Luck of the Bodkins by P. G. Wodehouse

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