Leave it to Psmith. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
Keeble’s feelings expressed themselves in a loud snort.
“Explain!”
“Well, I can. Whole trouble was, I started at the wrong end. Shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. The fact is, Uncle Joe, I’ve got a scheme. I give you my word that, if you’ll only put off having apoplexy for about three minutes,” said Freddie, scanning his fermenting relative with some anxiety, “I can shove you on to a good thing. Honestly I can. And all I say is, if this scheme I’m talking about is worth a thousand quid to you, will you slip it across? I’m game to spill it and leave it to your honesty to cash up if the thing looks good to you.”
“A thousand pounds!”
“Nice round sum,” urged Freddie ingratiatingly.
“Why,” demanded Mr. Keeble, now somewhat recovered, “do you want a thousand pounds?”
“Well, who doesn’t, if it comes to that?” said Freddie. “But I don’t mind telling you my special reason for wanting it at just this moment, if you’ll swear to keep it under your hat as far as the guv’nor is concerned.”
“If you mean that you wish me not to repeat to your father anything you may tell me in confidence, naturally I should not dream of doing such a thing.”
Freddie looked puzzled. His was no lightning brain.
“Can’t quite work that out,” he confessed. “Do you mean you will tell him or you won’t?”
“I will not tell him.”
“Good old Uncle Joe!” said Freddie, relieved. “A topper! I’ve always said so. Well, look here, you know all the trouble there’s been about my dropping a bit on the races lately?”
“I do.”
“Between ourselves, I dropped about five hundred of the best. And I just want to ask you one simple question. Why did I drop it?”
“Because you were an infernal young ass.”
“Well, yes,” agreed Freddie, having considered the point, “you might put it that way, of course. But why was I an ass?”
“Good God!” exclaimed the exasperated Mr. Keeble. “Am I a psycho-analyst?”
“I mean to say, if you come right down to it, I lost all that stuff simply because I was on the wrong side of the fence. It’s a mug’s game betting on horses. The only way to make money is to be a bookie, and that’s what I’m going to do if you’ll part with that thousand. Pal of mine, who was up at Oxford with me, is in a bookie’s office, and they’re game to take me in too if I can put up a thousand quid. Only I must let them know quick, because the offer’s not going to be open for ever. You’ve no notion what a deuce of a lot of competition there is for that sort of job.”
Mr. Keeble, who had been endeavouring with some energy to get a word in during this harangue, now contrived to speak.
“And do you seriously suppose that I would … But what’s the use of wasting time talking? I have no means of laying my hands on the sum you mention. If I had,” said Mr. Keeble wistfully. “If I had …” And his eye strayed to the letter on the desk, the letter which had got as far as “My dear Phyllis” and stuck there.
Freddie gazed upon him with cordial sympathy.
“Oh, I know how you’re situated, Uncle Joe, and I’m dashed sorry for you. I mean, Aunt Constance and all that.”
“What!” Irksome as Mr. Keeble sometimes found the peculiar condition of his financial arrangements, he had always had the consolation of supposing that they were a secret between his wife and himself. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I know that Aunt Constance keeps an eye on the doubloons and checks the outgoings pretty narrowly. And I think it’s a dashed shame that she won’t unbuckle to help poor old Phyllis. A girl,” said Freddie, “I always liked. Bally shame! Why the dickens shouldn’t she marry that fellow Jackson? I mean, love’s love,” said Freddie, who felt strongly on this point.
Mr. Keeble was making curious gulping noises.
“Perhaps I ought to explain,” said Freddie, “that I was having a quiet after-breakfast smoke outside the window there and heard the whole thing. I mean, you and Aunt Constance going to the mat about poor old Phyllis and you trying to bite the guv’nor’s ear and so forth.”
Mr. Keeble bubbled for awhile.
“You—you listened!” he managed to ejaculate at length.
“And dashed lucky for you,” said Freddie with a cordiality unimpaired by the frankly unfriendly stare under which a nicer-minded youth would have withered; “dashed lucky for you that I did. Because I’ve got a scheme.”
Mr. Keeble’s estimate of his young relative’s sagacity was not a high one, and it is doubtful whether, had the latter caught him in a less despondent mood, he would have wasted time in inquiring into the details of this scheme, the mention of which had been playing in and out of Freddie’s conversation like a will-o’-the-wisp. But such was his reduced state at the moment that a reluctant gleam of hope crept into his troubled eye.
“A scheme? Do you mean a scheme to help me out of—out of my difficulty?”
“Absolutely! You want the best seats, we have ’em. I mean,” Freddie went on in interpretation of these peculiar words, “you want three thousand quid, and I can show you how to get it.”
“Then kindly do so,” said Mr. Keeble; and, having opened the door, peered cautiously out, and closed it again, he crossed the room and shut the window.
“Makes it a bit fuggy, but perhaps you’re right,” said Freddie, eyeing these manœuvres. “Well, it’s like this, Uncle Joe. You remember what you were saying to Aunt Constance about some bird being apt to sneak up and pinch her necklace?”
“I do.”
“Well, why not?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why don’t you?”
Mr. Keeble regarded his nephew with unconcealed astonishment. He had been prepared for imbecility, but this exceeded his expectations.
“Steal my wife’s necklace!”
“That’s it. Frightfully quick you are, getting on to an idea. Pinch Aunt Connie’s necklace. For, mark you,” continued Freddie, so far forgetting the respect due from a nephew as to tap his uncle sharply on the chest, “if a husband pinches anything from a wife, it isn’t stealing. That’s law. I found that out from a movie I saw in town.”
The Hon. Freddie was a great student of the movies. He could tell a super-film from a super-super-film at a glance, and what he did not know about erring wives and licentious clubmen could have been written in a sub-title.
“Are you insane?” growled Mr. Keeble.
“It wouldn’t be hard for you to get hold of it. And once you’d got it everybody would be happy. I mean, all you’d have to do would be to draw a cheque to pay for another one for Aunt Connie—which would make her perfectly chirpy, as well as putting you one up, if you follow me. Then you would have the other necklace, the pinched one, to play about with. See what I mean? You could sell it privily and by stealth, ship Phyllis her three thousand, push across my thousand, and what was left over would be a nice little private account for you to tuck away somewhere where Aunt Connie wouldn’t know anything about it. And a dashed useful thing,” said Freddie, “to have up your sleeve in case of emergencies.”
“Are you … ?”
Mr. Keeble was on the point of repeating his previous remark when suddenly there came the realisation that, despite all preconceived opinions, the young man was anything but insane. The scheme, at which he had been prepared to scoff, was so brilliant, yet simple, that it seemed almost incredible that its sponsor could