SUMMER LIGHTNING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20288, 22 June 1929, Page 18 (Supplement)

SUMMER LIGHTNING.

BY P. G. WODEHOUSE.

CHAPTER VI. I Again Sue would have liked to apeak. Once more she refrained. She felt as if she were at a sick-bed, hearing a dying man's last words. On such occasions one does not interrupt. " Meanwhile," proceeded Hugo, tonelessly, " Millicent, suspecting—and lam surprised at her having a mind like that; I always looked on her as a pure, white soul —suspecting that I might be up to something in London, got the / - Argus on the long-distance telephone, and told them to follow my movements and report to -her. And, apparently, .just before she called me up, she had" been talking to th.em on tho wire and getting their statement. All this she revealed • to me in/short, burning sentences, and J then she .said that if I thought we were still engaged, 1' could have thwo more guesses But, to save me trouble, she .would tell mo the right answer, viz. : No wedding-bells for me. And to think," said Hugo, picking up .the glass and putling it down again, aftc inspection, with a hurt and disappointed look, " that I actually rallied this growth, Pilbeam, on the subject of following people and reporting on their movements. Yes, as I assure you. Rallied him blithely. Just as 1 was leaving his office we kidded merrily back and forth. , And then I went out into the world, happy and carefree, : -little knowing tnat my very step vs;as dogged by a blasted bloodhound. Well,' all' 7 1 can say is • that, if Ronnie "wants this Pilbeam's gore, and I gather that he does, he will jolly well have to .wait till I've helped myself." Sue, womanlike, blamed the woman. " I don't think Millicent can be a very nice girl," she said primly. "An angel," said Hugo. " Always ' was. Celebrated for it. I don't blame her.", / ' " I do. ' "I don't." " I do." " Well,/have it your own way," said Hugo, handsomely. He beckoned to the waiter. " Another of the same, please." " This settles it," said Sue. Her eyes were sparkling. Her chin had a resolute tilt. "Settles what?" " While you were at the telephone I had an ide^." "I have had ideas in my time," said Hugo. " Many of them. At the moment f I have but one. To get within arm's length. of that yam, Pilbeam, and twist his greasy neck till it comes apart in my hands. ' What do you do here ?' I " said, * Measure footprints V ' W T e follow ' people and report on their movements,' said he. ' Ho! ha!' I laughed carelessly. 'Ha! lia!' laughed ,he. General mirth and jollity. And all the while. . " Hugo, will you listen!" " And this is the bitter thought-that .now me. What chance have I of scooping out the man's inside with my bare hands? I've got to go back to Blandings' on the 2.15, or I lose my job. Leaving him unscathed in his bally lair, chuckling over my downfall, and followij ing some other poor devil's movements." ". , , The broken man passed a weary band .over his forehead. \»' "You spoke?" " I've been speaking for the last ten minutes, only you won't listen. " Say on," said Hugo listlessly, starting on the second restorative. "Have you ever heard of a Miss Schoonmaker ?" " I seem to know the name. Who is she?" " Me." Hugo lowered his glass, pained " Don't talk drip to a broken-hearted man," he begged. " What do you ' mean?" / . . , " When Ronnie was. driving me in his car we mat Lady Constance Keeble." " A blister," said Hugo. " Always_ >[, was. Generally admitted all over Shropshire." . * " She thought I was Miss Schoonmaker." "Why?" " Because Ronnie said I was." Hugo sighed hopelessly. "Complex! Complex! My God! How , complex!" " It was' quite simple and natural. Ronnie had just been telling me about this girl—how he had met her at Biarritz and that she was' coming to Blandings, and so on, and" when he saw Lady Constance looking at me with frightful suspicion it suddenly occurred to him to say that I was her." " That /you were Lady Constance V "No, idiot! -Miss Schoonmaker. And now I'm going to wire her—Lady Constance, not Miss Schoonmaker, in case ■ you were going to ask—saying that I m coming to Blandings right away. f " Pretending ■to be this Miss Schoonmaker?" " Yes." Hugo shook his head. ■" Imposs." "Why?" "Absolutely out of the q." • " Why ? Lady Constance is expecting .me. JDo be sensible." ' " I'm being sensible all right. But r somebody is gibbering, and, naming no names, it's you. Don't you realise that, just as you reach the front door, this Miss Schoonmaker will arrive in person, dishing the whole thing ?" " No, she won't." "Why won't she?" " Because Ronnie sent her a telegram, in Lady Constance's name, saying that fthere's scarlet fever or at Blandings, and she wasn't to come." Hugo's air of tho superior critic fell •< from him like a garment. He sat up in his chair. So moved was he that ho > spilled his lorandy and soda and did not give it so much as a look of regret. He let it soak into the carpet, unheeded. " Sue !"■ " Once I'm at Blandings I shall be able to see Ronnie and make him be sensible." " That's right." " And then-you'll be able to tell Milli J cent thqfc there couldn't have been much harm in my being out with .you last night, because I'm engaged to Ronnie." . " That's right, too." , " Can see any flaws?" " ' 1 "Not a flaw." " I suppose as a matter of fact, you'll give the whole thing away in the fiist five minutes by calling me Sue." Hugo waved an arm buoyantly. " Don't give the possibility another thought," he said. "If I do I'll cover it up adroitly by saying I meant ' Schoo.' Short for Schoonmaker. And ! now go and send her another telegram. Keep on sending telegrams. Leave nothing to chance Send a dozen, and pitch it strong. Say that Biandings Castle is ravaged with disease. Not merely scarlet fever. Scarlet fever and mumps. Not to mention housemaid's knee, diabetes, •measles, shingles and tho botts. We're .on to a big thing, my Susan. Let as push it along." j, t CHAPTER VII. Sunshine, calling to all right-thinking men to come out and revel in its heartening warmth, poured in at the windows 6f the great library of Blandings Castle. But to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, much as ho liked sunshine as a rule, it .brought no cheer. His face drawn, his pincenez askew, his tie drooping away from its stud, like a languorous lily, he sat staring sightlessly before him. He v\ looked like something that had just been prepared.fop stuffing by a taxidermist. A moralist,' watching Lord Emsworth "i his travail, would have reflected smugly that it cuts both ways, this busiof being a peer of tho realm with

