until I settled
down in London that he came back into my life. We
met in Piccadilly one day, and resumed our relations
where they had been broken off. Old associations
are strong, and the fact that he was about my build
and so could wear my socks and shirts drew us very
close together.
Then he disappeared again, and it was a month
or more before I got news of him.
It was George Tupper who brought the news.
George was head of the school in my last year, and he
has fulfilled exactly the impeccable promise of those
early days. He is in the Foreign Office, doing well
and much respected. He has an earnest, pulpy heart
and takes other people’s troubles very seriously. Often
he had mourned to me like a father over Ukridge’s
erratic progress through life, and now, as he spoke,
he seemed to be filled with a solemn joy, as over a
reformed prodigal.
“Have you heard about Ukridge?” said George14 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Tupper. “He has settled down at last. Gone to live
with an aunt of his who owns one of those big houses
on Wimbledon Common. A very rich woman. I am
delighted. It will be the making of the old chap.”
I suppose he was right in a way, but to me this
tame subsidence into companionship with a rich aunt
in Wimbledon seemed somehow an indecent, almost
a tragic, end to a colourful career like that OL Sune:
Ukridge. And when I met the man a week later
my heart grew heavier still.
It was in Oxford Street at the hour when women
come up from the suburbs to shop; and he was stand-
ing among the dogs and commissionaires outside Self-
ridge’s. His arms were full of parcels, his face was
set in a mask of wan discomfort, and he was so beau-
tifully dressed that for an instant I did not recognise
him. Everything which the Correct Man wears was
assembled on his person, from the silk hat to the
patent-leather boots; and, as he confided to, me in
the first minute, he was suffering the tortures of the
damned. The boots pinched him, the hat hurt his
forehead, and the collar was worse than the hat and
boots combined.
“She makes me wear them,’’ he said, moodily, jerk-
ing his head towards the interior of the store and utter-
ing a sharp howl as the movement caused the collar
to gouge his neck.
“Still,” I said, trying to turn his mind to happier
things, “you must be having a great time. George
Tupper tells me that your aunt is rich. I suppose
you're living off the fat of the land.”UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 15
“The browsing and sluicing are good,” admitted
Ukridge. “But it’s a wearing life, laddie. A wearing
life, old horse.”
“Why don’t you come and see me sometimes?”
“T’m not allowed out at night.”
“Well, shall I come and see you?”
A look of poignant alarm shot out from under
the silk hat.
“Don’t dream of it, laddie,’”’ said Ukridge, earnestly.
‘Don’t dream of it. You're a good chap—my best
pal and all that sort of thing—but the fact is, my stand-
ing in the home’s none too solid even now, and one
sight of you would knock my prestige into hash. Aunt
Julia would think you worldly.”
“T’m not worldly.”
‘Well, you look worldly. You wear a squash hat
and a soft collar. If you don’t mind my suggesting
it, old horse, I think, if I were you, I’d pop off now
before she comes out. Good-bye, laddie.”’
“Ichabod!” I murmured sadly to myself as I passed
on down Oxford Street. “Ichabod!”
I should have had more faith. I should have
known my Ukridge better. I should have realised that
a London suburb could no more imprison that great
man permanently than Elba did Napoleon.
One afternoon, as I let myself into the house in
Ebury Street of which I rented at that time the bed-
room and sitting-room on the first floor, I came upon
Bowles, my landlord, standing in listening attitude
at the foot of the stairs.
“Good afternoon, sir,’
’
said Bowles. “A gentleman16 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
is waiting to see you. I fancy I heard him calling
me a moment ago.”
“Who is he?”
““A Mr. Ukridge, sir. He ‘i
A vast voice boomed out from above.
‘Bowles, old horse!”
Bowles, like all other proprietors of furnished apart-
ments in the southwestern district of London, was
an ex-butler, and about him, as about all ex-butlers,
there clung like a garment an aura of dignified superi-
ority which had never failed to crush my spirit. He
was a man of portly aspect, with a bald head and
prominent eyes of a lightish green—eyes that seemed
to weigh me dispassionately and find me wanting.
“H’m!” they seemed to say. ‘“‘Young—very young.
And not at all what I have been accustomed to in
the best places.” To hear this dignitary addressed—
and in a shout at that—as “old horse” affected me
with much the same sense of imminent chaos as would
afflict a devout young curate if he saw his bishop
slapped on the back. The shock, therefore, when he
responded not merely mildly but with what almost
amounted to camaraderie was numbing.
“Sir?” cooed Bowles.
“Bring me six bones and a corkscrew.”’
“Very good, sir.”
3owles retired, and I bounded upstairs and flung
open the door of my sitting-room.
“Great Scott!” I said, blankly.
The place was a sea of Pekingese dogs. Later in-
vestigation reduced their number to six, but in that—— ce ce IR I nen ee a —
UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 17
first moment there seemed to be hundreds. Goggling
eyes met mine wherever I looked. The room was a
forest of waving tails. With his back against the
mantelpiece, smoking placidly, stood Ukridge.
“Hallo, laddie!’ he said, with a genial wave of the
hand, as if to make me free of the place. “You're
just in time. I’ve got to dash off and catch a train
in a quarter of an hour. Stop it, you mutts!” he bel-
lowed, and the six Pekingese, who had been barking
steadily since my arrival, stopped in mid-yap, and were
still, Ukridge’s personality seemed to exercise a
magnetism over the animal kingdom, from ex-butlers
to Pekes, which bordered on the uncanny. “I’m off
to Sheep’s Cray, in Kent. Taken a cottage there.”
“Are you going to live there?”
eves:
“But what about your aunt?”
“Oh, I’ve left her. Life is stern and life is earnest,
and if I mean to make a fortune I’ve got to bustle
about and not stay cooped up in a place like Wimble-
don.”
“Something in that.”
“Besides which, she told me the very sight of me
made her sick and she never wanted to see me again.”
I might have guessed, directly I saw him, that some
upheaval had taken place. The sumptuous raiment
which had made him such a treat to the eye at our
last meeting was gone, and he was back in his pre-
Wimbledon costume, which was, as the advertisements
say, distinctly individual. Over grey flannel trousers,
a golf coat, and a brown sweater he wore like a royal18 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
robe a bright yellow mackintosh. His collar had
broken free from its stud and showed a couple of
inches of bare neck. His hair was disordered, and his
masterful nose was topped by a pair of steel-rimmed
pince-nez cunningly attached to his flapping ears with
ginger-beer wire. His whole appearance spelled re-
volt.
s0wles manifested himself with a plateful of bones.
“That’s right. Chuck ’em down on the floor.”
“Very good, sir.”
“T like that fellow,” said Ukridge, as the door closed.
“We had a dashed interesting talk before you came
in. Did you know he had a cousin on the music-
halls ?”’
‘He hasn’t confided in me much.”
‘‘He’s promised me an introduction to him later on.
May be useful to be in touch with a man who knows
the ropes. You see, laddie, I’ve hit on the most
amazing scheme.” He swept his arm round dramati-
cally, overturning a plaster cast of the Infant Samuel
at Prayer. “All right, all right, you can mend it
with glue or something, and, anyway, you’re probably
better without it. Yessir, I’ve hit on a great scheme.
The idea of a thousand years.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to train dogs.”
“Train dogs ?”
“For the music-hall stage. Dog acts, you know.
Performing dogs. Pots of money in it. I start ina
modest way with these six. When I’ve taught ’em a
few tricks, I sell them to a fellow in the profession forUKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 19
a large sum and buy twelve more. I train those, sell
’em for a large sum, and with the money buy twenty-
four more. I train those
“Here, wait a minute.” My head was beginning
to swim. I had a vision of England paved with
Pekingese dogs, all doing tricks. “How do you know
you'll be able to sell them?”
“Of course I shall. The demand’s enormous. Sup-
ply can’t cope with it. At a conservative estimate
I should think I ought to scoop in four or five thou-
sand pounds the first year. That, of course, is before
the business really starts to expand.”
plesee.
“When I get going properly, with a dozen assistants
under me and an organised establishment, | shall begin
to touch the big money. What I’m aiming at is a sort
of Dogs’ College out in the country somewhere. Big
place with a lot of ground. Regular classes and a set
curriculum. Large staff, each member of it with so
many dogs under his care, me looking on and superin-
tending. Why, once the thing starts moving it'll run
itself, and all I shall have to do will be to sit back
and endorse the cheques. It isn’t as if I would have
to confine my operations to England. The demand
for performing dogs is universal throughout the civi-
lised world. America wants performing dogs. Aus-
tralia wants performing dogs. Africa could do with
a few, I’ve no doubt. My aim, laddie, is gradually to
get a monopoly of the trade. I want everybody who
needs a performing dog of any description to come
automatically to me. And I'll tell you what, laddie.20 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
If you like to put up a bit of capital, I'll let you in on
the ground floor.”’
“No, thanks.”
“All right. Have it your own way. Only don't
forget that there was a fellow who put nine hundred
dollars into the Ford Car business when it was start-
ing and he collected a cool forty million. I say, is that
clock right? Great Scott! Ill be missing my train.
Help me mobilise these dashed animals.”
Five minutes later, accompanied by the six Peking-
ese and bearing about him a pound of my tobacco,
three pairs of my socks, and the remains of a bottle
of whisky, Ukridge departed in a taxi-cab for Charing
Cross Station to begin his life-work.
Perhaps six weeks passed, six quiet Ukridgeless
weeks, and then one morning I received an agitated
telegram. Indeed, it was not so much a telegram as
a cry of anguish. In every word of it there breathed
the tortured spirit of a great man who has battled
in vain against overwhelming odds. It was the sort
of telegram which Job might have sent off after a
lengthy session with Bildad the Shuhite :—
“Come here immediately, laddie. Life and death
matter, old horse. Desperate situation. Don’t fail
me,”
It stirred me like a bugle, I caught the next train.
The White Cottage, Sheep’s Cray—destined, pre-
sumably, to become in future years an historic spot and
a Mecca for dog-loving pilgrims—was a small and
battered building standing near the main road to Lon-UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 21
don at some distance from the village. I found it
without difficulty, for Ukridge seemed to have achieved
a certain celebrity in the neighbourhood; but to effect
an entry was a harder task. I rapped for a full minute
without result, then, shouted; and I was about to con-
clude that Ukridge was not at home when the door
suddenly opened. As I was just giving a final bang
at the moment, I entered the house in a manner remi-
niscent of one of the Ballet Russe practising a new
and difficult step.
“Sorry, old horse,” said Ukridge. “Wouldn’t have
kept you waiting if ’d known who it was. Thought
you were Gooch, the grocer—goods supplied to the
value of six pounds three and a penny.”
pale See.
“He keeps hounding me for his beastly money,”
said Ukridge, bitterly, as he led the way into the sit-
ting-room. “It’s a little hard. Upon my Sam it’s a
little hard. I come down here to inaugurate a vast
business and do the natives a bit of good by establish-
ing a growing industry in their midst, and the first
thing you know they turn round and bite the
hand that was going to feed them. I’ve been hampered
and rattled by these blood-suckers ever since I got here.
A little trust, a little sympathy, a little of the good old
give-and-take spirit—that was all I asked. And what
happened? They wanted a bit on account! Kept
bothering me for a bit on account, I'll trouble you, just
when I needed all my thoughts and all my energy
and ever ounce of concentration at my command for
my extraordinarily difficult and delicate work. J22 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
couldn’t give them a bit on account. Later on, if they
had only exercised reasonable patience, I would no
doubt have been in a position to settle their infernal
bills fifty times over. But the time was not ripe. |
reasoned with the men. I said, ‘Here am I, a busy
man, trying hard to educate six Pekingese dogs for
the music-hall stage, and you come distracting my at-
tention and impairing my efficiency by babbling about
a bit on account. It isn’t the pull-together spirit,’ I
said. ‘It isn’t the spirit that wins to wealth. These
narrow petty-cash ideas can never make for success.’
But no, they couldn’t see it. They started calling here
at all hours and waylaying me in the public highways
till life became an absolute curse. And now what do
you think has happened ?”’
“What ?”
~The dogs.”
“Got distemper?”
“No. Worse. My landlord’s pinched them as se-
curity for his infernal rent! Sneaked the stock. Tied
up the assets. Crippled the business at the very out-
set. Have you ever in your life heard of anything so
dastardly? I know I agreed to pay the damned rent
weekly and I’m about six weeks behind, but, my gosh!
surely a man with a huge enterprise on his hands isn’t
supposed to have to worry about these trifles when he’s
occupied with the most delicate Well, I put all
that to old Nickerson, but a fat lot of good it did. So
then I wired to you.”
“Ah!” I said, and there was a brief and pregnant
pause.7 ana ee PE ge a eed
rk a
UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 23
“T thought,” said Ukridge, meditatively, “that you
might be able to suggest somebody I could touch.”
He spoke in a detached and almost casual way, but
his eye was gleaming at me significantly, and I avoided
it with a sense of guilt. My finances at the moment
were in their customary unsettled condition—rather
more so, in fact, than usual, owing to unsatisfactory
speculations at Kempton Park on the previous Satur-
day; and it seemed to me that, if ever there was a time
for passing the buck, this was it. I mused tensely.
It was an occasion for quick thinking.
“George Tupper!” I cried, on the crest of a brain-
wave.
“George Tupper?” echoed Ukridge, radiantly, his
gloom melting like fog before the sun. “The very
man, by Gad! It’s a most amazing thing, but I never
thought of him. George Tupper, of course! Big-
hearted George, the old school-chum. He'll do it like
a shot and won’t miss the money. These Foreign
Office blokes have always got a spare tenner or two
tucked away in the old sock. They pinch it out of the
public funds. Rush back to town, laddie, with all
speed, get hold of Tuppy, lush him up, and bite his ear
for twenty quid. Now is the time for all good men
to come to the aid of the party.”
I had been convinced that George Tupper would not
fail us, nor did he. He parted without a murmur—
even with enthusiasm. The consignment was one that
might have been made to order for him. As a boy,
George used to write sentimental poetry for the school
magazine, and now he is the sort of man who is al-24 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
ways starting subscription lists and getting up me-
morials and presentations. He listened to my story
with the serious official air which these Foreign Office
fellows put on when they are deciding whether to de-
clare war on Switzerland or send a firm note to San
Marino, and was reaching for his cheque-book before
I had been speaking two minutes. Ukridge’s sad case
seemed to move him deeply.
“Too bad,” said George. “So he is training dogs,
is he? Well, it seems very unfair that, if he has at
last settled down to real work, he should be hampered
by financial difficulties at the outset. We ought to do
something practical for him. After all, a loan of
twenty pounds cannot relieve the situation perma-
nently.”
“T think you’re a bit optimistic if you’re looking on
it as a loan.”
“What Ukridge needs is capital.”
“He thinks that, too. So does Gooch, the grocer.”
“Capital,” repeated George Tupper, firmly, as if
he were reasoning with the plenipotentiary of some
Great Power. “Every venture requires capital at
first.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Where can we
obtain capital for Ukridge?”’
“Rob a bank.”
George Tupper’s face cleared.
“T have it!” he said. “I will go straight over to
Wimbledon to-night and approach his aunt.”
“Aren't you forgetting that Ukridge is about as
popular with her as a cold welsh rabbit?”
“There may be a temporary estrangement, but ifUKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 25
I tell her the facts and impress upon her that Ukridge
is really making a genuine effort to earn a living "
“Well, try if you like. But she will probably set
the parrot on to you.”
“It will have to be done diplomatically, of course.
It might be as well if you did not tell Ukridge what
I propose to do. I do not wish to arouse hopes which
may not be fulfilled.”’
A blaze of yellow on the platform of Sheep’s Cray
Station next morning informed me that Ukridge had
come to meet my train. The sun poured down from a
cloudless sky, but it took more than sunshine to make
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge discard his mack-
intosh. He looked like an animated blob of mustard.
When the train rolled in, he was standing in solitary
grandeur trying to light his pipe, but as I got out I
perceived that he had been joined by a sad-looking
man, who, from the rapid and earnest manner in
which he talked and the vehemence of his gesticula-
tions, appeared to be ventilating some theme on which
he felt deeply. Ukridge was looking warm and har-
assed, and, as I approached, I could hear his voice
booming in reply.
“My dear sir, my dear old horse, do be reasonable,
do try to cultivate the big, broad flexible outlook ‘4
He saw me and broke away—not unwillingly; and,
gripping my arm, drew me off along the platform.
The sad-looking man followed irresolutely.
“Have you got the stuff, laddie?’”’ enquired Ukridge,
in a tense whisper. ‘Have you got it?”
“Yes, here it is.’26 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Put it back, put it back!” moaned Ukridge in
agony, as I felt in my pocket. “Do you know who
that was I was talking to? Gooch, the grocer!”
‘Goods supplied to the value of six pounds three
and a penny?”
“Absolutely Uy
“Well, now’s your chance. Fling him a purse of
gold. That'll make him look silly.”
“My dear old horse, I can’t afford to go about the
place squandering my cash simply in order to make
grocers look silly. That money is earmarked for
Nickerson, my landlord.”
“Oh! I say, I think the six pounds three and a
penny bird is following us.”
“Then for goodness’ sake, laddie, let’s get a move
on! If that man knew we had twenty quid on us,
our lives wouldn’t be safe. He’d make one spring.”
He hurried me out of the station and led the way
up a shady lane that wound off through the fields,
slinking furtively “like one that on a lonesome road
doth walk in fear and dread, and having once looked
back walks on and turns no more his head, because
he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him
tread.”’ As a matter of fact, the frightful fiend had
given up the pursuit after the first few steps, and a
moment later I drew this fact to Ukridge’s attention,
for it was not the sort of day on which to break walk-
ing records unnecessarily.
He halted, relieved, and mopped his spacious brow
with a handkerchief which I recognised as having
once been my property.UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 27
“Thank goodness we’ve shaken him off,” he said.
“Not a bad chap in his way, I believe—a good husband
and father, I’m told, and sings in the church choir.
But no vision. That’s what he lacks, old horse—
vision. He can’t understand that all vast industrial
enterprises have been built upon a system of liberal
and cheerful credit. Won't realise that credit is the
life-blood of commerce. Without credit commerce has
no elasticity. And if commerce has no elasticity what
dam’ good is it?”
“T don’t know.”
“Nor does anybody else. Well, now that he’s gone,
you can give me that money. Did Tuppy cough up
cheerfully ?”
“Blithely.”
“T knew it,” said Ukridge, deeply moved, “I knew
it. A good fellow. One of the best. I’ve always
liked Tuppy. A man you can rely on. Some day,
when I get going on a big scale, he shall have this back
a thousandfold. I’m glad you brought small notes.”
“Why?”
“T want to scatter ’em about on the table in front
of this Nickerson blighter.”
“Ts this where he lives?”
We had come to a red-roofed house, set back from
the road amidst trees. Ukridge wielded the knocker
forcefully.
“Tell Mr. Nickerson,” he said to the maid, “that
Mr. Ukridge has called and would like a word.”
About the demeanour of the man who presently
entered the room into which we had been shown there28 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
was that subtle but well-marked something which
stamps your creditor the world over. Mr. Nickerson
was a man of medium height, almost completely sur-
rounded by whiskers, and through the shrubbery he
gazed at Ukridge with frozen eyes, shooting out waves
of deleterious,animal magnetism. You could see at a
glance that he was not fond of Ukridge. Take him
for all in all, Mr. Nickerson looked like one of the less
amiable prophets of the Old Testament about to inter-
view the captive monarch of the Amalekites.
“Well?” he said, and I have never heard the word
spoken in 4 more forbidding manner.
“I’ve come about the rent.”
“Ah?” said Mr. Nickerson, guardedly.
“To pay it,” said Ukridtve.
“To, pay it!” ejaculated Mr. Nickerson, incredu-
lously.
“Here!” said Ukridge, and with a superb gesture
flung money on the table.
I understood now why the massive-minded man
had wanted the small notes. They made a brave dis-
play. There was a light breeze blowing in through
the open window, and so musical a rustling did it set
up as it played about the heaped-up wealth that Mr.
Nickerson’s austerity seemed to vanish like breath off
a razor-blade. For a moment a dazed look came into
his eyes and he swayed slightly; then, as he started
to gather up the money, he took on the benevolent
air of a bishop blessing pilgrims. As far as Mr. Nick-
erson was concerned, the sun was up.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Ukridge, I’m sure,”’ he said.2 zi
einen a ge ig nS ee pone ad ae —
a 7 =a 2
UKRIDGE’S DOG COLLEGE 29
“Thank you very much. No hard feelings, I trust?”
“Not on my side, old horse,” responded Ukridge,
affably. “Business is business.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, I may as well take those dogs now,” said
Ukridge, helping himself to a cigar from a box which
he had just discovered on the mantelpiece and putting
a couple more in his pocket in the friendliest way.
“The sooner they’re back with me the better. They've
lost a day’s education as it is.”
“Why, certainly, Mr. Ukridge; certainly. They are
in the shed at the bottom of the garden. I will get
them for you at once.”
He retreated through the door, babbling ingrati-
atingly.
“Amazing how fond these blokes are of money,”
sighed Ukridge. “It’s a thing I don’t like to see.
Sordid, I call it. That blighter’s eyes were gleaming,
positively gleaming, laddie, as he scooped up the stuff.
Good cigars these,”’ he added, pocketing three more.
There was a faltering footstep outside, and Mr.
Nickerson re-entered the room. The man appeared
to have something on his mind. said Teddy Weeks.
“I’m told, what’s more, it isn’t a bit painful. A sort
of dull shock, that’s all.”
“Who told you that?”
“T forget. Someone.”
“Well, you can tell him from me that he’s an ass,”
said Teddy Weeks, with asperity.
“All right. If you object to being run over by a
truck there are lots of other ways. But, upon my
Sam, it’s pretty hopeless suggesting them. You seem
to have no enterprise at all, Yesterday, after I went
to all the trouble to put a dog in your room, a dog
which would have done all the work for you—all that
you had to do was stand still and let him use his own
judgment—what happened? You climbed on to——’”’54 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Victor Beamish interrupted, speaking in a voice
husky with emotion.
“Was it you who put that damned dog in the
room ?”
“Eh?” said Ukridge. “Why, yes. But we can have
a good talk about all that later on,’ he proceeded,
hastily. ‘“The point at the moment is how the dickens
we're going to persuade this poor worm to collect our
insurance money for us. Why, damme, I should have
thought you would have e
“All I can say ” began Victor Beamish, heatedly.
“Yes, yes,” said Ukridge; “some other time. Must
stick to business now, laddie. I was saying,” he re-
sumed, “that I should have thought you would have
been as keen as mustard to put the job through for
your own sake. You're always beefing that you
haven’t any clothes to impress managers with. Think
of all you can buy with your share of the swag once
you have summoned up a little ordinary determina-
tion and seen the thing through. Think of the suits,
the boots, the hats, the spats. You’re always talking
about your dashed career, and how all you need to
land you in a West-end production is good clothes.
Well, here’s your chance to get them.”
His eloquence was not wasted. A wistful look came
into Teddy Weeks’s eye, such a look as must have
come into the eye of Moses on the summit of Pisgah.
He breathed heavily. You could see that the man was
mentally walking along Cork Street, weighing the
merits of one famous tailor against another.
“T’'ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, suddenly. “It’sUKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE 55
no use asking me to put this thing through in cold
blood. I simply can’t do it. I haven’t the nerve. But
if you fellows will give me a dinner to-night with lots
of champagne I think it will key me up to it.”
A heavy silence fell upon the room. Champagne!
The word was like a knell.
“How on earth are we going to afford champagne ?”
said Victor Beamish.
“Well, there it is,” said Teddy Weeks. “Take it
or leave it.”
“Gentlemen,” said Ukridge, “it would seem that the
company requires more capital. How about it, old
horses? Let’s get together in a frank, business-like,
cards-on-the-table spirit, and see what can be done. I
can raise ten bob.”’
“What!” cried the entire assembled company,
amazed. “How?”
“Tl pawn a banjo.”
“You haven’t got a banjo.”
“No, but George Tupper has, and I know where he
keeps it.”
Started in this spirited way, the subscriptions came
pouring in. I contributed a cigarette-case, Bertram
Fox thought his landlady would let him owe for
another week, Robert Dunhill had an uncle in Kensing-
ton who, he fancied, if tactfully approached, would be
good for a quid, and Victor Beamish said that if
the advertisement-manager of the O-So-Eesi Piano-
Player was churlish enough to refuse an advance of
five shillings against future work he misjudged him
sadly. Within a few minutes, in short, the Lightning56 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Drive had produced the impressive total of two
pounds six shillings, and we asked Teddy Weeks if he
thought that he could get adequately keyed up within
the limits of that sum.
“Tl try,” said Teddy Weeks.
So, not unmindful of the fact that that excellent
hostelry supplied champagne at eight shillings the quart
bottle, we fixed the meeting for seven o'clock at
Barolint’s.
Considered as a social affair, Teddy Weeks’s keying-
up dinner was not a success. Almost from the start
I think we all found it trying. It was not so much the
fact that he was drinking deeply of Barolini’s eight-
shilling champagne while we, from lack of funds, were
compelled to confine ourselves to meaner beverages;
what really marred the pleasantness of the function was
the extraordinary effect the stuff had on Teddy. What
was actually in the champagne supplied to Barolini and
purveyed by him to the public, such as were reckless
enough to drink it, at eight shillings the bottle remains
a secret between its maker and his Maker; but three
glasses of it were enough to convert Teddy Weeks
from a mild and rather oily young man into a truculent
swashbuckler.
He quarrelled with us all. With the soup he was
tilting at Victor Beamish’s theories of Art; the fish
found him ridiculing Bertram Fox’s views on the
future of the motion-picture; and by the time the leg
of chicken with dandelion salad arrived—or, as some
held, string salad—opinions varied on this point—the
hell-brew had so wrought on him that he had begunUKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE 57
to lecture Ukridge on his misspent life and was urg-
ing him in accents audible across the street to go out
and get a job and thus acquire sufficient self-respect
to enable him to look himself in the face in a mirror
without wincing. Not, added Teddy Weeks with what
we all thought uncalled-for offensiveness, that any
amount of self-respect was likely to do that. Having
said which, he called imperiously for another eight
bobs’-worth.
We gazed at one another wanly. However excellent
the end towards which all this was tending, there was
no denying that it was hard to bear. But policy kept
us silent. We recognised that this was Teddy Weeks’s
evening and that he must be humoured. Victor
Beamish said meekly that Teddy had cleared up a lot
of points which had been troubling him for a long
time. Bertram Fox agreed that there was much in
what Teddy had said about the future of the close-up.
And even Ukridge, though his haughty soul was seared
to its foundations by the latter’s personal remarks,
promised to take his homily to heart and act upon it
at the earliest possible moment.
“You'd better!’ said Teddy Weeks, belligerently,
biting off the end of one of Barolini’s cigars. “And
there’s another thing—don’t let me hear of your com-
ing and sneaking people’s socks again.”
“Very well, laddie,” said Ukridge, humbly.
“Tf there is one person in the world that I despise,”
said Teddy, bending a red-eyed gaze on the offender,
“it’s a snock-seeker—a seek-snocker—a—well, you
know what I mean.”58 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
We hastened to assure him that we knew what he
meant and he relapsed into a lengthy stupor, from
which he emerged three-quarters of an hour later to
announce that he didn’t know what he intended to do,
but that he was going. We said that we were going too,
and we paid the bill and did so.
Teddy Weeks’s indignation on discovering us gath-
ered about him upon the pavement outside the restau-
rant was intense, and he expressed it freely. Among
other things, he said—which was not true—that he
had a reputation to keep up in Soho.
“It’s all right, Teddy, old horse,” said Ukridge,
soothingly. ‘We just thought you would like to have
all your old pals round you when you did it.”
“Did it? Did what ?”
“Why, had the accident.”
Teddy Weeks glared at him truculently. Then his
mood seemed to change abruptly, and he burst into
a loud and hearty laugh.
“Well, of all the silly ideas!” he cried, amusedly.
“I’m not going to have an accident. You don’t sup-
pose I ever seriously intended to have an accident, do
you? It was just my fun.” Then, with another
sudden change of mood, he seemed to become a victim
to an acute unhappiness. He stroked Ukridge’s arm
affectionately, and a tear rolled down his cheek. “Just
my fun,” he repeated. “You don’t mind my fun, do
you?” he asked pleadingly. ‘You like my fun, don’t
you? All my fun. Never meant to have an accident
at all. Just wanted dinner.” The gay humour of it
all overcame his sorrow once more. “Funniest thingUKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE 59
ever heard,” he said cordially. ‘“Didn’t want accident,
wanted dinner. Dinner daxident, danner dixident,”
he added, driving home his point. ‘Well, good night
all,” he said, cheerily. And, stepping off the kerb on
to a banana-skin, was instantly knocked ten feet by a
passing lorry.
“Two ribs and an arm,” said the doctor five min-
utes later, superintending the removal proceedings.
“Gently with that stretcher.”
It was two weeks before we were informed by the
authorities of Charing Cross Hospital that the patient
was in a condition to receive visitors. A whip-round
secured the price of a basket of fruit, and Ukridge and
I were deputed by the shareholders to deliver it with
their compliments and kind enquiries.
“Hallo!” we said in a hushed, bedside manner when
finally admitted to his presence.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” replied the invalid.
I must confess even in that first moment to having
experienced a slight feeling of surprise. It was not
like Teddy Weeks to call us gentlemen. Ukridge,
however, seemed to notice nothing amiss.
“Well, well, well,’ he said, buoyantly. “And how
are you, laddie? We've brought you a few fragments
Onnandits
“I am getting along capitally,’ replied Teddy
Weeks, still in that odd precise way which had made
his opening words strike me as curious. eATiCNe!
should like to say that in my opinion England has
reason to be proud of the alertness and enterprise of
her great journals. The excellence of their reading-60 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
matter, the ingenuity of their various competitions, and,
above all, the go-ahead spirit which has resulted in this
accident insurance scheme are beyond praise. Have
you got that down?” he enquired.
Ukridge and I looked at each other. We had been
told that Teddy was practically normal again, but this
sounded like delirium.
“Have we got that down, old horse?” asked
Ukridge, gently.
Teddy Weeks seemed surprised.
“Aren’t you reporters?”
“How do you mean, reporters?”
“T thought you had come from one of these weekly
papers that have been paying me insurance money, to
interview me,” said Teddy Weeks.
Ukridge and I exchanged another glance. An un-
easy glance this time. I think that already a grim
foreboding had begun to cast its shadow over us.
“Surely you remember me, Teddy, old horse?” said
Ukridge, anxiously.
Teddy Weeks knit his brow, concentrating painfully.
“Why, of course,” he said at last. “You’re Ukridge,
aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Ukridge.”
“Of course. Ukridge.”
“Yes. Ukridge. Funny your forgetting me!”
“Yes,” said Teddy Weeks. “It’s the effect of the
shock I got when that thing bowled me over. I must
have been struck on the head, I suppose. It has had
the effect of rendering my memory rather uncertain.
The doctors here are very interested. They say itUKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE 61
is a most unusual case. I can remember some things
perfectly, but in some ways my memory is a complete
blank.”
“Oh, but I say, old horse,” quavered Ukridge. “I
suppose you haven’t forgotten about that insurance,
have you?”
“Oh, no, I remember that.”
Ukridge breathed a relieved sigh.
“T was a subscriber to a number of weekly papers,”
went on Teddy Weeks. “They are paying me in-
surance money now.”
“Yes, yes, old horse,” cried Ukridge. “But what I
mean is you remember the Syndicate, don’t you?”
Teddy Weeks raised his eyebrows.
“Syndicate? What Syndicate?”
“Why, when we all got together and put up the
money to pay for the subscriptions to these papers and
drew lots, to choose which of us should go out and
have an accident and collect the money. And you drew
it, don’t you remember ?”
Utter astonishment, and a shocked astonishment at
that, spread itself over Teddy Weeks’s countenance.
The man seemed outraged.
“I certainly remember nothing of the kind,” he said,
severely. “I cannot imagine myself for a moment con-
senting to become a party to what from your own
account would appear to have been a criminal con-
spiracy to obtain money under false pretences from a
number of weekly papers.”’
“But, laddie a
“Towever,” said Teddy Weeks, “if there is any62 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
truth in this story, no doubt you have documentary
evidence to support it.”’
Ukridge looked at me. I looked at Ukridge. ‘There
was a long silence.
“Shift-ho, old horse?” said Ukridge, sadly. “No
use staying on here.”
“No,” I replied, with equal gloom. “May as well
go.
“Glad to have seen you,” said Teddy Weeks, “and
thanks for the fruit.”
The next time I saw the man he was coming out
of a manager’s office in the Haymarket. He had on
a new Homburg hat of a delicate pearl grey, spats to
match, and a new blue flannel suit, beautifully cut,
with an invisible red twill. He was looking jubilant,
and, as I passed him, he drew from his pocket a gold
' cigarette-case.
It was shortly after that, if you remember, that he
made a big hit as the juvenile lead in that piece at the
Apollo and started on his sensational career as a
matinée idol.
Inside the church the organ had swelled into the
familiar music of the Wedding March. A verger
came out and opened the doors. The five cooks ceased
their reminiscences of other and smarter weddings at
which they had participated. The camera-men un-
shipped their cameras. The costermonger moved his
barrow of vegetables a pace forward. A dishevelled
and unshaven man at my side uttered a disapproving
growl.
“Tdle rich!” said the dishevelled man.UKRIDGE’S ACCIDENT SYNDICATE 63
Out of the church came a beauteous being, leading
attached to his arm another being, somewhat less
beauteous.
There was no denying the spectacular effect of
Teddy Weeks. He was handsomer than ever. His
sleek hair, gorgeously waved, shone in the sun, his
eyes were large and bright; his lissome frame, garbed
in faultless morning-coat and trousers, was that of an
Apollo. But his bride gave the impression that Teddy
had married money. They paused in the doorway, and
the camera-men became active and fussy.
“Have you got a shilling, laddie?” said Ukridge in
a low, level voice.
“Why do you want a shilling?”
“Old horse,” said Ukridge, tensely, “it is of the
utmost vital importance that I have a shilling here and
now.”
