Laughing Gas (28 page)

'If, of course, I could collect the necessary cash.' 'But why England?'

Not, in the circs, easy to answer that. 'Oh, I just thought of it.'

'Well, think of something else, my poor child. You certainly get the craziest ideas, Joseph. Apart from the fact that you would have nowhere to go when you got there, you couldn't so much as begin to get there. Where's your passport? Do you think a shipping office would sell transportation to anyone of your age? You would be detained for enquiries and then mailed back to Miss Brinkmeyer.'

I hadn't thought of that. In conceiving the plan of going to England and settling down at Biddleford, I had, I am free to admit, merely sketched out the broad, general outlines of the thing, leaving the details to be filled in later.

'There's only one thing. You must go home to your mother at Chillicothe, Ohio. So listen. I can't drive you there myself, because my car's only borrowed, but I'll go to the nearest garage and hire something to take you home. Your mother can pay when you arrive. I will explain to them. All right, then, I'll be going. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

'I'll be back to see you off. Cheer up, Joseph. Things will dry straight one of these days.'

She pushed off. There was a pancake left on the dish. I ate it moodily. Then, feeling stifled indoors, I wandered out of the house and started to walk up the lane, kicking stones.

She had told me to cheer up, but I was dashed if I could do it. She had said that things would dry straight one of these days, but I was blowed if I could see when. The more I contemplated the general outlook, the ballier it seemed.

I mean to say, leaving Ann's swivet out of it and concentrating on my own, what was the position of affairs? Hopeless love gnawed at my heart, and would doubtless continue so to gnaw. But, even apart from that, how about it?

The future seemed to me to look about as black as it could stick. I hadn't been any too
keen on being a child
star, when all my tastes and habits lay in the direction of being a third earl, but it would have been a dashed sight better than being an ex-child star, as I was now.

There might have been some faint satisfaction to be gained from feeling that one was the Idol of American Motherhood. Of this I was now deprived. Taking a line through the attitude of those Michigan specimens, it was only too plain that the sole emotion American Motherhood would feel towards me from now on would be a strong desire to bounce a brick off my head.

Presumably I would have to settl
e down to a life of retired obscurity with Joey Cooley's parent in Chillicothe, Ohio. And while he had told me that this parent cooked an excellent fried chicken, Southern style, I can't say I found myself relishing the prospect much. You know how it is, getting to know a strange woman. It takes you a long time to feel at your ease. Difficult at the outset to discover mutual tastes and congenial subjects of conversation.

With all this on my mind it is not surprising that as I turned into the main road I was in a pretty profound reverie. What jerked me out of it was the sound of a motor bicycle coming along at the dickens of a speed. And, looking round, I found the bally thing right on top of me.

I had just time to note that the occupant of the saddle was clad in a quiet grey suit and that his socks, which were of powder blue, melted into tasteful suede shoes, when there was a yell and a toot, one of the handlebars biffed me on the head, and I turned three somersaults and knew no more.

Chapter 27

W
hen
I
came to,
I
was lying by the side of the road with my eyes shut and a nasty lumpy feeling in the skull. A voice was speaking. 'Hey I' it said.

My first idea was that
I
was in Heaven and that this was an angel trying to get acquainted, but
I
was too occupied with skull to take a look and ascertain.
I
just lay there.

'Hey,' said the voice again. 'Are you dead?'

A moment before,
I
should have replied 'Yes' without hesitation, but now doubts were beginning to creep in. The bean was clearing.
I
thought
it
over a bit longer and was convinced.

'No,'
I
said.

And by way of producing evidence to back up the statement,
I
opened my eyes. They fell upon something which brought me up with a round turn.

For an instant,
I
thought that
I
was having those things chaps have that begin with 'h'. Then the bean cleared still further and
I
saw that this was not so.

Standing before me was little Joey Cooley in person. There was no possibility of error. There were the knickerbockers, there were the golden curls. And at the same moment
I
caught sight of my legs, stretching out towards the horizon. They were long and beefy and clad in quiet grey trousers, terminating at the ankles in powder-blue socks that melted, as
it
were, into tasteful suede shoes.

I
suppose s
ome fellows would have been non-
plussed. Possibly a day or so earlier
I
might have been non-plussed myself. But the vivid life which
I
had been living of late had sharpened my faculties, and
I
was on to what had happened in a flash.

We were back again as before.

I could see quite easily how the thing had been worked. It was that smash that had done the trick. At the precise moment when it had laid me out cold, it must have laid the kid Cooley out cold, and while we were both laid out cold we had done another of our switches. I had no recollection of the incident, but no doubt we had got together in the fourth dimension, talked the things over briefly, and decided that now was an admirable opportunity of getting back to what I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it, is called the
status quo.

'What ho
!'
I exclaimed.

After what had passed between this young shrimp and myself at our last meeting, I would have been well within my rights, no doubt, in being a bit stand-offish. We had parted, I mean to say, if you remember, on distant terms, he having shrugged my shoulders and sneered at me and gone off and left me alone with the ravening Murphy. But I was feeling much too bucked to be sniffy. I fairly beamed at the little Gawd-help-us.

'What ho, what hoi' I said. 'I say, do you notice anything?'

'Notice what?'

'Why, the old
status quo,
if that's the expression I want,
Have you observed that we're back again?'

