Luck of the Bodkins (10 page)

'And I should like to say that I consider it a privilege to meet a family like yours. I never in my puff encountered such
a
sweetness-and-light-scattering bunch. You, Miss -'

'Spence is the name.'

'You, Miss Spence, bring corpses to life. You, Llewellyn, place real money for the first time within the grasp of my brother Ambrose. This acquaintanceship must not be allowed to end here. I must see more of you, Miss Spence, and of you, Llewellyn. Golly,' said Reggie, 'if anybody had told me half an hour ago that I should be capable of looking forward to dinner tonight like a starving tapeworm, I wouldn't have believed him. Good-bye, Miss Spence, and you, Llewellyn, or rather
au revoir,
and thanks, thanks, Miss Spence, and you, Llewellyn. Thank you a thousand times. What's your first name?'

·Mabel.
’

·Right,' said Reggie.

The door closed. Mabel Spence smiled. Mr Llewellyn did cot.

'Well,' said Mabel, 'that's today's good deed done. I don't know where that boy picked up his jag, but he had certainly gone after it with both hands. You wouldn't think, to see him now, that he's probably quite good-looking. I've always admired that slim, long-legged type.'

Mr Llewellyn was in no mood to give his attention to lectures on the personal appearance of Reggie Tennyson, and he had begun to indicate this by dancing about the state-room in a rather emotional manner, like a wounded duck,

'Say, listen! Will you listen I'

·Well go on. What?'

Do you know who's on board this boat?'

Well, I'm pretty clear about Tennyson senior and Tennyson junior, and I met Lotus Blossom on the tender, but outside of that -'

'Let me tell you who's on board this boat. That Cannes guy. The fellow on that hotel terrace at Cannes. The one who wanted to know how to spell "sciatica"
‘

'Nonsense.'

'Nonsense, eh?
’

·You've got that bozo on the brain. You're imagining it.'

'Is that so? Well, get this. I was sitting in the library after I left you and he popped up from nowhere and breathed down the back of my neck. This time he wanted to know how to spell "inexplicable".'

·He did?'

That's what he did.
’

"Well, well, that boy's certainly attending to his education all right. He'll have quite a nice little vocabulary before he's through. Did you tell him?'

Mr Llewellyn danced another step or two.

'Of course I didn't tell him. How should I know how to spell "inexplicable"? And if I had of known, do you think I was in shape to tell anybody how to spell anything? I simply sat and stared at him and tried to catch up with my breath.'

'But why shouldn't he be going across? Lots of other people are. I can't see that his being on board is so exceptionally significant. And try,' said Mabel Spence, in passing, 'spelling those two when you're at leisure.'

'You can't, can't you?'

·I can't, no.'

"Well, try this one on your cottage piano,' said Mr Llewellyn urgently. 'Ambrose Tennyson came along and seemed to know the fellow, so I asked him what his racket was, and Tennyson said he was a detective.'

'A detective?'

'A detective. D - e - ... Detective,' said Mr Llewellyn, This did impress Mabel. She bit her lip thoughtfully. 'Is that so?' 'I'm telling you.'

'You're sure it was the same man?'

'Of course I'm sure it was the same man.'

'Odd.'

'What's odd about it? I told you that morning at Cannes that he was one of these Customs spies, and if you don't believe me perhaps you'll believe the purser. The purser ought to know what he's talking about, oughtn't he? And the purser tells me that you can't throw a brick at any of those Cannes hotels without hitting one. He says they hang around, listening in on conversations, and sooner or later some dumb woman says something about smuggling something, and then they get busy. This guy's come aboard to keep an eye on me. That's what they do. The purser was telling me. Once they hit the trail, they never let go. So now what?' said Mr Llewellyn, collapsing on the bed and sitting there breathing stertorously.

Mabel Spence had never been a great admirer of her brother-in-law, but she was not without feminine pity. There were plenty of things she could have said, and would have liked to say, about Mr Llewellyn's blood pressure and his need for a rigid system of diet, but she left them unspoken. She pondered for a moment, turning a woman's practical eye on the problem. It was not long before her shrewd brain enabled her to point out the bright side.

'Don't worry,' she said.

The condition of Mr Llewellyn's nerves being what it was, she might have worded her remark more happily. The motion-picture magnate, already mauve, turned
a
royal purple.

'Don't worry? That's good.'

There's nothing to worry about.'

'Nothing to worry about? That's a honey.
’

"Well, there isn't. I thought at first that you were making
a
lot out of nothing, but if this man is a detective you're probably right about him having come on board because of what he heard us saying that day. Still, why get apoplexy? The whole thing's quite simple. He's probably like everybody else -ready to be fixed if you make the price right.'

Mr Llewellyn, who had been about to speak - taking the words 'quite simple' as his cue - gave a start. He seemed to swallow something, and a marked improvement became notice-
’
able in his complexion. It faded back to mauve again.

That's true.'

'Sure.'

‘
Yes. I guess that's about right, at that. He probably is.
’

Her words had made him feel as if, after wandering through
a
morass, he had suddenly touched solid ground. When it came to fixing people, he knew where he stood.

Then the Soul's Awakening look which always comes into the eyes of motion-picture magnates when the question of fixing people arises slowly died away.

'But how's it to be done? I can't just walk up to him and ask for the tariff.'