I passed it over. Ukridge turned to the dishevelled
man, and I perceived that he held in his hand a large
rich tomato of juicy and over-ripe appearance.
“Would you like to earn a bob?” Ukridge said.
“Would I!” replied the dishevelled man.
Ukridge sank his voice to a hoarse whisper.
The camera-men had finished their preparations.
Teddy Weeks, his head thrown back in that gallant way
which has endeared him to so many female hearts,
was exhibiting his celebrated teeth. The cooks, in
undertones, were making adverse comments on the ap-
pearance of the bride.
‘Now, please,’’ said one of the camera-men.
Over the heads of the crowd, well and truly aimed,64 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
whizzed a large juicy tomato. It burst like a shell full
between Teddy Weeks’s expressive eyes, obliterating
them in scarlet ruin. It spattered Teddy Weeks’s
collar, it dripped on Teddy Weeks’s morning-coat.
And the dishevelled man turned abruptly and raced off
down the street.
Ukridge grasped my arm. There was a look of
deep content in his eyes.
“Shift-ho?” said Ukridge.
Arm-in-arm, we strolled off in the pleasant June sun-
shine.CHAPTER Ill
THE DEBUT OF BATTLING BILLSON
T becomes increasingly difficult, I have found, as
time goes by, to recall the exact circumstances in
which one first became acquainted with this man or
that; for as a general thing I lay no claim to the
possession of one of those hair-trigger memories
which come from subscribing to the correspondence
courses advertised in the magazines. And yet I can
state without doubt or hesitation that the individual
afterwards known as Battling Billson entered my life
at half-past four on the afternoon of Saturday, Sep-
tember the tenth, two days after my twenty-seventh
birthday. For there was that about my first sight of
him which has caused the event to remain photo-
graphically lined on the tablets of my mind when a
yesterday has faded from its page. Not only was
our meeting dramatic and even startling, but it had in
it something of the quality of the last straw, the final
sling or arrow of outrageous Fortune. It seemed to
put the lid on the sadness of life.
Everything had been going steadily wrong with me
for more than a week. I had been away, paying a
duty visit to uncongenial relatives in the country, and
6566 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
it had rained and rained and rained. There had been
family prayers before breakfast and bezique after
dinner. On the journey back to London my carriage
had been full of babies, the train had stopped every-
where, and I had had nothing to eat but a bag of
buns. And when finally I let myself into my lodgings
in Ebury Street and sought the soothing haven of my
sitting-room, the first thing I saw on opening the door
was this enormous red-headed man lying on the sofa.
He made no move as I came in, for he was asleep;
and I can best convey the instantaneous impression I
got of his formidable physique by saying that I had
no desire to wake him. The sofa was a small one,
and he overflowed it in every direction. He had a
broken nose, and his jaw was the jaw of a Wild West
motion-picture star registering Determination. One
hand was under his head; the other, hanging down to
the floor, looked like a strayed ham congealed into
stone. What he was doing in my sitting-room I did
not know; but, passionately as I wished to know, I
preferred not to seek first-hand information. There
was something about him that seemed to suggest that
he might be one of those men who are rather cross
when they first wake up. I crept out and stole softly
downstairs to make enquiries of Bowles, my landlord.
“Sir?” said Bowles, in his fruity ex-butler way,
popping up from the depths accompanied by a rich
smell of finnan haddie.
“There’s someone in my room,” I whispered.
“That would be Mr. Ukridge, sir.”
“It wouldn’t be anything of the kind,” I replied,THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 67
with asperity. I seldom had the courage to contradict
Bowles, but this statement was so wildly inaccurate
that I could not let it pass. “It’s a huge red-headed
man.”’
“Mr. Ukridge’s friend, sir. He joined Mr. Ukridge
here yesterday.”
“How do you mean, joined Mr. Ukridge here yes-
terday?”’
“Mr. Ukridge came to occupy your rooms in your
absence, sir, on the night after your departure. I
assumed that he had your approval. He said, if I
remember correctly, that ‘it would be all right.’ ”
For some reason or other which I had never been
able to explain, Bowles’s attitude towards Ukridge
from their first meeting had been that of an indulgent
father towards a favourite son. He gave the impres-
sion now of congratulating me on having such a friend
to rally round and sneak into my rooms when I went
away.
“Would there be arything further, sir?’ enquired
Bowles, with a wistful half-glance over his shoulder.
He seemed reluctant to tear himself away for long
from the finnan haddie.
“No,” I said. ‘Er—no. When do you expect Mr.
Ukridge back?”
“Mr. Ukridge informed me that he would return for
dinner, sir. Unless he has altered his plans, he is now
at a matinée performance at the Gaiety Theatre.”
The audience was just beginning to leave when I
reached the Gaiety. I waited in the Strand, and pres-68 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
ently was rewarded by the sight of a yellow mackin-
tosh working its way through the crowd.
“Hallo, laddie!’”’ said Stanley Featherstonehaugh
Ukridge, genially. ‘When did you get back? I say,
I want you to remember this tune, so that you can
remind me of it to-morrow, when I’ll be sure to have
forgotten it. This is how it goes.’”’ He poised him-
self flat-footedly in the surging tide of pedestrians and,
shutting his eyes and raising his chin, began to yodel
in a loud and dismal tenor. “Tumty-tumty-tumty-
tum, tum tum tum,” he concluded. “And now, old
horse, you may lead me across the street to the Coal
Hole for a short snifter. What sort of a time have
you had?”
“Never mind what sort of a time ve had. Who’s
the fellow you’ve dumped down in my rooms?”
“Red-haired man?”
“Good Lord! Surely even you wouldn’t inflict more
than one on me?”
Ukridge looked at me a little pained.
“T don’t like this tone,” he said, leading me down
the steps of the Coal Hole. ‘Upon my Sam, your
manner wounds me, old horse. [I little thought that
you would object to your best friend laying his head
on your pillow.”
“T don’t mind your head. At least I do, but I sup-
pose I’ve got to put up with it. But when it comes to
your taking in lodgers 7%
“Order two tawny ports, laddie,” said Ukridge, ‘“‘and
I'll explain all about that. I had an idea all along
that you would want to know. It’s like this,” he pro-THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 69
ceeded, when the tawny ports had arrived. “That
bloke’s going to make my everlasting fortune.”
“Well, can’t he do it somewhere else except in my
sitting-room ?”
“You know me, old horse,’
y
said Ukridge, sipping
luxuriously. ‘Keen, alert, far-sighted. Brain never
still. Always getting ideas—bing—like a flash. The
other day I was in a pub down Chelsea way having a
bit of bread and cheese, and a fellow came in smoth-
ered with jewels. Smothered, I give you my word.
Rings on his fingers and a tie-pin you could have lit
your cigar at. JI made enquiries and found that he
was Tod Bingham’s manager.”
“Who’s Tod Bingham?”
“My dear old son, you must have heard of Tod
Bingham. The new middle-weight champion. Beat
Alf Palmer for the belt a couple of weeks ago. And
this bloke, as opulent-looking a bloke as ever I saw,
was his manager. I suppose he gets about fifty per
cent. of everything Tod makes, and you know the
sort of purses they give for big fights nowadays. And
then there’s music-hall tours and the movies and all
that. Well, I see no reason why, putting the thing
at the lowest figures, I shouldn’t scoop in thousands.
I got the idea two seconds after they told me who this
fellow was. And what made the thing seem almost as
if it was meant to be was the coincidence that I should.
have heard only that morning that the Hyacinth
Was in.”
The man seemed to me to be rambling. In my re-70 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
duced and afflicted state his cryptic method of narra-
tive irritated me.
“T don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“What's the Hyacinth? In where?”
“Pull yourself together, old horse,” said Ukridge,
with the air of one endeavouring to be patient with a
half-witted child. “You remember the Hyacinth, the
tramp steamer I took that trip on a couple of years
ago. Many’s the time I’ve told you about the Hya-
cinth. She docked in the Port of London the night
before I met this opulent bloke, and I had been mean-
ing to go down next day and have a chat with the
lads. The fellow you found in your rooms is one of
the trimmers. As decent a bird as ever you met.
Not much conversation, but a heart of gold. And it
came across me like a thunderbolt the moment they
told me who the jewelled cove was that, if I could only
induce this man Billson to take up scrapping seriously,
with me as his manager, my fortune was made. Bill-
son is the man who invented fighting.”
fle looks, its.
“Splendid chap—you’ll like him.”
“YT bet I shall. I made up my mind to like him
the moment I saw him.”
“Never picks a quarrel, you understand—in fact,
used to need the deuce of a lot of provocation before
he would give of his best; but once he started—golly !
I’ve seen that man clean out a bar at Marseilles in a
way that fascinated you. A bar filled to overflowing
with A.B.’s and firemen, mind you, and all capable
of felling oxen with a blow. Six of them there were,THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 71
and they kept swatting Billson with all the vim and
heartiness at their disposal, but he just let them bounce
off, and went on with the business in hand. The
man’s a champion, laddie, nothing less. You couldn’t
hurt him with a hatchet, and every time he hits any-
one all the undertakers in the place jump up and make
bids for the body. And the amazing bit of luck is
that he was looking for a job ashore. It appears he’s
fallen in love with one of the barmaids at the Crown
in Kennington. Not,’ said Ukridge, so that all mis-
apprehension should be avoided, “the one with the
squint. The other one. Flossie. The girl with yellow
hair.”
“T don’t know the barmaids at the Crown in Ken-
nington,”’ I said.
“Nice girls,’ said Ukridge paternally. “So it was
all right, you see. Our interests were identical. Good
old Billson isn’t what you’d call a very intelligent
chap, but I managed to make him understand after an
hour or so, and we drew up the contract. I’m to get
fifty per cent. of everything in consideration of man-
aging him, fixing up fights, and looking after him
generally.”
“And looking after him includes tucking him up on
my sofa and singing him to sleep?”
Again that pained look came into Ukridge’s face.
He gazed at me as if I had disappointed him.
“You keep harping on that, laddie, and it isn’t the
right spirit. Anyone would think that we had polluted
your damned room.”
“Well, you must admit that having this coming12 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
champion of yours in the home is going to make
things a bit crowded.”
“Don’t worry about that, my dear old man,” said
Ukridge, reassuringly. “We move to the White Hart
at Barnes to-morrow, to start training. I’ve got Bill-
son an engagement in one of the preliminaries down at
Wonderland two weeks from to-night.”
“No; really?” I said, impressed by this enterprise.
“How did you manage it?”
“IT just took him along and showed him to the
management. They jumped at him. You see, the
old boy’s appearance rather speaks for itself. Thank
goodness, all this happened just when I had a few
quid tucked away. By the greatest good luck I ran into
George Tupper at the very moment when he had had
word that they were going to make him an under-
secretary or something—I can’t remember the de-
tails, but it’s something they give these Foreign Office
blokes when they show a bit of class—and Tuppy
parted with a tenner without a murmur. Seemed
sort of dazed. I believe now I could have had twenty
if I’d had the presence of mind to ask for it. Still,”
said Ukridge, with a manly resignation which did him
credit, “it can’t be helped now, and ten will see me
through. The only thing that’s worrying me at the
moment is what to call Billson,”’
“Yes, I should be careful what I called a man like
that.”
“T mean, what name is he to fight under ?”’
“Why not his own?”
“His parents, confound them,” said Ukridge,THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 73
moodily, “christened him Wilberforce. I ask you,
can you see the crowd at Wonderland having Wilber-
force Billson introduced to them?”
“Willie Billson,’ I suggested. “Rather snappy.”
Ukridge considered the proposal seriously, with
knit brows, as becomes a manager.
“Too frivolous,’ he decided at length. “Might be
all right for a bantam, but—no, I don’t like it. I was
thinking of something like Hurricane Hicks or Rock-
Crusher Riggs.”’
“Don’t do it,’ I urged, “or you'll kill his career
right from the start. You never find a real champion
with one of these fancy names. Bob Fitzsimmons, Jack
Johnson, James J. Corbett, James J. Jeffries "
“James J. Billson?”’
» Rotter.’
“You don’t think,” said Ukridge, almost with
timidity, “that Wildcat Wix might do?”
“No fighter with an adjective in front of his name
ever boxed in anything except a three-round prelim-
inary.”
“How about Battling Billson?”
I patted him on the shoulder.
“Go no farther,’ I said. “The thing is settled.
Battling Billson is the name.”’
“Laddie,”’ said Ukridge in a hushed voice, reaching
across the table and grasping my hand, “‘this is genius.
Sheer genius. Order another couple of tawny ports,
old man.”
I did so, and we drank deep to the Battler’s success.
My formal introduction to my godchild took place74 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
on our return to Ebury Street, and—great as had
been my respect for the man before—it left me with
a heightened appreciation of the potentialities for tri-
umph awaiting him in his selected profession. He was
awake by this time and moving ponderously about
the sitting-room, and he looked even more impressive
standing than he had appeared when lying down. At
our first meeting, moreover, his eyes had been closed
in sleep; they were now open, green in colour, and of
a peculiarly metallic glint which caused them, as we
shook hands, to seem to be exploring my person for
good spots to hit. What was probably intended to
be a smile that wins appeared to me a grim and sar-
donic twist of the lip. Take him for all in all, I had
never met a man so calculated to convert the most
truculent swashbuckler to pacifism at a glance; and
when I recalled Ukridge’s story of the little unpleas-
antness at Marseilles and realised that a mere handful
of half a dozen able-bodied seamen had had the temer-
ity to engage this fellow in personal conflict, it gave
me a thrill of patriotic pride. There must be good
stuff in the British Merchant Marine, I felt. Hearts
of oak.
Dinner, which followed the introduction, revealed
the Battler rather as a capable trencherman than as a
sparkling conversationalist. His long reach enabled
him to grab salt, potatoes, pepper, and other neces-
saries without the necessity of asking for them; and
on other topics he seemed to possess no views which he
deemed worthy of exploitation. A strong, silent man.
That there was a softer side to his character was,THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 75
however, made clear to me when, after smoking one
of my cigars and talking for awhile of this and that,
Ukridge went out on one of those mysterious errands
of his which were always summoning him at all hours
and left my guest and myself alone together. After a
bare half-hour’s silence, broken only by the soothing
gurgle of his pipe, the coming champion cocked an in-
timidating eye at me and spoke.
“You ever been in love, mister?”
I was thrilled and flattered. Something in my ap-
pearance, I told myself, some nebulous something
that showed me a man of sentiment and sympathy,
had appealed to this man, and he was about to pour
out his heart in intimate confession. I said yes, I had
been in love many times. I went on to speak of love
as a noble emotion of which no man need be ashamed.
I spoke at length and with fervor.
“"R!” said Battling Billson.
Then, as if aware that he had been chattering in
an undignified manner to a comparative stranger, he
withdrew into the silence again and did not emerge
till it was time to go to bed, when he said “Good night,
mister,” and disappeared. It was disappointing. Sig-
nificant, perhaps, the conversation had been, but I had
been rather hoping for something which could have
been built up into a human document, entitled “The
Soul of the Abysmal Brute,’”’ and sold to some editor
for that real money which was always so badly needed
in the home.
Ukridge and his protégé left next morning for
Barnes, and, as that riverside resort was somewhat off76 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
my beat, I saw no more of the Battler until the fateful
night at Wonderland. From time to time Ukridge
would drop in at my rooms to purloin cigars and socks,
and on these occasions he always spoke with the great-
est confidence of his man’s prospects. At first, it
seemed, there had been a little difficulty owing to the
other’s rooted idea that plug tobacco was an indis-
pensable adjunct to training: but towards the end of
the first week the arguments of wisdom had prevailed
and he had consented to abandon smoking until after
his début. By this concession the issue seemed to
Ukridge to have been sealed as a certainty, and he
was in sunny mood as he borrowed the money from
me to pay our fares to the Underground station at
which the pilgrim alights who wishes to visit that
Mecca of East-end boxing, Wonderland.
The Battler had preceded us, and when we arrived
was in the dressing-room, stripped to a breath-taking
semi-nudity. I had not supposed that it was possible
for a man to be larger than was Mr. Billson when
arrayed for the street, but in trunks and boxing shoes
he looked like his big brother. Muscles resembling
the hawsers of an Atlantic liner coiled down his
arms and rippled along his massive shoulders. He
seemed to dwarf altogether the by no means flimsy
athlete who passed out of the room as we came in.
“That’s the bloke,” announced Mr. Billson, jerking
his red head after this person.
We understood him to imply that the other was
his opponent, and the spirit of confidence which had
animated us waxed considerably. Where six of theTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 77
pick of the Merchant Marine had failed, this stripling
could scarcely hope to succeed.
“T been talkin’ to ’im,” said Battling Billson.
I took this unwonted garrulity to be due to a slight
nervousness natural at such a moment.
“°E’s ’ad a lot of trouble, that bloke,” said the
Battler.
The obvious reply was that he was now going to
have a lot more, but before either of us could make it
a hoarse voice announced that Squiffy and the Toff
had completed their three-round bout and that the stage
now waited for our nominee. We hurried to our
seats. The necessity of taking a look at our man in
the dressing-room had deprived us of the pleasure of
witnessing the passage of arms between Squiffy and
the Toff, but I gathered that it must have been lively
and full of entertainment, for the audience seemed in
excellent humor. All those who were not too busy
eating jellied eels were babbling happily or whistling,
between their fingers to friends in distant parts of
the hall. As Mr. Billson climbed into the ring in all
the glory of his red hair and jumping muscles, the
babble rose to a roar. It was plain that Wonderland
had stamped our Battler with its approval on sight.
The audiences which support Wonderland are not
disdainful of science. Neat footwork wins their com-
mendation, and a skillful ducking of the head is greeted
with knowing applause. But what they esteem most
highly is the punch. And one sight of Battling Bill-
son seemed to tell them that here was the Punch per-
sonified. They sent the fighters off to a howl of ec-78 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
stasy, and settled back in their seats to enjoy the pure
pleasure of seeing two of their fellow-men hitting each
other very hard and often.
The howl died away.
I looked at Ukridge with concern. Was this the
hero of Marseilles, the man who cleaned out bar-rooms
and on whom undertakers fawned? Diffident was the
only word to describe our Battler’s behaviour in that
opening round. He pawed lightly at his antagonist.
He embraced him like a brother. He shuffled about the
ring, innocuous.
“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.
“He always starts slow,” said Ukridge, but his con-
cern was manifest. He fumbled nervously at the but-
tons of his mackintosh. The referee was warning Bat-
tling Billson. He was speaking to him like a disap-
pointed father. In the cheaper and baser parts of the
house enraged citizens were whistling ‘‘Comrades.”’
Everywhere a chill had fallen on the house. That first
fine fresh enthusiasm had died away, and the sounding
of the gong for the end of the round was greeted with
censorious cat-calls. As Mr. Billson lurched back to
his corner, frank unfriendliness was displayed on all
sides.
With the opening of the second round considerably
more spirit was introduced into the affair. The same
strange torpidity still held our Battler in its grip, but
his opponent was another man. During round one he
had seemed a little nervous and apprehensive. He had
behaved as if he considered it prudent not to stir
Mr. Billson. But now this distaste for direct actionTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 79
had left him. There was jauntiness in his demeanour
as he moved to the center of the ring; and, having
reached it, he uncoiled a long left and smote Mr. Bill-
son forcefully on the nose. Twice he smote him, and
twice Mr. Billson blinked like one who had had bad
news from home. The man who had had a lot of
trouble leaned sideways and brought his right fist
squarely against the Battler’s ear.
All was forgotten and forgiven. A moment be-
fore the audience had been solidly anti-Billson. Now
they were as unanimously pro. For these blows, while
they appeared to have affected him not at all physically,
seemed to have awakened Mr. Billson’s better feelings
as if somebody had turned ona tap. They had aroused
in Mr. Billson’s soul that zest for combat which had
been so sadly to seek in round one. For an instant
after the receipt of that buffet on the ear the Battler
stood motionless on his flat feet, apparently in deep
thought. Then, with the air of one who has suddenly
remembered an important appointment, he plunged for-
ward. Like an animated windmill he cast himself
upon the bloke of troubles. He knocked him here,
he bounced him there. He committed mayhem upon
his person. He did everything to him that a man can
do who is hampered with boxing-gloves, until presently
the troubled one was leaning heavily against the ropes,
his head hanging dazedly, his whole attitude that of a
man who would just as soon let the matter drop. It
only remained for the Battler to drive home the final
punch, and a hundred enthusiasts, rising to their feet,
were pointing out to him desirable locations for it.80 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
But once more that strange diffidence had descended
upon our representative. While every other man in
the building seemed to know the correct procedure
and was sketching it out in nervous English, Mr. Bill-
son appeared the victim of doubt. He looked uncer-
tainly at his opponent and enquiringly at the referee.
The referee, obviously a man of blunted sensibili-
ties, was unresponsive. Do It Now was plainly his
slogan. He was a business man, and he wanted his
patrons to get good value for their money. He was
urging Mr. Billson to make a thorough job of it.
And finally Mr. Billson approached his man and drew
back his right arm. Having done this, he looked over
his shoulder once more at the referee.
It was a fatal blunder. The man who had had
a lot of trouble may have been in poor shape, but, like
most of his profession, he retained, despite his recent
misadventures, a reserve store of energy. Even as
Mr. Billson turned his head, he reached down to the
floor with his gloved right hand, then, with a final
effort, brought it up in a majestic sweep against the
angle of the other’s jaw. And then, as the fickle audi-
ence, with swift change of sympathy, cheered him on,
he buried his left in Mr. Billson’s stomach on the
exact spot where the well-dressed man wears the third
button of his waistcoat.
Of all human experiences this of being smitten in
this precise locality is the least agreeable. Battling
Billson drooped’ like a stricken flower, settled slowly
down, and spread himself out, He lay peacefullyTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 81
on his back with outstretched arms like a man floating
in smooth water. His day’s work was done.
A wailing cry rose above the din of excited patrons
of sport endeavouring to explain to their neighbours
how it had all happened. It was the voice of Ukridge
mourning over his dead.
At half-past eleven that night, as I was preparing
for bed, a drooping figure entered my room. I mixed
a silent, sympathetic Scotch and soda, and for awhile
no word was spoken.
‘‘How is the poor fellow?” I asked at length.
Hes all. right,”’ said: Ukridge; listlessly. “I: lett
him eating fish and chips at a coffee-stall.”
“Bad luck his getting pipped on the post like that.”
“Bad luck!’ boomed Ukridge, throwing off his
lethargy with a vigour that spoke of mental anguish.
“What do you mean, bad luck? It was just dam’
boneheadedness. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard. I
invest vast sums in this man, I support him in luxury
for two weeks, asking nothing of him in return except
to sail in and knock somebody’s head off, which he
could have done in two minutes if he had liked, and
he lets me down purely and simply because the other
fellow told him that he had been up all night looking
after his wife who had burned her hand at the jam
factory. Infernal sentimentalism!”
“Does him credit,” I argued.
“Bah !”?
‘Kind hearts,” I urged, ‘are more than coronets.”’
“Who the devil wants a pugilist to have a kind
heart? What’s the use of this man Billson being able82 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
to knock out an elephant if he’s afflicted with this
damned maudlin mushiness? Who ever heard of a
mushy pugilist? It’s the wrong spirit. It doesn’t
make for success.”
“It’s a handicap, of course,” I admitted.
“What guarantee have I,” demanded Ukridge,
“that if I go to enormous trouble and expense getting
him another match, he won’t turn aside and brush
away a Silent tear in the first round because he’s heard
that the blighter’s wife has got an ingrowing toenail ?”
“You could match him only against bachelors.”
“Yes, and the first bachelor he met would draw him
into a corner and tell him his aunt was down with
whooping-cough, and the chump would heave a sigh
and stick his chin out to be walloped. A fellow’s got
no business to have red hair if he isn’t going to live
up to it. And yet,” said Ukridge, wistfully, “I’ve seen
that man—it was in a dance-hall at Naples—I’ve seen
him take on at least eleven Italians simultaneously.
But then, one of them had stuck a knife about three
inches into his leg. He seems to need something like
that to give him ambition.”
“I don’t see how you are going to arrange to have
him knifed just before each fight.”’
“No,” said Ukridge, mournfully.
“What are you going to do about his future? Have
you any plans?”
“Nothing definite. My aunt was looking for a com-
panion to attend to her correspondence and take care
of the canary last time I saw her. I might try to get
the job for him.”THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 83
And with a horrid, mirthless laugh Stanley Feather-
stonehaugh Ukridge borrowed five shillings and passed
out into the night.
I did not see Ukridge for the next few days, but I
had news of him from our mutual friend, George
Tupper, whom I met prancing in uplifted mood down
Whitehall.
“I say,” said George Tupper without preamble, and
with a sort of dazed fervor, “they’ve given me an
under-secretaryship.”
I pressed his hand. I would have slapped him on
the back, but one does not slap the backs of eminent
Foreign Office officials in Whitehall in broad daylight,
even if one has been at school with them.
“Congratulations,” I said. “There is no one whom
I would more gladly see under-secretarying. I heard
rumors of this from Ukridge.”
“Oh, yes, I remember I told him it might be coming
off. Good old Ukridge! I met him just now and
told him the news, and he was delighted.”
“How much did he touch you for?”
“Eh? Oh, only five pounds. Till Saturday. He
expects to have a lot of money by then.”
“Did you ever know the time when Ukridge didn’t
expect to have a lot of money?”
“T want you and Ukridge to come and have a bit
of dinner with me to celebrate. How would Wed-
nesday suit you?”
“Splendidly.”
“Seven-thirty at the Regent Grill, then. Will you
tell Ukridge?”84 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“T don’t know where he’s got to. I haven’t seen him
for nearly a week. Did he tell you where he was?”
“Out at some place at Barnes. What was the name
Ornite.
“The White Hart?”
e DnatSeiti
“Tell me,” I said, “how did he seem? Cheerful?”
“Very. Whyr”
“The last time I saw him he was thinking of giving
up the struggle. He had had reverses.”
I proceeded to the White Hart immediately after
lunch. The fact that Ukridge was still at that hos-
telry and had regained his usual sunny outlook on life
seemed to point to the fact that the clouds enveloping
the future of Mr. Billson had cleared away, and that
the latter’s hat was still in the ring. That this was so
was made clear to me directly I arrived. Enquiring
for my old friend, I was directed to an upper room,
from which, as I approached, there came a peculiar
thudding noise. It was caused, as I perceived on open-
ing the door, by Mr. Billson. Clad in flannel trousers
and a sweater, he was earnestly pounding a large
leather object suspended from a wooden platform.
His manager, seated on a soap-box in a corner, regarded
him the while with affectionate proprietorship.
“Hallo, old horse!’ said Ukridge, rising as I entered.
“Glad to see you.”’
The din of Mr. Billson’s bag-punching, from which
my arrival had not caused him to desist, was such as
to render conversation difficult. We moved to theTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 85
quieter retreat of the bar downstairs, where I informed
Ukridge of the under-secretary’s invitation.
“T’ll be there,” said Ukridge. ‘“There’s one thing
about good old Billson, you can trust him not to
break training if you take your eye off him. And,
of course, he realises that this is a big thing. It’ll be
the making of him.”
“Your aunt is considering engaging him, then?”
“My aunt? What on earth are you talking about?
Collect yourself, laddie.”
“When you left me you were going to try to get
him the job of looking after your aunt’s canary.”
“Oh, I was feeling rather sore then. That’s all
over. I had an earnest talk with the poor zimp, and he
means business from now on. And so he ought to,
dash it, with a magnificent opportunity like this.”
“Like what?”
“We're on to a big thing now, laddie, the dickens of
a big thing.”
“T hope you’ve made sure the other man’s a bache-
lor. Who is he?”
“Tod Bingham.”
“Tod Bingham?” I groped in my memory. “You
don’t mean the middle-weight champion?”
“That’s the fellow.”
“You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve got a
match on with a champion already?”
“Tt isn’t exactly a match. It’s like this. Tod Bing-
ham is going round the East-end halls offering two
hundred quid to anyone who'll stay four rounds with
him. Advertisement stuff. Good old Billson is going86 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
to unleash himself at the Shoreditch Empire next Sat-
urday.”’
“Do you think he’ll be able to stay four rounds?”
“Stay four rounds!” cried Ukridge. ‘‘Why he could
stay four rounds with a fellow armed with a Gatling-
gun and a couple of pickaxes. That money’s as good
as in our pockets, laddie. And once we’re through
with this job, there isn’t a boxing-place in England
that won’t jump at us. I don’t mind telling you in
confidence, old horse, that in a year from now I expect
to be pulling in hundreds a week. Clean up a bit here
first, you know, and then pop over to America and
make an enormous fortune. Damme, I shan’t know
how to spend the money!”
“Why not buy some socks? I’m running a bit short
of them.”
“Now, laddie, laddie,” said Ukridge, reprovingly,
“need we strike a jarring note? Is this the moment
to fling your beastly socks in an old friend’s face? A
broader-minded spirit is what I would like to see.”
I was ten minutes late in arriving at the Regent
Grill on the Wednesday of George Tupper’s invitation,
and the spectacle of George in person standing bare-
headed at the Piccadilly entrance filled me with guilty
remorse. George was the best fellow in the world,
but the atmosphere of the Foreign Office had increased
the tendency he had always had from boyhood to a
sort of precise fussiness, and it upset him if his affairs
did not run exactly on schedule. The thought that my
unpunctuality should have marred this great evening
sent me hurrying towards him full of apologies.THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 87
“Oh, there you are,” said George Tupper. “TI say,
it’s too bad :
“T’m awfully sorry. My watch
‘“Ukridge!” cried George Tupper, and I perceived
that it was not I who had caused his concern.
“Isn’t he coming?” I asked, amazed. The idea of
Ukridge evading a free meal was one of those that
seem to make the solid foundations of the world
)
rock.
“He’s come. And he’s brought a girl with him!”
“A girl!”
“In pink, with yellow hair,” wailed George Tupper.
“What am I to do?”
I pondered the point.
“Tt’s a weird thing for even Ukridge to have done,”
I said, ‘‘but I suppose you'll have to give her dinner.”
“But the place is full of people I know, and this
girl’s so—so spectacular.”
I felt for him deeply, but I could see no way out
of it.
“You don’t think I could say I had been taken ill?”
“Tt would hurt Ukridge’s feelings.”
“I should enjoy hurting Ukridge’s feelings, curse
him!”’ said George Tupper, fervently.
“And it would be an awful slam for the girl, who-
ever she is.”’
George Tupper sighed. His was a chivalrous
nature. He drew himself up as if bracing himself for
a dreadful ordeal.
“Oh, well, I suppose there’s nothing to do,” he said.88 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Come along. I left them drinking cocktails in the
lounge.”
George had not erred in describing Ukridge’s ad-
dition to the festivities as spectacular. Flamboyant
would have been a suitable word. As she preceded
us down the long dining-room, her arm linked in
George Tupper’s—she seemed to have taken a liking
to George—I had ample opportunity for studying her,
from her patent-leather shoes to the mass of golden
hair beneath her picture-hat. She had a loud, clear
voice, and she was telling George Tupper the rather
intimate details of an internal complaint which had
recently troubled an aunt of hers. If George had been
the family physician, she could not have been franker;
and I could see a dull glow spreading over his shapely
ears.
Perhaps Ukridge saw it, too, for he seemed to ex-
perience a slight twinge of conscience.
“T have an idea, laddie,” he whispered, “that old
Tuppy is a trifle peeved at my bringing Flossie along.
If you get a chance, you might just murmur to him
that it was a military necessity.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“T told you about her. Flossie, the barmaid at the
Crown in Kennington. Billson’s fiancée.”
I looked at him in amazement.
“Do you mean to tell me that you’re courting death
by flirting with Battling Billson’s girl?”
“My dear old man, nothing like that,”’ said Ukridge,
shocked. “The whole thing is, I’ve. got a particular
favour to ask of her—rather a rummy request—and itTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 89
was no good springing it on her in cold blood. There
had to be a certain amount of champagne in advance,
and my funds won’t run to champagne. I’m taking
her on to the Alhambra after dinner. T’'ll look you
up to-night and tell you all about it.”
We then proceeded to dine. It was not one of the
pleasantest meals of my experience. The future Mrs.
Billson prattled agreeably throughout, and Ukridge
assisted her in keeping the conversation alive; but the
shattered demeanour of George Tupper would have
taken the sparkle out of any banquet. From time to
time he pulled himself together and endeavored to play
the host, but for the most part he maintained a pale
and brooding silence; and it was a relief when Ukridge
and his companion rose to leave.
“Well! ” began George Tupper in a strangled
voice, as they moved away down the aisle.
I lit a cigar and sat back dutifully to listen.
Ukridge arrived in my rooms at midnight, his eyes
gleaming through their pince-nez with a strange light.
His manner was exuberant.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“T’m glad you think so.”
“Did you explain to Tuppy ?”
“I didn’t get a chance. He was talking too hard.”
“About me?”
“Yes. He said everything I’ve always felt about
you, only far, far better than I could ever have put it.”
Ukridge’s face clouded for a moment, but cheer ful-
ness returned.
“Oh, well, it can’t be helped. He'll simmer down90 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
in a day or two. It had to be done, laddie. Life and
death matter. And it’s all right. Read this.”
I took the letter he handed me. It was written
in a scrawly hand.
“What's this?”
“Read it, laddie. I think it will meet the case.”
I read.
“« “Wilberforce.” ””
“Who on earth’s Wilberforce?”
“T told you that was Billson’s name.”
“Oh, yes.”
I returned to the letter.
““WILBERFORCE,—
“T take my pen in hand to tell you that I can
never be yours. You will no doubt be surprised to
hear that I love another and a better man, so that it
can never be. He loves me, and he is a better man
than you.
“Hoping this finds you in the pink as it leaves me at
present,
“Yours faithfully,
“FLORENCE BurRNS.”
“I told her to keep it snappy,” said Ukridge.
“Well, she’s certainly done it,” I replied, handing
back the letter. ‘I’m sorry. From the little I saw
of her, I thought her a nice girl—for Billson. Do you
happen to know the other man’s address? Because it
would be a kindly act to send him a post card advising
him to leave England for a year or two.”
“The Shoreditch Empire will find him this week.”THE DEBUT OF BILLSON
“What!”
“The other man is Tod Bingham.”
