MONEY FOR NOTHING

Taranaki Daily News, 16 October 1934, Page 11

MONEY FOR NOTHING

By

P. G. Wodehouse

CHAPTER 5 (continued). Their roofs leak and you have to mend them; their walls fall down and you have to build them up; their lanes develop holes and you have to restore ithe surface; and all this runs into money. The way things were shaping, felt Mr. Carmody, in a few years. a /landlord would be expected to pay for ■the repairs of his tenants’ wireless sets. He wandered to the window and looked out at the sunlit garden.. And, as he did so, there came' into his range of vision the sturdy figure of his guest, Mr. Molloy; and for the first time that morning Lester Carmody seemed to hear, beating faintly in the distance, the wings of the blue bird. In a world containing anybody as rich-looking as Thomas G. Molloy there was surely still hope. Ronald Fish’s prediction that Hugo’s uncle would appreciate a visit from so ■ solid a citizen of the United States as Mr. Molloy had been fulfilled to the 'letter. ’

Mr. Carmody had welcomed his guest with open- arms. The more rich men he !could gather about him the better he 'was. pleased, for he was a man of vision and had quite a number of schemes in his mind for which he was anxious to obtain financial support.

He decided to go and have a chat with Mr. Molloy. On a morning like this, with all Nature smiling, an American millionaire might well feel just in the mood to put up a few hundred thousand dollars for something.

For July had come in on golden wings and the weather now was the kind of weather to make a poet sing, a lover love, and a Scotch business man subscribe largely to companies formed for the purpose of manufacturing diamonds out of coal tar. On such a morning, felt-Mr. Carmody, anybody ought to be willing to put up any sum for anything.

Nature continued to smile for about another three and a quarter minutes; and then, as far as Mr. Carmody was concerned, the sun went out. With a genial heartiness which gashed him like a knife, the plutocratic Mr. Molloy declined to invest a portion of his millions in a new golf-course, a cinema de luxe to be established in Rudge High Street, or any of the four other schemes which his host presented to his notice.

“No, sir,” said Mr. Molloy, “I’m mighty sorry I can’t meet- you in any way, but the fact is I’m all fixed up in oil. Oil’s my dish. I began in oil, and. I’ll end in oil. I wouldn’t be happy outside of oil.”

“Oh?” said Mr. Carmody, regarding this Human Sardine with as little open hostility and dislike as he-could manage on the spur of the moment. “Yes, sir,” proceeded Mr. Molloy, still in lyrical vein,“l put my first thousand into, oil'and I’ll put my last thousand ;into oil. Oil’s.beep a. good friend,to me. There’s money in oil.” “There is money,” urged Mr. Carmody, "in a cinema in Rudge High Street.” “Not the money there is in oil.” “You are a stranger here,” went on Mr. Carmody patiently, “so you have no doubt got a mistaken idea of the potentialities of Rudge. Rudge, you must remember, is a centre. Small though it is, never forget that it lies just off the main road in the heart of a prosperous country. Worcester is only seven miles away, Birmingham only eighteen. People would come in their motors —” “I’m not stopping them,” said Mr. Molloy generously. “All I’m saying is that my money stays in little old oil.”

“Or take golf,” said Mr. Carmody, side-stepping and attacking from another angle. “The only good golf course in Worcestershire at present is at Stourbridge. Worcestershire needs more golf courses. You know how popular golf is nowadays.” “Not so popular as oil. Oil,” said Mr. Molloy, with the air of one making' an epigram, "is oil. 1 ’ CHAPTER 0. Mr. Carmody stopped himself just in time from saying what he thought of oil. To relieve his feelings, he ground his heel into the soft gravel of the path; and had but one regret, that Mr. Molloy’s ‘most sensitive toe. was not under it. Half turning in the process of making this • bitter gesture, he perceived that Providence, since the. days of Job, always curious to know just how much ;a good man can bear, had sent Ronald : Overbury ■ Fish to add to his troubles. Young Mr. Fish was sauntering up behind his customary eleven inches of cigarette-holder, his pink face wearing that expression of good-natured superiority which, ever since their first meeting, had afflicted Mr. Carmody sorely. From the list of Mr. Carmody’s troubles, recently tabulated, Ronnie Fish was inadvertently omitted. Although to Lady Julia Fish, his mother, this young gentleman, no doubt, was all the world, Lester Carmody had found him nothing but a pain in the neck. Apart from the hideous expense of entertaining a man who took twice of nearly