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largdS private means and a good digestion. Unalloyed prosperity, he would have pointed out in his offensive way, tends to enervate: and in this world of ours, full of alarms and uncertainties, where almost anything is apt to drop suddenly on top of your head without warning at almost any moment, what one needs is to bo tough and alert. When some outstanding disaster happens to the ordinary man, it finds him prepared. Years of missing the 8.45, taking the dog for a run on rainy nights, endeavouring to abate smoky chimneys, i*nd .coming down to breakfast and discovering that they have burned the bacon again, nave given his .soul a protective hardness, so that by the time his wife's relations arrive for a long visit he is ready for them. I»ord Emsworth had had none of this salutary training. Fate, hitherto, had seemed to spend its time thinking up ways of pampering him. He ate well, slept well, and had no money troubles. He grew the best roses in Shropshire. He had • won a first prize for pumpkins at that county's agricultural show, a thing no Ear] of Emsworth had ever done before. And, just previous to the point at which this chronicle opens, his younger son, Frederick, had married tho daughter of an American millionaire, and had gone to live three thousand miles away from Blandings Castle, with lots of good, deep water in between him and it. He had come to look on himself as Fate's spoiled darling. Can we wonder, then, that in the agony of this sudden treacherous blow he felt stunned and looked eviscerated ? Is it surprising that the sunshine made no appeal to him? May we not consider him justified, as he sat there, in swallowing a lump in his throat like an ostrich gulping down a brass door-knob? The answer to these questions, in the order given, is no, no, and yes.' • The door of the library opened, revealing the natty person of his brother Galahad. . Lord Emsworth straightened his pincenez and looked at him apprehensively. Knowing how little reverence there was in the Hon. Galahad's composition and how tepid was his interest iri the honourable strugles for supremacy of fat pigs, he feared that tho other was about .to wound him in his bereavement with some jarring flippancy. Then his gaze softened, and he was conscious of a soothing - feeling of relief. There was no frivolity in his brother's face, only a gravity which became him well. The Hon. Galahad sat down, hitched up the knees of his trousers, cleared his throat, and spoke in a tone that could not have been more sympathetic or in better taste. " Bad business this, Clarence." " Appalling, my dear fellow." " What are you going to do about it?" :Lord Emsworth shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. He generally did when people asked him what he was going to do about things. "I am at a loss," he confessed. " I do not know how to act. What young Carmody tells me has completely upset all my plans." "Carmody?" " I sent him to the Argus Inquiry Agency in London to engage the services of a detective. It is a firm that Sir Gregory Parsloe once mentioned to me, in the days when we were on better terms. lie said, in rather a meaning way, I thought, that if ever I had any trouble of any sort that needed expert and tactful handling, these were the people to go to. I gathered that they had assisted him in some matter the details of which he did not confide to me, and had given complete satisfaction." "Parsloe!" said the Hon. Galahad, and sniffed. " So I sent young Carmody to London to approach them about finding the Empress. And now he tells me that hi& errand proved frnitless. They were firm in their refusal to trace missing pigs." " Just as well." " What do you mean ?" . . " Save you a lot of unnecessary expense. There's no need for you to waste money employing detectives." " I thought that possibly the trained mind .. ." "I can tell you who's got the Empress. I've known it all along." " What !" "Certainly."- " Galahad!" " It's as plain as the nose on your face." Lord Emsworth felt his nose. "Is it?" he said doubtfully. • "I've just been talking to Constance . . . "Constance?" Lord Emsworth opened his mouth feebly. " She hasn't got my pig?" _ " I've just been talking to Constance," repeated the Hon. Galahad, " and she called me some very unpleasant names." " She does, sometimes. Even as a child, I remember' ..." " Most unpleasant names. A senile mischief-maker, among others, , and a meddling old penguin. And all because I told her that the man who had stolen Empress of Blandings was young Gregory Parsloe." " Parsloe!" "Parsloe. Surely it's obvious? I should have thought it would have been clear to the meanest intelligence." From boyhood up, Lord Emsworth had possessed an intelligence about as mean as an intelligence canybe without actually being placed under restraint. Nevertheless, he found his .brother's theory incredible. "Parsloe?" t >f " Don't keep saying ' Parsloe. • " But my dear Galahad . . !*' "It stands to reason." " You don't really think so ?" "Of course I think so. Have you forgotten what I told you the other day ?" " Yes," said Lord Emsworth. He always forgot what people told him tho other day. . li About young Parsloe/' said the xion. Galahad impatiently. " About his nobbling my dog Towser." Lord Emsworth started. It all came back to'him- A hard ex P ression into the eyes behind the pincenez, which emotion had just jerked crooked again. "To be sure. Towser. Your dog. I remember." " He nobbled Towser, and he s nobbled the Empress. Dash it, Clarence, use your intelligence. Who else except young Parsloe had any interest in getting the Empress out ot the way? And, if he hadn't known there was some dirty work being planned, would that pig-man of his, Brotherhood, or whatever his name is, have been going about offering three to one on Pride of Matchingham? I told y-ou at tho time it was fishy ?" • The evidence was darning, and yet Lord Emsworth found himself once more i prey to doubt. Of the blackness of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe's soul he had, of course, long been aware. Bu,t could the man actually 'be capable of the . crime of the century? A fellow-landowner? A Justice of the Peace? A man who grew pumpkins ? A Baronet ? " But, Galahad ... A man in Parsloe's position . . ?" " What do you mean, a man in his position ? Do you suppose a fellow changes his nature just because a cousin of his dies and he comes into a baronetcy ? Haven't i told you a dozen times that ['ve known young Parsloe all his life ? Known him intimately. He was always as hot as mustard and as wide as Leicester Square Ask anybody who used to go around town is those days. When they saw young Parsloe coming, strong men winced and hid their valuables. He hadn't a penny except what he could get by telling the tale, and lie always did himself like a prince. When I knew him first,- he was living down on the river at Shepperton.' His old father, the Dean, had made an arrangement with the keeper of the pub there'to give him breakfast and bed and nothing else. 4 lf he wants dinner he must earn it,' the old boy said. And do you know how he used to earn it? He trained that mongrel of his. Banjo, to go and do tricks ■in front of parties that came to the place in steam launches. And then he would stroll up and hope hi 3 dog was not annoying them

