Chapter VII (3)

    At nine o’clock on the following evening I stood on the steps of Balbriggan waiting for my ring at the bell to be answered. Cats prowled furtively in the purple dusk, and from behind a lighted window on the ground floor of the house came the tinkle of a piano and the sound of voices raised in one of the more mournful types of hymn. I recognised Ukridge’s above the rest. He was expressing with a vigour which nearly cracked the glass a desire to be as a little child washed clean of sin, and it somehow seemed to deepen my already substantial gloom. Long experience of Ukridge’s ingenious schemes had given me a fatalistic feeling with regard to them. With whatever fair prospects I started out to co-operate with him on these occasions, I almost invariably found myself entangled sooner or later in some nightmare imbroglio.
    The door opened. A maid appeared.
    “Is Mr. Ukridge here?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Could I see him for a moment?”
    I followed her into the drawing-room.
    “Gentleman to see Mr. Ukridge, please,” said the maid, and left me to do my stuff.
    I was aware of a peculiar feeling. It was a sort of dry-mouthed panic, and I suddenly recognised it as the same helpless stage-fright which I had experienced years before on the occasion when, the old place presumably being short of talent, I had been picked on to sing a solo at the annual concert at school. I gazed upon the roomful of Prices, and words failed me. Near the bookshelf against the wall was a stuffed seagull of blackguardly aspect, suspended with outstretched wings by a piece of string. It had a gaping gamboge beak and its eye was bright and sardonic. I found myself gazing at it in a hypnotised manner. It seemed to see through me at a glance.
    It was Ukridge who came to the rescue. Incredibly at his ease in this frightful room, he advanced to welcome me, resplendent in a morning-coat, patent-leather shoes, and tie, all of which I recognised as my property. As always when he looted my wardrobe, he exuded wealth and respectability.
    “Want to see me, laddie?”
    His eye met mine meaningly, and I found speech. We had rehearsed this little scene with a good deal of care over the luncheon-table, and the dialogue began to come back to me. I was able to ignore the seagull and proceed.
    “I’m afraid I have serious news, old man,” I said, in a hushed voice.
    “Serious news?” said Ukridge, trying to turn pale.
    “Serious news!”
    I had warned him during rehearsals that this was going to sound uncommonly like a vaudeville cross-talk act of the Argumentative College Chums type, but he had ruled out the objection as far-fetched. Nevertheless, that is just what it did sound like, and I found myself blushing warmly.
    “What is it?” demanded Ukridge, emotionally, clutching me by the arm in a grip like the bite of a horse.
    “Ouch!” I cried. “Your aunt!”
    “My aunt?”
    “They telephoned from the house just now,” I proceeded, warming to my work, “to say that she had had a relapse. Her condition is very serious. They want you there at once. Even now it may be too late.”
    “Water!” said Ukridge, staggering back and clawing at his waistcoat—or rather at my waistcoat, which I had foolishly omitted to lock up. “Water!”
    It was well done. Even I, much as I wished that he would stop wrenching one of my best ties all out of shape, was obliged to admit that. I suppose it was his lifelong training in staggering under the blows of Fate that made him so convincing. The Price family seemed to be shaken to its foundations. There was no water in the room, but a horde of juvenile Prices immediately rushed off in quest of some, and meanwhile the rest of the family gathered about the stricken man, solicitous and sympathetic.
    “My aunt! Ill!” moaned Ukridge.
    “I shouldn’t worry, o’ man,” said a voice at the door.
    So sneering and altogether unpleasant was this voice that for a moment I almost thought that it must have been the sea-gull that had spoken. Then, turning, I perceived a young man in a blue flannel suit. A young man whom I had seen before. It was the Peacemaker, the fellow who had soothed and led away the infuriated bloke to whom Ukridge owed a bit of money.
    “I shouldn’t worry,” he said again, and looked malevolently upon Ukridge. His advent caused a sensation. Mr. Price, who had been kneading Ukridge’s shoulder with a strong man’s silent sympathy, towered as majestically as his five feet six would permit him.
    “Mr. Finch,” he said, “may I enquire what you are doing in my house?”
    “All right, all right——”
    “I thought I told you——”
    “All right, all right,” repeated Ernie Finch, who appeared to be a young man of character. “I’ve only come to expose an impostor.”
    “Impostor!”
    “Him!” said young Mr. Finch, pointing a scornful finger at Ukridge.
    I think Ukridge was about to speak, but he seemed to change his mind. As for me, I had edged out of the centre of things, and was looking on as inconspicuously as I could from behind a red plush sofa. I wished to dissociate myself entirely from the proceedings.
    “Ernie Finch,” said Mrs. Price, swelling, “what do you mean?”
    The young man seemed in no way discouraged by the general atmosphere of hostility. He twirled his small moustache and smiled a frosty smile.