everything and helped himself unblushingly to. more port, he chafed beneath his guest's curiously patronising manner. He objected to being treated as a junior—and, what was more, as a halfwitted junior—by solemn young men with pink faces. “What’s the argument?” asked Ronnie Fish, anchoring self and cigarette-holder at Mr. Carmody’s side. Mr. Molloy smiled genially. “No argument, brother,” he replied with that bluff heartiness which Lester Carmody had come to dislike so much. “I was merely telling our good friend and host here that the best investment under the broad blue canopy of God’s sky is oil.” . : “Quite right,”- said Ronnie Fish. “He’s perfectly correct, my dear Carmody.” “Our good host was trying to interest me in .golf courses.” “Don’t touch ’em,” said Mr. Fish. “I won’t,” said Mr. Molloy. “Give me oil. Oil’s oil. First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of its countrymen, that’s what oil 'is. Tire Universal Fuel of tire Future.” ? “Absolutely,” said Ronnie Fish. “What did Gladstone say in ’88? You can fuel some of the people all the time, and you can fuel all the people some of the time, but you can’t fuel all the people all the time. He was forgetting about oil. Probably he meant coal.” “Coal?” Mr. Molloy laughed satirically. You could see he despised the stuff. “Don’t talk to me about coal.” This was another disappointment for Mr. Carmody, Cinemas de luxe and golf courses having failed, coal was 'just what he had been intending to talk about. He suspected its presence beneath the turf of the park, and would have been glad to verify his suspicions with the aid of some one else’s capital. ’ “You listen to this bird, Carmody,” said Mr. Fish, patting his host on‘the back. “He’s talking sense. Gil’s . the stuff. ' Dig some of the savings out of the old sock, my dear Carmody, and wade in. You’ll never regret it.” And having delivered himself of this advice with a fatherly kindliness which sent his host’s temperature up several degrees Ronnie Fish strolled on. Mr. Molloy watched his disappear with benevolent approval. He said to Mr. Carmody that that. young man' had his head screwed on the right way, and seemed not to notice a certain lack of responsive enthusiasm on the ether’s part. Ronnie Fish’s head was not one of Mr. Carmody’s favourite subjects at the moment.

“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Molloy, resuming. "Any man that goes into oil is going into a good thing. Oil’s all right. You don’t see John D. Rockefeller running round asking for hand-outs from his friends, do you? No, sir! John’s got his modest little competence, same as me, and he got it, like I did, out of oil. Say, listen, Mr. Carmody, it isn’t often I give up any of my holdings, but you’ve been mighty nice to me, inviting me to your home and all, and I’d like to do something for you in return... What do you say to a good, solid block of Silver River stock at just the price it cost me? And let me tell you I’m offering you something that half the big men on our side would give their eyeteeth for. Only a couple of days before I sailed I was in Charley Schwab’s office, and.he said to me, ‘Tom,’ said Charley, ‘right up till now I’ve stuck to steel and I’ve don© well. Understand,’ he said, ‘l’m not knocking steel. But oil’s the stuff, and if you want to part with any of that Silver River of yours, Tom, he said, ‘pass it across .this desk and write your own ticket.’ That’ll show you.” There is no anguish like, the anguish of the man who is trying to extract cash from a fellow human being and suddenly finds the fellow human being trying to extract it from him. Mr. Carmody laughed a bitter laugh, “Do you imagine,” he said, “that 1 have money to spare for speculative investments?”

“Speculative?” Molloy seemed to suspect his ears Of playing tricks. “Silver River spec . . .’’ “By the time I’ve finished paying the bills for the expenses of this infernal estate, I consider myself lucky if I’ve got a few hundred that I can call my own.” There was a pause. “Is that so?” said Mr. Molloy In a thin voice.

Strictly speaking, it ■ was not. Before succeeding to his present position A head of the family and Squire of Rudge Hall, Lester Carmody had contrived to put away in gilt-edged securities a very nice sum indeed, the fruit of his labours In the world of business. But it was his whim to regard himself as a struggling pauper. “But all this . . Mr. Molloy indicated with a wave of his hand the smiling gardens, the rolling park and the opulent-looking trees reflected in the waters of the moat. “Surely this means a barrel of money?” (To be continued).