the mind of a man who has undertaken a mission as delicate as psmith’s at blandings castle is necessarily alert. ever since he had stepped into the five o’clock train at paddington, when his adventure might have been said formally to have started, psmith had walked warily, like one in a jungle on whom sudden and unexpected things might pounce out at any moment. this calm announcement from the slim young man, therefore, though it undoubtedly startled him, did not deprive him of his faculties. on the contrary, it quickened them. his first action was to step nimbly to the table on which the telegram lay awaiting the return of lord emsworth, his second was to slip the envelope into his pocket. it was imperative that telegrams signed mctodd should not lie about loose while he was enjoying the hospitality of the castle.
this done, he confronted the young man.
“come, come!” he said with quiet severity.
he was extremely grateful to a kindly providence which had arranged that this interview should take place at a time when nobody but himself was in the house.
“you say that you are ralston mctodd, the author of these poems?”
“yes, i do.”
[p. 174]“then what,” said psmith incisively, “is a pale parabola of joy?”
“er—what?” said the new-comer in an enfeebled voice. there was manifest in his demeanour now a marked nervousness.
“and here is another,” said psmith. “‘the——’ wait a minute, i’ll get it soon. yes. ‘the sibilant, scented silence that shimmered where we sat.’ could you oblige me with a diagram of that one?”
“i—i—— what are you talking about?”
psmith stretched out a long arm and patted him almost affectionately on the shoulder.
“it’s lucky you met me before you had to face the others,” he said. “i fear that you undertook this little venture without thoroughly equipping yourself. they would have detected your imposture in the first minute.”
“what do you mean—imposture? i don’t know what you’re talking about.”
psmith waggled his forefinger at him reproachfully.
“my dear comrade, i may as well tell you at once that the genuine mctodd is an old and dear friend of mine. i had a long and entertaining conversation with him only a few days ago. so that, i think we may confidently assert, is that. or am i wrong?”
“oh, hell!” said the young man. and, flopping bonelessly into a chair, he mopped his forehead in undisguised and abject collapse.
silence reigned for awhile.
“what,” inquired the visitor, raising a damp face that shone pallidly in the dim light, “are you going to do about it?”
“nothing, comrade—by the way, what is your name?”
“cootes.”
[p. 175]“nothing, comrade cootes. nothing whatever. you are free to leg it hence whenever you feel disposed. in fact, the sooner you do so, the better i shall be pleased.”
“say! that’s darned good of you.”
“not at all, not at all.”
“you’re an ace——”
“oh, hush!” interrupted psmith modestly. “but before you go tell me one or two things. i take it that your object in coming here was to have a pop at lady constance’s necklace?”
“yes.”
“i thought as much. and what made you suppose that the real mctodd would not be here when you arrived?”
“oh, that was all right. i travelled over with that guy mctodd on the boat, and saw a good deal of him when we got to london. he was full of how he’d been invited here, and i got it out of him that no one here knew him by sight. and then one afternoon i met him in the strand, all worked up. madder than a hornet. said he’d been insulted and wouldn’t come down to this place if they came and begged him on their bended knees. i couldn’t make out what it was all about, but apparently he had met lord emsworth and hadn’t been treated right. he told me he was going straight off to paris.”
“and did he?”
“sure. i saw him off myself at charing cross. that’s why it seemed such a cinch coming here instead of him. it’s just my darned luck that the first man i run into is a friend of his. how was i to know that he had any friends this side? he told me he’d never been in england before.”
“in this life, comrade cootes,” said psmith, “we[p. 176] must always distinguish between the unlikely and the impossible. it was unlikely, as you say, that you would meet any friend of mctodd’s in this out-of-the-way spot; and you rashly ordered your movements on the assumption that it was impossible. with what result? the cry goes round the underworld, ‘poor old cootes has made a bloomer!’”
“you needn’t rub it in.”
“i am only doing so for your good. it is my earnest hope that you will lay this lesson to heart and profit by it. who knows that it may not be the turning-point in your career? years hence, when you are a white-haired and opulent man of leisure, having retired from the crook business with a comfortable fortune, you may look back on your experience of to-day and realise that it was the means of starting you on the road to success. you will lay stress on it when you are interviewed for the weekly burglar on ‘how i began’ . . . but, talking of starting on roads, i think that perhaps it would be as well if you now had a dash at the one leading to the railway-station. the household may be returning at any moment now.”
“that’s right,” agreed the visitor.
“i think so,” said psmith. “i think so. you will be happier when you are away from here. once outside the castle precincts, a great weight will roll off your mind. a little fresh air will put the roses in your cheeks. you know your way out?”
he shepherded the young man to the door and with a cordial push started him on his way. then with long strides he ran upstairs to the library to find eve.
* * * * *
at about the same moment, on the platform of market blandings station, miss aileen peavey was[p. 177] alighting from the train which had left bridgeford some half an hour earlier. a headache, the fruit of standing about in the hot sun, had caused her to forgo the pleasure of hearing lord emsworth deliver his speech: and she had slipped back on a convenient train with the intention of lying down and resting. finding, on reaching market blandings, that her head was much better, and the heat of the afternoon being now over, she started to walk to the castle, greatly refreshed by a cool breeze which had sprung up from the west. she left the town at almost the exact time when the disconsolate mr. cootes was passing out of the big gates at the end of the castle drive.
