Nothing Serious (4 page)

I mean
to say, he had so nearly clicked. That was the bitter thought. He had achieved
the object which he had set out to achieve—viz, the bringing together of the
sundered hearts of V. Twistleton and H. Davenport, but unless he could get
Horace on the ‘phone in the morning and put him abreast before the Darts tourney
began, all would be lost. It was a fat lot of consolation to feel that a
couple of days from now Horace Davenport would be going about with his hat on
the side of his head, slapping people on the back and standing them drinks.
What was of the essence was to have him in that condition to-morrow morning.

He
brooded on what might have been. If only he had been able to give Valerie
Twistleton the heart-melting talk he had been planning. If only Nannie Byles
had postponed her appearance for another quarter of an hour. Bingo is a pretty
chivalrous chap and one who, wind and weather permitting, would never lay a
hand upon a woman save in the way of kindness, but if somebody at that moment
had given him a blunt knife and asked him to skin Nannie Byles with it and drop
her into a vat of boiling oil, he would have sprung to the task with his hair
in a braid.

The
vital thing, he was feeling, as he at last dozed off, was to be up bright and
early next day, so as to connect with Horace in good time.

Which
being so, you as a man who knows life will not be surprised to hear that what
happened was that he overslept himself. When he finally came out of the ether
and hared to the telephone, it was the same old story. The girl at the exchange
rang and rang and rang, but there was no answer. Bingo tried the Drones, but
was informed that Horace had not yet arrived. There seemed nothing for it but
to get dressed and go to the club.

By the
time he got there the Darts tourney would, of course, be in full swing, and he
could picture the sort of Horace Davenport that would be competing. A limp,
listless Horace Davenport, looking like a filleted sole.

It was
hardly worth going in, he felt, when he reached the club, but something seemed
to force him through the doorway: and he was approaching the smoking-room on
leaden feet, when the door opened and out came Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps and
Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright.

“A
walkover,” Barmy was saying.

A
sudden irrational hope stirred in Bingo’s bosom like a jumping bean. It was
silly, of course, to think that Barmy had been speaking about Horace, but the
level of form at the Drones, except for that pre-eminent expert, is so steady
that he could not picture any of the other competitors having a walkover. He
clutched Barmy’s coat sleeve in a feverish grip.

“Who
for?” he gasped.

“Oh,
hullo, Bingo,” said Barmy. “The very chap we wanted to see. Catsmeat and I have
collaborated in an article for that paper of yours entitled ‘Some Little-Known
Cocktails.’ We were just going round to the office to give it to you.”

Bingo
accepted the typewritten sheets absently. In his editorial capacity he was
always glad to consider unsolicited contributions (though these, he was careful
to point out, must be submitted at their authors’ risk), and a thesis on such a
subject by two such acknowledged authorities could scarcely fail to be fraught
with interest, but at the moment his mind was far removed from the conduct of
Wee
Tots.

“Who’s
it a walkover for?” he said hoarsely.

“Horace
Davenport, of course,” said Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright. “He has been playing
inspired Darts. If you go in quick, you may be able to catch a glimpse of his
artistry.”

But
Bingo was too late. When he entered the smoking-room, the contest was over and
Horace Davenport, the centre of an eager group of friends and admirers, was
receiving congratulations, a popular winner—except with Oofy Prosser, who was
sitting in a corner pale and haggard beneath his pimples. Seeing Bingo, the
champion detached himself and came over to him.

“Oh,
hullo, Bingo,” said Horace, “I was hoping you would look in. I wanted a word
with you. You remember that broken heart of mine? Well, it’s all right. Not
broken, after all. A complete reconciliation was effected shortly before
midnight last night at Mario’s.”

Bingo
was amazed.

“You
came to Mario’s?”

