Leave it to Psmith. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 have worked it out for himself.
“Not my own,” said Freddie modestly, as if in answer to the thought. “Saw much the same thing in a movie once. Only there the fellow, if I remember, wanted to do down an insurance company, and it wasn’t a necklace that he pinched but bonds. Still, the principle’s the same. Well, how do we go, Uncle Joe? How about it? Is that worth a thousand quid or not?”
Even though he had seen in person to the closing of the door and the window, Mr. Keeble could not refrain from a conspirator-like glance about him. They had been speaking with lowered voices, but now words came from him in an almost inaudible whisper.
“Could it really be done? Is it feasible?”
“Feasible? Why, dash it, what the dickens is there to stop you? You could do it in a second. And the beauty of the whole thing is that, if you were copped, nobody could say a word, because husband pinching from wife isn’t stealing. Law.”
The statement that in the circumstances indicated nobody could say a word seemed to Mr. Keeble so at variance with the facts that he was compelled to challenge it.
“Your aunt would have a good deal to say,” he observed ruefully.
“Eh? Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Well, you would have to risk that. After all, the chances would be dead against her finding out.”
“But she might.”
“Oh, well, if you put it like that, I suppose she might.”
“Freddie, my boy,” said Mr. Keeble weakly, “I daren’t do it!”
The vision of his thousand pounds slipping from his grasp so wrought upon Freddie that he expressed himself in a manner far from fitting in one of his years towards an older man.
“Oh, I say, don’t be such a rabbit!”
Mr. Keeble shook his head.
“No,” he repeated, “I daren’t.”
It might have seemed that the negotiations had reached a deadlock, but Freddie, with a thousand pounds in sight, was in far too stimulated a condition to permit so tame an ending to such a promising plot. As he stood there, chafing at his uncle’s pusillanimity, an idea was vouchsafed to him.
“By Jove! I’ll tell you what!” he cried.
“Not so loud!” moaned the apprehensive Mr. Keeble. “Not so loud!”
“I’ll tell you what,” repeated Freddie in a hoarse whisper. “How would it be if I did the pinching?”
“What!”
“How would it...”
“Would you?” Hope, which had vanished from Mr. Keeble’s face, came flooding back. “My boy, would you really?”
“For a thousand quid you bet I would.”
Mr. Keeble clutched at his young relative’s hand and gripped it feverishly.
“Freddie,” he said, “the moment you place that necklace in my hands, I will give you not a thousand but two thousand pounds.”
“Uncle Joe,” said Freddie with equal intensity, “it’s a bet!”
Mr. Keeble mopped at his forehead.
“You think you can manage it?”
“Manage it?” Freddie laughed a light laugh. “Just watch me!”
Mr. Keeble grasped his hand again with the utmost warmth.
“I must go out and get some air,” he said. “I’m all upset. May I really leave this matter to you, Freddie?”
“Rather!”
“Good! Then to-night I will write to Phyllis and say that I may be able to do what she wishes.”
“Don’t say ‘may,’” cried Freddie buoyantly. “The word is ‘will.’ Bally will! What ho!”
Exhilaration is a heady drug; but, like other drugs, it has the disadvantage that its stimulating effects seldom last for very long. For perhaps ten minutes after his uncle had left him, Freddie Threepwood lay back in his chair in a sort of ecstasy. He felt strong, vigorous, alert. Then by degrees, like a chilling wind, doubt began to creep upon him—faintly at first, then more and more insistently, till by the end of a quarter of an hour he was in a state of pronounced self-mistrust. Or, to put it with less elegance, he was suffering from an exceedingly severe attack of cold feet.
The more he contemplated the venture which he had undertaken, the less alluring did it appear to him. His was not a keen imagination, but even he could shape with a gruesome clearness a vision of the frightful bust-up that would ensue should he be detected stealing his Aunt Constance’s diamond necklace. Common decency would in such an event seal his lips as regarded his Uncle Joseph’s share in the matter. And even if—as might conceivably happen—common decency failed at the crisis, reason told him that his Uncle Joseph would infallibly disclaim any knowledge of or connection with the rash act. And then where would he be? In the soup, undoubtedly. For Freddie could not conceal it from himself that there was nothing in his previous record to make it seem inconceivable to his nearest and dearest that he should steal the jewellery of a female relative for purely personal ends. The verdict in the event of detection would be one of uncompromising condemnation.
And yet he hated the idea of meekly allowing that two thousand pounds to escape from his clutch...
A young man’s cross-roads.
The agony of spirit into which these meditations