'You don't have to.' There was scorn for the slower masculine intelligence in Mabel's voice. 'Did you take a good square look at him?'

'Did I take
a
good square look at him!' echoed Mr Llewellyn. 'For what seemed about an hour I did nothing else but. If he'd of had pimples I could have counted each individual one.'

'Pimples are just what he hasn't got. That's the whole point He's a darned good-looking fellow.' 'I didn't admire him.'

'Well, he is. Rather like Bob Montgomery. And I'll bet he knows it. I'll bet he's been wanting to break into pictures ever since he started shaving. I'll bet if you took him on one side and offered him a job at Llewellyn City, he'd jump at it. And then-
’

Then he couldn't dish the dirt to those Customs sharks!
’
'Of course he couldn't. He wouldn't want to. Why, anyone in your position, with jobs in the pictures to give away,
can
fix anybody. This guy will drop the moment you start talking
’
"M
’
yes,' said Mr Llewellyn.

The brightness had suddenly gone out of his voice. A pen
’
sive look was on his face. He was musing.

Unless absolutely compelled to do so, Ivor Llewellyn had no desire to add to the number of blood-sucking parasites already battening on his firm's pay-roll. Every Saturday morning he was paying out good money to his wife's brother George, his wife's Uncle Wilmot, his wife's cousin Egbert and his wife's cousin Egbert's sister Genevieve - who, much as he doubted her ability to read at all, was in the Reading Department of the Superba-Llewellyn at a cool three hundred and fifty dollars a week. If needs must, of course, he could add to these a Monty Bodkin at whatever fantastic salary that cold-hearted human bloodhound might see fit to demand, but he was wondering if needs really did must.

Then he saw that it was the only way. The old, sound principle of stopping the mouth of the man who knew was one which it was impossible to better. It had served him many
a
time before, and it must serve him again.

'I'll do it," he said. 'Ambrose Tennyson is a friend
of
his
’
I'll have him put through the deal. That'll be better than if I approach him direct. More dignified. I think you're rights He'll drop.'

'Sure he will. Why wouldn't he? I don't suppose they pay these fellows much. A nice fat salary at Llewellyn City will look like the earth to him. I told you there was nothing to worry about.'

"You certainly did.'

'And wasn't I right?
’

'You certainly were,' said Mr Llewellyn.

He gazed with positive benevolence at his sister-in-law,
won
dering how he could ever have got the idea that he did not like her. For an instant he even went so far as to consider the notion of kissing her.

Thinking better of this he reached for his case, produced a cigar and began to chew it.

Chapter
8

Monty Bodkin, having had his quick one, had not lingered on in the smoking-room, full though it was of pleasant fellows with whom in his mood of exalted happiness he would have found it agreeable to forgather. He had gone below to inspect the state-room, formerly the property of Reginald Tennyson, which was to be his home for the next five days. He was thus privileged to obtain his first view of Albert Eustace Pease-march, the bedroom steward assigned to that section of the C deck. This zealous man was not actually visible when he entered, being manifest only as a sound of heavy breathing from the bathroom, but a moment later he emerged and Monty was enabled to see him steadily and see him whole.

His immediate reaction on doing so was a feeling that, as far as his chances of getting a feast for the eye were concerned, he had come a little late. He should have caught Albert Pease-march a decade or so earlier, before the years had taken their toll. The steward was now a man in the middle forties, and time had robbed him of practically all his hair, giving him in niggardly exchange a pink pimple on the side of the nose. It had also removed from his figure that streamline effect. Nobody who had recently come from the presence of Ivor Llewellyn would have called him fat, but he was certainly overweight for a man of his height. He had a round, moonlike face, in which were set, like currants in a suet dumpling, two small brown eyes. And these eyes caused Monty, as he met them, to experience a slight diminution of the effervescing cheerfulness which he had brought with him into the room.

It was not that he minded Albert Peasemarch's eyes being small. Some of his best friends had small eyes. What damped him was the fact that in their expression he seemed to detect a certain disapproval, as if the other did not like his looks. And the thought of anyone not liking his looks, at a moment when he had just become reconciled to Gertrude Butterwick, cut Monty like a knife.

He resolved to address himself to the task of removing this disapproval, of making Albert Peasemarch all smiles, of showing Albert Peasemarch, in fine, that if by some unfortunate chance he, Monty, had happened to fall short in any way of his, Albert's, standard of physical beauty, the inner, essential Bodkin was well up to sample.

'Not strictly handsome in the classical style,' Albert would go back and tell his mates, though goodness knew he had no claim to set himself up as a critic, 'but a very pleasant young gentleman. Nothing stand-offish about him. No haughtiness. A most entertaining conversationalist' - or however bedroom stewards put it when they wanted to say 'entertaining conversationalist'.

With this end in view, he let loose a gay and ringing 'Good evening.'

'Good evening, sir,' said Albert Peasemarch coldly.

Monty's impression that the man disapproved of him deepened. The fellow's manner was unquestionably austere. It was his first ocean voyage, so he had no means of estimating from past experience what was the average mean or norm of geniality in stewards, but surely, he felt, he was entitled to expect more chumminess.

He took a line through butlers. If he had arrived on a visit at a country house and had found the butler as unresponsive as this, he would have had serious misgivings that the man must have overheard his host saying derogatory things about him at the dinner-table. He could not help feeling that in some way, for some reason, Albert Peasemarch was prejudiced against him.