“Thanks
to you,” said Horace Davenport, massaging his arm gratefully. “I must mention,
Bingo, that after I had told you about my broken heart yesterday, I suddenly
remembered that there were one or two things about it which I had forgotten to
touch on. So I came back. They said you had been seen going to the ‘phone
booth, so I pushed along there. You had left the door ajar, and picture my
horror on hearing you talking to Valerie and making an assignation with her at
Mario’s.”

“I
simply wanted—” began Bingo, but Horace continued.

“I
reeled away blindly. I was distraught. I had been telling myself that Valerie
was being false to me with another, but I had never for an instant suspected
that this snake in the grass was my old friend Richard Little, a chap with whom
when at school I had frequently shared my last acid drop.”

“But
listen. I simply wanted—”

“Well,
I said to myself ‘I’ll give them about half an hour, and then I’ll go to Mario’s
and stride in and confront them. This,’ I said to myself, ‘will make them feel
pretty silly.’ So I did. But when I got there, you had legged it and were not
there to be confronted. So I confronted Valerie.”

“Listen,
Horace, old egg,” said Bingo, insisting on being heard, “I simply wanted to
shoot a bit of nourishment into her for mellowing purposes and then plead your
cause.”

“I
know. She told me. She said you had talked to her like a kindly elder brother.
What arguments you used I cannot say, but they dragged home the gravy
plenteously. I found her in melting mood. We came together with a click, and
the wedding is fixed for the twenty-third
prox.
And now, Bingo,” said
Horace, looking at his watch, “I shall have to be leaving you. I promised
Valerie I would drop in directly the Darts contest was over and let her cocker
spaniel nibble my nose. The animal seems to wish it, and I think we all ought
to do our best to spread sweetness and light, even at some slight personal
inconvenience. Good-bye, Bingo, and a thousand thanks. I can give you a lift, if
you are coming my way.”

“Thanks,”
said Bingo, “but I must collect that thirty-three pound ten. After that I have
one or two little things to do, and then I must be nipping home.”

Bingo
reached The Nook in good time. And he had replaced the links in their box and
was about to leave his bedroom, when Mrs Bingo shoved her head in the door.

“Why,
Bingo darling,” she said, “aren’t you at the office?”

“I just
popped back to see you,” explained Bingo. “How’s your mother?”

“Much
better,” said Mrs Bingo. She seemed distrait. “Bingo, darling,” she said after
a bit of a pause, revealing the seat of the trouble, “I’m a little worried.
About Nannie.”

“About
Nannie?”

“Yes.
When you were a child, do you remember her as being at all.., eccentric?”

“Eccentric?”

“Well,
the most extraordinary thing happened last night. Where were you last night,
Bingo?”

“I went
to bed early.”

“You
didn’t go out?” Bingo stared.

“Go
out?”

“No, of
course you didn’t,” said Mrs Bingo. “But Nannie declares that at half-past ten
she was walking in the garden getting a breath of fresh air, and she saw you
jump into a cab.”

Bingo
looked grave. He gave a low whistle.

“Started
seeing things, eh? Bad. Bad.”

“—and
she says she heard you tell the driver to go to Mario’s.”

“Hearing
voices, too? Worse. Worse.”

“And
she followed you with your woolly muffler. She had to wait a long time before
she could get a cab, and when she got to the restaurant they wouldn’t let her
in, and there was a lot of trouble about that, and then she found she had no
money to pay the cab, and there was a lot of trouble about that, too, and I
think in the end she must have lost her temper a little or she would never have
boxed the cabman’s ears and bitten that waiter.”

“Bit a
waiter, did she?”

“She
said she didn’t like his manner. And after that they sent for the police and
she was taken to Vine Street, and she telephoned to me to come and bail her
out. So I went round to the police station and bailed her out, and she told me
this extraordinary story about you. I hurried home and peeped in at your door,
and there you were, fast asleep of course.”

“Of
course.”

Mrs
Bingo chewed the lower lip.

“It’s
all very disturbing.”