    “I mean,” he said, feeling in his pocket and producing an envelope, “that this fellow here hasn’t got an aunt. Or, if he has, she isn’t Miss Julia Ukridge, the well-known and wealthy novelist. I had my suspicions about this gentleman right from the first, I may as well tell you, and ever since he came to this house I’ve been going round making a few enquiries about him. The first thing I did was to write his aunt—the lady he says is his aunt—making out I wanted her nephew’s address, me being an old school chum of his. Here’s what she writes back—you can see it for yourselves if you want to: ‘Miss Ukridge acknowledges receipt of Mr. Finch’s letter, and in reply wishes to state that she has no nephew.’ No nephew! That’s plain enough, isn’t it?” He raised a hand to check comment. “And here’s another thing,” he proceeded. “That motor-car he’s been swanking about in. It doesn’t belong to him at all. It belongs to a man named Fillimore. I noted the number and made investigations. This fellow’s name isn’t Ukridge at all. It’s Smallweed. He’s a penniless impostor who’s been pulling all your legs from the moment he came into the house; and if you let Mabel marry him you’ll be making the biggest bloomer of your lives!”
    There was an awestruck silence. Price looked upon Price in dumb consternation.
    “I don’t believe you,” said the master of the house at length, but he spoke without conviction.
    “Then, perhaps,” retorted Ernie Finch, “you’ll believe this gentleman. Come in, Mr. Grindlay.”
    Bearded, frock-coated, and sinister beyond words, the Creditor stalked into the room.
    “You tell ’em,” said Ernie Finch.
    The Creditor appeared more than willing. He fixed Ukridge with a glittering eye, and his bosom heaved with pent-up emotion.
    “Sorry to intrude on a family on Sunday evening,” he said, “but this young man told me I should find Mr. Smallweed here, so I came along. I’ve been hunting for him high and low for two years and more about a matter of one pound two and threepence for goods supplied.”
    “He owes you money?” faltered Mr. Price.
    “He bilked me,” said the Creditor, precisely.
    “Is this true?” said Mr. Price, turning to Ukridge.
    Ukridge had risen and seemed to be wondering whether it was possible to sidle unobserved from the room. At this question he halted, and a weak smile played about his lips.
    “Well——” said Ukridge.
    The head of the family pursued his examination no further. His mind appeared to be made up. He had weighed the evidence and reached a decision. His eyes flashed. He raised a hand and pointed to the door.
    “Leave my house!” he thundered.
    “Right-o!” said Ukridge, mildly.
    “And never enter it again!”
    “Right-o!” said Ukridge.
    Mr. Price turned to his daughter.
    “Mabel,” he said, “this engagement of yours is broken. Broken, do you understand? I forbid you ever to see this scoundrel again. You hear me?”
    “All right, pa,” said Miss Price, speaking for the first and last time. She seemed to be of a docile and equable disposition. I fancied I caught a not-displeased glance on its way to Ernie Finch.
    “And now, sir,” cried Mr. Price, “go!”
    “Right-o!” said Ukridge.
    But here the Creditor struck a business note.
    “And what,” he enquired, “about my one pound two and threepence?”
    It seemed for a moment that matters were about to become difficult. But Ukridge, ever ready-witted, found the solution.
    “Have you got one pound two and threepence on you, old man?” he said to me.
    And with my usual bad luck I had.
    We walked together down Peabody Road. Already Ukridge’s momentary discomfiture had passed.
    “It just shows, laddie,” he said, exuberantly, “that one should never despair. However black the outlook, old horse, never, never despair. That scheme of mine might or might not have worked—one cannot tell. But, instead of having to go to all the bother of subterfuge, to which I always object, here we have a nice, clean-cut solution of the thing without any trouble at all.” He mused happily for a moment. “I never thought,” he said, “that the time would come when I would feel a gush of kindly feeling towards Ernie Finch; but, upon my Sam, laddie, if he were here now, I would embrace the fellow. Clasp him to my bosom, dash it!” He fell once more into a reverie. “Amazing, old horse,” he proceeded, “how things work out. Many a time I’ve been on the very point of paying that blighter Grindlay his money, merely to be rid of the annoyance of having him always popping up, but every time something seemed to stop me. I can’t tell you what it was—a sort of feeling. Almost as if one had a guardian angel at one’s elbow guiding one. My gosh, just think where I would have been if I had yielded to the impulse. It was Grindlay blowing in that turned the scale. By gad, Corky my boy, this is the happiest moment of my life.”
    “It might be the happiest of mine,” I said, churlishly, “if I thought I should ever see that one pound two and threepence again.”
    “Now, laddie, laddie,” protested Ukridge, “these are not the words of a friend. Don’t mar a moment of unalloyed gladness. Don’t you worry, you’ll get your money back. A thousandfold!”
    “When?”
    “One of these days,” said Ukridge, buoyantly. “One of these days.”