“Tod Bingham!” The drama of the situation
moved me. “Do you mean to say that Tod Bingham
is in love with Battling Billson’s girl?”
“No. He’s never seen her!”
“What do you mean?”
Ukridge sat down creakingly on the sofa. He
slapped my knee with sudden and uncomfortable vio-
lence.
“Laddie,” said Ukridge, “I will tell you all. Yester-
day afternoon I found old Billson reading a copy of
the Daily Sportsman. He isn’t much of a reader as a
rule, so I was rather interested to know what had
gripped him. And do you know what it was, old
horse ?”
=I do not.”
“It was an article about Tod Bingham. One of
those damned sentimental blurbs they print about
pugilists nowadays, saying what a good chap he was in
private life and how he always sent a telegram to his
old mother after each fight and gave her half the
purse. Damme, there ought to be a censorship of the
Press. These blighters don’t mind what they print. I
don’t suppose Tod Bingham has got an old mother,
and if he has I’ll bet he doesn’t give her a bob. There
were tears in that chump Billson’s eyes as he showed
me the article. Salt tears, laddie! ‘Must be a nice
feller!’ he said. Well, I ask you! I mean to say, it’s
a bit thick when the man you’ve been pouring out
money for and watching over like a baby sister starts92 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
getting sorry for a champion three days before he’s
due to fight him. A champion, mark you! It was
bad enough his getting mushy about that fellow at
Wonderland, but when it came to being soft-hearted
over Tod Bingham something had to be done. Well,
you know me. Brain like a buzz-saw. I saw the only
way of counteracting this pernicious stuff was to get
him so mad with Tod Bingham that he would forget
all about his old mother, so I suddenly thought: Why
not get Flossie to pretend that Bingham had cut him
out with her? Well, it’s not the sort of thing you
can ask a girl to do without preparing the ground a
bit, so I brought her along to Tuppy’s dinner. It was
a master-stroke, laddie. There’s nothing softens the
delicately-nurtured like a good dinner, and there’s no
denying that old Tuppy did us well. She agreed the
moment I put the thing to her, and sat down and
wrote that letter without a blink. I think she thinks
it’s all a jolly practical joke. She’s a light-hearted
girl.”
“Must be.”
“Tt’ll give poor old Billson a bit of a jar for the
time being, I suppose, but it'll make him spread him-
self on Saturday night, and he’ll be perfectly happy on
Sunday morning when she tells him she didn’t mean
it and he realises that he’s got a hundred quid of Tod
Bingham’s in his trousers pocket.”
“T thought you said it was two hundred quid that
Bingham was offering.”
“T get a hundred,” said Ukridge, dreamily.
“The only flaw is, the letter doesn’t give the otherTHE DEBUT OF BILLSON 93
man’s name. How is Billson to know it’s Tod Bing-
ham ?”
“Why, damme, laddie, do use your intelligence.
Billson isn’t going to sit and yawn when he gets that
letter. He'll buzz straight down to Kennington and
ask Flossie.”’
“And then she will give the whole thing away.”
“No, she won’t. I slipped her a couple of quid to
promise she wouldn’t. And that reminds me, old man,
it has left me a bit short, so if you could possibly
3)
manage
“Good night,” I said.
“But, laddie :
“And God bless you,” I added, firmly.
The Shoreditch Empire is a roomy house, but it was
crowded to the doors when I reached it on the Satur-
ay night. In normal circumstances I suppose there
would always have been a large audience on a Satur-
day, and this evening the lure of Tod Bingham’s per-
sonal appearance had drawn more than capacity. In
return for my shilling I was accorded the privilege of
standing against the wall at the back, a position from
which I could not see a great deal of the performance.
From the occasional flashes which I got of the stage
between the heads of my neighbours, however, and
from the generally restless and impatient attitude of
the audience I gathered that I was not missing much.
The programme of the Shoreditch Empire that week
was essentially a one-man affair. The patrons had
the air of suffering the preliminary acts as unavoidable
obstacles that stand between them and the head-liner.ene
94 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
It was Tod Bingham whom they had come to see, and
they were not cordial to the unfortunate serio-comics,
tramp cyclists, jugglers, acrobats, and ballad singers
who intruded themselves during the earlier part of the
evening. The cheer that arose as the curtain fell on
a dramatic sketch came from the heart, for the next
number on the programme was that of the star.
A stout man in evening dress with a red handker-
chief worn ambassadorially athwart his shirt-front
stepped out from the wings.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
“"Ush!” cried the audience.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
mevoice: | =Goodole\ Tod!” (Cheese! it!” )
“Ladies and gentlemen,’”’ said the ambassador for
the third time. He scanned the house apprehensively.
“Deeply regret have unfortunate disappointment to
announce. Tod Bingham unfortunately unable to ap-
pear before you to-night.”
A howl like the howl of wolves balked of their prey
or of an amphitheatre full of Roman citizens on receipt
of the news that the supply of lions had run out
greeted these words. We stared at each other with a
wild surmise. Could this thing be, or was it not too
thick for human belief?
“Wot’s the matter with im?” demanded the gallery,
hoarsely.
“Yus, wot’s the matter with ’im?” echoed we of the
better element on the lower floor.
The ambassador sidled uneasily towards the promptentrance.
favourite.
THE DEBUT OF BILLSON 95
He seemed aware that he was not a popular
“"E ’as ’ad an unfortunate accident,” he declared,
nervously
beginning to sweep away his aitches whole-
sale. “On ’is way ’ere to this ’all ’e was unfortunately
run into by a truck, sustaining bruises and contusions
which render ‘1m unfortunately unable to appear be-
fore you to-night. I beg to announce that ’is place will
be taken by Professor Devine, who will render ’is
;
marvellous imitations of various birds and familiar
animals.
;,
Ladies and gentlemen,” concluded the am-
bassador, stepping nimbly off the stage, “I thank you
one and all.”
The curtain rose and a dapper individual with a
waxed moustache skipped on.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my first imitation will be
> ’ ’
of that well-known songster, the common thrush—
better known to some of you per’aps as the throstle.
And in connection with my performance I wish to state
that I ’ave nothing whatsoever in my mouth. The
effects which I produce
Pd
I withdrew, and two-thirds of the audience started
to do the same. From behind us, dying away as the
doors closed, came the plaintive note of the common
thrush feebly competing with that other and sterner
bird which haunts those places of entertainment where
audiences are critical and swift to take offence.
Out in
the street a knot of Shoreditch’s younger
set were hanging on the lips of an excited orator ina
battered hat and trousers which had been made for a
larger man.
Some stirring tale which he was telling96 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
held them spellbound. Words came raggedly through
the noise of the traffic.
* like this. Then ’e ’its ’im another like that.
Then they start—on the side of the jor 4,
“Pass along, there,” interrupted an official voice.
?
“Come on, there, pass along.
The crowd thinned and resolved itself into its ele-
ments. I found myself moving down the street in
company with the wearer of the battered hat. Though
we had not been formally introduced, he seemed to
consider me a suitable recipient for his tale. He en-
rolled me at once as a nucleus for a fresh audience.
“°F comes up, this bloke does, just as Tod is goin’
>
in at the stage-door
soars, 0 queried:
“Tod Bingham. ’E comes up just as ’e’s goin’ in
at the stage-door, and ’e says ‘’Ere!’ and Tod says
‘Yus?’ and this bloke ’e says ‘Put ’em up!’ and Tod
says ‘Put wot up?’ and this bloke says ‘Yer ’ands,’ and
Tod says ‘Wot, me?’—sort of surprised. An’ the
next minute they’re fightin’ all over the shop.”
“But surely Tod Bingham was run over by a truck?”
The man in the battered hat surveyed me with the
mingled scorn and resentment which the devout bestow
on those of heretical views.
“Truck! ’E wasn’t run over by no truck. Wot
mikes yer fink ’e was run over by a truck? Wot ud ’e
be doin’ bein’ run over by a truck? ’E ’ad it put
across ’im by this red-’eaded bloke, same as I’m tellin‘
vel
A great light shone upon me.THE DEBUT OF BILLSON
“Red-headed ?” I cried.
us,”
“A big man?”
eis”
“And he put it across Tod Bingham?”
“Put it across ’im proper. ‘Ad to go ’ome ina keb,
Tod did. Funny a bloke that could fight like that
bloke could fight ’adn’t the sense to go and do it on
the stige and get some money for it. That’s wot I
think.”
Across the street an arc-lamp shed its cold rays.
And into its glare there strode a man draped in a yel-
low mackintosh. The light gleamed on his pince-nez
and lent a gruesome pallor to his set face. It was
Ukridge retreating from Moscow.
“Others,” I said, ‘‘are thinking the same.”
And I hurried across the road to administer what
feeble consolation I might. There are moments when
a fellow needs a friend.CHAP LER LV.
FIRST AID FOR DORA
EVER in the course of a long and intimate
acquaintance having been shown any evidence
to the contrary, I had always looked on Stanley
Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, my boyhood chum, as a
man ruggedly indifferent to the appeal of the opposite
sex. I had assumed that, like so many financial giants,
he had no time for dalliance with women—other and
deeper matters, I supposed, keeping that great brain
permanently occupied. It was a surprise, therefore,
when, passing down Shaftesbury Avenue one Wednes-
day afternoon in June at the hour when matinée audi-
ences were leaving the theatres, I came upon him as-
sisting a girl in a white dress to mount an omnibus.
As far as this simple ceremony could be rendered
impressive, Ukridge made it so. His manner was a
blend of courtliness and devotion; and if his mackin-
tosh had been a shade less yellow and his hat a trifle
less disreputable, he would have looked just like Sir
Walter Raleigh.
The bus moved on, Ukridge waved, and I proceeded
to make enquiries. I felt that I was an interested
party. There had been a distinctly “object-matri-
98FIRST AID FOR DORA 99
mony’ look about the back of his neck, it seemed to
me; and the prospect of having to support a Mrs.
Ukridge and keep a flock of little Ukridges in socks
and shirts perturbed me.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Oh, hallo, laddie!” said Ukridge, turning. ‘Where
did you spring from? If you had come a moment
earlier, I’d have introduced you to Dora.” The bus
was lumbering out of sight into Piccadilly Circus, and
the white figure on top turned and gave a final wave.
“That was Dora Mason,” said Ukridge, having flapped
a large hand in reply. “She’s my aunt’s secretary-com-
panion. I used to see a bit of her from time to time
when I was living at Wimbledon. Old Tuppy gave
me a couple of seats for that show at the Apollo, so I
thought it would be a kindly act to ask her along. I’m
sorry for that girl. Sorry for her, old horse.”
‘““What’s the matter with her?”
“Hers is a grey life. She has few pleasures. It’s
an act of charity to give her a little treat now and
then. Think of it! Nothing to do all day but brush
the Pekingese and type out my aunt’s rotten novels.”
“Does your aunt write novels?”
“The world’s worst, laddie, the world’s worst.
She’s been steeped to the gills in literature ever since
I can remember. They’ve just made her president of
the Pen and Ink Club. As a matter of fact, it was her
novels that did me in when I lived with her. She used
to send me to bed with the beastly things and ask me
questions about them at breakfast. Absolutely with-
out exaggeration, laddie, at breakfast. It was a dog’s100 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
life, and I’m glad it’s over. Flesh and blood couldn't
stand the strain. Well, knowing my aunt, I don’t mind
telling you that my heart bleeds for poor little Dora.
I know what a foul time she has, and I feel a better,
finer man for having given her this passing gleam of
sunshine. I wish I could have done more for her.”
“Well, you might have stood her tea after the
theatre.”
“Not within the sphere of practical politics, laddie.
Unless you can sneak out without paying, which is
dashed difficult to do with these cashiers watching the
door like weasels, tea even at an A B C shop punches
the pocket-book pretty hard, and at the moment I’m
down to the scrapings. But I’ll tell you what, I don't
mind joining you in a cup, if you were thinking of it.”
“T wasn’t.”
“Come, come! A little more of the good old spirit
of hospitality, old horse.”
“Why do you wear that beastly mackintosh in mid-
summer ?” :
“Don’t evade the point, laddie. I can see at a glance
that you need tea. You're looking pale and fagged.”’
“Doctors say that tea is bad for the nerves.”
“Yes, possibly there’s something in that. Then
I'll tell you what,” said Ukridge, never too proud to
yield a point, “we'll make it a whisky-and-soda in-
stead. Come along over to the Criterion.”
It was a few days after this that the Derby was run,
and a horse of the name of Gunga Din finished third.
This did not interest the great bulk of the intelligentsia
to any marked extent, the animal having started at aFIRST AID FOR DORA 101
hundred to three, but it meant much to me, for I had
drawn his name in the sweepstake at my club. After a
monotonous series of blanks stretching back to the
first year of my membership, this seemed to me the
outstanding event of the century, and I celebrated my
triumph by an informal dinner to a few friends. It
was some small consolation to me later to remember
that I had wanted to include Ukridge in the party, but
failed to get hold of him. Dark hours were to follow,
but at least Ukridge did not go through them bursting
with my meat.
There is no form of spiritual exaltation so poignant
as that which comes from winning even a third prize
in a sweepstake. So tremendous was the moral uplift
that, when eleven o’clock arrived, it seemed silly to
sit talking in a club and still sillier to go to bed. I
suggested spaciously that we should all go off and dress
and resume the revels at my expense half an hour later
at Mario’s, where, it being an extension night, there
would be music and dancing till three. We scattered
in cabs to our various homes.
How seldom in this life do we receive any premo-
nition of impending disaster. I hummed a gay air as
I entered the house in Ebury Street where I lodged,
and not even the usually quelling sight of Bowles, my
landlord, in the hall as I came in could quench my
bonhomie. Generally a meeting with Bowles had the
effect on me which the interior of a cathedral has on
the devout, but to-night I was superior to this weakness.
“Ah, Bowles,” I cried, chummily, only just stopping
myself from adding ‘Honest fellow!’ “Hallo,102 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Bowles! I say, Bowles, I drew Gunga Din in the club
sweep.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes. He came in third, you know.”
“So I see by the evening paper, sir. I congratulate
you.”
“Thank you, Bowles, thank you.”
“Mr. Ukridge called earlier in the evening, sir,” said
Bowles.
“Did he? Sorry I was out. I was trying to get hold
of him. Did he want anything in particular?”
“Vour dress-clothes, sir.”
‘My dress-clothes, eh?” I laughed genially. “Ex-
traordinary fellow! You never know A ghastly
thought smote me like a blow. A cold wind seemed
to blow through the hall. “He didn’t get them, did
he?” I quavered.
fairy, “yes, ‘Sit.””
“Got my dress-clothes?” I muttered thickly, clutch-
ing for support at the hat-stand.
“He said it would be all right, sir,” said Bowles,
with that sickening tolerance which he always ex-
hibited for all that Ukridge said or did. One of the
leading mysteries of my life was my landlord’s amaz-
ing attitude towards this hell-hound. He fawned on
the man. A splendid fellow like myself had to go
about in a state of hushed reverence towards Bowles,
while a human blot like Ukridge could bellow at him
over the banisters without the slightest rebuke. It
was one of those things which make one laugh cyni-
cally when people talk about the equality of man.
’FIRST AID FOR DORA 103
“He got my dress-clothes?”? I mumbled.
“Mr. Ukridge said that he knew you would be glad
to let him have them, as you would not be requiring
them to-night.”
“But I do require them, damn it!” I shouted, lost to
all proper feeling. Never before had I let fall an oath
in Bowles’s presence. “I’m giving half a dozen men
supper at Mario’s in a quarter of an hour.”
Bowles clicked his tongue sympathetically.
“What am I going to do?”
‘Perhaps if you would allow me to lend you mine,
Sinn:
MVOUTSIe :
“TI have a very nice suit. It was given to me by his
lordship the late Earl of Oxted, in whose employment
I was for many years. I fancy it would do very well
on you, sir. His lordship was about your height,
though perhaps a little slenderer. Shall I fetch it, sir?
I have it in a trunk downstairs.”
The obligations of hospitality are sacred. In fifteen
minutes’ time six jovial men would be assembled at
Mario’s, and what would they do, lacking a host?
I nodded feebly.
“It’s very kind of you,” I managed to say.
“Not at all, sir. It is a pleasure.”
If he was speaking the truth, I was glad of it. It is
nice to think that the affair brought pleasure to some-
one.
That the late Earl of Oxted had indeed been a
somewhat slenderer man than myself became manifest
to me from the first pulling on of the trousers.104 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Hitherto I had always admired the slim, small-boned
type of aristocrat, but it was not long before I was
wishing that Bowles had been in the employment of
someone who had gone in a little more heartily for
starchy foods. And I regretted, moreover, that the
fashion of wearing a velvet collar on an evening coat,
if it had to come in at all, had not lasted a few years
longer. Dim as the light in my bedroom was, it was
strong enough to make me wince as I looked in the
mirror.
And I was aware of a curious odour.
“Tsn’t this room a trifle stuffy, Bowles?”
wo, Sire lL think ‘not.’
“Don’t you notice an odd smell?”
“No, sir. But I have a somewhat heavy cold. If
you are ready, sir, I will ¢all a cab.”
Moth-balls! That was the scent I had detected. It
swept upon me like a wave in the cab. It accompanied
me like a fog all the way to Mario’s, and burst out
in its full fragrance when I entered the place and re-
moved my overcoat. The cloak-room waiter sniffed
in a startled way as he gave me my check, one or two
people standing near hastened to remove themselves
from my immediate neighbourhood, and my friends,
when I joined them, expressed themselves with friend-
like candour. With a solid unanimity they told me
frankly that it was only the fact that I was paying
for the supper that enabled them to tolerate my pres-
ence.
The leper-like feeling induced by this uncharitable
attitude caused me after the conclusion of the mealFIRST AID FOR DORA 105
to withdraw to the balcony to smoke in solitude. My
guests were dancing merrily, but such pleasures were
not for me. Besides, my velvet collar had already
excited ribald comment, and I am a sensitive man.
Crouched in a lonely corner of the balcony, surrounded
by the outcasts who were not allowed on the lower
floor because they were not dressed, I chewed a cigar
and watched the revels with a jaundiced eye. The
space reserved for dancing was crowded and couples
either revolved warily or ruthlessly bumped a passage
for themselves, using their partners as battering-rams.
Prominent among the ruthless bumpers was a big man
who was giving a realistic imitation of a steam-plough.
He danced strongly and energetically, and when he
struck the line, something had to give.
From the very first something about this man had
seemed familiar; but owing to his peculiar crouching
manner of dancing, which he seemed to have modelled
on the ring-style of Mr. James J. Jeffries, it was not
immediately that I was able to see his face. But
presently, as the music stopped and he straightened
himself to clap his hands for an encore, his foul fea-
tures were revealed to me.
It was Ukridge. Ukridge, confound him, with my
dress-clothes fitting him so perfectly and with such
unwrinkled smoothness that he might have stepped
straight out of one of Ouida’s novels. Until that
moment I had never fully realised the meaning of the
expression “faultless evening dress.’’ With a pas-
sionate cry I leaped from my seat, and, accompanied
by a rich smell of camphor, bounded for the stairs.106 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Like Hamlet on a less impressive occasion, I wanted
to slay this man when he was full of bread, with all
his crimes, broad-blown, as flush as May, at drinking,
swearing, or about some act that had no relish of
salvation in it.
“But, laddie,”’ said Ukridge, backed into a corner
of the lobby apart from the throng, “be reasonable.”
I cleansed my bosom of a good deal of that perilous
stuff that weighs upon the heart.
“Tow could I guess that you would want the things ?
Look at it from my position, old horse. I knew you,
laddie, a good true friend who would be delighted to
lend a pal his dress-clothes any time when he didn’t
need them himself, and as you weren’t there when I
called, I couldn’t ask you, so I naturally simply bor-
rowed them. It was all just one of those little mis-
understandings which can’t be helped. And, as it
luckily turns out, you had a spare suit, so everything
was all right, after all.”
“You don’t think this poisonous fancy dress is mine,
do you?”
“Tsn’t it?” said Ukridge, astonished.
“It belongs to Bowles. He lent it to me.”
“And most extraordinarily well you look in it, lad-
die,” said Ukridge. “Upon my Sam, you look like a
duke or something.”
“And smell like a second-hand clothes-store.”
‘Nonsense, my dear old son, nonsense. A mere
faint suggestion of some rather pleasant antiseptic.
Nothing more. I like it. It’s invigorating. Honestly,
old man, it’s really remarkable what an air that suitFIRST AID FOR DORA 107
gives you. Distinguished. That’s the word I was
searching for. You look distinguished. All the girls
are saying so. When you came in just now to speak
to me, I heard one of them whisper “Who is it?’ That
shows you.”
“More likely ‘what is it?’ ”
“Ha, ha!” bellowed Ukridge, seeking to cajole me
with sycophantic mirth. “Dashed good! Deuced
good! Not ‘Who is it?’ but ‘What is it?’ It beats me
how you think of these things. Golly, if I had a brain
But now, old son, if you don’t mind,
like yours
I really must be getting back to poor little Dora.
She’ll be wondering what has become of me.”
The significance of these words had the effect of
making me forget my just wrath for a moment.
“Are you here with that girl you took to the theatre
the other afternoon?”
“Yes. I happened to win a trifle on the Derby, so
I thought it would be a decent thing to ask her out for
an evening’s pleasure. Hers is a grey life.”
“It must be, seeing you so much.”
“A little personal, old horse,’ said Ukridge re-
provingly. “A trifle bitter. But I know you don’t
mean it. Yours is a heart of gold really. If I’ve said
that once, I’ve said it a hundred times. Always saying
it. Rugged exterior but heart of gold. My very
words. Well, good-bye for the present, laddie. ['ll
look in to-morrow and return these things. I’m sorry
there was any misunderstanding about them, but it
makes up for everything, doesn’t it, to feel that you’ve108 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
helped brighten life for a poor little downtrodden
thing who has few pleasures.”’
“Just one last word,” I said. “One final remark.”
a Mesive
“I’m sitting in that corner of the balcony over
there,” I said. “I mention the fact so that you can
look out for yourself. If you come dancing under-
neath there, I shall drop a plate on you. And if it
kills you, so much the better. I’m a poor downtrod-
den little thing, and I have few pleasures.”
Owing to a mawkish respect for the conventions, for
which I reproach myself, I did not actually perform
this service to humanity. With the exception of
throwing a roll at him—which missed him but most
fortunately hit the member of my supper-party who
had sniffed with the most noticeable offensiveness at my
camphorated costume—I took no punitive measures
against Ukridge that night. But his demeanour, when
he called at my rooms next day, could not have been
more crushed if I had dropped a pound of lead on him.
He strode into my sitting-room with the sombre tread
of the man who in a conflict with Fate has received
the loser’s end. I had been passing in my mind a num-
ber of good snappy things to say to him, but his ap-
pearance touched me to such an extent that I held
them in. To abuse this man would have been like
dancing on a tomb.
“Ror Heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?’ I asked.
“You look like a toad under the harrow.”
He sat down creakingly, and lit one of my cigars.
“Poor little Dora!’FIRST AID FOR DORA
“What about her?”
“She’s got the push!”
“The push? From your aunt’s, do you mean?”
esd’
“What for?”
Ukridge sighed heavily.
“Most unfortunate business, old horse, and largely
my fault. I thought the whole thing was perfectly
safe. You see, my aunt goes to bed at half-past ten
every night, so it seemed to me that if Dora slipped
out at eleven and left a window open behind her she
could sneak back all right when we got home from
Mario’s. But what happened? Some dashed officious
ass,” said Ukridge, with honest wrath, “went and
locked the damned window. I don’t know who it was.
I suspect the butler. He has a nasty habit of going
round the place late at night and shutting things.
Upon my San, it’s a little hard! If only people would
”
leave things alone and not go snooping about
“What happened?”
“Why, it was the scullery window which we’d left
open, and when we got back at four o’clock this morn-
ing the infernal thing was shut as tight as an egg.
Things looked pretty rocky, but Dora remembered
that her bedroom window was always open, so we
bucked up again for a bit. Her room’s on the second
floor, but I knew where there was a ladder, so I went
and got it, and she was just hopping up as merry as
dammit when somebody flashed a great beastly lantern
on us, and there was a policeman, wanting to know
what the game was. The whole trouble with the police110 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
force of London, laddie, the thing that makes them a
hissing and a byword, is that they’re snoopers to a
man. Zeal, I suppose they call it. Why they can’t
attend to their own affairs is more than I can under-
stand. Dozens of murders going on all the time,
probably, all over Wimbledon, and all this bloke would
do was stand and wiggle his infernal lantern and ask
what the game was. Wouldn’t be satisfied with a plain
statement that it was all right. Insisted on rousing
the house to have us identified.”
Ukridge paused, a reminiscent look of pain on his
expressive face.
“And then?” I said.
“We were,” said Ukridge, briefly.
“What ?”
“Identified. By my aunt. In a dressing-gown and
a revolver. And the long and short of it is, old man,
that poor little Dora has got the sack.”
I could not find it in my heart to blame his aunt for
what he evidently considered a high-handed and tyran-
nical outrage. If I were a maiden lady of regular
views, I should relieve myself of the services of any
secretary-companion who returned to roost only a few
short hours in advance of the milk. But, as Ukridge
plainly desired sympathy rather than an austere pro-
nouncement on the relations of employer and employed,
I threw him a couple of tuts, which seemed to soothe
him a little. He turned to the practical side of the
matter.
“What’s to be done?”
“T don’t see what you can do.”FIRST AID FOR DORA LLI
“But I must do something. I’ve lost the poor little
thing her job, and I must try to get it back. It’s a
rotten sort of job, but it’s her bread and butter. Do
you think George Tupper would biff round and have
a chat with my aunt, if I asked him?”
“T suppose he would. He’s the best-hearted man in
the world. But I doubt if he’ll be able to do much.”’
“Nonsense, laddie,’’ said Ukridge, his unconquerable
optimism rising bravely from the depths. “I have the
utmost confidence in old Tuppy. A man in a million.
And he’s such a dashed respectable sort of bloke that
he might have her jumping through hoops and sham-
ming dead before she knew what was happening to her.
You never know. Yes, I'll try old Tuppy. I'll go and
see him now.”
“T should.”
“Just lend me a trifle for a cab, old son, and I shall
be able to get to the Foreign Office before one o’clock.
I mean to say, even if nothing comes of it, I shall
be able to get a lunch out of him. And I need refresh-
ment, laddie, need it sorely. The whole business has
shaken me very much.”
It was three days after this that, stirred by a pleasant
scent of bacon and coffee, I hurried my dressing and,
proceeding to my sitting-room, found that Ukridge
had dropped in to take breakfast with me, as was often
his companionable practice. He seemed thoroughly
cheerful again, and was plying knife and fork briskly
like the good trencherman he was.
“Morning, old horse,” he said agreeably.
“Good morning.”112 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Devilish good bacon, this. As good as I’ve ever
bitten. Bowles is cooking you some more.”
“That’s nice. I'll have a cup of coffee, if you don’t
mind me making myself at home while I’m waiting.”
I started to open the letters by my plate, and became
aware that my guest was eyeing me with a stare of
intense penetration through his pince-nez, which were
all crooked as usual. ‘“What’s the matter?”
“Matter ?”
“Why,” I said, “are you looking at me like a fish
with lung-trouble?”’
“Was 1?” He took a sip of coffee with an over-
done carelessness. ‘“‘Matter of fact, old son, I was
rather interested. JI see you’ve a letter from my aunt.”
“What ?”
I had picked up the last envelope. It was addressed
in a strong female hand, strange to me. I now tore
it open. It was even as Ukridge had said. Dated the
previous day and headed ‘Heath House, Wimbledon
Common,” the letter ran as follows :-—
“Dear S1r,—I shall be happy to see you if you will
call at this address the day after to-morrow (Friday)
at four-thirty—-Yours faithfully, JULIA UKRIDGE.”
I could make nothing of this. My morning mail,
whether pleasant or the reverse, whether bringing a
bill from a tradesman or a cheque from an editor,
had had till now the uniform quality of being plain,
straightforward, and easy to understand; but this
communication baffled me. How Ukridge’s aunt had
become aware of my existence, and why a call from meFIRST AID FOR DORA 113
should ameliorate her lot, were problems beyond my
unravelling, and I brooded over it as an Egyptologist
might over some newly-discovered hieroglyphic.
“What does she say?” enquired Ukridge.
“She wants me to call at half-past four to-morrow
afternoon.”
“Splendid!’ cried Ukridge. “I knew she would
bite.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
Ukridge reached across the table and patted me
affectionately on the shoulder. The movement in-
volved the upsetting of a full cup of coffee, but I sup-
pose he meant well. He sank back again in his chair
and adjusted his pince-nez in order to get a better
view of me. I seemed to fill him with honest joy, and
he suddenly burst into a spirited eulogy, rather like
some minstrel of old delivering an ex-tempore boost
of his chieftain and employer.
“Laddie,” said Ukridge, “if there’s one thing about
you that I’ve always admired it’s your readiness to
help a pal. One of the most admirable qualities a
bloke can possess, and nobody has it to a greater extent
than you. You're practically unique in that way. I’ve
had men come up to me and ask me about you. “What
sort of a chap is he?’ they say. ‘One of the very best,’
I reply. ‘A fellow you can rely on. A man who
would die rather than let you down. A bloke who
would go through fire and water to do a pal a good
turn. A bird with a heart of gold and a nature as true
as Steel:114 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Yes, I’m a splendid fellow,” I agreed, slightly per-
plexed by this panegyric. “Get on.”
“T am getting on, old horse,’”’ said Ukridge, with
faint reproach. “What I’m trying to say is that I
knew you would be delighted to tackle this little job
for me. It wasn’t necessary to ask you. I knew.”
A grim foreboding of an awful doom crept over
me, as it had done so often before in my association
with Ukridge.
“Will you kindly tell me what damned thing you’ve
let me in for now?”
Ukridge deprecated my warmth with a wave of his
fork. He spoke soothingly and with a winning per-
suasiveness. He practically cooed.
“Tt’s nothing, laddie. Practically nothing. Just a
simple little act of kindness which you will thank me
for putting in your way. It’s like this. As I ought
to have foreseen from the first, that ass Tuppy proved
a broken reed. In that matter of Dora, you know.
Got no result whatever. He went to see my aunt the
day before yesterday, and asked her to take Dora on
again, and she gave him the miss-in-balk. I’m not
surprised. I never had any confidence in Tuppy. It
was a mistake ever sending him. It’s no good trying
frontal attack in a delicate business like this. What
you need is strategy. You want to think what is the
enemy’s weak side and then attack him from that angle.
Now, what is my aunt’s weak side, laddie? Her weak
side, what is it? Now think. Reflect, old horse.”
“From the sound of her voice, the only time I ever
got near her, I should say she hadn’t one.”FIRST AID FOR DORA 115
“That’s where you make your error, old son. But-
ter her up about her beastly novels, and a child could
eat out of her hand. When Tuppy let me down I just
lit a pipe and had a good think. And then suddenly
I got it. I went to a pal of mine, a thorough sports-
man—you don’t know him. I must introduce you
some day—and he wrote my aunt a letter from you,
asking if you could come and interview her for
Woman’s Sphere. It’s a weekly paper, which I happen
to know she takes in regularly. Now, listen, laddie.
Don’t interrupt for a moment. I want you to get
the devilish shrewdness of this. You go and inter-
view her, and she’s all over you. Tickled to death.
Of course, you'll have to do a good deal of Young
Disciple stuff, but you won’t mind that. After you’ve
soft-soaped her till she’s purring like a dynamo, you
get up to go. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘this has been the
proudest occasion of my life, meeting one whose work
I have so long admired.’ And she says, ‘The pleasure
is mine, old horse.’ And you slop over each other a
bit more. Then you say sort of casually, as if it had
just occurred to you, ‘Oh, by the way, I believe my
cousin—or sister
No, better make it cousin—
‘I believe my cousin, Miss Dora Mason, is your secre-
tary, isn’t she?’ ‘She isn’t any such dam’ thing,’ re-
plies my aunt. ‘I sacked her three days ago.’ That’s
your cue, laddie. Your face falls, you register concern,
you're frightfully cut up. You start in to ask her to
let Dora come back. And you’re such pals by this time
that she can refuse you nothing. And there you are!
My dear old son, you can take it from me that if you116 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
only keep your head and do the Young Disciple stuff
properly the thing can’t fail. It’s an iron-clad scheme.
There isn’t a flaw in it.”
“There is one.”
“I think you’re wrong. I’ve gone over the thing
very carefully. What is it?”
“The flaw is that I’m not going anywhere near
your infernal aunt. So you can trot back to your
forger chum and tell him he’s wasted a good sheet of
letter-paper.”
A pair of pince-nez tinkled into a plate. Two pained
eyes blinked at me across the table. Stanley Feather-
stonehaugh Ukridge was wounded to the quick.
“You don’t mean to say you’re backing out?” he
said, in a low, quivering voice.
“T never was in.”
“Taddie,” said Ukridge, weightily, resting an elbow
on his last slice of bacon, “I want to ask you one
question. Just one simple question. Have you ever
let me down? Has there been one occasion in our long
friendship when I have relied upon you and been
deceived? Not one!’
“Everything’s got to have a beginning. I’m start-
ing now.”
“But think of her. Dora! Poor little Dora. Think
of poor little Dora.”
“Tf this business teaches her to keep away from you,
it will be a blessing in the end.”
“But, laddie ”
I suppose there is some fatal weakness in my char-
acter, or else the brand of bacon which Bowles cookedFIRST AID FOR DORA 117
possessed a peculiarly mellowing quality. All I know
is that, after being adamant for a good ten minutes,
I finished breakfast committed to a task from which
my soul revolted. After all, as Ukridge said, it was
rough on the girl. Chivalry is chivalry. We must
strive to lend a helping hand as we go through this
world of ours, and all that sort of thing. Four o’clock
on the following afternoon found me entering a cab
and giving the driver the address of Heath House,
Wimbledon Common.