“Now
there, with all due deference to you, my talented old scrivener,” said Bingo, “I
think you have missed the
mot juste.
I would call it appalling. Let me
tell you something else that will make you think a bit. You remember all that
song and dance she made about my links having been stolen. Well, I’ve just been
taking a look, and they’re in their usual box in the usual place on the
dressing-table, just where they’ve always been.”

“Really?”

“I
assure you. Well,” said Bingo, “suit yourself, of course, but I should have
thought we were taking a big chance entrusting our first-born to the care of a
Nannie who is loopy to the eyebrows and constantly seeing visions and what
not, to make no mention of hearing voices and not being able to see a set of
diamond cuff-links when they’re staring her in the face. I threw out the
suggestion once before, and it was not well received, but I will make it again.
Give her the push, moon of my delight. Pension her off. Slip her a few quid per
and a set of your books and let her retire to some honeysuckle-covered cottage
where she can’t do any harm.”

“I
believe you’re right.”

“I know
I’m right,” said Bingo. “You don’t want her suddenly getting the idea that
Algernon Aubrey is a pink hippopotamus and loosing off at him with her elephant
rifle, do you? Very well, then.”

CHAPTER
II

Bramley is So Bracing

A GENERAL meeting had been
called at the Drones to decide on the venue for the club’s annual golf rally,
and the school of thought that favoured Bramley-on-Sea was beginning to make
headway when Freddie Widgeon took the floor. In a speech of impassioned
eloquence he warned his hearers not to go within fifty miles of the beastly
place. And so vivid was the impression he conveyed of Bramley-on-Sea as a spot
where the law of the jungle prevailed and anything could happen to anybody that
the voters were swayed like reeds and the counter proposal of Cooden Beach was
accepted almost unanimously.

His
warmth excited comment at the bar.

“Freddie
doesn’t like Bramley,” said an acute Egg, who had been thinking it over with
the assistance of a pink gin.

“Possibly,”
suggested a Bean, “because he was at school there when he was a kid.”

The
Crumpet who had joined the group shook his head.

“No, it
wasn’t that,” he said. “Poor old Freddie had a very painful experience at
Bramley recently, culminating in his getting the raspberry from the girl he
loved.”

“What,
again?”

“Yes.
It’s curious about Freddie,” said the Crumpet, sipping a thoughtful martini. “He
rarely fails to click, but he never seems able to go on clicking. A whale at
the Boy Meets Girl stuff, he is unfortunately equally unerring at the Boy Loses
Girl.”

“Which
of the troupe was it who gave him the air this time?” asked an interested
Pieface.

“Mavis
Peasmarch. Lord Bodsham’s daughter.”

“But,
dash it,” protested the Pieface, “that can’t be right. She returned him to
store ages ago. You told us about it yourself. That time in New York when he
got mixed up with the female in the pink négligée picked out with ultramarine
lovebirds.”

The
Crumpet nodded.

“Quite
true. He was, as you say, handed his portfolio on that occasion. But Freddie is
a pretty gifted explainer, if you give him time to mould and shape his story,
and on their return to England he appears to have squared himself somehow. She
took him on again—on appro., as it were. The idea was that if he proved himself
steady and serious, those wedding bells would ring out. If not, not a tinkle.

“Such
was the position of affairs when he learned from this Peasmarch that she and
her father were proposing to park themselves for the summer months at the
Hotel Magnifique at Bramley-on-Sea.”

Freddie’s
instant reaction to this news was, of course (said the Crumpet), an urge to
wangle a visit there himself, and he devoted the whole force of his intellect
to trying to think how this could be done. He shrank from spending good money
on a hotel, but on the other hand his proud soul scorned a boarding-house, and
what they call an
impasse
might have resulted, had he not discovered
that Bingo Little and Mrs Bingo had taken a shack at Bramley in order that the
Bingo baby should get its whack of ozone. Bramley, as I dare say you have seen
mentioned on the posters, is so bracing, and if you are a parent you have to
think of these things. Brace the baby, and you are that much ahead of the game.