“Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here?” I gurgled.
Claude looked at me reproachfully.
“Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie,” he said reprovingly. “Why, it was only last night that you were saying you wished I was stopping a good long time. Your dream has come true. I am!”
“But why aren’t you on your way to South Africa?”
“Now that,” said Claude, “is a point I rather thought you would want to have explained. It’s like this, old man. You remember that girl you introduced me to at Ciro’s last night?”
“Which girl?”
“There was only one,” said Claude coldly. “Only one that counted, that is to say. Her name was Marion Wardour. I danced with her a good deal, if you remember.”
I began to recollect in a hazy sort of way. Marion Wardour has been a pal of mine for some time. A very good sort. She’s playing in that show at the Apollo at the moment. I remembered now that she had been at Ciro’s with a party the night before, and the twins had insisted on being introduced.
“We are soul mates, Bertie,” said Claude. “I found it out quite early in the p.m., and the more thought I’ve given to the matter the more convinced I’ve become. It happens like that now and then, you know. Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So the long and the short of it is that I gave old Eustace the slip at Waterloo and slid back here. The idea of going to South Africa and leaving a girl like that in England doesn’t appeal to me a bit. I’m all for thinking imperially and giving the Colonies a leg-up and all that sort of thing; but it can’t be done. After all,” said Claude reasonably, “South Africa has got along all right without me up till now, so why shouldn’t it stick it?”
“But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He’ll be expecting you to turn up.”
“Oh, he’ll have Eustace. That’ll satisfy him. Very sound fellow, Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can’t explain, I’ve got a slight headache this morning.”
And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill to look at.
“Oh, my aunt!” I said.
Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.
“Smooth work, Bertie, smooth work!” he said. “I’m sorry for poor old Claude, but there was no alternative. I eluded his vigilance at Waterloo and snaked off in a taxi. I suppose the poor old ass is wondering where the deuce I’ve got to. But it couldn’t be helped. If you really seriously expected me to go slogging off to South Africa, you shouldn’t have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to tell you all about that, Bertie. I’m not a man,” said Eustace, sitting down on the bed, “who falls in love with every girl he sees. I suppose ‘strong, silent,’ would be the best description you could find for me. But when I do meet my affinity I don’t waste time. I—”
“Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?”
“Too? What do you mean, ‘too’?”
I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in person, looking like a giant refreshed. There’s no doubt that Jeeves’s pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. It’s something he puts in them—the Worcester sauce or something. Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he said.
“What on earth are you doing here?” said Eustace.
“Have you come back to inflict your beastly society upon Miss Wardour?”
“Is that why you’ve come back?”
They thrashed the subject out a bit further.
“Well,” said Claude at last. “I suppose it can’t be helped. If you’re here, you’re here. May the best man win!”
“Yes, but dash it all!” I managed to put in at this point. “What’s the idea? Where do you think you’re going to stay if you stick on in London?”
“Why, here,” said Eustace, surprised.
“Where else?” said Claude, raising his eyebrows.
“You won’t object to putting us up, Bertie?” said Eustace.
“Not a sportsman like you,” said Claude.
“But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I’m hiding you when you ought to be in South Africa? Where do I get off?”
“Where does he get off?” Claude asked Eustace.
“Oh, I expect he’ll manage somehow,” said Eustace to Claude.
“Of course,” said Claude, quite cheered up. “He’ll manage.”
“Rather!” said Eustace. “A resourceful chap like Bertie! Of course he will.”
“And now,” said Claude, shelving the subject, “what about that bite of lunch we were discussing a moment ago, Bertie? That stuff good old Jeeves slipped into me just now has given me what you might call an appetite. Something in the nature of six chops and a batter pudding would about meet the case, I think.”
I suppose every chappie in the world has black periods in his life to which he can’t look back without the smouldering eye and the silent shudder. Some coves, if you can judge by the novels you read nowadays, have them practically all the time; but, what with enjoying a sizable private income and a topping digestion, I’m bound to say it isn’t very often I find my own existence getting a flat tyre. That’s why this particular epoch is one that I