My emotions on entering Heath House were such
as I would have felt had I been keeping a tryst with a
dentist who by some strange freak happened also to
be a duke. From the moment when a butler of super-
Bowles dignity opened the door and, after regarding
me with ill-concealed dislike, started to conduct me
down a long hall, I was in the grip of both fear and
humility. Heath House is one of the stately homes
of Wimbledon; how beautiful they stand, as the poet
says: and after the humble drabness of Ebury Street
it frankly overawed me. Its keynote was an extreme
neatness which seemed to sneer at my squashy collar
and reproach my baggy trouser-leg. The farther I
penetrated over the polished floor, the more vividly
was it brought home to me that I was one of the
submerged tenth and could have done with a hair-cut.
I had not been aware when I left home that my hair
was unusually long, but now I seemed to be festooned
by a matted and offensive growth. A patch on my left
shoe which had had a rather comfortable look in Ebury
Street stood out like a blot on the landscape. No, I118
HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
was not at my ease; and when I reflected that in a
few moments I was to meet Ukridge’s aunt, that
legendary figure, face to face, a sort of wistful admi-
ration filled me for the beauty of the nature of one
who would go through all this to help a girl he had
never even met. There was no doubt about it—the
facts spoke for themselves—I was one of the finest
fellows
I had ever known. Nevertheless, there was no
getting away from it, my trousers did bag at the knee.
“Mr.
Corcoran,’ announced the butler, opening the
3 , D>
drawing-room door. He spoke with just that in-
tonation of voice that seemed to disclaim all responsi-
bility.
If I had an appointment, he intimated, it was
his duty, however repulsive, to show me in; but, that
done, he dissociated himself entirely from the whole
affair.
There were two women and six Pekingese dogs
inthe room. The Pekes I had met before, during their
brief undergraduate days at Ukridge’s dog college,
but they did not appear to recognise me. The occa-
sion when they had lunched at my expense seemed to
have passed from their minds. One by one they came
up, sniffed, and then moved away as if my bouquet
had disappointed them. They gave the impression
that they saw eye to eye with the butler in his estimate
of the
women.
young visitor. I was left to face the two
Of these—reading from right to left—one was a
tall, angular, hawk-faced female with a stony eye.
The other, to whom I gave but a passing glance at the
moment, was small, and so it seemed to me, pleasant-FIRST AID FOR DORA 119
looking. She had bright hair faintly powdered with
grey, and mild eyes of a china blue. She reminded
me of the better class of cat. I took her to be some
casual caller who had looked in for a cup of tea. It
was the hawk on whom I riveted my attention. She
was looking at me with a piercing and unpleasant
stare, and I thought how exactly she resembled the
picture I had formed of her in my mind from Uk-
ridge’s conversation.
“Miss Ukridge?’” I said, sliding on a rug towards
her and feeling like some novice whose manager,
against his personal wishes, has fixed him up with a
match with the heavyweight champion.
“Tam Miss Ukridge,” said the other woman. “Miss
Watterson, Mr. Corcoran.”’
It was a shock, but, the moment of surprise over, I
began to feel something approaching mental comfort
for the first time since I had entered this house of
slippery rugs and supercilious butlers. Somehow I
had got the impression from Ukridge that his aunt
was a sort of stage aunt, all stiff satin and raised
eyebrows. This half-portion with the mild blue eyes
I felt that I could tackle. It passed my comprehen-
sion why Ukridge should ever have found her intimi-
dating.
“IT hope you will not mind if we have our little
talk before Miss Watterson,” she said with a charming
smile. “She has come to arrange the details of the
Pen and Ink Club dance which we are giving shortly.
She will keep quite quiet and not interrupt. You don’t
mind ?”120 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Not at all, not at all,” I said in my attractive way.
It is not exaggerating to say that at this moment I
felt debonair. “Not at all, not at all. Oh, not at all.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
“Thank you, thank you.”
The hawk moved over to the window, leaving us to
ourselves.
“Now we are quite cosy,” said Ukridge’s aunt.
“Yes, yes,’ I agreed. Dash it, I liked this woman.
“Tell me, Mr. Corcoran,” said Ukridge’s aunt, “‘are
you on the staff of Woman’s Sphere? It is one of my
favourite papers. I read it every week.”
“The outside staff.’’
“What do you mean by the outside staff?”
“Well, I don’t actually work in the office, but the
editor gives me occasional jobs.”
“T see. Who is the editor now?”
I began to feel slightly less debonair. She was just
making conversation, of course, to put me at my ease,
but I wished she would stop asking me these ques-
tions. I searched desperately in my mind for a name
—any name—but as usual on these occasions every
name in the English language had passed from me.
“Of course. I remember now,” said Ukridge’s aunt,
to my profound relief. “It’s Mr. Jevons, isn’t it? J
met him one night at dinner.”
“Jevons,’ I burbled. ‘“‘That’s right. Jevons.”
“A tall man with a light moustache.”’
“Well, fairly tall,” I said, judicially.
‘“‘And he sent you here to interview me?”
ames.FIRST AID FOR DORA 121
“Well, which of my novels do you wish me to talk
about ?”
I relaxed with a delightful sense of relief. I felt
on solid ground at last. And then it suddenly came
to me that Ukridge in his woollen-headed way had
omitted to mention the name of a single one of this
woman's books.
“Er—oh, all of them,” I said hurriedly.
“T see. My general literary work.”
“Exactly,” I said. My feeling towards her now was
one of positive affection.
She leaned back in her chair with her finger-tips
together, a pretty look of meditation on her face.
“Do you think it would interest the readers of
Woman's Sphere to know which novel of mine is my
own favourite?”
“T am sure it would.”
“Of course,” said Ukridge’s aunt, “‘it is not easy for
an author to answer a question like that. You see, one
has moods in which first one book and then another
appeals to one.”
“Quite,” I replied. “Quite.”
“Which of my books do you like best, Mr. Corco-
Tate
There swept over me the trapped feeling one gets
in nightmares. From six baskets the six Pekingese
stared at me unwinkingly.
““Er—oh, all of them,” I heard a croaking voice reply.
My voice, presumably, though I did not recognise it.
“How delightful!” said Ukridge’s aunt. “Now, I
really do call that delightful. One or two of the122 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
critics have said that my work was uneven. It is so
nice to meet someone who doesn’t agree with them.
Personally, I think my favourite is The Heart of
Adelaide.”
I nodded my approval of this sound choice. The
muscles which had humped themselves stiffly on my
back began to crawl back into place again. I found it
possible to breathe.
“Yes,” I said, frowning thoughtfully, “I suppose
The Heart of Adelaide is the best thing you have
written. It has such human appeal,” I added, playing
it safe.
“Have you read it, Mr. Corcoran?”
“Oh, yes.’’
“And you really enjoyed it?”
“Tremendously.”’
“You don’t think it is a fair criticism to say that
it is a little broad in parts?”
“Most unfair.” I began to see my way. I do not
know why, but I had been assuming that her novels
must be the sort you find in seaside libraries. Evi-
dently they belonged to the other class of female
novels, the sort which libraries ban. ‘“‘Of course,” I
said, “it is written honestly, fearlessly, and shows life
as itus. But broaay No. not’
“That scene in the conservatory?”
“Best thing in the book,” I said stoutly.
A pleased smile played about her mouth. Ukridge
had been right. Praise her work, and a child could
eat out of her hand. I found myself wishing that IFIRST AID FOR DORA 123
had really read the thing, so that I could have gone
into more detail and made her still happier.
she said. ‘Really, it is
’
“T’m so glad you like it,’
most encouraging.”
“Oh, no,” I murmured modestly.
“Oh, but it is. Because I have only just started
to write it, you see. I finished chapter one this morn-
ing.”
She was still smiling so engagingly that for a mo-
ment the full horror of these words did not penetrate
my consciousness.
“The Heart of Adelaide is my next novel. The
scene in the conservatory, which you like so much,
comes towards the middle of it. I was not expecting
to reach it till about the end of next month. How
odd that you should know all about it!”
I had got it now all right, and it was like sitting
down on the empty space where there should have
been a chair. Somehow the fact that she was so
pleasant about it all served to deepen my discomfiture.
In the course of an active life I have frequently felt
a fool, but never such a fool as I felt then. The fear-
ful woman had been playing with me, leading me on,
watching me entangle myself like a fly on fly-paper.
And suddenly I perceived that I had erred in thinking
of her eyes as mild. A hard gleam had come into
them. They were like a couple of blue gimlets. She
looked like a cat that had caught a mouse, and it was
revealed to me in one sickening age-long instant why
Ukridge went in fear of her. There was that about
her which would have intimidated the Sheik.124 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“It seems so odd, too,” she tinkled on, “that you
should have come to interview me for Woman’s
Sphere. Because they published an interview with me
only the week before last. I thought it so strange
that I rang up my friend Miss Watterson, who is the
editress, and asked her if there had not been some
mistake. And she said she had never heard of you.
Fave you ever heard of Mr. Corcoran, Muriel?”
“Never,” said the hawk, fixing me with a revolted
eye.
“How strange!” said Ukridge’s aunt. “But then
the whole thing is so strange. Oh, must you go, Mr.
Corcoran?”
My mind was in a slightly chaotic condition, but
on that one point it was crystal-clear. Yes, I must go.
Through the door if I could find it—failing that,
through the window. And anybody who tried to stop
me would do well to have a care.
“You will remember me to Mr. Jevons when you
see him, won’t you?” said Ukridge’s aunt.
I was fumbling at the handle.
“And, Mr. Corcoran.” She was still smiling ami-
ably, but there had come into her voice a note like that
which it had had on a certain memorable occasion when
summoning Ukridge to his doom from the unseen
interior of his Sheep’s Cray cottage. ‘‘Will you please
tell my nephew Stanley that I should be glad if he
would send no more of his friends to see me. Good
afternoon.”
I suppose that at some point in the proceedings my
hostess must have rung a bell, for out in the passageFIRST AID FOR DORA 125
I found my old chum, the butler. With the uncanny
telepathy of his species he appeared aware that I was
leaving under what might be called a cloud, for his
manner had taken on a warder-like grimness. His
hand looked as if it was itching to grasp me by the
shoulder, and when we reached the front door he eyed
the pavement wistfully, as if thinking what a splendid
spot it would be for me to hit with a thud.
“Nice day,’ I said, with the feverish instinct to
babble which comes to strong men in their agony.
He scorned to reply, and as I tottered down the
sunlit street I was conscious of his gaze following me.
““A very vicious specimen,” I could fancy him say-
ing. “And mainly due to my prudence and foresight
that he hasn’t got away with the spoons.”’
It was a warm afternoon, but to such an extent
had the recent happenings churned up my emotions
that I walked the whole way back to Ebury Street
with a rapidity which caused more languid pedestrians
to regard me with a pitying contempt. Reaching my
sitting-room in an advanced state of solubility and fa-
tigue, I found Ukridge stretched upon the sofa.
“Hallo, laddie!’”’ said Ukridge, reaching out a hand
for the cooling drink that lay on the floor beside him.
“TI was wondering when you would show up. I wanted
to tell you that it won’t be necessary for you to go
and see my aunt after all. It appears that Dora has
a hundred quid tucked away in a bank, and she’s been
offered a partnership by a woman she knows who
runs one of these typewriting places. I advised her
to close with it. So she’s all right.”126 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
He quaffed deeply of the bowl and breathed a con-
tented sigh. There was a silence.
“When did you hear of this?” I asked at length.
“Yesterday afternoon,” said Ukridge. ‘I meant to
pop round and tell you, but somehow it slipped my
mind.”CHAPTER V
THE RETURN OF BATTLING BILLSON
T was a most embarrassing moment, one of those
moments which plant lines on the face and turn the
hair a distinguished grey at the temples. I looked
at the barman. The barman looked at me. The
assembled company looked at us both impartially.
“Ho!” said the barman.
I am very quick. I could see at once that he was
not in sympathy with me. He was a large, profuse
man, and his eye as it met mine conveyed the im-
pression that he regarded me as a bad dream come
true. His mobile lips curved slightly, showing a gold
tooth; and the muscles of his brawny arms, which
were strong as iron bands, twitched a little.
“Ho!” he said.
The circumstances which had brought me into my
present painful position were as follows. In writing
those stories for the popular magazines which at that
time were causing so many editors so much regret, I
was accustomed, like one of my brother-authors, te
take all mankind for my province. Thus, one day I
would be dealing with dukes in their castles, and next
J would turn right round and start tackling the sub-
127128 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
merged tenth in their slums. Versatile. At the mo-
ment I happened to be engaged upon a rather poign-
ant little thing about a girl called Liz, who worked
in a fried-fish shop in the Ratcliff Highway, and I had
accordingly gone down there to collect local colour.
For whatever posterity may say of James Corcoran,
it can never say that he shrank from inconveniences
where his art was concerned.
The Ratcliff Highway is an interesting thorough-
fare, but on a warm day it breeds thirst. After wan-
dering about for an hour or so, therefore, I entered
the Prince of Wales public-house, called for a pint
of beer, drained it at a draught, reached in my pocket
for coin, and found emptiness. I was in a position
to add to my notes on the East End of London one
to the effect that pocket-pickery flourishes there as a
fine art.
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said, smiling an apologetic
smile and endeavouring to put a debonair winsomeness
into my voice. “I find I’ve got no money.”
It was at this point that the barman said “Ho!”
and moved out into the open through a trick door in
the counter.
“I think my pocket must have been picked,” I said.
“Oh, do you?” said the barman.
He gave me the idea of being rather a soured man.
Years of association with unscrupulous citizens who
tried to get drinks for nothing had robbed him of that
fine fresh young enthusiasm with which he had started
out on his career of barmanship.THE RETURN OF BILLSON 129
“T had better leave my name and address,’ I sug-
gested.
“Who,” enquired the barman, coldly, “wants your
blinking name and address?”
These practical men go straight to the heart of a
thing. He had put his finger on the very hub of the
matter. Who did want my blinking name and address?
No one.
“T will send
began to happen suddenly. An obviously expert hand
gripped me by the back of the neck, another closed
upon the seat of my trousers, there was a rush of air,
” I was proceeding, when things
and I was rolling across the pavement in the direction
of a wet and unsavoury gutter. The barman, gigantic
against the dirty white front of the public-house, sur-
veyed me grimly.
I think that, if he had confined himself to mere
looks—however offensive—I would have gone no
further into the matter. After all, the man had right
on his side. How could he be expected to see into my
soul and note its snowy purity? But, as I picked my-
self up, he could not resist the temptation to improve
the occasion.
“That’s what comes of tryin’ to snitch drinks,” he
said, with what seemed to me insufferable priggishness.
Those harsh words stung me to the quick. I burned
with generous wrath. I flung myself on that barman.
The futility of attacking such a colossus never
occurred to me. I forgot entirely that he could put
me out of action with one hand.
A moment later, however, he had reminded me of130 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
this fact. Even as I made my onslaught an enormous
fist came from nowhere and crashed into the side of
my head. I sat down again.
“Plot?
I was aware, dimly, that someone was speaking to
me, someone who was not the barman. That athlete
had already dismissed me as a spent force and returned
to his professional duties. I looked up and got a
sort of general impression of bigness and blue serge,
and then I was lifted lightly to my feet.
My head had begun to clear now, and I was able
to look more steadily at my sympathiser. And, as
I looked, the feeling came to me that I had seen him
before somewhere. That red hair, those glinting eyes,
that impressive bulk—it was my old friend Wilber-
force Billson and no other—Battling Billson, the
coming champion, whom I had last seen fighting at
Wonderland under the personal management of Stan-
ley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge.
“Did ’e ’it yer?” enquired Mr. Billson.
There was only one answer to this. Disordered
though my faculties were, I was clear upon this point.
I said, “Yes, he did hit me.”
“"R! said Mr. Billson, and immediately passed into
the hostelry.
It was not at once that I understood the significance
of this move. The interpretation I placed upon his
abrupt departure was that, having wearied of my so-
ciety, he had decided to go and have some refreshment.
Only when the sound of raised voices from within
came pouring through the door did I begin to suspectTHE RETURN OF BILLSON 131
that in attributing to it such callousness I might have
wronged that golden nature. With the sudden reap-
pearance of the barman—who shot out as if impelled
by some imperious force and did a sort of backwards
fox-trot across the pavement—suspicion became cer-
tainty.
The barman, as becomes a man plying his trade in
the Ratcliff Highway, was made of stern stuff. He
was no poltroon. As soon as he had managed to stop
himself from pirouetting, he dabbed at his right cheek-
bone in a delicate manner, soliloquised for a moment,
and then dashed back into the bar. And it was after
the door had swung to again behind him that the pro-
ceedings may have been said formally to have begun.
What precisely was going on inside that bar I was
still too enfeebled to go and see. It sounded like an
earthquake, and no meagre earthquake at that, All
the glassware in the world seemed to be smashing
simultaneously, the populations of several cities were
shouting in unison, and I could almost fancy that I
saw the walls of the building shake and heave. And
then somebody blew a police-whistle.
There is a magic about the sound of a police-whistle.
It acts like oil on the most troubled waters. This one
brought about an instant lull in the tumult. Glasses
ceased to break, voices were hushed, and a moment
later out came Mr. Billson, standing not upon the
order of his going. His nose was bleeding a little and
there was the scenario of a black eye forming on his
face, but otherwise there seemed nothing much the
matter with him. He cast a wary look up and down132 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
the street and sprinted for the nearest corner. And ],
shaking off the dreamy after-effects of my encounter
with the barman, sprinted in his wake. I was glowing
with gratitude and admiration. I wanted to catch this
man up and thank him formally. I wanted to assure
him of my undying esteem. Moreover, I wanted to
borrow sixpence from him. The realisation that he
was the only man in the whole wide East End of
London who was likely to lend me the money to save
me having to walk back to Ebury Street gave me a
rare burst of speed.
It was not easy to overtake him, for the sound of
my pursuing feet evidently suggested to Mr. Billson
that the hunt was up, and he made good going.
Eventually, however, when in addition to running I
began to emit a plaintive “Mr. Billson! I say, Mr.
Billson!”” at every second stride, he seemed to gather
that he was among friends.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said, halting.
He was plainly relieved. He produced a murky pipe
and lit it. I delivered my speech of thanks. Having
heard me out, he removed his pipe and put into a few
short words the moral of the whole affair.
“Nobody don’t dot no pals of mine not when I’m
around,” said Mr. Billson.
“It was awfully good of you to trouble,” I said
with feeling.
“No trouble,” said Mr. Billson.
“You must have hit that barman pretty hard. He
came out at about forty miles an hour.”’
“T dotted him,” agreed Mr. Billson.THE RETURN OF BILLSON 133
“T’m afraid he has hurt your eye,” I said, sym-
pathetically.
“Him!” said Mr. Billson, expectorating with scorn.
“That wasn’t him. That was his pals. Six or seven
of ’em there was.”
“And did you dot them too?” I cried, amazed at the
prowess of this wonder-man.
“°R!” said Mr. Billson. He smoked awhile. “But
I dotted ’im most,” he proceeded. He looked at me
with honest warmth, his chivalrous heart plainly
stirred to its depths. ‘The idea,” he said, disgustedly,
Or ai ————- *is size’’—he defined the barman
crisply and, as far as I could judge after so brief an
acquaintanceship, accurately—“goin’ and dottin’ a little
like you!”
The sentiment was so admirable that I could not
take exception to its phraseology. Nor did I rebel at
To aman of Mr. Billson’s mould
,
being called “‘little.’
I supposed most people looked little.
“Well, I’m very much obliged,’ I said.
Mr. Billson smoked in silence.
“Have you been back long?” I asked, for something
to say. Outstanding as were his other merits, he was
not good at keeping a conversation alive.
“Back?” said Mr. Billson.
“Back in London. Ukridge told me that you had
gone to sea again.”
“Say, mister,” exclaimed Mr. Billson, for the first
time seeming to show real interest in my remarks, “‘you
seen ’im lately?”
“Ukridge? Oh, yes, I see him nearly every day.”134 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“T been tryin’ to find ’im.”’
“T can give you his address,” I said. And I wrote
it down on the back of an envelope. Then, having
shaken his hand, I thanked him once more for his
courteous assistance and borrowed my fare back to
civilisation on the Underground, and we parted with
mutual expressions of good will.
The next step in the march of events was what I
shall call the Episode of the Inexplicable Female. It
occurred two days later. Returning shortly after lunch
to my rooms in Ebury Street, I was met in the
hall by Mrs. Bowles, my landlord’s wife. I greeted
her a trifle nervously, for, like her husband, she always
exercised a rather oppressive effect on me. She lacked
Bowles’s ambassadorial dignity, but made up for it by
a manner so peculiarly sepulchral that strong men
quailed before her pale gaze. Scotch by birth, she had
an eye that looked as if it was for ever searching for
astral bodies wrapped in winding-sheets—this, I be-
lieve, being a favourite indoor sport among certain
sets in North Britain.
“Sir,” said Mrs. Bowles, “there is a body in your
sitting-room.”’
“A body!’ I am bound to say that this Phillips-
Oppenheim-like opening to the conversation gave me
something of a shock. Then I remembered her na-
tionality. “Oh, you mean a man?”
“A woman,” corrected Mrs. Bowles. ‘‘A body ina
pink hat.”’
I was conscious of a feeling of guilt. In this pure
and modest house, female bodies in pink hats seemedTHE RETURN OF BILLSON 135
to require explanation. I felt that the correct thing
to do would have been to call upon Heaven to witness
that this woman was nothing to me, nothing.
“T was to give you this letter, sir.’
I took it and opened the envelope with a sigh. I
had recognised the handwriting of Ukridge, and for
the hundredth time in our close acquaintanceship there
smote me like a blow the sad suspicion that this man
had once more gone and wished upon me some fright-
ful thing.
“My DEAR OLD HorsE,—
“It’s not often I ask you to do anything for
”
aT) is
I laughed hollowly.
“My DEAR OLD HorsE,—
“It’s not often I ask you to do anything for me,
laddie, but I beg and implore you to rally round now
and show yourself the true friend I know you are.
The one thing I’ve always said about you, Corky my
boy, is that you’re a real pal who never lets a fellow
down.
“The bearer of this—a delightful woman, you'll
like her—is Flossie’s mother. She’s up for the day
by excursion from the North, and it is absolutely vital
that she be lushed up and seen off at Euston at six-
forty-five. I can’t look after her myself, as unfor-
tunately I’m laid up with a sprained ankle. Otherwise
I wouldn’t trouble you.
“This is a life and death matter, old man, and I’m136 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
relying on you. I can’t possibly tell you how important
it is that this old bird should be suitably entertained.
The gravest issues hang on it. So shove on your hat
and go to it, laddie, and blessings will reward you.
Tell you all the details when we meet.
“Yours ever,
“S. F. UKRIDGE.
“P.S.—I will defray all expenses later.”
Those last words did wring a faint, melancholy
smile from me, but apart from them this hideous docu-
ment seemed to me to be entirely free from comic
relief. I looked at my watch and found that it was
barely two-thirty. This female, therefore, was on my
hands for a solid four hours and a quarter. I breathed
maledictions—futile, of course, for it was a peculiar
characteristic of the demon Ukridge on these occasions
that, unless one were strong-minded enough to dis-
regard his frenzied pleadings altogether (a thing which
was nearly always beyond me), he gave one no chance
of escape. He sprang his foul schemes on one at the
very last moment, leaving no opportunity for a grace-
ful refusal.
I proceeded slowly up the stairs to my sitting-room.
It would have been a distinct advantage, I felt, if I
had known who on earth this Flossie was of whom he
wrote with such airy familiarity. The name, though
Ukridge plainly expected it to touch a chord in me,
left me entirely unresponsive. As far as ] was aware,
there was no Flossie of any description in my life. I
thought back through the years. Long-forgottenTHE RETURN OF BILLSON 137
Janes and Kates and Muriels and Elizabeths rose from
the murky depths of my memory as I stirred it, but
no Flossie. It occurred to me as I opened the door
that, if Ukridge was expecting pleasant reminiscences
of Flossie to form a tender bond between me and her
mother, he was building on sandy soil.
The first impression I got on entering the room was
that Mrs. Bowles possessed the true reporter’s gift for
picking out the detail that really mattered. One could
have said many things about Flossie’s mother, as, for
instance, that she was stout, cheerful, and far more
tightly laced than a doctor would have considered
judicious; but what stood out above all the others was
the fact that she was wearing a pink hat. It was
the largest, gayest, most exuberantly ornate specimen
of head-wear that I had ever seen, and the prospect of
spending four hours and a quarter in its society added
the last touch to my already poignant gloom. The only
gleam of sunshine that lightened my darkness was the
reflection that, if we went to a picture-palace, she
would have to remove it.
“Er—how do you do?” I said, pausing in the door-
way.
“’Ow do you do?” said a voice from under the hat.
“Say ‘’Ow-do-you-do?’ to the gentleman, Cecil.”’
IT perceived a small, shiny boy by the window.
Ukridge, realising with the true artist’s instinct that
the secret of all successful prose is the knowledge of
what to omit, had not mentioned him in his letter; and,
as he turned reluctantly to go through the necessary138 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
civilities, it seemed to me that the burden was more
than I could bear. He was a rat-faced, sinister-looking
boy, and he gazed at me with a frigid distaste which
reminded me of the barman at the Prince of Wales
public-house in Ratcliff Highway.
“T brought Cecil along,” said Flossie’s (and pre-
sumably Cecil’s) mother, after the stripling, having
growled a cautious greeting, obviously with the mental
reservation that it committed him to nothing, had re-
turned to the window, “because I thought it would be
nice for ’im to say he had seen London.”
“Quite, quite,” I replied, while Cecil, at the window,
gazed darkly out at London as if he did not think much
of it.
“Mr. Ukridge said you would trot us round.”
‘Delighted, delighted,” I quavered, looking at the
hat and looking swiftly away again. “I think we had
better go to a picture-palace, don’t you?”’
“Naw!” said Cecil. And there was that in his man-
ner which suggested that when he said “Naw!” it was
final.
“Cecil wants to see the sights,” explained his mother.
“We can see all the pictures back at home. ’E’s been
lookin’ forward to seein’ the sights of London. It'll
be an education for ’im, like, to see all the sights.”
“Westminster Abbey?” I suggested. After all,
what could be better for the lad’s growing mind than
to inspect the memorials of the great past and, if
disposed, pick out a suitable site for his own burial at
some later date? Also, I had a fleeting notion, which
a moment’s reflection exploded before it could bringTHE RETURN OF BILLSON 139
me much comfort, that women removed their hats in
Westminster Abbey.
“Naw! said Cecil.
*“’E wants to see the murders,’
mother.
’
explained Flossie’s
She spoke as if it were the most reasonable of
boyish desires, but it sounded to me impracticable.
Homicides do not publish formal programmes of their
intended activities. I had no notion what murders
were scheduled for to-day.
“"E always reads up all the murders in the Sunday
paper,” went on the parent, throwing light on the
matter,
“Oh, I understand,” I said. “Then Madame Tus-
saud’s 1s the spot he wants. They’ve got all the mur-
derers.”
“Naw!” said Cecil.
“It’s the places ’e wants to see,” said Flossie’s
mo.her, amiably tolerant of my density. “The places
where all them murders was committed. ’E’s clipped
out the addresses and ’e wants to be able to tell ‘is
friends when he gets back that ’e’s seen ’em.”’
A profound relief surged over me.
“Why, we can do the whole thing in a cab,” I cried.
“We can stay in a cab from start to finish. No need
to leave the cab at all.”
“Orla bus ie
“Not a bus,” I said firmly. I was quite decided on
a cab—one with blinds that would pull down, if pos-
sible.
“’Ave it your own way,” said Flossie’s mother,140 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
agreeably. “Speaking as far as I’m personally con-
cerned, I’m shaw there’s nothing I would rather prefer
than a nice ride in a keb. Jear what the gentleman
says, Cecil? You're goin’ to ride ina keb.”
“Urgh!” said Cecil, as if he would believe it when
he saw it. ?
“Yes. He was to get it for losing. Some fellows
who wanted a chance to do some heavy betting per-
suaded him to sell the fight.”’
“But he didn’t sell the fight.”
“T know that, dammit. That’s the whole trouble.
And do you know why he didn’t? I'll tell you. Just
as he was all ready to let himself be knocked out in
that fifth round, the other bloke happened to tread on
his ingrowing toe-nail, and that made him so mad that
he forgot about everything else and sailed in and
hammered the stuffing out of him. I ask you, laddie!
I appeal to you as a reasonable man. Have you ever
in your life heard of such a footling, idiotic, woollen-
headed proceeding? Throwing away a fortune, an
absolute dashed fortune, purely to gratify a momentary
whim! Hurling away wealth beyond the dreams of158 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
avarice simply because a bloke stamped on his ingrow-
ing toe-nail. His ingrowing toe-nail!’’ Ukridge
laughed raspingly. ‘What right has a boxer to have
an ingrowing toe-nail? And if he has an ingrowing
toe-nail, surely—my gosh!—he can stand a little tri-
fling discomfort for half a minute. The fact of the
matter is, old horse, boxers aren’t what they were.
Degenerate, laddie, absolutely degenerate. No heart.
No courage. No self-respect. No vision. The old
bulldog breed has disappeared entirely.”
And with a moody nod Stanley Featherstonehaugh
Ukridge passed out into the night.GHAR TERS WI
UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH
ae girl from the typewriting and stenographic
bureau had a quiet but speaking eye. At first
it had registered nothing but enthusiasm and the desire
to please. But now, rising from that formidable
notebook, it met mine with a look of exasperated be-
wilderment. There was an expression of strained
sweetness on her face, as of a good woman unjustly
put upon. I could read what was in her mind as clearly
as if she had been impolite enough to shout it. She
thought me a fool. And as this made the thing unan-
imous, for I had been feeling exactly the same myself
for the last quarter of an hour, I decided that the
painful exhibition must now terminate.
It was Ukridge who had let me in for the thing. He
had fired my imagination with the tales of authors who
were able to turn out five thousand words a day by
dictating their stuff to a stenographer instead of writ-
ing it; and though I felt at the time that he was merely
trying to drum up trade for the typewriting bureau
in which his young friend Dora Mason was now a
partner, the lure of the idea had gripped me. Like all
writers, [ had a sturdy distaste for solid work, and
159160 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
this seemed to offer a pleasant way out, turning lit-
erary composition into a jolly téte-a-tete chat. It was
only when those gleaming eyes looked eagerly into mine
and that twitching pencil poised itself to record the
lightest of my golden thoughts that I discovered what
I was up against. For fifteen minutes I had been ex-
periencing all the complex emotions of a nervous man
who, suddenly called upon to make a public speech,
realises too late that his brain has been withdrawn
and replaced by a cheap cauliflower substitute: and I
was through.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m afraid it’s not much use
going on. I don’t seem able to manage 1:
Now that I had come frankly out into the open and
admitted my idiocy, the girl’s expression softened.
She closed her notebook forgivingly.
“Lots of people can’t,” she said. “It’s just a
knack.”
“Everything seems to go out of my head.”
“lve often thought it must be very difficult to dic-
tate.”
Two minds with but a single thought, in fact. Her
sweet reasonableness, combined with the relief that
the thing was over, induced in me a desire to babble.
One has the same feeling when the dentist lets one out
of his chair.
“Youre from the Norfolk Street Agency, aren't
you?” I said. A silly question, seeing that I had
expressly rung them up on the telephone and asked
them to send somebody round; but I was still feeling
the effects of the ether.UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 161
eS.
“That’s in Norfolk Street, isn’t it? I mean,” I
went on hurriedly, “I wonder if you know a Miss
Mason there? Miss Dora Mason.”
She seemed surprised.
“My name is Dora Mason,” she said.
I was surprised, too. I had not supposed that
partners in typewriting businesses stooped to going
out on these errands. And I was conscious of a
return of my former embarrassment, feeling—quite
unreasonably, for I had only seen her once in my life,
and then from a distance
membered her.
‘‘We were short-handed at the office,” she explained,
“so I came along. But how do you know my name?”
“I am a great friend of Ukridge’s.”’
“Why, of course! I was wondering why your
name was so familiar. Ive heard him talk so much
about you.”
And after that we really did settle down to the
cosy téte-a-téte of which I had had visions. She was
a nice girl, the only noticeable flaw in her character
being an absurd respect for Ukridge’s intelligence and
abilities. I, who had known that foe of the human
race from boyhood up and was still writhing beneath
the memory of the night when he had sneaked my
dress clothes, could have corrected her estimate of
him, but it seemed unkind to shatter her girlish dreams.
“He was wonderful about this typewriting busi-
ness,”’ she said. “It was such a splendid opportunity,
and but for Mr. Ukridge I should have had to let it
that I ought to have re-162 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
slip. You see, they were asking two hundred pounds
for the partnership, and I only had a hundred. And
Mr. Ukridge insisted on putting up the rest of the
money. You see—I don’t know if he told you—he
insisted that he ought to do something because he says
he lost me the position I had with his aunt. It wasn’t
his fault at all, really, but he kept saying that if I
hadn’t gone to that dance with him I shouldn’t have
got back late and been dismissed. So es
She was a rapid talker, and it was only now that I
was able to comment on the amazing statement which
she had made in the opening portion of her speech.
So stunning had been the effect of those few words
on me that I had hardly heard her subsequent re-
marks.
‘Did you say that Ukridge insisted on finding the
rest?” I gasped.
“Ves. Wasn’t it nice of him?”
“He gave you a hundred pounds? Ukridge!”
“Guaranteed it,” said Miss Mason. “I arranged
to pay a hundred pounds down and the rest in sixty
days.”
“But suppose the rest is not paid in sixty days?”
“Well, then I’m afraid I should lose my hundred.
But it will be, of course. Mr. Ukridge told me to have
no anxiety about that at all. Well, good-bye, Mr.
Corcoran. I must be going now. I’m sorry we didn't
get better results with the dictating. I should think it
must be very difficult to do till you get used to iten
Her cheerful smile as she went out struck me as one
of the most pathetic sights I had ever seen. Poor child,UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 163
bustling off so brightly when her whole future rested
on Ukridge’s ability to raise a hundred pounds! I
presumed that he was relying on one of those Utopian
schemes of his which were to bring him in thousands—
and not for the
“at a conservative estimate, laddie!”
first time in a friendship of years the reflection came to
me that Ukridge ought to be in some sort of a home.
A capital fellow in many respects, but not a man lightly
to be allowed at large.