and stand talking till they went in to dinner and then go in with them and pick up the wine-list, and before they knew what was happening he would be bursting with their champagne and cigars. That's the sort of fellow younj Parsloe was." \:-J

" But oven so. . "I remember hint running up to me outside that pub one afternoon—the Jolly Miller it was called, his face shining with positive ecstasy. 'Come in, quick!' ho said. ' There's a new barmaid, and she hasn't found out yet I'm not allowed credit.' " " But Galahad . . ."

'' And if young Parsloe thinks I've forgotten a certain incident that occurred in the earh summer of the year '95, he's very much mistaken. He met me in the Haymarket and took me into the Two Goslings for a drink—there's a hat-shop now where it -used to be—and after we'd had it he pulls a sort of dashed little top affair out of his pocket, a thing with numbers written round it. Said he'd found it in tho street, and wondered who thought of these ingenious little toys arid insisted on our spinning it for halfcrowns. ' You take the odd numbers, I'll take the even,' says young Parsloe. And before I coulu fight my way out into tho fresh air, I was ten pounds seven and sixpence in tho hole. And I discovered next morning that thev make those beastly things so that if you push the stem through and spin them the wrong way up you're bound to get an even number. And when I askefi him the following afternoon to show me that top again, he said he'd lost it. That's the sort of fellow young Parsloe was. And you expect me to believi that inheriting a baronetcy and settling down in the country has made him so dashed pure and high-minded that he wouldn't stoop to nobbling a pig." Lord Emsworth uncoiled _ himself. Cumulative evidence had done its work. His eyes glittered, and he breathed stertorously. " The scoundrel!" " Tough nut, always was.'' " What, shall I do?" "Do ? Why, go to him right away and tax him " " Tax him..'" " Yes. Look him squarely in the eye and tax him with his crime." "I will! Immediately." •" I'll come with you." ''Look him squarely in the eye!" "And tax him!"

