to psmith five minutes later, as he sat in his room smoking a cigarette and looking dreamily out at the distant hills, there entered the hon. frederick threepwood, who, having closed the door behind him, tottered to the bed and uttered a deep and discordant groan. psmith, his mind thus rudely wrenched from pleasant meditations, turned and regarded the gloomy youth with disfavour.
“at any other time, comrade threepwood,” he said politely but with firmness, “certainly. but not now. i am not in the vein.”
“what?” said the hon. freddie vacantly.
[p. 163]“i say that at any other time i shall be delighted to listen to your farmyard imitations, but not now. at the moment i am deep in thoughts of my own, and i may say frankly that i regard you as more or less of an excrescence. i want solitude, solitude. i am in a beautiful reverie, and your presence jars upon me somewhat profoundly.”
the hon. freddie ruined the symmetry of his hair by passing his fingers feverishly through it.
“don’t talk so much! i never met a fellow like you for talking.” having rumpled his hair to the left, he went through it again and rumpled it to the right. “i say, do you know what? you’ve jolly well got to clear out of here quick!” he got up from the bed, and approached the window. having done which, he bent towards psmith and whispered in his ear. “the game’s up!”
psmith withdrew his ear with a touch of hauteur, but he looked at his companion with a little more interest. he had feared, when he saw freddie stagger in with such melodramatic despair and emit so hollow a groan, that the topic on which he wished to converse was the already exhausted one of his broken heart. it now began to appear that weightier matters were on his mind.
“i fail to understand you, comrade threepwood,” he said. “the last time i had the privilege of conversing with you, you informed me that susan, or whatever her name is, merely giggled and told you not to be silly when you embraced her. in other words, she is not a detective. what has happened since then to get you all worked up?”
“baxter!”
“what has baxter been doing?”
“only giving the whole bally show away to me,[p. 164] that’s all,” said freddie feverishly. he clutched psmith’s arm violently, causing that exquisite to utter a slight moan and smooth out the wrinkles thus created in his sleeve. “listen! i’ve just been talking to the blighter. i was passing the library just now, when he popped out of the door and hauled me in. and, dash it, he hadn’t been talking two seconds before i realised that he has seen through the whole dam’ thing practically from the moment you got here. though he doesn’t seem to know that i’ve anything to do with it, thank goodness.”
“i should imagine not, if he makes you his confidant. why did he do that, by the way? what made him select you as the recipient of his secrets?”
“as far as i can make out, his idea was to form a gang, if you know what i mean. he said a lot of stuff about him and me being the only two able-bodied young men in the place, and we ought to be prepared to tackle you if you started anything.”
“i see. and now tell me how our delightful friend ever happened to begin suspecting that i was not all i seemed to be. i had been flattering myself that i had put the little deception over with complete success.”
“well, in the first place, dash it, that dam’ fellow mctodd—the real one, you know—sent a telegram saying that he wasn’t coming. so it seemed rummy to baxter bang from the start when you blew in all merry and bright.”
“ah! that was what they all meant by saying they were glad i had come ‘after all.’ a phrase which at the moment, i confess, rather mystified me.”
“and then you went and wrote in the peavey female’s autograph-book.”
“in what way was that a false move?”
[p. 165]“why, that was the biggest bloomer on record, as it has turned out,” said freddie vehemently. “baxter apparently keeps every letter that comes to the place on a file, and he’d skewered mctodd’s original letter with the rest. i mean, the one he wrote accepting the invitation to come here. and baxter compared his handwriting with what you wrote in the peavey’s album, and, of course, they weren’t a dam’ bit alike. and that put the lid on it.”
psmith lit another cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. he realised that he had made a tactical error in underestimating the antagonism of the efficient one.
“does he seem to have any idea why i have come to the castle?” he asked.
“any idea? why, dash it, the very first thing he said to me was that you must have come to sneak aunt connie’s necklace.”
“in that case, why has he made no move till to-day? i should have supposed that he would long since have denounced me before as large an audience as he could assemble. why this reticence on the part of genial old baxter?”
a crimson flush of chivalrous indignation spread itself over freddie’s face.
“he told me that, too.”
“there seems to have been no reserves between comrade baxter and yourself. and very healthy, too, this spirit of confidence. what was his reason for abstaining from loosing the bomb?”
“he said he was pretty sure you wouldn’t try to do anything on your own. he thought you would wait till your accomplice arrived. and, damn him,” cried freddie heatedly, “do you know who he’s got the infernal gall to think is your accomplice? miss halliday! dash him!”
[p. 166]psmith smoked in thoughtful silence.
“well, of course, now that this has happened,” said freddie, “i suppose it’s no good thinking of going on with the thing. you’d better pop off, what? if i were you, i’d leg it to-day and have your luggage sent on after you.”
psmith threw away his cigarette and stretched himself. during the last few moments he had been thinking with some tenseness.
“comrade threepwood,” he said reprovingly, “you suggest a cowardly and weak-minded action. i admit that the outlook would be distinctly rosier if no such person as baxter were on the premises, but nevertheless the thing must be seen through to a finish. at least we have this advantage over our spectacled friend, that we know he suspects me and he doesn’t know we know. i think that with a little resource and ingenuity we may yet win through.” he turned to the window and looked out. “sad,” he sighed, “that these idyllic surroundings should have become oppressed with a cloud of sinister menace. one thinks one sees a faun popping about in the undergrowth, and on looking more closely perceives that it is in reality a detective with a notebook. what one fancied was the piping of pan turns out to be a police-whistle, summoning assistance. still, we must bear these things without wincing. they are our cross. what you have told me will render me, if possible, warier and more snake-like than ever, but my purpose remains firm. the cry goes round the castle battlements ‘psmith intends to keep the old flag flying!’ so charge off and soothe your quivering ganglions with a couple of aspirins, comrade threepwood, and leave me to my thoughts. all will doubtless come right in the future.”