I was pursuing this train of thought when the bang-
ing of the front door, followed by a pounding of foot-
steps on the stairs and a confused noise without,
announced his arrival.
“T say, laddie,” said Ukridge, entering the room, as
was his habit, like a northeasterly gale, “was that Dora
Mason I saw going down the street? It looked like her
back. Has she been here?”
“Yes. I asked her agency to send someone to take
dictation, and she came.”’
Ukridge reached out for the tobacco jar, filled his
pipe, replenished his pouch, sank comfortably on to the
sofa, adjusted the cushions, and bestowed an approving
glance upon me.
“Corky, my boy,” said Ukridge, “what I like about
you and the reason why I always maintain that you
will be a great man one of these days is that you have
vision. You have the big, broad, flexible outlook.
You’re not too proud to take advice. I say to you,
‘Dictate your stuff, it’ll pay you,’ and, damme, you go
straight off and do it. No arguing or shilly-shallying.
You just go and do it. It’s the spirit that wins to164 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
success. I like to see it. Dictating will add thousands
a year to your income. I say it advisedly, laddie—
thousands. And if you continue leading a steady and
sober life and save your pennies, you'll be amazed at
the way your capital will pile up. Money at five per
cent. compound interest doubles itself every fourteen
>)
years. By the time you're forty
It seemed churlish to strike a jarring note after all
these compliments, but it had to be done.
“Never mind about what’s going to happen to me
when I’m forty,” I said. ‘What I want to know is
what is all this I hear about you guaranteeing Miss
Mason a hundred quid?”
“Ah, she told you? Yes,” said Ukridge, airily, Oh
guaranteed it. Matter of conscience, old son. Man of
honour, no alternative. You see, there’s no getting
away from it, it was my fault that she was sacked by
my aunt. Got to see her through, laddie, got to see
her through.”
I goggled at the man.
“Took here,” I said, “let’s get this thing straight. A
couple of days ago you touched me for five shillings
and said it would save your life.”
“Tt did, old man, it did.”
“And now you're talking of scattering hundred quid
about the place as if you were Rothschild. Do you
smoke it or inject it with a hypodermic needle?”
There was pain in Ukridge’s eyes as he sat up and
gazed at me through the smoke.
“T don’t like this tone, laddie,” he said, reproach fully.UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 165
“Upon my Sam, it wounds me. It sounds as if you
had lost faith in me, in my vision.”
“Oh, I know you’ve got vision. And the big, broad,
flexible outlook. Also snap, ginger, enterprise, and ears
that stick out at right angles like the sails of a wind-
mill. But that doesn’t help me to understand where on
earth you expect to get a hundred quid.”
Ukridge smiled tolerantly.
“You don’t suppose I would have guaranteed the
money for poor little Dora unless I knew where to lay
my hands on it, do you? If you ask me, Have I got
the stuff at this precise moment? I candidly reply, No,
I haven’t. But it’s fluttering on the horizon, laddie,
fluttering on the horizon. I can hear the beating of its
wings.”
“Is Battling Billson going to fight someone and make
your fortune again?”
Ukridge winced, and the look of pain flitted across
his face once more.
“Don’t mention that man’s name to me, old horse,”’
he begged. “Every time I think of him everything
seems to go all black. No, the thing I have on hand
now is a real solid business proposition. Gilt-edged,
you might call it: I ran into a bloke the other day
whom I used to know out in Canada.”
“I didn’t know you had ever been in Canada,” I in-
terrupted.
“Of course I’ve been in Canada. Go over there and
ask the first fellow you meet if I was ever in Canada.
Canada! I should say I had been in Canada. Why,
when I left Canada, I was seen off on the steamer by166 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
a couple of policemen. Well, I ran into this bloke in
Piccadilly. He was wandering up and down and look-
ing rather lost. Couldn’t make out what the deuce
he was doing over here, because, when I knew him,
he hadn’t a cent. Well, it seems that he got fed up
with Canada and went over to America to try and make
his fortune. And, by Jove, he did, first crack out of the
box. Bought a bit of land about the size of a pocket-
handkerchief in Texas or Oklahoma or somewhere, and
one morning, when he was hoeing the soil or planting
turnips or something, out buzzed a whacking great
oil-well. Apparently that sort of thing’s happening
every day out there. If I could get a bit of capital
together, I’m dashed if I wouldn’t go to Texas myself.
Great open spaces where men are men, laddie—suit me
down to the ground. Well, we got talking, and he said
that he intended to settle in England. Came from
London as a kid, but couldn’t stick it at any price now
because they had altered it so much. I told him the
thing for him to do was to buy a house in the country
with a decent bit of shooting, and he said, ‘Well, how
do you buy a house in the country with a decent bit of
shooting?’ and I said, ‘Leave it entirely in my hands,
old horse. TI’ll see you're treated right.’ So he told
me to go ahead, and I went to Farmingdons, the house-
agent blokes in Cavendish Square. Had a chat with
the manager. Very decent old bird with moth-eaten
whiskers. I said I’d got a millionaire looking for a
house in the country. ‘Find him one, laddie,’ I said,
‘and we split the commish.’ He said ‘Right-o,’ and
any day now I expect to hear that he’s dug up some-UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 167
thing suitable. Well, you can see for yourself what
that’s going to mean. These house-agent fellows take
it as a personal affront if a client gets away from them
with anything except a collar-stud and the clothes he
stands up in, and I’m in halves. Reason it out, my
boy, reason it out.”
“You’re sure this man really has money?”
“Crawling with it, laddie. Hasn’t found out yet
there’s anything smaller than a five-pound note in cir-
culation. He took me to lunch, and when he tipped
the waiter the man burst into tears and kissed him on
both cheeks.”
I am bound to admit that I felt easier in my mind,
for it really did seem as though the fortunes of Miss
Mason rested on firm ground. I had never supposed
that Ukridge could be associated with so sound a
scheme, and [ said so. In fact, I rather overdid my
approval, for it encouraged him to borrow another five
shillings; and before he left we were in treaty over a
further deal which was to entail my advancing him
half a sovereign in one solid payment. Business breeds
business.
For the next ten days I saw nothing of Ukridge. As
he was in the habit of making these periodical dis-
appearances, I did not worry unduly as to the where-
abouts of my wandering boy, but I was conscious from
time to time of a mild wonder as to what had become
of him. The mystery was solved one night when I
was walking through Pall Mall on my way home after
a late session with an actor acquaintance who was
going into vaudeville, and to whom I hoped
mis-168 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
takenly, as it turned out—to sell a one-act play.
I say night, but it was nearly two in the morning.
The streets were black and deserted, silence was every-
where, and all London slept except Ukridge and a
friend of his whom I came upon standing outside
Hardy’s fishing tackle shop. That is to say, Ukridge
was standing outside the shop. His friend was sit-
ting on the pavement with his back against a lamp-
post.
As far as I could see in the uncertain light, he was a
man of middle age, rugged of aspect and grizzled about
the temples. I was able to inspect his temples because
—doubtless from the best motives—he was wearing
his hat on his left foot. He was correctly clad in dress
clothes, but his appearance was a little marred by a
splash of mud across his shirt-front and the fact that
at some point earlier in the evening he had either
thrown away or been deprived of his tie. He gazed
fixedly at the hat with a poached-egg-like stare. He
was the only man I had ever seen who was smoking
two cigars at the same time.
Ukridge greeted me with the warmth of a_be-
leaguered garrison welcoming the relieving army.
“My dear old horse! Just the man I wanted!” he
cried, as if he had picked me out of a number of com-
peting applicants. “You can give me a hand with
Hank, laddie.”’
“Ts this Hank!” I enquired, glancing at the recum-
bent sportsman, who had now closed his eyes as if the
spectacle of the hat had begun to pall.
“Yes. Hank Philbrick. This is the bloke [ wasUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 169
telling you about, the fellow who wants the house.”
"He doesn’t seem to want any house. He looks
quite satisfied with the great open spaces.” "
“Poor old Hank’s a bit under the weather,” explained
Ukridge, regarding his stricken friend with tolerant
sympathy. “It takes him this way. The fact is, old
man, it’s a mistake for these blokes to come into money.
They overdo things. The only thing Hank ever got
to drink for the first fifty years of his life was water,
with buttermilk as a treat on his birthday, and he’s
trying to make up for lost time. He’s only just dis-
covered that there are such things as liqueurs in the
world, and he’s making them rather a hobby. Says
they’re such a pretty colour. It wouldn’t be so bad
if he stuck to one at a time, but he likes making ex-
periments. Mixes them, laddie. Orders the whole lot
and blends them in a tankard. Well, I mean to say,”
said Ukridge reasonably, “you can’t take more than
five or six tankards of mixed benedictine, chartreuse,
kummel, creme de menthe, and old brandy without
‘feeling the strain a bit. Especially if you stoke up on
champagne and burgundy.”
A strong shudder ran through me at the thought. I
gazed at the human cellar on the pavement with a feel-
ing bordering on awe.
“Does he really ?”’
“Every night for the last two weeks. I’ve been
with him most of the time. I’m the only pal he’s got
in London, and he likes to have me round.”
“What plans have you for his future? His im-
mediate future, I mean. Do we remove him some-170 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
where or is he going to spend the night out here under
the quiet stars?”
“T thought, if you would lend a hand, old man, we
could get him to the Carlton. He's staying there.”
“He won't be long, if he comes in in this state.”
“Bless you, my dear old man, they don’t mind. He
tipped the night-porter twenty quid yesterday and asked
me if I thought it was enough. Lend a hand, laddie.
Let’s go.”’
I lent a hand, and we went.
The effect which that nocturnal encounter had upon
me was to cement the impression that in acting as agent
for Mr. Philbrick in the purchase of a house Ukridge
was on to a good thing, What little I had seen of
Hank had convinced me that he was not the man to
be finicky about price. He would pay whatever they
asked him without hesitation. Ukridge would un-
doubtedly make enough out of his share of the commis-
sion to pay off Dora Mason’s hundred without feeling
it. Indeed, for the first time in his life he would
probably be in possession of that bit of capital of which
he was accustomed to speak so wistfully. I ceased,
therefore, to worry about Miss Mason’s future and
concentrated myself on my own troubles.
They would probably have seemed to anyone else
minor troubles, but nevertheless they were big enough
to depress me. Two days after my meeting with
Ukridge and Mr. Philbrick in Pall Mall I had received
rather a disturbing letter.
There was a Society paper for which at that time I
did occasional work and wished to do more; and theUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 171
editor of this paper had sent me a ticket for the forth-
coming dance of the Pen and Ink Club, with instruc-
tions to let him have a column and a half of bright
descriptive matter. It was only after I had digested
the pleasant reflection that here was a bit of badly
needed cash dropping on me out of a clear sky that I
realised why the words Pen and Ink Club seemed to
have a familiar ring. It was the club of which
Ukridge’s aunt Julia was the popular and energetic
president, and the thought of a second meeting with
that uncomfortable woman filled me with a deep gloom.
I had not forgotten—and probably would never forget
—my encounter with her in her drawing-room at
Wimbledon.
I was not in a financial position, however, to refuse
editors their whims, so the thing had to be gone
through; but the prospect damped me, and I was still
brooding on it when a violent ring at the front-door
bell broke in on my meditations. It was followed by
the booming of Ukridge’s voice enquiring if I were in.
A moment later he had burst into the room. His eyes
were wild, his pince-nez at an angle of forty-five, and
his collar separated from its stud by a gap of several
inches. His whole appearance clearly indicated some
blow of fate, and I was not surprised when his first
words revealed an aching heart.
“Hank Philbrick,” said Ukridge without preamble,
“is a son of Belial, a leper, and a worm.”
‘“What’s happened now?”
“He’s let me down, the weak-minded Tishbite!
Doesn’t want that house in the country after all. My172 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
gosh, if Hank Philbrick is the sort of man Canada is
producing nowadays, Heaven help the British Empire.”
I shelved my petty troubles. They seemed insignifi-
cant beside this majestic tragedy.
“What made him change his mind?” I asked.
“The wobbling, vacillating hell-hound! I always
had a feeling that there was something wrong with that
man. He hada nasty, shifty eye. You'll bear me out,
laddie, in that? MHaven’t I spoken to you a hundred
times about his shifty eye?”
“Certainly. Why did he change his mind?”
“Didn’t I always say he wasn’t to be trusted?”
“Repeatedly. What made him change his mind?”
Ukridge laughed with a sharp bitterness that nearly
cracked the window-pane. His collar leaped like a live
thing. Ukridge’s collar was always a sort of thermom-
eter that registered the warmth of his feelings.
Sometimes, when his temperature was normal, it would
remain attached to its stud for minutes at a time; but
the slightest touch of fever sent it jumping up, and
the more he was moved the higher it jumped.
“When I knew Hank out in Canada,” he said, “he
had the constitution of an ox. Ostriches took his
correspondence course in digestion. But directly he
comes into a bit of money Laddie,” said Ukridge
earnestly, “when I’m a rich man, I want you to stand
at my elbow and watch me very carefully. The mo-
ment you see signs of degeneration speak a warning
word. Don’t let me coddle myself. Don’t let me get
fussy about my health, Where was 1? Oh yes.
Directly this man comes into a bit of money he getsUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 173
the idea that he’s a sort of frigile, delicate flower.”
“I shouldn’t have thought so from what you were
telling me the other night.”
‘What happened the other night was the cause of
all the trouble. Naturally he woke up with a bit of
a head.”
“I can quite believe it.”
“Yes, but my gosh, what’s a head! In the old days
he would have gone and worked it off by taking a
dose of pain-killer and chopping down half-a-dozen
trees. But now what happens? Having all this
money, he wouldn’t take a simple remedy like that.
No, sir! He went to one of those Harley Street sharks
who charge a couple of guineas for saying ‘Well, how
are we this morning?’ A fatal move, laddie. Natur-
ally, the shark was all over him. Tapped him here
and prodded him there, said he was run down, and
finally told him he ought to spend six months in a dry,
sunny climate. Recommended Egypt. Egypt, I'll
trouble you, for a bloke who lived fifty years think-
ing that it was a town in Illinois. Well, the long
and the short of it is that he’s gone off for six months,
doesn’t want a place in England, and I hope he gets
bitten by a crocodile. And the lease all drawn out
and ready to sign. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard.
Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth while going
on struggling.”
A sombre silence fell upon us. Ukridge, sunk in
gloomy reverie, fumbled absently at his collar stud.
I smoked with a heavy heart.174 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“What will your friend Dora do now?” I said at
length.
“That’s what’s worrying me,” said Ukridge, lugu-
briously. “I’ve been trying to think of some other
way of raising that hundred, but at the moment I
don’t mind confessing I am baffled. I can see no day-
light.”
Nor could I. His chance of raising a hundred
pounds by any means short of breaking into the Mint
seemed slight indeed.
“Odd the way things happen,” I said. I gave him
the editor’s letter. ‘Look at that.”
“What’s this?”
“Fe’s sending me to do an article on the Pen and
Ink Club dance. If only I had never been to see your
)
aunt
‘And made a mess of it.”
“T didn’t make a mess of it. It just happened
that :
“All right, laddie, all right,” said Ukridge, tone-
lessly. “Don’t let’s split straws. The fact remains,
whether it’s your fault or not, the thing was a com-
plete frost. What were you saying?”
“T was saying that, if only I had never been to your
aunt, I could have met her in a perfectly natural way
at this dance.”’
“Done Young Disciple stuff,” said Ukridge, seizing
on the idea. ‘(Rubbed in the fact that you could do
her a bit of good by boosting her in the paper.”
“And asked her to re-engage Miss Mason as her
secretary.”UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH
Ukridge fiddled with the letter.
“You don’t think even now -
I was sorry for him and sorrier for Dora Mason,
but on this point I was firm.
mNot dl donite:
“But consider, laddie,” urged Ukridge. “At this
dance she may well be in malleable mood. The lights,
the music, the laughter, the jollity.”
“No,” I said. “It can’t be done. I can’t back out
of going to the affair, because if I did I’d never get
any more work to do for this paper. But I’ll tell you
one thing. I mean to keep quite clear of your aunt.
That's final. I dream of her in the night sometimes
and wake up screaming. And in any case it wouldn’t
be any use my tackling her. She wouldn’t listen to
me. It’s too late. You weren’t there that afternoon
at Wimbledon, but you can take it from me that I’m
not one of her circle of friends.”
“That’s the way it always happens,” sighed Ukridge.
“Everything comes too late. Well, I’ll be popping off.
Lot of heavy thinking to do, laddie. Lot of heavy
thinking.”
And he left without borrowing even a cigar, a sure
sign that his resilient spirit was crushed beyond re-
cuperation.
The dance of the Pen and Ink Club was held, like
so many functions of its kind, at the Lotus Rooms,
Knightsbridge, that barrack-like building which seems
to exist only for these sad affairs. The Pen and
Ink evidently went in for quality in its membership
rather than quantity; and the band, when I arrived,176 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
was giving out the peculiarly tinny sound which bands
always produce in very large rooms that are only one-
sixth part full, The air was chilly and desolate and
a general melancholy seemed to prevail. The few
couples dancing on the broad acres of floor appeared
sombre and introspective, as if they were meditating
on the body upstairs and realising that all flesh is as
grass. Around the room on those gilt chairs which
are only seen in subscription-dance halls weird beings
were talking in undertones, probably about the trend
of Scandinavian literature. In fact, the only bright
spot on the whole gloomy business was that it occurred
before the era of tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles.
That curious grey hopelessness which always afflicts
me when I am confronted with literary people in the
bulk was not lightened by the reflection that at any
moment I might encounter Miss Julia Ukridge. I
moved warily about the room, keenly alert, like a cat
that has wandered into a strange alley and sees in
every shadow the potential hurler of a half-brick. I
could envisage nothing but awkwardness and embar-
rassment springing from such a meeting. The lesson
which I had drawn from my previous encounter with
her was that happiness for me lay in keeping as far
away from Miss Julia Ukridge as possible.
“Excuse me!”
My precautions had been in vain. She had sneaked
up on me from behind.
“Good evening,” I said.
It is never any good rehearsing these scenes in ad-
vance. They always turn out so differently. I hadUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 177
been assuming, when I slunk into this hall, that if I
met this woman I should feel the same shrinking sense
of guilt and inferiority which had proved so disin-
tegrating at Wimbledon. I had omitted to make
allowances for the fact that that painful episode had
taken place on her own ground, and that right from
the start my conscience had been far from clear. To-
night the conditions were different.
“Are you a member of the Pen and Ink Club?” said
Ukridge’s aunt, frostily.
Her stony blue eyes were fixed on me with an ex-
pression that was not exactly loathing, but rather a
cold and critical contempt. So might a fastidious cook
look at a black-beetle in her kitchen.
PNG, Lreplied, «J, am not”
I felt bold and hostile. This woman gave me a
pain in the neck, and I endeavoured to express as much
in the language of the eyes.
“Then will you please tell me what you are doing
here? This is a private dance.”
One has one’s moments. I felt much as I presume
Battling Billson must have felt in his recent fight with
Alf Todd, when he perceived his antagonist advancing
upon him wide-open, inviting the knock-out punch.
“The editor of Society sent me a ticket. He wanted
an article written about it.’
If I was feeling like Mr. Billson, Ukridge’s aunt
must have felt very like Mr. Todd. I could see that
she was shaken. In a flash I had changed from a
black-beetle to a god-like creature, able, if conciliated,
to do a bit of that log-rolling which is so dear to the178 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
heart of the female novelist. And she had not con-
ciliated me. Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the
saddest are these: It might have been. It is too much
to say that her jaw fell, but certainly the agony of this
black moment caused her lips to part in a sort of
twisted despair. But there was good stuff in this
woman. She rallied gamely.
‘A Press ticket,” she murmured.
“A Press ticket,’ I echoed.
SiViav ol see itr”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you.”
“Not at all.”
She passed on.
I resumed my inspection of the dancers with a
lighter heart. In my present uplifted mood they did
not appear so bad as they had a few minutes back.
Some of them, quite a few of them, looked almost
human. The floor was fuller now, and whether owing
to my imagination or not, the atmosphere seemed to
have taken on a certain cheeriness. The old sugges-
tion of a funeral still lingered, but now it was possible
to think of it as a less formal, rather jollier funeral.
I began to be glad that I had come.
“Excuse me!”
I had thought that I was finished with this sort of
thing for the evening, and I turned with a little im-
patience. It was a refined tenor voice that had ad-
dressed me, and it was a refined tenor-looking man
whom I saw. He was young and fattish, with a
Jovian coiffure and pince-nez attached to a black cord.UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 179
’
“Pardon me,” said this young man, “‘but are you a
member of the Pen and Ink Club?”
My momentary annoyance vanished, for it suddenly
occurred to me that, looked at in the proper light, it
was really extremely flattering, this staunch refusal
on the part of these people to entertain the belief that
I could be one of them. No doubt, I felt, they were
taking up the position of the proprietor of a certain
night-club, who, when sued for defamation of char-
acter by a young lady to whom he had refused ad-
mittance on the ground that she was not a fit person
to associate with his members, explained to the court
that he had meant it as a compliment.
“No, thank Heaven!’ I replied.
“Then what c
“Press ticket,’ I explained.
“Press ticket? What paper?”
“Society.”
There was nothing of the Julia Ukridge spirit in
this young man, no ingrained pride which kept him
aloof and outwardly indifferent. He beamed like the
rising sun. He grasped my arm and kneaded it. He
gambolled about me like a young lamb in the spring-
time.
“My dear fellow!’’ he exclaimed, exuberantly, and
clutched my arm more firmly, lest even now I might
elude him. ‘My dear fellow, I really must apologise.
I would not have questioned you, but there are some
persons present who were not invited. I met a man
only a moment ago who said that he had bought a
ticket. Some absurd mistake. There were no tickets180 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
for sale. I was about to question him further, but
he disappeared into the crowd and I have not seen him
since. This is a quite private dance, open only to
members of the club. Come with me, my dear fellow,
and I will give you a few particulars which you may
find of use for your article.”
He led me resolutely into a small room off the floor,
closed the door to prevent escape, and, on the principle
on which you rub a cat’s paws with butter to induce
it to settle down in a new home, began to fuss about
with whisky and cigarettes.
“Do, do sit down.”
I sat down.
“First, about this club. The Pen and Ink Club is
the only really exclusive organisation of its kind in
London. We pride ourselves on the fact. We are to
the literary world what Brooks’s and the Carlton are
to the social. Members are elected solely by invitation.
Election, in short, you understand, is in the nature of
an accolade. We have exactly one hundred members,
and we include only those writers who in our opinion
possess vision.”
“And the big, broad, flexible outlook ?”
“T beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.”
“The names of most of those here to-night must be
very familiar to you.”
“T know Miss Ukridge, the president,” I said.
A faint, almost imperceptible shadow passed over the
stout young man’s face. He removed his pince-nezUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 181
and polished them with a touch of disfavour. There
was a rather flat note in his voice.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “Julia Ukridge. A dear soul,
but between ourselves, strictly between ourselves,
not a great deal of help in an executive capacity.”
“Noe”
“No. In confidence, I do all the work. I am the
club’s secretary. My name, by the way, is Charlton
Prout. You may know it?”
He eyed me wistfully, and I felt that something
ought to be done about him. He was much too sleek,
and he had no right to do his hair like that.
“Of course,” I said. “I have read all your books.”
“Really ?”
““A Shriek in the Night.” ‘Who Killed Jasper
Bossom ?’—all of them.”
He stiffened austerely.
“You must be confusing me with some other—ah
—writer,’ he said. “My work is on somewhat dif-
ferent lines. The reviewers usually describe the sort
of thing I do as Pastels in Prose. My best-liked book,
I believe, is Grey Myrtles. Dunstable’s brought it out
last year. It was exceedingly well received. And I
do a good deal of critical work for the better class of
review.” He paused. “If you think it would interest
your readers,” he said, with a deprecating wave of the
hand, “I will send you a photograph. Possibly your
editor would like to use it.”
“T bet he would.”
“A photograph somehow seems to—as it were—
set off an article of this kind.”182 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“That,” I replied, cordially, “is what it doesn’t do
nothing else but.”
“And you won't forget Grey Myrtles. Well, if you
have finished your cigarette, we might be returning to
the ballroom. These people rather rely on me to keep
things going, you know.”
A burst of music greeted us as he opened the door,
and even in that first moment I had an odd feeling
that it sounded different. That tinny sound had gone
from it. And as we debouched from behind a potted
palm and came in sight of the floor, I realised why.
The floor was full. It was crammed, jammed, and
overflowing. Where couples had moved as single
spies, they were now in battalions. The place was alive
with noise and laughter. These people might, as my
companion had said, be relying on him to keep things
going, but they seemed to have been getting along un-
commonly well in his absence. I paused and surveyed
the mob in astonishment. I could not make the man’s
figures balance.
“T thought you said the Pen and Ink Club had only
a hundred members.”
The secretary was fumbling for his glasses. He
had an almost Ukridge-like knack of dropping his
pince-nez in moments of emotion.
“Tt it has,’ he stammered.
‘Well, reading from left to right, I make it nearer
seven hundred.”’
“TI cannot understand it.”
“Perhaps they have been having a new election and
letting in some writers without vision,” I suggested.UKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 183
I was aware of Miss Ukridge bearing down upon
us, bristling.
“Mr. Prout!’
The talented young author of Grey Myrtles leaped
convulsively.
“Yes, Miss Ukridge?”
“Who are all these people ?”
“I—I don’t know,” said the talented young man.
“You don’t know! It’s your business to know. You
are the secretary of the club. I suggest that you find
out as quickly as possible who they are and what they
imagine they are doing here.”
The goaded secretary had something of the air of
a man leading a forlorn hope, and his ears had turned
bright pink, but he went at it bravely. A serene-
looking man with a light moustache and a made-up
tie was passing, and he sprang upon him like a stoutish
leopard.
“Excuse me, sir.”
ce etn ae
“Will you kindly—would you mind
I ask is
pardon me if
“What are you doing here?” demanded Miss
Ukridge, curtly, cutting in on his flounderings with a
masterful impatience. ‘‘How do you come to be at
this dance?”
The man seemed surprised.
“Who, me?” he said. “I came with the rest of
fern
“What do you mean, the rest of them?”184 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“The members of the Warner’s Stores Social and
Outing Club.”
“But this is the dance of the Pen and Ink Club,”
bleated Mr. Prout.
“Some mistake,” said the other, confidently. “It’s
a bloomer of some kind. Here,” he added, beckoning
to a portly gentleman of middle age who was bustling
by, “you’d better have a talk with our hon. sec. He'll
know. Mr. Biggs, this gentleman seems to think
there’s been some mistake about this dance.”
Mr. Biggs stopped, looked, and listened. Seen at
close range, he had a forceful, determined air. I liked
his looks.
“May I introduce Mr. Charlton Prout?” I said.
“Author of Grey Myrtles. Mr. Prout,” I went on,
as this seemed to make little or no sensation, “‘is the
secretary of the Pen and Ink Club.”
“I’m the secretary of the Warner’s Stores Social
and Outing Club,” said Mr. Biggs.
The two secretaries eyed each other warily, like two
dogs.
“But what are you doing here?” moaned Mr.
Prout, in a voice like the wind in the tree-tops. ‘This
is a private dance.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Biggs, resolutely.
“T personally bought tickets for all my members.”
“But there were no tickets for sale. The dance was
”?
for the exclusive
“Tt’s perfectly evident that you have come to the
wrong hall or chosen the wrong evening,” snapped
Miss Ukridge, abruptly superseding Mr. Prout in theUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 185
supreme command. I did not blame her for feeling
a little impatient. The secretary was handling the
campaign very feebly.
The man behind the Warner’s Stores Social and
Outing Club cocked a polite but belligerent eye at this
new enemy. [I liked his looks more than ever. This
was a man who would fight it out on these lines if it
took all the summer.
“I have not the honour of this lady’s acquaintance,”
he said, smoothly, but with a gradually reddening eye.
The Biggses, that eye seemed to say, were loath to
war upon women, but if the women asked for it they
could be men of iron, ruthless. “Might I ask who
this lady is?”
“This is our president.”
“Happy to meet you, ma’am.”
“Miss Ukridge,” added Mr. Prout, completing the
mtroduction.
The name appeared to strike a chord in Mr. Biggs.
He bent forward and a gleam of triumph came into
his eyes.
“Ukridge, did you say?”
“Miss Julia Ukridge.”
“Then it’s all right,” said Mr. Biggs, briskly.
“There’s been no mistake. I bought our tickets from
a gentleman named Ukridge. I got seven hundred at
five bob apiece, reduction for taking a quantity and
ten per cent. discount for cash. If Mr. Ukridge acted
contrary to instructions, it’s too late to remedy the
matter now. You should have made it clear to him186 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
what you wanted him to do before he went and did
ites
And with this extremely sound sentiment the hon-
orary secretary of the Warner’s Stores Social and
Outing Club turned on the heel of his shining dancing-
pump and was gone. And I, too, sauntered away.
There seemed nothing to keep me. As I went, I looked
over my shoulder. The author of Grey Myrtles ap-
peared to be entering upon the opening stages of what
promised to be a painful téte-a-tete. My heart bled
for him. If ever a man was blameless Mr. Prout was,
but the president of the Pen and Ink Club was not
the woman to allow a trifle like that to stand in her
way.
“Oh, it just came to me, laddie,”’ said Stanley
Featherstonehaugh Ukridge modestly, interviewed
later by our representive. “You know me. One mo-
ment mind a blank, then—bing/—some dashed co-
lossal idea. It was your showing me that ticket for
the dance that set me thinking. And I happened to
meet a bloke in a pub who worked in Warner’s Stores.
Nice fellow, with a fair amount of pimples. Told
me their Social and Outing Club was working up for
its semi-annual beano. One thing led to another, I
got him to introduce me to the hon. sec., and we came
to terms. I liked the man, Jaddie. Great treat to
meet a bloke with a good, level business head. We
settled the details in no time. Well, I don’t mind tell-
ing you, Corky my boy, that at last for the first time
in many years I begin to see my way clear. I’ve got
a bit of capital now. After sending poor little DoraUKRIDGE SEES HER THROUGH 187
her hundred, I shall have at least fifty quid left over.
Fifty quid! My dear old son, you may take it from
me that there’s no limit
absolutely no limit—to what
I can accomplish with fifty o’goblins in my kick.
From now on I see my way clear. My feet are on
solid ground. The world, laddie, is my oyster. Noth-
ing can stop me from making a colossal fortune. I’m
not exaggerating, old horse—a colossal fortune.
Why, by a year from now I calculate, at a conserva-
tive estimate i
Our representative then withdrew.CHAPTER VII
NO WEDDING BELLS FOR HIM
O Ukridge, as might be expected from one of
his sunny optimism, the whole affair has long
since come to present itself in the light of yet another
proof of the way in which all things in this world of
ours work together for good. In it, from start to
finish, he sees the finger of Providence; and, when
marshalling evidence to support his theory that a
means of escape from the most formidable perils will
always be vouchsafed to the righteous and deserving,
this is the episode which he advances as Exhibit A.
The thing may be said to have had its beginning in
the Haymarket one afternoon towards the middle of
the summer. We had been lunching at my expense at
the Pall Mall Restaurant, and as we came out a large
and shiny car drew up beside the kerb, and the chauf-
feur, alighting, opened the bonnet and began to fiddle
about in its interior with a pair of pliers. Had I been
alone, a casual glance in passing would have contented
me, but for Ukridge the spectacle of somebody else
working always had an irresistible fascination, and,
gripping my arm, he steered me up to assist him in
giving the toiler moral support. About two minutes
188NO WEDDING BELLS FOR HIM 189
after he had started to breathe earnestly on the man’s
neck, the latter, seeming to become aware that what
was tickling his back hair was not some wandering
June zephyr, looked up with a certain petulance.
“Ere!” he said, protestingly. Then his annoyance
gave place to something which—for a chauffeur—ap-
proached cordiality. “ ’Ullo!’’ he observed.
“Why, hallo, Frederick,” said Ukridge. “Didn't
recognise you. Is this the new car?”
“Ah,” nodded the chauffeur.
“Pal of mine,” explained Ukridge to me in a brief
aside. “Met him in a pub.”’ London was congested
with pals whom Ukridge had met in pubs. ‘“‘What’s
the trouble?”
“Missing,” said Frederick the chauffeur. “Soon
‘ave her right.”
His confidence in his skill was not misplaced. After
a short interval he straightened himself, closed the
bonnet, and wiped his hands.
“Nice day,” he said.
“Terrific,” agreed Ukridge. “Where are you off
ton
“Got to go to Addington. Pick up the guv’nor,
playin’ golf there.”’ He seemed to hesitate for a mo-
ment, then the mellowing influence of the summer
sunshine asserted itself. ‘Like a ride as far as East
Croydon? Get a train back from there.”
It was a handsome offer, and one which neither
Jkridge nor myself felt disposed to decline. We
climbed in, Frederick trod on the self-starter, and off
we bowled, two gentlemen of fashion taking their190 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
afternoon airing. Speaking for myself, I felt tranquil
and debonair, and I have no reason to suppose that
Ukridge was otherwise. The deplorable incident
which now occurred was thus rendered doubly dis-
tressing. We had stopped at the foot of the street to
allow the north-bound traffic to pass, when our pleasant
after-luncheon torpidity was shattered by a sudden
and violent shout.
at
That the shouter was addressing us there was no
room for doubt. He was standing on the pavement
not four feet away, glaring unmistakably into our
costly tonneau—a stout, bearded man of middle age,
unsuitably clad, considering the weather and the sar-
torial prejudices of Society, in a frock-coat and a
bowler hat. ‘Hi! You!” he bellowed, to the scandal
of all good passers-by.
Frederick the chauffeur, after one swift glance of
god-like disdain out of the corner of his left eye, had
ceased to interest himself in this undignified exhibi-
tion on the part of one of the lower orders, but I was
surprised to observe that Ukridge was betraying all
the discomposure of some wild thing taken in a trap.
His face had turned crimson and assumed a bulbous
expression, and he was staring straight ahead of him
with a piteous effort to ignore what manifestly would
not be ignored.
“T’d like a word with you,” boomed the bearded
one.
