Mr. Nickerson was fumbling guiltily, and now he produced from his pocket a crumpled wad of notes, which he thrust agitatedly upon Ukridge, who waved them away with loathing.
“This gentleman,” boomed Ukridge, indicating me with a sweeping gesture, “happens to be a lawyer. It is extremely lucky that he chanced to come down today to pay me a visit. Have you followed the proceedings closely?”
I said I had followed them very closely.
“Is it your opinion that an action will lie?”
I said it seemed highly probable, and this expert ruling appeared to put the final touch on Mr. Nickerson’s collapse. Almost tearfully he urged the notes on Ukridge.
“What’s this?” said Ukridge, loftily.
“I—I thought, Mr. Ukridge, that, if it were agreeable to you, you might consent to take your money back, and—and consider the episode closed.”
Ukridge turned to me with raised eyebrows.
“Ha!” he cried. “Ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha!” I chorused, dutifully.
“He thinks that he can close the episode by giving me my money back. Isn’t that rich?”
“Fruity,” I agreed.
“Those dogs were worth hundreds of pounds, and he thinks he can square me with a rotten twenty. Would you have believed it if you hadn’t heard it with your own ears, old horse?”
“Never!”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Ukridge, after thought. “I’ll take this money.” Mr. Nickerson thanked him. “And there are one or two trifling accounts which want settling with some of the local tradesmen. You will square those—”
“Certainly, Mr. Ukridge, certainly.”
“And after that—well, I’ll have to think it over. If I decide to institute proceedings my lawyer will communicate with you in due course.”
And we left the wretched man, cowering despicably behind his whiskers.
It seemed to me, as we passed down the tree-shaded lane and out into the white glare of the road, that Ukridge was bearing himself in his hour of disaster with a rather admirable fortitude. His stock-in-trade, the lifeblood of his enterprise, was scattered all over Kent, probably never to return, and all that he had to show on the other side of the balance-sheet was the cancelling of a few weeks’ back rent and the paying-off of Gooch, the grocer, and his friends. It was a situation which might well have crushed the spirit of an ordinary man, but Ukridge seemed by no means dejected. Jaunty, rather. His eyes shone behind their pince-nez and he whistled a rollicking air. When presently he began to sing, I felt that it was time to create a diversion.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Who, me?” said Ukridge, buoyantly. “Oh, I’m coming back to town on the next train. You don’t mind hoofing it to the next station, do you? It’s only five miles. It might be a trifle risky to start from Sheep’s Cray.”
“Why risky?”
“Because of the dogs, of course.”
“Dogs?”
Ukridge hummed a gay strain.
“Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you about that. I’ve got ’em.”
“What?”
“Yes. I went out late last night and pinched them out of the shed.” He chuckled amusedly. “Perfectly simple. Only needed a clear, level head. I borrowed a dead cat and tied a string to it, legged it to old Nickerson’s garden after dark, dug a board out of the back of the shed, and shoved my head down and chirruped. The dogs came trickling out, and I hared off, towing old Colonel Cat on his string. Great run while it lasted, laddie. Hounds picked up the scent right away and started off in a bunch at fifty miles an hour. Cat and I doing a steady fifty-five. Thought every minute old Nickerson would hear and start blazing away with a gun, but nothing happened. I led the pack across country for a run of twenty minutes without a check, parked the dogs in my sitting room, and so to bed. Took it out of me, by gosh! Not so young as I was.”
I was silent for a moment, conscious of a feeling almost of reverence. This man was undoubtedly spacious. There had always been something about Ukridge that dulled the moral sense.
“Well,” I said at length, “you’ve certainly got vision.”
“Yes?” said Ukridge, gratified.
“And the big, broad, flexible outlook.”
“Got to, laddie, nowadays. The foundation of a successful business career.”
“And what’s the next move?”
We were drawing near to the White Cottage. It stood and broiled in the sunlight, and I hoped that there might be something cool to drink inside it. The window of the sitting room was open, and through it came the yapping of Pekingese.
“Oh, I shall find another cottage somewhere else,” said Ukridge, eyeing his little home with a certain sentimentality. “That won’t be hard. Lots of cottages all over the place. And then I shall buckle down to serious work. You’ll be astounded at the progress I’ve made already. In a minute I’ll show you what those dogs can do.”
“They can bark all right.”
“Yes. They seem excited about something. You know, laddie, I’ve had a great idea. When I saw you at your rooms my scheme was to specialise in performing dogs for the music-halls—what you might call professional dogs. But I’ve been thinking it over, and now I don’t see why I shouldn’t go in for developing amateur talent as well. Say you have a dog—Fido, the household pet—and you think it would brighten the home if he could do a few tricks from time to time. Well, you’re a busy man, you haven’t the time to give up to teaching him. So you just tie a label to his collar and ship him off for a month to the Ukridge Dog College, and back he comes, thoroughly educated. No trouble, no worry, easy terms. Upon my Sam, I’m not sure there isn’t more money in the amateur branch than in the professional. I don’t see why eventually dog owners shouldn’t send their dogs to me as a regular