'Oh, yes. I got that. How do you suppose it happened?'

I hadn't had time to think it all out, of course, but I gave my view for wha
t it was worth. He nodded under
standingly.

'I see. Same old routine. It wasn't my fault,' he went on, with a touch of sullen defensiveness in his voice. 'I blew my horn.'

'Oh, quite.'

'What were you doing, wandering around on the road that way?' 'Just musing.'

'And how do you come to be here at all?'

'This is where George and Eddie and Fred brought me.'

'Who are George and Eddie and Fred?'

'Rather decent coves. Kidnappers.' His face cleared.

'Oh, that kidnapping stunt came off, all right, did it?' 'Not a hitch.'

'And this is their hide-out? That house down the lane there?' 'That's right.' 'What happened?'

'Well, it's a long story. We started off with some breakfast—'

He uttered an exclamation.

'Breakfast! So that was it? The moment I got back into this body of mine, I thought you must have been doing something to it since I had it last. It seemed fuller. It had kind of lost that hollow feeling. Breakfast, eh? What did you have?'

'Sausages, followed by pancakes.'

His eye lit up.

'Any left?'

'You can't want any more already.' 'I do too.'

'There may be some in the kitchen. Can you cook sausages?'

'I'm not sure. But I can try. And maybe there'd be some bacon, as well. And eggs. And bread. If I've got to go back to Ma Brinkmeyer, with Clause B of my contract operating, I'll need to stoke up.'

The time had come, I saw, to break the news to him.

'I wouldn't go back to the Brinkmeyers, if I were you.'

'Talk sense. My contract's got three years to run.'

'Not now.'

'Eh?'

'Haven't you seen the Sunday paper?' 'No. Why?'

'Well, I'm sorry to say,' I said, 'that inadvertently, if you know what the word means, I've rather let you in a bit.'

And in a few simple words I informed him of the state of affairs.

I needn't have worried. I've never seen a child so profoundly braced. In supposing that he would be all broken up at the news that his professional career had been ruined, I had been right off the mark. Nowhere near it.

'Well, sir,' he said, regarding me affectionately, 'I'll say you've done me a good turn all right. You couldn't have done me a better turn if you'd sat up nights studying how to. No, sir
!'

I was astounded.

'You're pleased and gratified?' I said, quite unable to grasp.

'You bet I'm pleased and gratified. This lets me out nicely. Now I can go straight back to Chillicothe.' He broke off, his exuberance waning a bit. 'Or can I?'

'Why not?'

'How am I to get there?'

I waved a hand lightly. And the relief of being able to wave my own hand was simply terrific. 'Oh, that's all arranged.' 'It is?'

'Oh, rather. There will be a car here shortly to take you.'

'Well, that's swell. Whose idea was that?'

'Ann Bannister's.'

'It would be. What a girl
!'

‘
Ah!'

'There's a girl that's got a head on h
er shoulders.' 'And what a head!
'
'I love Ann.' 'Me, too.'

He seemed surprised.

'You?'

'Certainly.'

'Do you love two of them, then?' 'I beg your pardon?'

'You told me you were
that way about April June.'

I shuddered.

'Do me a favour,' I said. 'Don't mention that name to me. How right you were, young Cooleyl How unerring was your judgement of character. When you called her a pill.'

'She's a pill, all right.' 'Definitely a pill.' 'A whale of a pill.' 'A frightful pil
l.' 'Yessir!
' 'Yessir
!'

We seemed to be pretty straight on that point. I turned to another.

'Rummy,' I said, 'that you hadn't seen the Sunday paper. Don't you read it as a rule?'

It seemed to me that a slight shadow passed over his brow again. He appeared a trifle embarrassed, I thought.

'Why, yes,' he said, 'I do. Only to-day I was stopped -sort of.'

'Stopped - sort of?'

'Yes, interrupted - kind of - before I could get down to it.'

'Who interrupted you?' 'This cop.' 'Which cop?'

His embarrassment increased.

'Say, listen,' he said, 'there's something I ought to tell you. I was meaning to let you have it before this, but we got to talking of other things. It was this way. I'd just bought the paper this morning, and I was starting to read it on the street outside the Garden of the Hesperides, when
up
comes a cop on a motor-bicycle and asks me am I Lord Havershot.'

'To which you replied —?'

'Yessir. He then ups and pinches me for assaulting Ma Brinkmeyer. It's an open-and-shut case, he says, because it seems where when I was chasing her around that pool I dropped your card-case.'

'Great Scott!'

'Sure. But wait. You ain't heard nothin' yet. You know that lovely wallop of yours, the one that travels about eight inches, with a sort of corkscrew twist on it?'

I tottered.

'You didn't —'

'Yessir. Plumb on the snoot. Down he went, and I swiped his motor-bike and lit out. I was heading for Mexico. And let me tell you sump'n. If I was you, if that motor-bike is still working, why, I'd keep right on heading for Mexico. If I was you. Yessir. And now I think I'll be going along and snaring myself a sausage. These pancakes of yours seem
to be kind of wearing off a littl
e.'

He disappeared down the lane, and I made a beeline for the motor-bike to look it over. If this body of mine, for whose rash acts I must now once more take the responsibility, had been going about hitting policemen, I could see that his advice about getting over the border into Mexico was sound.