And then matters proceeded with a good deal of
rapidity. The traffic had begun to move on now, andNO WEDDING BELLS FOR HIM 191
as we moved with it, travelling with increasing speed,
the man appeared to realise that if ’twere done ’twere
well ’twere done quickly. He executed a cumbersome
leap and landed on our running-board; and Ukridge,
coming suddenly to life, put out a large flat hand and
pushed. The intruder dropped off, and the last I saw
of him he was standing in the middle of the road,
shaking his fist, in imminent danger of being run over
by a number three omnibus.
“Gosh!” sighed Ukridge, with some feverishness.
“What was it all about?” I enquired.
~ Bloke I owe a bit of money to,” explained Ukridge,
tersely.
“Ah!” T said, feeling that all had been made clear.
I had never before actually seen one of Ukridge’s
creditors in action, but he had frequently given me to
understand that they lurked all over London like
leopards in the jungle, waiting to spring on him.
There were certain streets down which he would never
walk for fear of what might befall.
“Been trailing me like a bloodhound for two years,”
said Ukridge. “Keeps bobbing up when I don’t ex-
pect him and turning my hair white to the roots.”
I was willing to hear more, and even hinted as much,
but he relapsed into a moody silence. We were moy-
ing at a brisk clip into Clapham Common when the
second of the incidents occurred which were to make
this drive linger in the memory. Just as we came in
sight of the Common, a fool of a girl loomed up right
before our front wheels. She had been crossing the
road, and now, after the manner of her species, she192 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
lost her head. She was a large, silly-looking girl, and
she darted to and fro like a lunatic hen; and as Ukridge
and I rose simultaneously from our seats, clutching
each other in agony, she tripped over her feet and fell.
But Frederick, master of his craft, had the situation
well in hand. He made an inspired swerve, and when
we stopped a moment later, the girl was picking her-
self up, dusty, but still in one piece.
These happenings affect different men in different
ways. In Frederick’s cold grey eye as he looked over
his shoulder and backed the car there was only the
weary scorn of a superman for the never-ending follies
of a woollen-headed proletariat. I, on the other hand,
had reacted in a gust of nervous profanity. And
Ukridge, I perceived as I grew calmer, the affair had
touched on his chivalrous side. All the time we were
backing he was mumbling to himself, and he was out
of the car, bleating apologies, almost before we had
stopped.
“Awfully sorry. Might have killed you. Can't for-
give myself.”
The girl treated the affair in still another way.
She giggled. And somehow that brainless laugh
afflicted me more than anything that had gone before.
It was not her fault, I suppose. This untimely mirth
was merely due to disordered nerves. But I had taken
a prejudice against her at first sight.
“T do hope,” babbled Ukridge, “you aren't hurt?
Do tell me you aren’t hurt.”
The girl giggled again. And she was at least twelveNO WEDDING BELLS FOR HIM 193
pounds too heavy to be a giggler. I wanted to pass on
and forget her.
“No, reely, thanks.”
“But shaken, what?”
“T did come down a fair old bang,” chuckled this
repellent female.
“T thought so. I was afraid so. Shaken. Ganglions
vibrating. You must let me drive you home.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“T insist. Positively I insist!”
“Ere!” said Frederick the chauffeur, in a low, com-
pelling voice.
mesa Co
“Got to get on to Addington.”’
‘fYes, yes, yes,” said Ukridge, with testy impatience,
quite the seigneur resenting interference from an
underling. “But there’s plenty of time to drive this
lady home. Can’t you see she’s shaken? Where can
I take you?”
“It’s only just round the corner in the next street.
Balbriggan the name of the house 1s.”
“Balbriggan, Frederick, in the next street,’’ said
Ukridge, in a tone that brooked no argument.
I suppose the spectacle of the daughter of the house
rolling up to the front door in a Daimler is unusual in
Peabody Road, Clapham Common. At any rate, we
had hardly drawn up when Balbriggan began to exude
its occupants in platoons. Father, mother, three small
sisters, and a brace of brothers were on the steps in
the first ten seconds. They surged down the garden
path in a solid mass.194 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Ukridge was at his most spacious. Quickly estab-
lishing himself on the footing of a friend of the
family, he took charge of the whole affair. Introduc-
tions sped to and fro, and in a few moving words he
explained the situation, while | remained mute and
insignificant in my corner and Frederick the chauffeur
stared at his oil-gauge with a fathomless eye.
“Couldn’t have forgiven myself, Mr. Price, if any-
thing had happened to Miss Price. Fortunately my
chauffeur is an excellent driver and swerved just in
time. You showed great presence of mind, Frederick,”
said Ukridge, handsomely, “‘great presence of mind.”
Frederick continued to gaze aloofly at his oil-gauge.
“What a lovely car, Mr. Ukridge!’’ said the mother
of the family.
“Yes?” said Ukridge, airly. ‘Yes, quite a good old
machine.”
“Can you drive yourself?” asked the smaller of the
two small brothers, reverently.
“Oh, yes. Yes. But I generally use Frederick for
town work,”’
“Would you and your friend care to come in for
a cup of tea?” said Mrs. Price.
I could see Ukridge hesitate. He had only recently
finished an excellent lunch, but there was that about
the offer of a free meal which never failed to touch
a chord in him. At this point, however, Frederick
spoke.
‘““°Ere!”’ said Frederick.
whispered Lawlor.
“Be quiet !”’
“Then, damme,” shouted Ukridge, “rely on me,
young Boko.
I shall be at your side.
I shall spare no
efforts to pull you through. You can count on me to—’’
“Really!
Please!
At that table down there,’
,
said
the president, rising, while H. K. Hodger, who had
got as far as ‘““Then, faith and begob, it’s me that’ll be232 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
afther ” paused in a pained manner and plucked at
the table-cloth.
Ukridge subsided. But his offer of assistance was
no passing whim, to be lightly forgotten in the
slumbers of the night. I was still in bed a few morn-
ings later when he burst in, equipped for travel to the
last button and carrying a seedy suit-case.
“Just off, laddie, just off!’
“Fine!’’ I said. ‘Good-bye.”’
“Corky my boy,” boomed Ukridge, sitting creak-
ingly on the bed and poisoning the air with his noisome
tobacco, “I feel happy this morning. Stimulated. And
why? Because I am doing an altruistic action. We
busy men of affairs, Corky, are too apt to exclude al-
truism from our lives. We are too prone to say ‘What
is there in it for me?’ and, if there proves on investi-
gation to be nothing in it for us, to give it the miss-in-
balk. That is why this business makes me so con-
foundedly happy. At considerable expense and incon-
venience I am going down to Redbridge to-day, and
what is there in it for me? Nothing. Nothing, my
boy, except the pure delight of helping an old school-
fellow over a tough spot. If I can do anything, how-
ever little, to bring young Boko in at the right end of
the poll, that will be enough reward for me. I am
going to do my bit, Corky, and it may be that my bit
will turn out to be just the trifle that brings home the
bacon. I shall go down there and talk
“T bet you will.”
“T don’t know much about politics, it’s true, but
I can bone up enough to get by. Invective ought toTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 233
meet the case, and I’m pretty good at invective. I
know the sort of thing. You accuse the rival candidate
of every low act under the sun, without giving him
quite enough to start a libel action on. Now, what I
want you to do, Corky, old horse 3
“Oh, heavens!’ I moaned at these familiar words.
‘ is just to polish up this election song of mine.
I sat up half the night writing it, but I can see it
limps in spots. You can put it right in half an hour.
Polish it up, laddie, and forward without fail to the
Bull Hotel, Redbridge, this afternoon. It may just
be the means of shoving Boko past the post by a nose.”
He clattered out hurriedly; and, sleep being now
impossible, I picked up the sheet of paper he had left
and read the verses.
They were well meant, but that let them out. Uk-
ridge was no poet or he would never have attempted to
rhyme “Lawlor” with “before us.”
A rather neat phrase happening to occur to me at
the breakfast table, coincident with the reflection that
possibly Ukridge was right and it did behoove his old
schoolfellows to rally round the candidate, I spent the
morning turning out a new ballad. Having finished
this by noon, I despatched it to the Bull Hotel, and
went off to lunch with something of that feeling of
satisfaction which, as Ukridge had pointed out, does
come to altruists. I was strolling down Piccadilly,
enjoying an after-luncheon smoke, when I ran into
Looney Coote.
On Looney’s amiable face there was a mingled ex-
pression of chagrin and satisfaction.234 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Tt’s happened,” he said.
“What ?”
“The third misfortune. I told you it would.”
“What’s the trouble now? Has Spencer broken
his other leg?”
“My car has been stolen.”
A decent sympathy would no doubt have become
me, but from earliest years I had always found it
difficult to resist the temptation to be airy and jocose
when dealing with Looney Coote. The man was
so indecently rich that he had no right to have
troubles.
“Oh, well,” I said, “you can easily get another.
Fords cost practically nothing nowadays.”
“Tt wasn’t a Ford,” bleated Looney, outraged. “It
was a brand-new Winchester-Murphy. I paid fifteen
hundred pounds for it only a month ago, and now it’s
gone.”’
“Where did you see it last?”
“T didn’t see it last. My chauffeur brought it round
to my rooms this morning, and, instead of staying with
it as he should have done till I was ready, went off
round the corner for a cup of coffee, so he says! And
when he came back it had vanished.”’
“The coffee ?” ;
“The car, you ass. The car had disappeared. It
had been stolen.”’
“I suppose you have notified the police ?’’
“I’m on my way to Scotland Yard now. It just
occurred to me. Have you any idea what the procedureTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 235
is? It’s the first time I’ve been mixed up with this
sort of thing.”
“You give them the number of the car, and they send
out word to police-stations all over the country to look
out for it.”
“T see,” said Looney Coote, brightening. “That
sounds rather promising, what? I mean, it looks as if
someone would be bound to spot it sooner or later.”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course, the first thing a thief
would do would be to take off the number-plate and sub-
stitute a false one.”
“Oh, great Scott! Not really?”
“And after that he would paint the car a different
colour.”’
nOhVWsayiy
“Still, the police generally manage to find them in
the end. Years hence they will come on it in an old
barn with the tonneau stove in and the engines taken
out. Then they will hand it back to you and claim
the reward. But, as a matter of fact, what you ought
to be praying is that you may never get it back. Then
the thing would be a real misfortune. If you get it
back as good as new in the next couple of days, it won't
be a misfortune at all, and you will have number three
hanging over your head again, just as before. And
who knows what that third misfortune may be? In
a way, you’re tempting Providence by applying to
Scotland Yard.”
“Yes,” said Looney Coote, doubtfully. “All the
same, I think I will, don’t you know. I mean to say,
after all, a fifteen-hundred-quid Winchester-Murphy236 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
is a fifteen-hundred-quid Winchester-Murphy, if you
come right down to it, what?”
Showing that even in the most superstitious there
may be grains of hard, practical common sense lurking
somewhere.
It had not been my intention originally to take any
part in the by-election in the Redbridge division be-
yond writing three verses of a hymn in praise of Boko
Lawlor and sending him a congratulatory wire if he
won. But two things combined to make me change my
mind. The first was the fact that it occurred to me—
always the keen young journalist—that there might
be a couple of guineas of Interesting Bits money in it
(“How a Modern Election is Fought: Humours of
the Poll’); the second, that, ever since his departure
Ukridge had been sending me a constant stream of tele-
grams so stimulating that eventually they lit the spark.
I append specimens :—
“Going strong. Made three speeches yesterday.
Election song a sensation. Come on down.—UK-
RIDGE.”
“Boko locally regarded as walk-over. Made four
speeches yesterday. Election song a breeze. Come on
down.—UKRIDGE.”
“Victory in sight. Spoke practically all yester-
day. Election song a riot. Children croon it in cots.
Come on down.—UKRIDGE.”
I leave it to any young author to say whether a man
with one solitary political lyric to his credit could have
resisted this. With the exception of a single music-THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 237
hall song (““Mother, She’s Pinching My Leg,” tried
out by Tim Sims, the Koy Komic, at the Peebles Hip-
podrome, and discarded, in reponse to a popular appeal,
after one performance), no written words of mine had
ever passed human lips. Naturally, it gave mea certain
thrill to imagine the enlightened electorate of Red-
bridge—at any rate, the right-thinking portion of it—
bellowing in its thousands those noble lines :—
“No foreign foe’s insidious hate
Our country shall o’erwhelm
So long as England’s ship of state
Has LAWLOR at the helm.”
Whether I was technically correct in describing as
guiding the ship of state a man who would probably
spend his entire Parliamentary career in total silence,
voting meekly as the Whip directed, I had not stopped
to enquire. All I knew was that it sounded well, and I
wanted to hear it. In addition to which, there was the
opportunity, never likely to occur again, of seeing Uk-
ridge make an ass of himself before a large audience.
I went to Redbridge.
The first thing I saw on leaving the station was 4
very large poster exhibiting Boko Lawlor’s expressive
features, bearing the legend :—
LAWLOR
FOR
REDBRIDGE.
This was all right, but immediately beside it, evi-
dently placed there by the hand of an enemy, was a still
larger caricature of this poster which stressed my old238 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
friend’s prominent nose in a manner that seemed to
me to go beyond the limits of a fair debate. To this
was appended the words :—
Do You
WANT
PALS
For A MEMBER?
To which, if I had been a hesitating voter of the
constituency, I would certainly have replied “No!” for
there was something about that grossly elongated nose
that convicted the man beyond hope of appeal of every
undesirable quality a Member of Parliament can pos-
sess. You could see at a glance that here was one who,
if elected, would do his underhand best to cut down the
Navy, tax the poor man’s food, and strike a series of
blows at the very root of the home. And, as if it were
not enough, a few yards further on was a placard
covering almost the entire side of a house, which said
in simple, straightforward black letters a foot high :—
Down WITH
Boxko
THE HuMAN GARGOYLE.
How my poor old contemporary, after passing a
week in constant society of these slurs on his personal
appearance, could endure to look himself in the face in
his shaving-mirror of a morning was more than I could
see. I commented on this to Ukridge, who had met me
at the station in a luxurious car.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Ukridge, huskily. TheTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 239
first thing I had noticed about him was that his vocal
cords had been putting in overtime since our last meet-
ing. “Just the usual give-and-take of an election.
When we get round this next corner you'll see the
poster we’ve got out to tickle up the other bloke. It’s
a pippin.”
I did, and indeed it was a pippin. After one glance
at it as we rolled by, I could not but feel that the
electors of Redbridge were in an uncommonly awk-
ward position, having to choose between Boko, as ex-
hibited in the street we had just passed, and this horror
now before me. Mr. Herbert Huxtable, the opposition
candidate, seemed to run as generously to ears as his
adversary did to nose, and the artist had not overlooked
this feature. Indeed, except for a mean, narrow face
with close-set eyes and a murderer’s mouth, Mr. Hux-
table appeared to be all ears. They drooped and flapped
about him like carpet-bags, and I averted my gaze,
appalled.
‘Do you mean to say you’re allowed to do this sort
of thing?” I asked, incredulously.
“My dear old horse, it’s expected of you. It’s a
mere formality. The other side would feel awkward
and disappointed if you didn’t.”
“And how did they find out about Lawlor being
called Boko?” I enquired, for the point had puzzled
me. Ina way, you might say that it was the only thing
you could possibly call him, but the explanation hardly
satisfied me.
“That,” admitted Ukridge, ‘was largely my fault.
I was a bit carried away the first time I addressed the240 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
multitude, and I happened to allude to the old chap by
his nickname. Of course, the opposition took it up at
once. Boko was a little sore about it for a while.”
“T can see how he might be.”
“But that’s all over now,” said Ukridge, buoyantly.
“We're the greatest of pals. He relies on me at every
turn. Yesterday he admitted to me in so many words
that if he gets in it'll be owing to my help as much as
anything. The fact is, laddie, I’ve made rather a hit
with the manyheaded. They seem to like to hear me
speak.”
“Fond of a laugh, eh?”
“Now, laddie,” said Ukridge, reprovingly, “this is
not the right tone. You must curb that spirit of levity
while you are down here. This is a dashed serious
business, Corky, old man, and the sooner you realise
it the better. If you have come here to gibe and to
mock e
“T came to hear my election song sung. When do
they sing it?”
“Oh, practically all the time. Incessantly, you might
Saver
“Tn their baths?”
“Most of the voters here don’t take baths. You'll
gather that when we reach Biscuit Row.”
“What’s Biscuit Row?”
“Tt’s the quarter of the town where the blokes live
who work in Fitch and Weyman’s biscuit factory,
laddie. It’s what you might call,” said Ukridge, im-
portantly, “the doubtful element of the place. All the
rest of the town is nice and clean-cut, they’re eitherTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 241
solid for Boko or nuts on Huxtable—but these biscuit
blokes are wobbly. That’s why we have to canvass
them so carefully.”
“Oh, you’re going canvassing, are you?”
“We are,” corrected Ukridge.
“Not me?”
“Corky,” said Ukridge, firmly, “pull yourself to-
gether. It was principally to assist me in canvassing
these biscuit blighters that I got you down here.
Where’s your patriotism, laddie? Don’t you want old
Boko to get into Parliament, or what is it? We must
strain every nerve. We must set our hands to the
plough. The job you’ve got to tackle is the baby-
kissing "
“T won't kiss their infernal babies!’
“You will, old horse, unless you mean to spend the
rest of your life cursing yourself vainly when it is too
late that poor old Boko got pipped on the tape purely
on account of your poltroonery. Consider, old man!
Have some vision! Be an altruist! It may be that
your efforts will prove the deciding factor in this
desperately close-run race.”
“What do you mean, desperately close-run race?
You said in your wire that it was a walk-over for
Boko.”’
“That was just to fool the telegraph-bloke, whom
I suspect of being in the enemy camp. As a matter of
fact, between ourselves, it’s touch and go. A trifle
either way will do the business now.”’
“Why don’t you kiss these beastly babies?”
“There’s something about me that scares ’em, laddie.242 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
I’ve tried it once or twice, but only alienated several
valuable voters by frightening their offspring into a
nervous collapse. I think it’s my glasses they don’t
like. But you—now, you,” said Ukridge, with revolt-
ing fulsomeness, “are an ideal baby-kisser. The first
time I ever saw you, I said: ‘There goes one of
nature’s baby-kissers.’ Directly I started to canvass
these people and realised what 1 was up against, I
thought of you. ‘Corky’s the man,’ I said to myself;
‘the fellow we want is old Corky. Good-looking.
And not merely good-looking but kind-looking.’
They'll take to you, laddie. Yours is a face a baby can
9
trust
“Now listen!”
“And it won’t last long. Just a couple of streets and
we're through. So stiffen your backbone, laddie, and
go at it like a man. Boko is going to entertain you
with a magnificent banquet at his hotel to-night. I
happen to know there will be champagne. Keep your
mind fixed on that and the thing will seem easy.”
The whole question of canvassing is one which |
would like some time to go into at length. I consider
it to be an altogether abominable practice. An English-
man’s home is his castle, and it seems to me intolerable
that, just as you have got into shirt-sleeves and settled
down to a soothing pipe, total strangers should be per-
mitted to force their way in and bother you with their
nauseous flattery and their impertinent curiosity as
to which way you mean to vote. And, while I prefer
not to speak at length of my experiences in Biscuit
Row, I must say this much, that practically everyTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 243
resident of that dingy quarter appeared to see eye to
eye with me in this matter. I have never encountered
a body of men who were consistently less chummy.
They looked at me with lowering brows, they answered
my limping civilities with gruff monosyllables, they
snatched their babies away from me and hid them,
yelling, in distant parts of the house. Altogether a
most discouraging experience, I should have said, and
one which seemed to indicate that, as far as Biscuit
Row was concerned, Boko Lawlor would score a blank
at the poll.
Ukridge scoffed at this gloomy theory.
“My dear old horse,” he cried, exuberantly, as the
door of the last house slammed behind us and I revealed
to him the inferences I had drawn, “‘you mustn’t mind
that. It’s just their way. They treat everybody the
same. Why, one of Huxtable’s fellows got his hat
smashed in at that very house we just left. I consider
the outlook highly promising, laddie.”’
And so, to my surprise, did the candidate himself.
When we had finished dinner that night and were
talking over our cigars, while Ukridge slumbered
noisily in an easy chair, Boko Lawlor spoke with a
husky confidence of his prospects.
“And, curiously enough,” said Boko, endorsing what
until then I had looked on as mere idle swank on Uk-
ridge’s part, “the fellow who will have really helped
me more than anybody else, if I get in, is old Ukridge,
He borders, perhaps, a trifle too closely on the libellous
in his speeches, but he certainly has the knack of talk-
ing to an audience. In the past week he has made him-244 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
self quite a prominent figure in Redbridge. In fact,
I’m bound to say it has made me a little nervous at
times, this prominence of his. I know what an erratic
fellow he is, and if he were to become the centre of
some horrible scandal it would mean defeat for a cer-
tainty.”
“How do you mean, scandal?”
“T sometimes conjure up a dreadful vision,” said
Boko Lawlor, with a slight shudder, “of one of his
creditors suddenly rising in the audience and denoun-
cing him for not having paid for a pair of trousers or
something.”
He cast an apprehensive eye at the sleeping figure.
“You're all right if he keeps on wearing that suit,” I
said, soothingly, “because it happens to be one he
sneaked from me. I have been wondering why it was
so familiar.”
“Well, anyhow,” said Boko, with determined op-
timism, ‘I suppose, if anything like that was going to
happen, it would have happened before. He has been
addressing meetings all the week, and nothing has oc-
curred. I’m going to let him open the ball at our last
rally to-morrow night. He has a way of warming up
the audience. You'll come to that, of course?”
“Tf I am to see Ukridge warming up_an audience,
nothing shall keep me away.”
“T’ll see that you get a seat on the platform. It will
be the biggest affair we have had. The polling takes
place on the next day, and this will be our last chance
of swaying the doubters.”
“T didn’t know doubters ever came to these meetings.
99THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 245
I thought the audience was always solid for the
speakers.”
“Tt may be so in some constituencies,” said Boko,
moodily, “but it certainly isn’t at Redbridge.”
The monster meeting in support of Boko Lawlor’s
candidature was held at that popular eyesore, the As-
sociated Mechanics’ Hall. As I sat among the elect
on the platform, waiting for the proceedings to com-
mence, there came up to me a mixed scent of dust,
clothes, orange-peel, chalk, wood, plaster, pomade, and
Associated Mechanics—the whole forming a mixture
which, I began to see, was likely to prove too rich for
me. I changed my seat in order to bring myself next
to a small but promising-looking door, through which
it would be possible, if necessary, to withdraw without
being noticed.
The principle on which the chairmen at these meet-
ings are selected is perhaps too familiar to require
recording here at length, but in case some of my
readers are not acquainted with the workings of polit-
ical machines, I may say that no one under the age of
eighty-five is eligible and the preference is given to
those with adenoids. For Boko Lawlor the authorities
had extended themselves and picked a champion of
his class. In addition to adenoids, the Right Hon. the
Marquess of Cricklewood had—or seemed to”°havye—a
potato of the maximum size and hotness in his mouth,
and he had learned his elocution in one of those cor-
respondence schools which teach it by mail. I caught
his first sentence—that he would only detain us a
moment—but for fifteen minutes after that he baffled246 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
me completely. That he was still speaking I could tell
by the way his Adam’s apple wiggled, but what he was
saying I could not even guess. And presently, the door
at my side offering its silent invitation, I slid softly
through and closed it behind me.
Except for the fact that I was now out of sight of
the chairman, I did not seem to have bettered my posi-
tion greatly. The scenic effects of the hall had not been
alluring, but there was nothing much more enlivening
to look at here. I found myself in a stone-flagged
corridor with walls of an unhealthy green, ending in a
flight of stairs. I was just about to proceed towards
these in a casual spirit of exploration, when footsteps
made themselves heard, and in another moment a
helmet loomed into view, followed by a red face, a blue
uniform, and large, stout boots—making in all one
constable, who proceeded along the corridor towards
me with a measured step as if pacing a beat. I thought
his face looked stern and disapproving, and attributed
it to the fact that I had just lighted a cigarette—
presumably in a place where smoking was not en-
couraged. I dropped the cigarette and placed a guilty
heel on it—an action which I regretted the next
‘moment, when the constable himself produced one from
the recesses of his tunic and asked me for a match.
“Not allowed to smoke on duty,” he said, affably,
“but there’s no harm in a puff.”
I saw now that what I had taken for a stern and
disapproving look was merely the official mask. I
agreed that no possible harm could come of a puff.THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE
“Meeting started?’ enquired the officer, jerking his
head towards the door.
YES:
The chairman was making a few remarks
when I came out.”
“Ah!
Better give it time to warm up,’ he said,
And there was a restful silence for some
cryptically.
minutes, while the scent of a cigarette of small price
competed with the other odours of the corridor.
Presently, however, the stillness was interrupted.
From the unseen hall came the faint clapping of hands,
and then a burst of melody.
possible to distinguish the words, but surely there was
no mistaking that virile rhythm :—
“Tum tumty tumty tumty tum,
Tum tumty tumty tum,
Tum tumty tumty tumty tum,
Tum TUMTY tumty tum.”
It was!
pride.
It must be! I glowed all over with modest
“That’s mine,” I said, with attempted nonchalance.
“Ur?” queried the constable, who had fallen into a
reverie.
My election
“That thing they’re singing. Mine.
y5
song.
It seemed to me that the officer regarded me
strangely. It may have been admiration, but it looked
more like disappointment and disfavour.
“You on Lawlor’s side?”’ he demanded, heavily.
“Ves.
I wrote his election song, They’re singing
it now.”
“I’m opposed to ’im in toto and root and branch,”248 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
said the constable, emphatically, “I don’t like ’is views
—subversive, that’s what I call ’em. Subversive.”’
There seemed nothing to say to this. This diver-
gence of opinion was unfortunate, but there it was.
After all, there was no reason why political differences
should have to interfere with what had all the appear-
ance of being the dawning of a beautiful friendship.
Pass over it lightly, that was the tactful course. I
endeavoured to steer the conversation gently back to
less debatable grounds.
“This is my first visit to Redbridge,” said I, chattily.
“Ur?” said the constable, but I could see that he
was not interested. He finished his cigarette with three
rapid puffs and stamped it out. And as he did so a
strange, purposeful tenseness seemed to come over him.
His boiled-fish eyes seemed to say that the time of dal-
liance was now ended and constabulary duty was to be
done. “Is that the way to the platform, mister?’ he
asked, indicating my door with a jerk of the helmet.
I cannot say why it was, but at this moment a sudden
foreboding swept over me.
“Why do you want to go on the platform?” I asked,
apprehensively.
There was no doubt about the disfavour with which
he regarded me now. So frigid was his glance that
I backed against the door in some alarm.
“Never you mind,” he said, severely, “why I want
to go on that platform. If you really want to know,”
he continued, with that slight inconsistency which
marks great minds, ‘I’m goin’ there to arrest a feller.”
It was perhaps a little uncomplimentary to UkridgeTHE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 249
that I should so instantly have leaped to the certainty
that, if anybody on a platform on which he sat was in
danger of arrest, he must be the man. ‘There were
at least twenty other earnest supporters of Boko
grouped behind the chairman beyond the door, but it
never even occurred to me as a possibility that it could
be one of these on whom the hand of the law proposed
to descend. And a moment later my instinct was
proved to be unerring. The singing had ceased, and
now a stentorian voice had begun to fill all space. It
spoke, was interrupted by a roar of laughter, and began
to speak again.
“That’s ’im,” said the constable, briefly.
“There must be some mistake,” I said. “That is my
friend, Mr. Ukridge.”’
“T don’t know ’is name and I don’t care about ’is
name,” said the constable, sternly. “But if ’e’s the
big feller with the glasses that’s stayin’ at the Bull,
that’s the man I’m after. He may bea ’ighly ’umorous
and diverting orator,’”’ said the constable, bitterly, as
another happy burst of laughter greeted what was pre-
sumably a further sally at the expense of the side which
enjoyed his support, “‘but, be that as it may, ’e’s got to
come along with me to the station and explain how ’e
’appens to be in posession of a stolen car that there’s
been an enquiry sent out from ’eadquarters about.”
My heart turned to water. A light had flashed upon
me.
“Car?” I quavered.
“Car,’”’ said the constable.
“Was it a gentleman named Coote sho lodged the250 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
)
complaint about his car being stolen? Because
“T don’t is
“Because, if so, there has been a mistake. Mr. Uk-
ridge is a personal friend of Mr. Coote, and f
“T don’t know whose name it is’s car’s been stolen,”
said the constable, elliptically. “All I know is, there’s
been an enquiry sent out, and this feller’s got it.”
At this point something hard dug into the small of
my back as I pressed against the door. I stole a hand
round behind me, and my fingers closed upon a key.
The policeman was stooping to retrieve a dropped note-
book. I turned the key softly and pocketed it.
“Tf you would kindly not object to standing back
a bit and giving a feller a chance to get at that door,”
said the policeman, straightening himself. He con-
ducted experiments with the handle. “ ’Ere, it’s
oan
oliswitires said. sls ate
“’Ow did you get out through this door if it’s
locked ?”
“Tt wasn’t locked when I came through.”’
He eyed me with dull suspicion for a moment, then
knocked imperatively with a large red knuckle.
“Shush! Shush!’”? came a _ scandalised whisper
through the keyhole.
“Never you mind about ‘Shush! Shush!’” said the
constable, with asperity. “You open this door, that’s
what you do.’ And he substituted for the knuckle
a leg-of-mutton-like fist. The sound of his banging
boomed through the corridor like distant thunder.THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 251
“Really, you know,” I protested, “you’re disturbing
the meeting.”
“T want to disturb the meeting,’
’
replied this strong
but not silent man, casting a cold look over his shoulder.
And the next instant, to prove that he was as ready with
deeds as with words, he backed a foot or two, lifted a
huge and weighty foot, and kicked.
For all ordinary purposes the builder of the Associ-
ated Mechanics’ Hall had done his work adequately,
but he had never suspected that an emergency might
arise which
would bring his doors into competition
with a policeman’s foot. Any lesser maltreatment the
lock might
powerless.
have withstood, but against this it was
With a sharp sound like the cry of one
registering a formal protest the door gave way. It
swung back,
Whether or
showing a vista of startled faces beyond.
not the noise had reached the audience in
the hall I did not know, but it had certainly impressed
the little group on the platform. I had a swift glimpse
of forms hurrying to the centre of the disturbance, of
the chairman gaping like a surprised sheep, of Ukridge
glowering; and then the constable blocked out my view
as he marched forward over the débris.
A moment later there was no doubt as to whether
the audience was interested. A confused uproar broke
out in every corner of the hall, and, hurrying on to the
platform, I
fallen: It
perceived that the hand of the law had
was grasping Ukridge’s shoulder in a
weighty grip in the sight of all men.
There was just one instant before the tumult reached
its height in which it was possible for the constable to252 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
speak with a chance of making himself heard. He
seized his opportunity adroitly. He threw back his
head and bellowed as if he were giving evidence before
a deaf magistrate.
‘ °E’s—stolen—a—mo—tor—car! I’m a-r-resting
—’im—for—’avin’—sto—len—a—norter-mobile!” he
vociferated in accents audible to all. And then, with
the sudden swiftness of one practised in the art of
spiriting felons away from the midst of their friends,
he was gone, and Ukridge with him.
There followed a long moment of bewildered amaze-
ment. Nothing like this had ever happened before at
political meetings at Redbridge, and the audience
seemed doubtful how to act. The first person to whom
intelligence returned was a grim-looking little man in
the third row, who had forced himself into prominence
during the chairman’s speech with some determined
heckling. He bounded out of his chair and stood on it.
“Men of Redbridge!’ he shouted.
“Siddown!” roared the audience automatically.
“Men of Redbridge,’ repeated the little man, in a
voice out of all proportion to his inches, “are you going
to trust—do you mean to support—is it your intention
to place your affairs in the hands of one who employs
criminals is
“Siddown!”” recommended many voices, but there
were many others that shouted “ Ear, “Ear!”
ca who employs criminals to speak on his plat-
form? Men of Redbridge, I i
Here someone grasped the little man’s collar and
brought him to the floor. Somebody else hit the collar-THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 253
grasper over the head with an umbrella. A third
party broke the umbrella and smote its owner on the
nose. And after that the action may be said to have
become general. Everybody seemed to be fighting
everybody else, and at the back of the hall a group of
serious thinkers, in whom I seemed to recognise
the denizens of Biscuit Row, had begun to dismember
the chairs and throw them at random. It was when
the first rush was made for the platform that the meet-
ing definitely broke up. The chairman headed the
stampede for my little door, moving well for a man
of his years, and he was closely followed by the rest
of the elect. I came somewhat midway in the pro-
cession, outstripped by the leaders, but well up in the
field. The last I saw of the monster meeting in aid of
Boko Lawlor’s candidature was Boko’s drawn and
agonised face as he barked his shin on an overturned
table in his efforts to reach the exit in three strides.
The next morning dawned bright and fair, and the
sun, as we speeded back to London, smiled graciously
in through the windows of our third-class compart-
ment. But it awoke no answering smile on Ukridge’s
face. He sat in his corner scowling ponderously out at
the green countryside. He seemed in no way thank-
ful that his prison-life was over, and he gave me no
formal thanks for the swiftness and intelligence with
which I had obtained his release.
A five-shilling telegram to Looney Coote had been
the means of effecting this. Shortly after breakfast
Ukridge had come to my hotel a free man, with the
information that Looney had wired the police of Red-254 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
bridge directions to unbar the prison cell. But liberty
he appeared to consider a small thing compared with
his wrongs, and now he sat in the train, thinking, think-
ing, thinking.
I was not surprised when his first act on reaching
Paddington was to climb into a cab and request the
driver to convey him immediately to Looney Coote’s
address.
Personally, though I was considerate enough not to
say so, I was pro-Coote. If Ukridge wished to go
about sneaking his friends’ cars without a word of ex-
planation, it seemed to me that he did so at his own
risk. I could not see how Looney Coote could be ex-
pected to know by some form of telepathy that his
vanished Winchester-Murphy had fallen into the hands
of an old schoolfellow. But Ukridge, to judge by his
stony stare and tightened lips, not to mention the fact
that his collar had jumped off its stud and he had made
no attempt to adjust it, thought differently. He sat in
the cab, brooding silently, and when we reached our
destination and were shown into Looney’s luxurious
sitting-room, he gave one long, deep sigh, like that of
a fighter who hears the gong go for round one.