" And tax him." Lord Emsworth had reached tho hall and was peering agitatedly to right and left. ' Where the devil's my .hat ? I can't find my hat. Somebody's always hiding my hat. I will not havb my hats hidden." " You don't need a hat to tax a man with stealing a pig," said the Hon. Galahad, who was well versed in the manners and rules of good society.

In his studv at Matchingham Hall in the neighbouring village of Much Matchingham, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe sat gazing at the current number of a weekly paper. We have seen that weekly paper before On that occasion it was in the plump hands of Beach. And, oddly enough, what had attracted Sir Gregory's attention was the very item which had interested the butler. The Hon, Galahad Threepwood. brother of the Earl of Emswortli. A little bird tells us that ' Gaily' is at Blandings Castle. Shropshire,' the ancestral seat of the family, busily engaged in writing reminiscences. As every member of the 'old brigade will testify they ought to be as warm as the weather, if not warmer!

But whereas Beach, perusing this, had chuckled, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe shivered, like one who on a country ramble suddenly preceives a snake in his path.

Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, of Matchingham Hall, seventh baronet of his line, was one of those men who start their lives well, skid for awhile, and then slide back on to the straight and narrow path and stay there. That i 3 to say, he had been up to the age of twenty a blameless boy, and from the age of thirty-one, when he had succeeded to the title, a practically blameless Bart. So much so that now, in his 52nd year, he was on the eve of being accepted by the local Unionist Committee as their accredited candidate for the forthcoming by-election in the Bridgeford and Shifley Parliamentary Division of Shropshire.

jrfut there had been a decade in his life, that dangerous decade of the twenties, when he had accumulated a past so substantial that a less able man would have been compelled to spread it over a far longer period. It was an epoch in his life to which lie did not enjoy looking back, and years of irreproachable barthood had enabled him, as far as ha personally was concerned, to bury the past. And now, it seemed, this pestilential companion of his youth was about to dig it up again.

The years had turned Sir Gregory into a man of portly habit; and, as portly men do in moments of stress, he puffed. But, puff he never so shrewdly, he could not blow away that paragraph. It was still these, looking up at him, when the door opened and the butler announced Lord Emsworth and Mr. Galahad Threepwood.

Sir Gregory's first emotion on seeing the taxing party file into the room was one of pardonable surprise. Aware of the hard feelings which George Cyril Wellbeloved's transference on his allegiance had aroused in the bosom of that gifted pig-man's former employer, he had not expected to receive a morning call from the Earl of Emsworth. As for the Hpn. Galahad, he had ceased to be on cordial terms with him as long ago as the winter of the year nineteen hundred and six. Then, following quickly on tho heels of surprise, came indignation. That the author of tho reminiscences should be writing scurrilous stories about him with one hand and strolling calmly into his private study with, so to speak, tho other, occasioned him the keenest resentment. He drew himself up and was in the very act of staring haughtily, when the Hon, Galahad broke the islence. " Young Parsloe," said thp Hon. Galahad, speaking in a sharp, unpleasant voice, " your sins have found you out!" It had been the baronet's intention to inquire to what lie was indebted for the pleasure of this visit, and to inquire it icily; but at this remarkablo speech-the words halted on his lips. "Eh?" he said blankly. Tho Hon. Galahad was regarding him through his monocle rather as a cook eyes a black-kettle on discovering it in the kitchen sink. It was a look which would have aroused pique in a slug, and once more the Squire of Matchingham's bewilderment gave way to wrath. "What the devil do you ,-mean ,he demanded. " See his face?" asked the Hon. Galahad in a rasping aside. "I'm looking at it now,".said Lord Emsworth. " Guilt written upon it." "Plainly," agreed Lord. Emsworth., Tho Hon. Galahad, who had folded his arms in a menacing manner, unfolded them and struck the desk a smart blow. "Be very careful, Parsloe! Think before you speak. And, when you speak, speak the truth. I may say, by the way of a start, that we know all." How low an estimate Sir Gregory Parsloo had formed of his visitors' collective sanity was revealed by the fact that it was actually Lord Emsworth that he now turned as,, the more intelligent one of the pair. "Emsworth! Explain! What tho deuce aro you doing here ? And what tho devil is that old image talking about?" Lord Emsworth had been watching his brother with growing admiration. The latter's spirited opening of the case for the prosecution had won his hearty'approval. " You know." he said curtly. " I should say he dashed well does know," said the Hon. Galahad. " Parsloe, produce that pig!" (To be continued daily.) ' ' 1