Looney fluttered out of the adjoining room in
pyjamas and a flowered dressing-gown. He was
evidently a late riser.
“Oh, here you are!” he said, pleased. “I say, old
man, I’m awfully glad it’s all right.”
“All right!” An overwrought snort escaped Uk-
ridge. His bosom swelled beneath his mackintosh.
“All right!”THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 255
“I’m frightfully sorry there was any trouble.”
Ukridge struggled for utterance.
“Do you know I spent the night on a beastly plank
bed,” he said, huskily.
“No, really? I say!
“Do you know that this morning I was washed by
the authorities ?”
=L say,, no!t;
“And you say it’s all right!”
He had plainly reached the point where he proposed
to deliver a lengthy address of a nature calculated to
cause alarm and despondency in Looney Coote, for he
raised a clenched fist, shook it passionately, and
swallowed once or twice. But before he could embark
on what would certainly have been an oration worth
listening to, his host anticipated him.
“T don’t see that it was my fault,” bleated Looney
Coote, voicing my own sentiments.
“You don’t see that it was your fault!” stuttered
Ukridge.
“Listen, old man,” I urged, pacifically. “I didn't
like to say so before, because you didn’t seem in the
mood for it, but what else could the poor chap have
done? You took his car without a word of explana-
tion 2
“What ?”
and naturally he thought it had been stolen
and had word sent out to the police-stations to look
out for whoever had got it. Asa matter of fact, it was
I who advised him to.”
Ukridge was staring bleakly at Looney.
>
«e256 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Without a word of explanation!’ he echoed.
“What about my letter, the long and carefully-written
letter I sent you explaining the whole thing?”
~Hettent:
esuy
“T got no letter,” said Looney Coote.
Ukridge laughed malevolently.
“You're going to pretend it went wrong in the post,
eh? Thin, very thin. I am certain that letter was
posted. I remember placing it in my pocket for that
purpose. It is not there now, and I have been wearing
this suit ever since I left London. See. These are all
the contents of my af
His voice trailed off as he gazed at the envelope in
his hand. There’ was a long silence. Ukridge’s jaw
dropped slowly.
“Now, how the deuce did that happen?” he mur-
mured.
I am bound to say that Looney Coote in this difficult
moment displayed a nice magnanimity which I could
never have shown. He merely nodded sympathetically.
“T’m always doing that sort of thing myself,” he
said. ‘“‘Never can remember to post letters. Well,
now that that’s all explained, have a drink, old man,
and let’s forget about it.”
The gleam in Ukridge’s eye showed that the invita-
tion was a welcome one, but the battered relics of his
conscience kept him from abandoning the subject under
discussion as his host had urged.
“But upon my Sam, Looney, old horse,” he stam-THE ARM OF LOONEY COOTE 257
mered, “I—vwell, dash it, I don’t know what to say. I
mean Me
Looney Coote was fumbling in the sideboard for the
materials for a friendly carouse.
“Don’t say another word, old man, not another
word,” he pleaded. “It’s the sort of thing that might
have happened to anyone. And, as a matter of fact,
the whole affair has done me a bit of good. Dashed
lucky it has turned out for me. You see, it came as
a sort of omen. There was an absolute outsider run-
ning in the third race at Kempton Park the day after
the car went called Stolen Goods, and somehow it
seemed to me that the thing had been sent for a purpose.
I crammed on thirty quid at twenty-five to one. The
people round about laughed when they saw me back
this poor, broken-down-looking moke, and, dash it,
the animal simply romped home! I collected a parcel!”
We clamoured our congratulations on this happy
ending. Ukridge was especially exuberant.
“Yes,’”’ said Looney Coote, “I won seven hundred
and fifty quid. Just like that! I put it on with that
new fellow you were telling me about at the O. W.
dinner, old man—that chap Isaac O’Brien. It sent
him absolutely broke and he’s had to go out of business.
He’s only paid me six hundred quid so far, but he says
he has some sort of a sleeping partner or something who
may be able to raise the balance.”CHAPTER IX
THE EXIT OF BATTLING BILLSON
E Theatre Royal, Llunindnno, is in the middle
of the principal thoroughfare of that repellent
town, and immediately opposite its grubby main en-
trance there is a lamp-post. Under this lamp-post, as
I approached, a man was standing. He was a large
man, and his air was that of one who has recently
passed through some trying experience. There was
dust on his person, and he had lost his hat. At the
sound of my footsteps he turned, and the rays of the
lamp revealed the familiar features of my old friend
Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge.
“Great Scott!” I ejaculated. “What are you doing
here?”
There was no possibility of hallucination. It was
the man himself in the flesh. And what Ukridge, a
free agent, could be doing in Llunindnno was more than
I could imagine. Situated, as its name implies, in
Wales, it is a dark, dingy, dishevelled spot, inhabitated
by tough and sinister men with suspicious eyes and
three-day beards; and to me, after a mere forty minutes’
sojourn in the place, it was incredible that anyone
should be there except on compulsion.
Ukridge gaped at me incredulously.
258THE EXIT OF BILLSON 259
“Corky, old horse!” he said, “this is, upon my Sam,
without exception the most amazing event in the
world’s history. The last bloke I expected to see.”’
“Same here. Is anything the matter?’ I asked,
eyeing his bedraggled appearance.
“Matter? I should say something was the matter!”
snorted Ukridge, astonishment giving way to right-
eous indignation. ‘They chucked me out!”
“Chucked you out? Who? Where from?”
“This infernal theatre, laddie. After taking my
good money, dash it! At least, I got in on my face, but
that has nothing to do with the principle of the thing.
Corky, my boy, don’t you ever go about this world
seeking for justice, because there’s no such thing under
the broad vault of heaven. I had just gone out for a
breather after the first act, and when I came back I
found some fiend in human shape had pinched my seat.
And just because I tried to lift the fellow out by the
ears, a dozen hired assassins swooped down and shot
me out. Me, I'll trouble you! The injured party!
Upon my Sam,” he said, heatedly, with a longing look
at the closed door, “I’ve a dashed good mind to——”
“TI shouldn’t,” I said, soothingly. “After all, what
does it matter? It’s just one of those things that are
bound to happen from time to time. The man of
affairs passes them off with a light laugh.”
“Yes, but a
“Come and have a drink.”
The suggestion made him waver. The light of
battle died down in his eyes. He stood for a moment
in thought.260 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“You wouldn’t bung a brick through the window?”
he queried, doubtfully.
“No, no!”
“Perhaps you're right.”
He linked his arm in mine and we crossed the road
to where the lights of a public-house shone like hearten-
ing beacons. The crisis was over.
“Corky,” said Ukridge, warily laying down his mug
of beer on the counter a few moments later, lest emotion
should cause him to spill any of its precious contents,
“I can’t get over, I simply cannot get over the astound-
ing fact of your being in this blighted town.”
I explained my position. My presence in Llunin-
dnno was due to the fact that the paper which occasion-
ally made use of my services as a special writer had sent
me to compose a fuller and more scholarly report than
its local correspondent seemed capable of concocting of
the activities of one Evan Jones, the latest of those re-
vivalists who periodically convulse the emotions of the
Welsh mining population. His last and biggest meet-
ing was to take place next morning at eleven o'clock.
“But what are you doing here?” I asked.
“What am J doing here?” said Ukridge. “Who, me?
Why, where else would you expect me to be? Haven't
you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Haven’t you seen the posters?”
“What posters? I only arrived an hour ago.”
“My dear old horse! Then naturally you aren't
abreast of local affairs.” He drained his mug, breathed
contentedly, and led me out into the street. “Look!”THE EXIT OF BILLSON 261
He was pointing at a poster, boldly lettered in red
and black, which decorated the side-wall of the Bon
Ton Millinery Emporium. The street-lighting system
of Llunindnno is defective, but I was able to read
what it said :—
ODDFELLOW\S’ HALL
Special Ten-Round Contest.
LLOYD THOMAS
(Llunindnno)
US.
BATTLING BILLSON
(Bermondsey ).
“Comes off to-morrow night,” said Ukridge. “And
I don’t mind telling you, laddie, that I expect to make
a colossal fortune.”’
“Are you still managing the Battler?’’ I said, sur-
prised at this dogged perseverance. “I should have
thought that after your last two experiences you would
have had about enough of it.”’
“Oh, he means business this time. I’ve been talking
to him like a father.”
“How much does he get ?”
“Twenty quid.”
“Twenty quid? Well, where does the colossal for-
tune come in? Your share will only be a tenner.”
“No, my boy. You haven’t got on to my devilish
shrewdness. I’m not in on the purse at all this time.
I’m the management.”
“The management ?”262 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
‘Well, part of it. You remember Isaac O’Brien, the
bookie I was partner with till that chump Looney Coote
smashed the business? Izzy Previn is his real name.
We've gone shares in this thing. Izzy came down a
week ago, hired the hall, and looked after the advertis-
ing and so on; and I arrived with good old Billson this
afternoon. We're giving him twenty quid, and the
other fellow’s getting another twenty; and all the rest
of the cash Izzy and I split on a fifty-fifty basis. Afflu-
ence, laddie! That’s what it means. Affluence beyond
the dreams of a Monte Cristo. Owing to this Jones
fellow the place is crowded, and every sportsman for
miles around will be there to-morrow at five bob a
head, cheaper seats two-and-six, and standing-room one
shilling. Add lemonade and fried fish privileges, and
you have a proposition almost without parallel in the
annals of commerce. I couldn’t be more on velvet if
they gave me a sack and a shovel and let me loose in
the Mint.”
I congratulated him in suitable terms.
“How is the Battler?” I asked.
“Trained to an ounce. Come and see him to-morrow
morning.”
“T can’t come in the morning. I’ve got to go to this
Jones meeting.”
“Oh, yes. -Well, make it early in the afternoon,
then. Don’t come later than three, because he will be
resting. We’re at Number Seven Caerleon Street.
Ask for the Cap and Feathers public-house, and turn
sharp to the left.”
I was in a curiously uplifted mood on the followingTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 263
afternoon as I set out to pay my respects to Mr. Billson.
This was the first time I had had occasion to attend
one of these revival meetings, and the effect it had had
on me was to make me feel as if I had been imbibing
large quantities of champagne to the accompaniment
of a very loud orchestra. Even before the revivalist
rose to speak, the proceedings had had an effervescent
quality singularly unsettling to the sober mind, for the
vast gathering had begun to sing hymns directly they
took their seats; and while the opinion I had formed
of the inhabitants of Llunindnno was not high, there
was no denying their vocal powers. There is some-
thing about a Welsh voice when raised in song that no
other voice seems to possess—a creepy, heart-searching
quality that gets right into a man’s inner consciousness
and stirs it up with a pole. And on top of this had
come Evan Jones’s address.
It did not take me long to understand why this man
had gone through the countryside like a flame. He
had magnetism, intense earnestness, and the voice of
a prophet crying in the wilderness. His fiery eyes
seemed to single out each individual in the hall, and
every time he paused sighings and wailings went up
like the smoke of a furnace. And then, after speak-
ing for what I discovered with amazement on consult-
ing my watch was considerably over an hour, he
stopped. And I blinked like an aroused somnambulist,
shook myself to make sure I was still there, and came
away. And now, as I walked in search of the Cap
and Feathers, I was, as I say, oddly exhilarated: and
I was strolling about in a sort of trance when a sudden264 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
uproar jerked me from my thoughts. I looked about
me, and saw the sign of the Cap and Feathers sus-
pended over a building across the street.
It was a dubious-looking hostelry in a dubious neigh-
bourhood: and the sounds proceeding from its in-
terior were not reassuring to a peace-loving pedestrian.
There was a good deal of shouting going on and much
smashing of glass; and, as I stood there, the door
flew open and a familiar figure emerged rather hastily.
A moment later there appeared in the doorway a
woman.
She was a small woman, but she carried the largest
and most intimidating mop I had ever seen. It dripped
dirty water as she brandished it; and the man, glancing
apprehensively over his shoulder, proceeded rapidly on
his way.
“Hallo, Mr. Billson!”’ I said, as he shot by me.
It was not, perhaps, the best-chosen moment for en-
deavouring to engage him in light conversation. He
showed no disposition whatever to linger. He vanished
round the corner, and the woman, with a few winged
words, gave her mop a victorious flourish and re-
entered the public-house. I walked on, and a little
later a huge figure stepped cautiously out of an alley-
way and fell into step at my side.
“Didn’t recognise you, mister,” said Mr. Billson,
apologetically.
“You seemed in rather a hurry,” I agreed.
“OR said Mr. Billson, and a thoughtful silence
descended upon him for a space.THE EXIT OF BILLSON 265
“Who,” I asked, tactlessly, perhaps, “was your lady
friend ?”
Mr. Billson looked a trifle sheepish. Unnecessarily,
in my opinion. Even heroes may legitimately quail
before a mop wielded by an angry woman.
“She come out of a back room,” he said, with em-
barrassment. “Started makin’ a fuss when she saw
what I’d done. So I come away. You can’t dot a
woman,’ argued Mr. Billson, chivalrously.
“Certainly not,” I agreed. “But what was the
trouble ?”
“I been doin’ good,” said Mr. Billson, virtuously.
“Doing good?”
“Spillin’ their beers.”
“Whose beers?”
“All of their becrs. I went in and there was a lot of
sinful fellers drinkin’ beers. So I spilled ’em. All of
‘em. Walked round and spilled all of them beers, one
after the other. Not ’arf surprised them pore sinners
wasn't,” said Mr. Billson, with what sounded to me
not unlike a worldly chuckle.
“T can readily imagine it.”
eu
“T say I bet they were.”
“"R!” said Mr. Billson. He frowned. ‘Beer,’ he
proceeded, with cold austerity, “ain’t right. Sinful,
that’s what beer is. It stingeth like a serpent and biteth
like a ruddy adder.” |
My mouth watered a little. Beer like that was what
I had been scouring the country for for years. I
thought it imprudent, however, to say so. For some266 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
reason which I could not fathom, my companion, once
as fond of his half-pint as the next man, seemed to
have conceived a puritanical hostility to the beverage.
I decided to change the subject.
“T’m looking forward to seeing you fight to-night,”
I said.
He eyed me woodenly.
“Mee”
“Yes. At the Oddfellows’ Hall, you know.”
He shook his head.
“T ain’t fighting at no Oddfellows’ Hall,” he re-
plied. ‘Not at no Oddfellows’ Hall nor nowhere else
I’m not fighting, not to-night nor no night.” He
pondered stolidly, and then, as if coming to the con-
clusion that his last sentence could be improved by the
addition of a negative, added “No!”
And having said this, he suddenly stopped and stiff-
ened like a pointing dog; and, looking up to see what
interesting object by the wayside had attracted his
notice, I perceived that we were standing beneath
another public-house sign, that of the Blue Boar. Its
windows were hospitably open, and though them came
a musical clinking of glasses. Mr. Billson licked his
lips with a quiet relish.
‘“‘*Scuse me, mister,”’ he said, and left me abruptly.
My one thought now was to reach Ukridge as
quickly as possible, in order to acquaint him with these
sinister developments. For I was startled. More, I
was alarmed and uneasy. In one of the star per-
formers at a special ten-round contest, scheduled to
take place that evening, Mr. Billson’s attitude seemedTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 267
to me peculiar, not to say disquieting. So, even though
a sudden crash and uproar from the interior of the
Blue Boar called invitingly to me to linger, I hurried
on, and neither stopped, looked, nor listened until
I stood on the steps of Number Seven Caerleon Street.
And eventually, after my prolonged ringing and knock-
ing had finally induced a female of advanced years
to come up and open the door, I found Ukridge lying
on a horse-hair sofa in the far corner of the sitting-
room.
I unloaded my grave news. It was wasting time to
try to break it gently.
“T’ve just seen Billson,” I said, ‘and he seems to
be in rather a strange mood. In fact, I’m sorry to
say, old man, he rather gave me the impression 4
“That he wasn’t going to fight to-night?’ said
Ukridge, with a strange calm. “Quite correct. He
isn’t. He’s just been in here to tell me so. What I
like about the man is his consideration for all con-
cerned. He doesn’t want to upset anybody’s arrange-
ments.”
“But what’s the trouble? Is he kicking about only
getting twenty pounds?”
“No. He thinks fighting’s sinful!”
“What?”
“Nothing more nor less, Corky my boy. Like
chumps, we took our eyes off him for half a second
this morning, and he sneaked off to that revival meet-
ing. Went out shortly after a light and wholesome
breakfast for what he called a bit of a mooch round,
and came in half an hour ago a changed man. Full268 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
of loving-kindness, curse him. Nasty shifty gleam
in his eye. Told us he thought fighting sinful and it
was all off, and then buzzed out to spread the Word.”
I was shaken to the core. Wilberforce Billson, the
peerless but temperamental Battler, had never been
an ideal pugilist to manage, but hitherto he had drawn
the line at anything like this. Other little problems
which he might have brought up for his manager to
solve might have been overcome by patience and tact;
but not this one. The psychology of Mr. Billson
was as an open book to me. He possessed one of those
single-track minds, capable of accommodating but one
idea at a time, and he had the tenacity of the simple
soul. Argument would leave him unshaken. On that
bone-like head reason would beat in vain. And, these
things being so, I was at a loss to account for Ukridge’s
extraordinary calm. His fortitude in the hour of ruin
amazed me.
His next remark, however, offered an explanation.
‘We're putting on a substitute,” he said.
I was relieved.
“Oh, you’ve got a substitute? That’s a bit of luck.
Where did you find him?”
“As a matter of fact, laddie, I’ve decided to go on
myself.”
“What! You!”
“Only way out, my boy. No other solution.”
I stared at the man. Years of the closest acquain-
tance with S. F. Ukridge had rendered me almost sur-
prise-proof at anything he might do, but this was too
much.THE EXIT OF BILLSON 269
“Do you mean to tell me that you seriously intend
to go out there to-night and appear in the ring?”
I cried.
“Perfectly straightforward business-like proposition,
old man,” said Ukridge, stoutly. “I’m in excellent
shape. I sparred with Billson every day while he was
training.”
“Yes, but 7
“The fact is, laddie, you don’t realise my poten-
tialities. Recently, it’s true, I’ve allowed myself to
become slack and what you might call enervated, but,
damme, when I was on that trip in that tramp-steamer,
scarcely a week used to go by without my having a
good earnest scrap with somebody. Nothing barred,”
said Ukridge, musing lovingly on the carefree past,
“except biting and bottles.”
“Yes, but, hang it—a professional pugilist !”
“Well, to be absolutely accurate, laddie,”’ said Uk-
ridge, suddenly dropping the heroic manner and be-
coming confidential, “the thing’s going to be fixed.
Izzy Previn has seen the bloke Thomas’s manager,
and has arranged a gentleman’s agreement. The mana-
ger, a Class A blood-sucker, insists on us giving his
man another twenty pounds after the fight, but that
can’t be helped. In return, the Thomas bloke con-
sents to play light for three rounds, at the end of which
period, laddie, he will tap me on the side of the head
and | shall go down and out, a popular loser. What’s
more, I’m allowed to hit him hard—once—just so
long as it isn’t on the nose. So you see, a little tact,270 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
a little diplomacy, and the whole thing fixed up as
satisfactorily as anyone could wish.”
“But suppose the audience demands its money back
when they find they’re going to see a substitute?”
“My dear old horse,” protested Ukridge, “surely you
don’t imagine that a man with a business head like
mine overlooked that? Naturally, I’m going to fight
as Battling Billson. Nobody knows him in this town.
I’m a good big chap, just as much a heavy-weight
as he is. No, laddie, pick how you will you can’t pick
a flaw in this.”
“Why mayn’t you hit him on the nose?”
“T don’t know. People have these strange whims.
And now, Corky my boy, I think you had better leave
me. I ought to relax.”
The Oddfellows’ Hall was certainly filling up nicely
when J arrived that night. Indeed, it seemed as though
Llunindnno’s devotees of sport would cram it to the
roof. I took my place in the line before the pay-
window, and, having completed the business end of the
transaction, went in and enquired my way to the
dressing-rooms. And presently, after wandering
through divers passages, I came upon Ukridge, clad
for the ring and swathed in his familiar yellow mackin-
tosh.
“You're going to have a wonderful house,” I said.
“The populace is rolling up in shoals.”
He received the information with a strange lack of
enthusiasm. I looked at him in concern, and was dis-
quieted by his forlorn appearance. That face, which
had beamed so triumphantly at our last meeting, wasTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 271
pale and set. Those eyes, which normally shone with
the flame of an unquenchable optimism, seemed dull and
careworn. And even as I looked at him he seemed to
rouse himself from a stupor and, reaching out for
his shirt, which hung on a near-by peg, proceeded to
pull it over his head.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
His head popped out of the shirt, and he eyed me
wanly.
“T’m off,” he announced, briefly.
“Off? How do you mean, off?” I tried to soothe
what I took to be an eleventh-hour attack of stage-
fright. “You'll be all right.”
Ukridge laughed hollowly.
“Once the gong goes, you'll forget the crowd.”
“Tt isn’t the crowd,” said Ukridge, in a pale voice,
climbing into his trousers. “Corky, old man,” he went
on, earnestly, “if ever you feel your angry passions
rising to the point where you want to swat a stranger
in a public place, restrain yourself. There’s nothing
in it. This bloke Thomas was in here a moment ago
with his manager to settle the final details. He’s the
fellow I had the trouble with at the theatre last night!’
“The man you pulled out of the seat by his ears?”
I gasped.
Ukridge nodded.
“Recognised me at once, confound him, and it was
all his manager, a thoroughly decent cove whom I
liked, could do to prevent him getting at me there and
then.”
“Good Lord!” I said, aghast at this grim develop-272 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
ment, yet thinking how thoroughly characteristic it
was of Ukridge, when he had a whole townful of
people to quarrel with, to pick the one professional
pugilist.
At this moment, when Ukridge was lacing his left
shoe, the door opened and a man came in.
The newcomer was stout, dark and beady-eyed,
and from his manner of easy comradeship and the
fact that when he spoke he supplemented words with
the language of the waving palm, I deduced that this
must be Mr. Izzy Previn, recently trading as Isaac
O’Brien. He was cheeriness itself.
“Vell,” he said, with ill-timed exuberance, “how’th
the boy?”
The boy cast a sour look at him.
“The house,” proceeded Mr. Previn, with an al-
most lyrical enthusiasm, “is abtholutely full. Crammed,
jammed, and packed. They're hanging from the roof
by their eyelids. It’th goin’ to be a knockout.”
The expression, considering the circumstances, could
hardly have been less happily chosen. Ukridge winced
painfully, then spoke in no uncertain voice.
“lm not going to fight!”
Mr. Previn’s exuberance fell from him like a gar-
ment. His cigar dropped from his mouth, and his
beady eyes glittered with sudden consternation.
‘What do you mean?”
“Rather an unfortunate thing has happened,” I ex-
plained. “It seems that this man Thomas is a fellow
Ukridge had trouble with at the theatre last night.”THE EXIT OF BILLSON 273
“What do you mean, Ukridge?” broke in Mr.
Previn. “This is Battling Billson.”
“T’ve told Corky all about it,” said Ukridge over his
shoulder as he laced his right shoe. “Old pal of mine.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Previn, relieved. “Of course, if Mr.
Corky is a friend of yours and quite understands that
all this is quite private among ourselves and don’t
want talking about outside, all right. But what were
you thayin’? I can’t make head or tail of it. How
do you mean, you’re not goin’ to fight? Of course
you're goin’ to fight.”
“Thomas was in here just now,” I said. “Ukridge
and he had a row at the theatre last night, and naturally
Ukridge is afraid he will go back on the agreement.”’
“‘Nonthense,”’ said Mr. Previn, and his manner was
that of one soothing a refractory child. “He won't
go back on the agreement. He promised he’d play
light and he will play light. Gave me his word as a
gentleman.”
“He isn’t a gentleman,’ Ukridge pointed out,
moodily.
“But lithen!””
“I’m going to get out of here as quick as I dashed
well can!”
“Conthider!’ pleaded Mr. Previn, clawing great
chunks out of the air.
Ukridge began to button his collar.
“Reflect !’ moaned Mr. Previn. ‘“There’s that lovely
audience all sitting out there, jammed like thardines,
waiting for the thing to start. Do you expect me to
go and tell ’em there ain’t goin’ to be no fight? I’m274 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
thurprised at you,” said Mr. Previn, trying an appeal
to his pride. ‘“Where’th your manly spirit? A big,
husky fellow like you, that’s done all sorts of scrappin’
in your time .
“Not,” Ukridge pointed out coldly, “with any
damned professional pugilists who’ve got a grievance
against me.”
“He won't hurt you.”
“He won’t get the chance.”
“You'll be as safe and cosy in that ring with him
as if you was playing ball with your little thister.”
Ukridge said he hadn’t got a little sister.
“But think!’ implored Mr. Previn, flapping like a
seal. ‘Think of the money! Do you realise we'll
have to return it all, every penny of it?”
A spasm of pain passed over Ukridge’s face, but he
continued buttoning his collar.
“And not only that,” said Mr. Previn, “but, if you
ask me, they’ll be so mad when they hear there ain't
goin’ to be no fight, they'll lynch me.”
Ukridge seemed to regard this possibility with calm.
“And you, too,” added Mr. Previn.
Ukridge started. It was a plausible theory, and one
that had not occurred to him before. He paused
irresolutely. And at this moment a man came hurrying
in.
‘“What’s the matter?” he demanded, fussily.
“Thomas has been in the ring for five minutes. Isn't
_your man ready ?”
“In one half tick,” said Mr. Previn. He turnedTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 275
meaningly to Ukridge. ‘“That’s right, ain’t it? You'll
be ready in half a tick?”
Ukridge nodded wanly. In silence he shed shirt,
trousers, shoes, and collar, parting from them as if
they were old friends whom he never expected to see
again. One wistful glance he cast at his mackintosh,
lying forlornly across a chair; and then, with more
than a suggestion of a funeral procession, we started
down the corridor that led to the main hall. The hum
of many voices came to us; there was a sudden blaze of
light, and we were there. I must say for the sport-
loving citizens of Llunindnno that they appeared to be
fair-minded men. Stranger in their midst though he
was, they gave Ukridge an excellent reception as he
climbed into the ring; and for a moment, such is the
tonic effect of applause on a large scale, his depression
seemed to lift. A faint, gratified smile played about
his drawn mouth, and I think it would have developed
into a bashful grin, had he not at this instant caught
sight of the redoubtable Mr. Thomas towering mas-
sively across the way. I saw him blink, as one who,
thinking absently of this and that, walks suddenly into
a lamp-post; and his look of unhappiness returned.
My heart bled for him. If the offer of my little
savings in the bank could have transported him there
and then to the safety of his London lodgings, I
would have made it unreservedly. Mr. Previn had dis-
appeared, leaving me standing at the ringside, and as
nobody seemed to object I remained there, thus getting
an excellent view of the mass of bone and sinew that276 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
made up Lloyd Thomas. And there was certainly
plenty of him to see.
Mr. Thomas was, I should imagine, one of those men
who do not look their most formidable in mufti—for
otherwise I could not conceive how even the fact that
he had stolen his seat could have led Ukridge to lay the
hand of violence upon him. In the exiguous costume
of the ring he looked a person from whom the sensible
man would suffer almost any affront with meekness.
He was about six feet in height, and wherever a man
could bulge with muscle he bulged. For a moment my
anxiety for Ukridge was tinged with a wistful regret
that I should never see this sinewy citizen in action with
Mr. Billson. It would, I mused, have been a battle
worth coming even to Llunindnno to see.
The referee, meanwhile, had been introducing the
principals in the curt, impressive fashion of referees.
He now retired, and with a strange foreboding note a
gong sounded on the further side of the ring. The
seconds scuttled under the ropes. The man Thomas,
struggling—it seemed to me—with powerful emotions,
came ponderously out of his corner.
In these reminiscences of a vivid and varied career,
it is as a profound thinker that I have for the most
part had occasion to portray Stanley Featherstonehaugh
Ukridge. I was now to be reminded that he also had
it in him to be a doer. Even as Mr. Thomas shuffled
towards him, his left fist shot out and thudded against
the other’s ribs. In short, in a delicate and difficult
situation, Ukridge was comporting himself with an
adequacy that surprised me. However great mightTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 2707
have been his reluctance to embark on this contest, once
in he was doing well.
And then, half-way through the first round, the
truth dawned upon me. Injured though Mr. Thomas
had been, the gentleman’s agreement still held. The
word of a Thomas was as good as his bond. Poignant
though his dislike of Ukridge might be, nevertheless,
having pledged himself to mildness and self-restraint
for the first three rounds, he intended to abide by the
contract. Probably, in the interval between his visit
to Ukridge’s dressing-room and his appearance in the
ring, his manager had been talking earnestly to him.
At any rate, whether it was managerial authority or
his own sheer nobility of character that influenced him,
the fact remains that he treated Ukridge with a quite
remarkable forbearance, and the latter reached his
corner at the end of round one practically intact.
And it was this that undid him. No sooner had the
gong sounded for round two than out he pranced from
his corner, thoroughly above himself. He bounded
at Mr. Thomas like a dervish.
I could read his thoughts as if he had spoken them.
Nothing could be clearer than that he had altogether
failed to grasp the true position of affairs. Instead of
recognising his adversary’s forbearance for what it
was and being decently grateful for it, he was filled
with a sinful pride. Here, he told himself, was a man
who had a solid grievance against him—and, dash it,
the fellow couldn’t hurt him a bit. What the whole
thing boiled down to, he felt, was that he, Ukridge,
was better than he had suspected, a man to be reckoned278 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
with, and one who could show a distinguished gathering
of patrons of sport something worth looking at. The
consequence was that, where any sensible person would
have grasped the situation at once and endeavoured to
show his appreciation by toying with Mr. Thomas in
gingerly fashion, whispering soothing compliments
into his ear during the clinches, and generally trying to
lay the foundations of a beautiful friendship against
the moment when the gentleman’s agreement should
lapse, Ukridge committed the one unforgivable act.
There was a brief moment of fiddling and feinting in
the centre of the ring, then a sharp smacking sound,
a startled yelp, and Mr. Thomas, with gradually red-
dening eye, leaning against the ropes and muttering
to himself in Welsh.
Ukridge had hit him on the nose.
Once more I must pay a tribute to the fair-minded-
ness of the sportsmen of Llunindnno. The stricken
man was one of them—possible Llunindnno’s favourite
son—yet nothing could have exceeded the heartiness
with which they greeted the visitor’s achievement. A
shout went up as if Ukridge had done each individual
present a personal favour. It continued as he advanced
buoyantly upon his antagonist, and—to show how
entirely Llunindnno audiences render themselves im-
partial and free from any personal bias—it became
redoubled as Mr. Thomas, swinging a fist like a ham,
knocked Ukridge flat on his back. Whatever happened,
so long as it was sufficiently violent, seemed to be all
right with that broad-minded audience.
Ukridge heaved himself laboriously to one knee.THE EXIT OF BILLSON 279
His sensibilities had been ruffled by this unexpected
blow, about fifteen times as hard as the others he had
received since the beginning of the affray, but he was
ia man of mettle and determination. However humbly
he might quail before a threatening landlady, or how-
ever nimbly he might glide down a side-street at the
sight of an approaching creditor, there was nothing
wrong with his fighting heart when it came to a
straight issue between man and man, untinged by the
financial element. He struggled painfully to his feet,
while Mr. Thomas, now definitely abandoning the
gentleman’s agreement, hovered about him with ready
fists, only restrained by the fact that one of Ukridge’s
gloves still touched the floor.
It was at this tensest of moments that a voice spoke
inmyear. ‘“ Alf amo’, mister!”
A hand pushed me gently aside. Something large
obscured the lights. And Wilberforce Billson, squeez-
ing under the ropes, clambered into the ring.
For the purposes of the historian it was a good thing
that for the first few moments after this astounding
occurrence a dazed silence held the audience in its grip.
Otherwise, it might have been difficult to probe motives
and explain underlying causes. I think the spectators
wefe either too surprised to shout, or else they enter-
tained for a few brief seconds the idea that Mr. Billson
was the forerunner of a posse of plain-clothes police
about to raid the place. At any rate, for a space they
were silent, and he was enabled to say his say.
“Fightin’,” bellowed Mr. Billson, “ain’t right!”
There was an uneasy rustle in the audience. The280 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
voice of the referee came thinly, saying, “Here! Hi!”
“Sinful,” explained Mr. Billson, in a voice like a fog-
horn.
His oration was interrupted by Mr. Thomas, who
was endeavouring to get round him and attack Ukridge.
The Battler pushed him gently back.
“Gents,” he roared, “I, too, have been a man of
voylence! I ’ave struck men in anger. ’R, yes! But
I ’ave seen the light. Oh, my brothers ‘
The rest of his remarks were lost. With a startling
suddenness the frozen silence melted. In every part of
the hall indignant seatholders were rising to state their
views.
But it is doubtful whether, even if he had been
granted a continuance of their attention, Mr. Billson
would have spoken to much greater length; for at this
moment Lloyd Thomas, who had been gnawing at the
strings of his gloves with the air of a man who is able
to stand just so much and whose limit has been ex-
ceeded, now suddenly shed these obstacles to the freer
expression of self, and advancing bare-handed, smote
Mr. Billson violently on the jaw.
Mr. Billson turned. He was pained, one could see
that, but more spiritually than physically. For a
moment he seemed uncertain how to proceed. Then
he turned the other cheek.
The fermenting Mr. Thomas smote that, too.
There was no vacillation or uncertainty now about
Wilberforce Billson. He plainly considered that he
had done all that could reasonably be expected of any
pacifist. A man has only two cheeks. He flung up aTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 281
mast-like arm, to block a third blow, countered with an
accuracy and spirit which sent his aggressor reeling
to the ropes; and then, swiftly removing his coat, went
into action with the unregenerate zeal that had made
him the petted hero of a hundred water-fronts. And I,
tenderly scooping Ukridge up as he dropped from the
ring, hurried him away along the corridor to his
dressing-room. I would have given much to remain
and witness a mix-up which, if the police did not inter-
fere, promised to be the battle of the ages, but the
claims of friendship are paramount.
Ten minutes later, however, when Ukridge, washed,
clothed, and restored as near to the normal as a man
may be who has received the full weight of a Lloyd
Thomas on a vital spot, was reaching for his mackin-
tosh, there filtered through the intervening doors and
passageways a sudden roar so compelling that my sport-
ing spirit declined to ignore it.
“Back in a minute, old man,” I said.
And, urged by that ever-swelling roar, I cantered
back to the hall.
In the interval during which I had been ministering
to my stricken friend a certain decorum seemed to have
been restored to the proceedings. The conflict had
lost its first riotous abandon. Upholders of the
decencies of debate had induced Mr. Thomas to resume
his gloves, and a pair had also been thrust upon the
Battler. Moreover, it was apparent that the etiquette
of the tourney now governed the conflict, for rounds
had been introduced, and one had just finished as I
came in view of the ring. Mr. Billson was leaning back282 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
in a chair in one corner undergoing treatment by his
seconds, and in the opposite corner loomed Mr.
Thomas; and one sight of the two men was enough to
tell me what had caused that sudden tremendous out-
burst of enthusiasm among the patriots of Llunindnno.
In the last stages of the round which had just con-
cluded the native son must have forged ahead in no
uncertain manner. Perhaps some chance blow had
found its way through the Battler’s guard, laying him
open and defenceless to the final attack. For his at-
titude, as he sagged in his corner, was that of one
whose moments are numbered. His eyes were closed,
his mouth hung open, and exhaustion was writ large
upon him. Mr. Thomas, on the contrary, leaned
forward with hands on knees, wearing an impatient
look, as if this formality of a rest between rounds irked
his imperious spirit.
The gong sounded and he sprang from his seat.
“Taddie!’’ breathed an anguished voice, and a hand
clutched my arm.
I was dimly aware of Ukridge standing beside me.
I shook him off. This was no moment for conversa-
tion. My whole attention was concentrated on what
was happening in the ring.
“T say, laddie!”’
Matters in there had reached that tense stage when
audiences lose their self-control—when strong men
stand on seats and weak men cry “Siddown!” The
air was full of that electrical thrill that precedes the
knockout.
And the next moment it came. But it was not LloydTHE EXIT OF BILLSON 283
Thomas who delivered it. From some mysterious
reservoir of vitality Wilberforce Billson, the pride of
Bermondsey, who an instant before had been reeling
under his antagonist’s blows like a stricken hulk before
a hurricane, produced that one last punch that wins
battles. Up it came, whizzing straight to its mark,
a stupendous, miraculous uppercut which caught Mr.
Thomas on the angle of the jaw just as he lurched
forward to complete his task. It was the last word.
Anything milder Llunindnno’s favourite son might
have borne with fortitude, for his was a teak-like
frame impervious to most things short of dynamite ;
but this was final. It left no avenue for argument
or evasion. Lloyd Thomas spun round once in a com-
plete circle, dropped his hands, and sank slowly to the
ground.
There was one wild shout from the audience, and
then a solemn hush fell. And in this hush Ukridge’s
voice spoke once more in my ear.
“I say, laddie, that blighter Previn has bolted with
every penny of the receipts!”
The little sitting-room of Number Seven Caerleon
Street was very quiet and gave the impression of being
dark. This was because there is so much of Ukridge
and he takes Fate’s blows so hardly that when anything
goes wrong his gloom seems to fill a room like a fog.
For some minutes after our return from the Odd-
fellows’ Hall a gruesome silence had prevailed. Uk-
ridge had exhausted his vocabulary on the subject of
Mr. Previn; and as for me, the disaster seemed so284 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
tremendous as to render words of sympathy a mere
mockery.
‘And there’s another thing I’ve just remembered,”
said Ukridge, hollowly, stirring on his sofa.
‘“What’s that?” I enquired, in a bedside voice.
“The bloke Thomas. He was to have got another
twenty pounds.”
“He'll hardly claim it, surely?”
“He'll claim it all right,” said Ukridge, moodily.
“Except, by Jove,’ he went on, a sudden note of
optimism in his voice, “that he doesn’t know where I
am. I was forgetting that. Lucky we legged it away
from the hall before he could grab me.”
“You don’t think that Previn, when he was making
the arrangements with Thomas’s manager, may have
mentioned where you were staying?”
“Not likely. Why should he? What reason would
he have?”
“Gentleman to see you, sir,” crooned the aged female
at the door.
The gentleman walked in. It was the man who had
come to the dressing-room to announce that Thomas
was in the ring; and though on that occasion we had
not been formally introduced I did not need Ukridge’s
faint groan to tell me who he was.
“Mr. Previn?” he said. He was a brisk man, direct
in manner and speech.
“He’s not here,” said Ukridge.
“You'll do. You're his partner. I’ve come for that
twenty pounds.”
There was a painful silence.THE EXIT OF BILLSON
“It’s gone,” said Ukridge.
“What's gone?”
“The money, dash it. And Previn; too. .He’s
bolted.”’
A hard look came into the other’s eyes. Dim as the
light was, it was strong enough to show his expression,
and that expression was not an agreeable one.
“That won’t do,” he said, in a metallic voice.
3
“Now, my dear old horse
“Tt’s no good trying anything like that on me. I
want my money, or I’m going to call a policeman.
Now, then!”
“But, laddie, be reasonable.”’
“Made a mistake in not getting it in advance. But
now ll do. Out with it!”
“But I keep telling you Previn’s bolted!”
“He’s certainly bolted,” I put in, trying to be helpful.
“That’s right, mister,” said a voice at the door. “I
met ’im sneakin’ away.”
It was Wilberforce Billson. He stood in the door-
way diffidently, as one not sure of his welcome. His
whole bearing was apologetic. He had a nasty bruise
on his left cheek and one of his eyes was closed, but
he bore no other signs of his recent conflict.
Ukridge was gazing upon him with bulging eyes.
“You met him!” he moaned. “You actually met
him?”
“?R” said Mr. Billson. “When I was comin’ to the
all. I seen ’im puttin’ all that money into a liddle bag,
and then ’e ’urried off.”286 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Good lord!” I cried. ‘‘Didn’t you suspect what he
was up to?”
“oR” agreed Mr. Billson. I always knew ’e was a
wrong ’un.”’
“Then why, you poor woollen-headed fish,” bellowed
Ukridge, exploding, “why on earth didn’t you stop
him ?”
“TI never thought of that,” admitted Mr. Billson,
apologetically.
Ukridge laughed a hideous laugh.
“T just pushed ’im in the face,’ proceeded Mr. Bill-
son, “and took the liddle bag away from ’im.”’
He placed on the table a small weather-worn suit-
case that jingled musically as he moved it; then, with
the air of one who dismisses some triviality from his
mind, moved to the door.
“’Scuse me, gents,’ said Battling Billson, deprecat-
ingly. ‘“Can’t stop. I’ve got to go and spread the
light.”CHAPTER X
UKRIDGE ROUNDS A NASTY CORNER
HE late Sir Rupert Lakenheath, KC: MG GB
M.V.O., was one of those men at whom their
countries point with pride. Until his retirement on a
pension in the year 1906, he had been governor of
various insanitary outposts of the British Empire
situated around the equator, and as such had won
respect and esteem from all. A kindly editor of my
acquaintance secured for me the job of assisting the
widow of this great administrator to prepare his mem-
oirs for publication; and on a certain summer after-
noon I had just finished arraying myself suitably for
my first call on her at her residence in Thurloe Square,
South Kensington, when there was a knock at the door,
and Bowles, my landlord, entered, bearing gifts.
These consisted of a bottle with a staring label and
a large cardboard hat-box. I gazed at them blankly, for
they held no message for me.
Bowles, in his ambassadorial manner, condescended
to explain.
“Mr. Ukridge,” he said, with the ring of paternal
affection in his voice which always crept into it when
speaking of that menace to civilisation, “called a
moment ago, sir, and desired me to hand you these.”
287288 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
Having now approached the table on which he had
placed the objects, I was enabled to solve the mystery
of the bottle. It was one of those fat, bulging bottles,
and it bore across its diaphragm in red letters the single
word “PEPPO.” Beneath this, in black letters, ran
the legend, “It Bucks You Up.” I had not seen Uk-
ridge for more than two weeks, but at our last meet-
ing, I remembered, he had spoken of some foul patent
medicine of which he had somehow secured the agency.
This, apparently, was it.
“But what’s in the hat-box?” I asked.
“T could not say, sir,’”’ replied Bowles.
At this point the hat-box, which had hitherto not
spoken, uttered a crisp, sailorly oath, and followed it
up by singing the opening bars of “Annie Laurie.”
It then relapsed into its former moody silence.
A few doses of Peppo would, no doubt, have enabled
me to endure this remarkable happening with fortitude
and phlegm. Not having taken that specific, the thing
had a devastating effect upon my nervous centres. I
bounded back and upset a chair, while Bowles, his
dignity laid aside, leaped silently towards the ceiling.
It was the first time I had ever seen him lay off the
mask, and even in that trying moment I could not help
being gratified by the spectacle. It gave me one of
those thrills that come once in a lifetime.
“For Gord’s sake!’ ejaculated Bowles.
“Have a nut,” observed the hat-box, hospitably.
“Have a nut.”
Bowles’s panic subsided.
“Tt’s a bird, sir. A parrot!’UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 289
“What the deuce does Ukridge mean,” I cried, be-
coming the outraged householder, “by cluttering up
my rooms with his beastly parrots? I'd like that man
to know
The mention of Ukridge’s name seemed to act on
Bowles like a soothing draught. He recovered his
poise.
“T have no doubt, sir,” he said, a touch of coldness
in his voice that rebuked my outburst, “that Mr.
Ukridge has good reasons for depositing the bird in
our custody. I fancy he must wish you to take charge
of it for him.”
“He may wish it ” T was beginning, when my
eye fell on the clock. If I did not want to alienate
my employer by keeping her waiting, I must be on my
way immediately.
“Put that hat-box in the other room, Bowles,” I
said. ‘And I suppose you had better give the bird
something to eat.”
“Very good, sir. You may leave the matter in my
hands with complete confidence.”
The drawing-room into which I was shown on ar-
riving at Thurloe Square was filled with many memen-
toes of the late Sir Rupert’s gubernatorial career. In
addition the room contained a small and bewilderingly
pretty girl in a blue dress, who smiled upon me pleas-
antly.
“My aunt will be down ina moment,” she said, and
for a few moments we exchanged commonplaces. Then
the door opened and Lady Lakenheath appeared.
The widow of the administrator was tall, angular,290 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
and thin, with a sun-tanned face of a cast so determined
as to make it seem a tenable theory that in the years
previous to 1906 she had done at least her share of the
administrating. Her whole appearance was that of a
woman designed by nature to instil law and order into
the bosoms of boisterous cannibal kings. She surveyed
me with an appraising glance, and then, as if reconciled
to the fact that, poor specimen though I might be, I
was probably as good as anything else that could be
got for the money, received me into the fold by pressing
the bell and ordering tea.
Tea had arrived, and I was trying to combine bright
dialogue with the difficult feat of balancing my cup on
the smallest saucer I had ever seen, when my hostess,
happening to glance out of the window into the street
below, uttered something midway between a sigh and a
click of the tongue.
“Oh, dear! That extraordinary man again!”
The girl in the blue dress, who had declined tea and
Was sewing in a distant corner, bent a little closer over
her work.
“Millie!’’ said the administratress, plaintively, as if
desiring sympathy in her trouble.
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?”
“That man is calling again!”
There was a short but perceptible pause. A delicate
pink appeared in the girl’s cheeks.
“Yes, Aunt Elizabeth?” she said.
“Mr. Ukridge,” announced the maid at the door.
It seemed to me that if this sort of thing was to
continue, if existence was to become a mere series ofUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 291
shocks and surprises, Peppo would have to be installed
as an essential factor in my life. I stared speechlessly
at Ukridge as he breezed in with the unmistakable air
of sunny confidence which a man shows on familiar
ground. Even if I had not had Lady Lakenheath’s
words as evidence, his manner would have been enough
to tell me that he was a frequent visitor in her draw-
ing-room ; and how he had come to be on calling terms
with a lady so pre-eminently respectable it was beyond
me to imagine. I awoke from my stupor to find that
we were being introduced, and that Ukridge, for some
reason clear, no doubt, to his own tortuous mind but
inexplicable to me, was treating me as a complete
stranger. He nodded courteously but distantly, and I,
falling in with his unspoken wishes, nodded _ back.
Plainly relieved, he turned to Lady Lakenheath and
plunged forthwith into the talk of intimacy.
“T’ve got good news for you,” he said. ‘News about
Leonard.”’
The alteration in our hostess’s manner at these words
was remarkable. Her somewhat forbidding manner
softened in an instant to quite a tremulous fluttering.
Gone was the hauteur which had caused her but a
moment back to allude to him as “that extraordinary
man.” She pressed tea upon him, and scones.
“Oh, Mr. Ukridge!” she cried.
“T don’t want to rouse false hopes and all that sort
of thing, laddie—I mean, Lady Lakenheath, but upon
my Sam, I really believe I am on the track. I have
been making the most assiduous enquiries.”
“How very kind of you!”292 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“No, no,” said Ukridge, modestly.
“T have been so worried,’”’ said Lady Lakenheath,
“that I have scarcely been able to rest.”
“Too bad!”
“Last night I had a return of my wretched malaria.”
At these words, as if he had been given a cue,
Ukridge reached under his chair and produced trom
his hat, like some conjurer, a bottle that was own
brother to the one he had left in my rooms. Even
from where I sat I could read those magic words of
cheer on its flaunting label.
“Then I’ve got the very stuff for you,” he boomed.
“This is what you want. Glowing reports on all
sides. Two doses, and cripples fling away their
crutches and join the Beauty Chorus.”
“T am scarcely a cripple, Mr. Ukridge,’”’ said Lady
Lakenheath, with a return of her earlier bleakness.
“No, no! Good heavens, no! But you can't go
wrong by taking Peppo.”
“Peppo?” said Lady Lakenheath, doubtfully.
“Tt bucks you up.”
“You think it might do me good?” asked the suf-
ferer, wavering. There was a glitter in her eye that
betrayed the hypochondriac, the woman who will try
anything once.
Samet fall.
“Well, it is most kind and thoughtful of you to
have brought it. What with worrying over Leon-
ard e
“T know, I know,” murmured Ukridge, in a posi-
tively bedside manner.UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 293,
“It seems so strange,” said Lady Lakenheath, “that,
after I had advertised in all the papers, someone did
not find him.”
“Perhaps someone did find him!” said Ukridge,
darkly.
“You think he must have been stolen ?”
“I am convinced of it. A beautiful parrot like
Leonard, able to talk in six languages 2
“And sing,” murmured Lady Lakenheath.
" and sing,” added Ukridge, “is worth a lot of
money. But don’t you worry, old—er—don’t you
worry. If the investigations which I am conducting
now are successful, you will have Leonard back safe
and sound to-morrow.”
“To-morrow ?”
“Absolutely to-morrow. Now tell me all about your
malaria.”
I felt that the time had come for me to leave. It
was not merely that the conversation had taken a purely
medical turn and that I was practically excluded from
it; what was really driving me away was the impera-
tive necessity of getting out in the open somewhere
and thinking. My brain was whirling. The world
seemed to have become suddenly full of significant and
disturbing parrots. I seized my hat and rose. My
hostess was able to take only an absent-minded in-
terest in my departure. The last thing I saw as the
door closed was Ukridge’s look of big-hearted tender-
ness as he leaned forward so as not to miss a syllable
of his companion’s clinical revelations. He was not
actually patting Lady Lakenheath’s hand and telling294 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
her to be a brave little woman, but short of that he
appeared to be doing everything a man could do to
show her that, rugged though his exterior might be,
his heart was in the right place and aching for her
troubles.
I walked back to my rooms. I walked slowly and
pensively, bumping into lamp-posts and pedestrians.
It was a relief, when I finally reached Ebury Street,
to find Ukridge smoking on my sofa. I was resolved
that before he left he should explain what this was
all about, if I had to wrench the truth from him.
“Hallo, laddie!’’ he said. ‘Upon my Sam, Corky,
old horse, did you ever in your puff hear of anything
so astounding as our meeting like that? Hope you
didn’t mind my pretending not to know you. The fact
is my position in that house What the dickens
were you doing there, by the way?”
“T’m helping Lady Lakenheath prepare her hus-
band’s memoirs.”’
“Of course, yes. I remember hearing her say she
was going to rope in someone. But what a dashed
extraordinary thing it should be you! However, where
was I? Oh, yes. My position in the house, Corky,
is so delicate that I simply didn’t dare risk entering
into any entangling alliances. What I mean to say is,
if we had rushed into each other’s arms, and you had
been established in the old lady’s eyes as a friend of
mine, and then one of these days you had happened
to make a bloomer of some kind—as you well might,
laddie—and got heaved into the street on your left ear
—well, you see where I would be. I should be in-UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 295
volved in your downfall. And I solemnly assure you,
laddie, that my whole existence is staked on keeping
in with that female. I must get her consent!”
“Her what?”
“Her consent. To the marriage.”
“The marriage?”
Ukridge blew a cloud of smoke, and gazed through
it sentimentally at the ceiling.
“Isn't she a perfect angel?” he breathed, softly.
“Do you mean Lady Lakenheath’” I asked, be-
wildered.
“Fool! No, Millie.”
“Millie? The girl in blue?”
Ukridge sighed dreamily.
“She was wearing that blue dress when I first met
her, Corky. And a hat with thingummies. It was
on the Underground. I gave her my seat, and, as I
hung over her, suspended by a strap, I fell in love
absolutely in a flash. I give you my honest word,
laddie, I fell in love with her for all eternity between
Sloane Square and South Kensington stations. She
got out at South Kensington. So did I. I followed her
to the house, rang the bell, got the maid to show me
in, and, once I was in, put up a yarn about being mis-
directed and coming to the wrong address and all that
sort of thing. J think they thought I was looney or
trying to sell life insurance or something, but I didn’t
mind that. A few days later I called, and after that
I hung about, keeping an eye on their movements,
met ’em everywhere they went, and bowed and passed
a word and generally made my presence felt, and—296 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
well, to cut a long story short, old horse, we're engaged.
I happened to find out that Millie was in the habit
of taking the dog for a run in Kensington Gardens
every morning at eleven, and after that things began
to move. It took a bit of doing, of course, getting
up so early, but I was on the spot every day and we
talked and bunged sticks for the dog, and—well, as
I say, we’re engaged. She is the most amazing, won-
derful girl, laddie, that you ever encountered in your
Hires
I had listened to this recital dumbly. The thing was
too cataclysmal for my mind. It overwhelmed me.
“But ” T began.
“But,” said Ukridge, “the news has yet to be broken
to the old lady, and I am striving with every nerve in
my body, with every fibre of my brain, old horse, to
get in right with her. That is why I brought her that
Peppo. Not much, you may say, but every little helps,
Shows zeal. Nothing like zeal. But, of course, what
I’m really relying on is the parrot. That’s my ace
of trumps.”
I passed a hand over my corrugated forehead.
“The parrot!” I said, feebly. “Explain about the
parrot.” Ukridge eyed me with honest astonishment.
“Do you mean to tell me you haven't got on to
that? A man of your intelligence! Corky, you amaze
me. Why, I pinched it, of course. Or, rather, Millie
and I pinched it together. Muillie—a girl in a million,
laddie !—put the bird in a string-bag one night when
her aunt was dining out and lowered it to me out
of the drawing-room window. And I’ve been keepingUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 297
it in the background till the moment was ripe for the
spectacular return. Wouldn’t have done to take it
back at once. Bad strategy. Wiser to hold it in
reserve for a few days and show zeal and work up the
interest. Millie and I are building on the old lady’s
being so supremely bucked at having the bird restored
to her that there will be nothing she won’t be willing to
do for me.”
“But what do you want to dump: the thing in my
rooms for?’ I demanded, reminded of my grievance.
‘I never got such a shock as when that damned hat-box
began to back-chat at me.”
“T am sorry, old man, but it had to be. I could
never tell that the old lady might not take it into
her head to come round to my rooms about something.
I'd thrown out—mistakenly, I realise now—an occa-
sional suggestion about tea there some afternoon. So
I had to park the bird with you. [I'll take it away
to-morrow.”
“You'll take it away to-night!”
“Not to-night, old man,” pleaded Ukridge. ‘First
thing to-morrow. You won't find it any trouble.
Just throw it a word or two every now and then and
give it a bit of bread dipped in tea or something, and
you won’t have to worry about it at all. And I'll be
round by noon at the latest to take it away. May
Heaven reward you, laddie, for the way you have stood
by me this day!’
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 parrot298 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
should have proved to be a bird of high-strung tem-
perament, easily upset. The experiences which he had
undergone since leaving home, had, I was to discover,
jarred his nervous system. He was reasonably tran-
quil 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 any-
thing 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 hat-box was gone, and
about six o’clock Ukridge appeared, so beaming and
effervescent that I understood what had happened be-
fore 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 ie
“Lady Lakenheath has given her consent?”UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 299
“Not merely given it, but bestowed it blithely,
jubilantly.”’
“Tt 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 satisfies Lady Lakenheath?” I said, in-
credulously.
Ukridge hesitated for a moment.
“Well, to be absolutely frank, laddie,” he admitted,
“T 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 defi-
nitely 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.”
“T 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 for300 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
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 strik-
ing 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 IUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 301
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, carry-
ing 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 border-
ing on awe. This was the girl who had actually com-
mitted 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 ever met. I could not blame Ukridge
for falling in love with her.
“Thank you very much,” she said. She sat in the
huge arm-chair, 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 to-
gether.”
“T know. He is always talking about it.’ She302 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
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 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.”
“T bet he did!” I agreed, effusively. Such was the
magic of this Dresden china child that even her pre-
posterous suggestion that Ukridge possessed a con-
science could not shake me.
“He’s so wonderful and chivalrous and consid-
erate.” :
“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.”
“Tt’s noble! That’s what it is. Absolutely noble!”
“And if there’s one thing in the world he loathes
it is carrying parcels.”UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 303
“The man,” I exclaimed, with fanatical enthusiasm,
“1s a perfect Sir Galahad!”
“Isn't he? Why, only the other day ie
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, fever-
ishly, “‘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-nosed304 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
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 hav-
ing 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 co-operation.”
“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 any-
thing that can be done, he will do it.”
This ruled me out as a potential resister. UkridgeUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 305
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.
“Tt’s rummy in this life, laddie,’”’ he began in moral-
ising 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 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!’306 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
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 in 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 care-
fully, laddie, for I have thought this thing out to theUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 307
last detail. My aunt is at her cottage at Market Deep-
ing, in Sussex. I don’t know how the trains go, but
there’s sure to be one that’ll get me to Market Deep-
ing to-night. Directly I arrive I shall send a wire
to Wassick—signed ‘Ukridge,’”’ said the schemer.
“T 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.
“IT can rely on you, Corky? You will not let me
down over your end of the business ?”’
I
“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 my-
self 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 apprehension308 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
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.
“Welle”
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 manners 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 moreUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 309
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.”
I strolled buoyantly about the room, inspecting this
object and that. I hummed lightly. I spoke kindly
to the Pekes.
“Hallo, you Pekes!” I said.
I sauntered over to the mantelpiece, over which was
a mirror. I was gazing at myself and thinking that
it was not such a bad sort of face—not handsome,
perhaps, but with a sort of something about it—when
of a sudden the mirror reflected something else.
That something was the figure of that popular novel-
ist and well-known after-dinner speaker, Miss Julia
Ukridge. “Good-morning,” she said.
It is curious how often the gods who make sport of
us poor humans defeat their own ends by overdoing
the thing. Any contretemps less awful than this, how-
ever slightly less awful, would undoubtedly have left
me as limp as a sheet of carbon paper, rattled and
stammering, in prime condition to be made sport of.
But as it was I found myself strangely cool. I had
a subconscious feeling that there would be a reaction
later, and that the next time I looked in a mirror I
should find my hair strangely whitened, but for the
moment I was unnaturally composed, and my brain
buzzed like a circular-saw in an ice-box.310 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“How do you do?” I heard myself say. My voice
seemed to come from a long distance, but it was
steady and even pleasing in timbre.
“You wished to see me, Mr. Corcoran?”
Hess,
“Then why,” enquired Miss Ukridge, softly, “did
you ask for my secretary?”
There was that same acid sub-tinkle in her voice
which had been there at our previous battle in the
same ring. But that odd alertness stood by me well.
“T understood that you were out of town,” I said.
“Who told you that?”
“They were saying so at the Savage Club the other
night.” This seemed to hold her.
“Why did you wish to see me?” she asked, baffled
by my ready intelligence.
“IT hoped to get a few facts concerning your pro-
posed lecture tour in America.”
“How did you know that I was about to lecture in
America?” I raised my eyebrows. This was childish.
“They were saying so at the Savage Club,” I replied.
Baffled again.
“T had an idea, Mr. Corcoran,” she said, with a nasty
gleam in her blue eyes, “that you might be the person
alluded to in my nephew Stanley’s telegram.”
“Telegram ?”
“Yes. I altered my plans and returned to London
last night instead of waiting till this evening, and I
had scarcely arrived when a telegram came, signed
Ukridge, from the village where I had been staying. It
instructed my secretary to hand over to a gentlemanUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 311
who would call this morning the draft of the speech
which I am to deliver at the dinner of the Pen and
Ink Club. I assume the thing to have been some
obscure practical joke on the part of my nephew,
Stanley. And I also assumed, Mr. Corcoran, that you
must be the gentleman alluded to.”
I could parry this sort of stuff all day.
“What an odd idea!” I said.
“You think it odd? Then why did you tell my
butler that my secretary was expecting you?”
It was the worst one yet, but I blocked it.
“The man must have misunderstood me. He
seemed,” I added, loftily, ‘an unintelligent sort of
fellow.”
Our eyes met in silent conflict for a brief instant,
but all was well. Julia Ukridge was a civilised woman,
and this handicapped her in the contest. For people
may say what they like about the artificialities of
modern civilisation and hold its hypocrisies up to
scorn, but there is no denying that it has one out-
standing merit. Whatever its defects, civilisation pre-
vents a gently-bred lady of high standing in the literary
world from calling a man a liar and punching him on
the nose, however convinced she may be that he de-
serves it. Miss Ukridge’s hands twitched, her lips
tightened, and her eyes gleamed bluely—but she re-
strained herself. She shrugged her shoulders.
‘What do you wish to know about my lecture tour?”
she said.
It was the white flag.
Ukridge and I had arranged to dine together at312 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
the Regent Grill Room that night and celebrate the
happy ending of his troubles. I was first at the tryst,
and my heart bled for my poor friend as I noted the
care-free way in which he ambled up the aisle to our
table. I broke the bad news as gently as I could, and
the man sagged like a filleted fish. It was not a cheery
meal. J extended myself as host, plying him with
rich foods and spirited young wines, but he would not
be comforted. The only remark he contributed to the
conversation, outside of scattered monosyllables, oc-
curred as the waiter retired with the cigar-box.
“What’s the time, Corky, old man?”
I looked at my watch.
“Just on half-past nine.”
“About now,” said Ukridge, dully, ‘my aunt is
starting to give the old lady an earful!”
Lady Lakenheath was never, even at the best of
times, what I should call a sparkling woman, but it
seemed to me, as I sat with her at tea on the following
afternoon, that her manner was more sombre than
usual. She had all the earmarks of a woman who has
had disturbing news. She looked, in fact, exactly like
a woman who has been told by the aunt of the man who
js endeavouring to marry into her respectable family
the true character of that individual.
It was not easy in the circumstances to keep the
ball rolling on the subject of the "Mgomo-’Mgomos, but
I was struggling bravely, when the last thing happened
which I should have predicted.
“Mr. Ukridge,” announced the maid.
That Ukridge should be here at all was astounding;UKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 313
but that he should bustle in, as he did, with that same
air of being the household pet which had marked his
demeanour at our first meeting in this drawing-room,
soared into the very empyrean of the inexplicable. So
acutely was I affected by the spectacle of this man,
whom I had left on the previous night a broken hulk,
behaving with the ebullience of an honoured member
of the family, that I did what I had been on the verge
of doing every time I had partaken of Lady Laken-
heath’s hospitality—upset my tea.
“T wonder,” said Ukridge, plunging into speech with
the same old breezy abruptness, “if this stuff would
be any good, Aunt Elizabeth.”
I had got my cup balanced again as he started
speaking, but at the sound of this affectionate address
over it went again. Only a juggler of long experience
could have manipulated Lady Lakenheath’s miniature
cups and saucers successfully under the stress of emo-
tions such as I was experiencing.
“What is it, Stanley?” asked Lady Lakenheath,
with a flicker of interest.
They were bending their heads over a bottle which
Ukridge had pulled out of his pocket.
“Tt’s some new stuff, Aunt Elizabeth. Just put on
the market. Said to be excellent for parrots. Might
be worth trying.”
“Tt is exceedingly thoughtful of you, Stanley, to have
brought it,” said Lady Lakenheath, warmly. “And
I shall certainly try the effect of a dose if Leonard
has another seizure. Fortunately, he seemed almost
himself again this afternoon.”314 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
“Splendid!”
“My parrot,” said Lady Lakenheath, including me
in the conversation, “had a most peculiar attack last
night. I cannot account for it. His health has always
been so particularly good. I was dressing for dinner
at the time, and so was not present at the outset of the
seizure, but my niece, who was an eye-witness of what
occurred, tells me he behaved in a most unusual way.
Quite suddenly, it appears, he started to sing very
excitedly; then, after awhile, he stopped in the middle
of a bar and appeared to be suffering. My niece, who
is a most warm-hearted girl, was naturally exceedingly
alarmed. She ran to fetch me, and when I came down
poor Leonard was leaning against the side of his cage
in an attitude of complete exhaustion, and all he would
say was, ‘Have a nut!’ He repeated this several
times in a low voice, and then closed his eyes and
tumbled off his perch. I was up half the night with
him, but now he seems mercifully to have turned the
corner. This afternoon he is almost his old bright self
again, and has been talking in Swahili, always a sign
that he is feeling cheerful.”
I murmured my condolences and congratulations.
“Tt was particularly unfortunate,’ observed Ukridge,
sympathetically, “that the thing should have happened
last night, because it prevented Aunt Elizabeth going
to the Pen and Ink Club dinner.”
“What!” Fortunately I had set down my cup by
this time.
“Yes,”’ said Lady Lakenheath, regretfully. “And I
had been so looking forward to meeting Stanley’sUKRIDGE ROUNDS A CORNER 315
aunt there. Miss Julia Ukridge, the novelist. I have
been an admirer of hers for many years. But, with
Leonard in this terrible state, naturally I could not stir
from the house. His claims were paramount. I shall
have to wait till Miss Ukridge returns from America.”
“Next April,” murmured Ukridge, softly.
“T think, if you will excuse me now, Mr. Corcoran,
I will just run up and see how Leonard is.”’
The door closed.
“Laddie,” said Ukridge, solemnly, ‘““doesn’t this just
show
I gazed at him accusingly.
“Did you poison that parrot?”
“Me? Poison the parrot? Of course I didn’t poison
the parrot. The whole thing was due to an act of
mistaken kindness carried out in a spirit of the purest
altruism. And, as I was saying, doesn’t it just show
that no little act of kindness, however trivial, is ever
wasted in the great scheme of things? One might have
supposed that when I brought the old lady that bottle
of Peppo the thing would have begun and ended there
with a few conventional words of thanks. But mark,
laddie, how all things work together for good. Millie,
who, between ourselves, is absolutely a girl in a million,
happened to think the bird was looking a bit off colour
last night, and with a kindly anxiety to do him a bit
of good, gave him a slice of bread soaked in Peppo.
Thought it might brace him up. Now, what they put
in that stuff, old man, I don’t know, but the fact re-
mains that the bird almost instantly became perfectly
pie-eyed. You have heard the old lady’s account of the316 HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
affair, but, believe me, she doesn’t know one half of
it. Mullie informs me that Leonard’s behaviour had
to be seen to be believed. When the old lady came
down he was practically in a drunken stupor, and all
to-day he has been suffering from a shocking head.
If he’s really sitting up and taking notice again, it
simply means that he has worked off one of the finest
hang-overs of the age. Let this be a lesson to you,
laddie, never to let a day go by without its act of
kindness. What’s the time, old horse?”
“Getting on for five.”
Ukridge seemed to muse for a moment, and a happy
smile irradiated his face.
“About now,” he said. com lacently, “‘my aunt is
3 ) fia oe
out in the Channel somewhere. And I see by the
morning paper that there is a nasty gale blowing up
from the southeast!”
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Destroying Angel, The. Louis Joseph Vance. (Photoplay Ed.).
Devil’s Paw, The. E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Diamond Thieves, The. Arthur Stringer.
Disturbing Charm, The. Berta Ruck.
Domnegan. George Owen Baxter.
Door of Dread, The. Arthur Stringer,
Doors of the Night. Frank L. Packard.
Dope. Sax Rohmer.
Double Traitor, The. FE. Phillips Oppenheim.
Dust of the Desert. Robert Welles Ritchie.
Empty Hands. Arthur Stringer.
Empty Pockets. Rupert Hughes.
Empty Sack, The. Basil King.
Enchanted Canyon. Honoré Willsie.
Enemies of Women. V. B. Ibanez. (Photoplay Ed.).
Eris. Robert W. Chambers.
Erskine Dale, Pioneer. John Fox, Jr.
Evil Shepherd, The. E. Phillips Oppenheim.
Extricating Obadiah. Joseph C. Lincoln.
Eye of Zeitoon, The. Talbot Mundy.
Eyes of the Blind. Arthur Somers Roche.
Eyes of the World. Harold Bell Wright.
Fair Harbor. Joseph C. Lincoln.
Family. Wayland Wells Williams.
Fathoms Deep. Elizabeth Stancy Payne.
Feast of the Lanterns, Louise Gordon Miln.
fighting Chance, The, Robert W. Chambers.PLEASE RETURN TO
ALDERMAN LIBRARY
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