The Girl in Blue by P.G. Wodehouse Page B

so funny?” Make you a lot of new friends.’
    This
excellent advice, so simple and yet so practical, ought, one would have said,
to have been acted on without delay by its recipient, but if Crispin proposed
to go through life with a smile on his face, it was plain that he did not
intend to start immediately. Nor did the emergence from the house at this
moment of the resident broker’s man do anything to improve his morale. It is
possible that Chippendale had his little circle of admirers who brightened at
the sight of him, but Crispin was not of their number.
    ‘You’re
wanted on the telephone, sir,’ said Chippendale. Had he and Crispin been alone,
he would have used the less formal ‘chum’ or ‘mate’, but the presence of Barney
restrained him.
    ‘Says
he’s your brother.’
    Crispin
hurried into the house, followed by Chippendale, who made for the butler’s
pantry, where there was an extension. It was his practice to listen to all
telephonic conversations, for you never knew when you might not pick up
something of interest.
    ‘Bill?’
said Crispin.
    ‘Is
that you, Crips?’
    ‘Your
voice sounds funny, Bill. Is something the matter?’
    ‘You’re
damned right something’s the matter. That blasted Clayborne woman has stolen my Girl in Blue,’ thundered Willoughby, and Chippendale’s lips framed
themselves in a silent ‘Coo!’
    The
lips of a more emotional man would have made it ‘Gorblimey!’

 
     
     
    CHAPTER NINE
     
     
     
     
     
    1
     
    Willoughby had come back
from his golfing holiday in the most jovial of spirits. His putting had been
good: he had corrected, if only temporarily, the slice which had been troubling
him for weeks: he had got a birdie on the long seventh; and the thought that
Gainsborough’s Girl in Blue would be awaiting him on the mantelpiece in
his study set the seal on his euphoria. If ever a rather stout senior partner
in a law firm came within an ace of singing like the Cherubim and Seraphim, he
was that rather stout senior partner.
    And now
this had happened. How true is the old saying, attributed to Pliny the Elder,
that a man who lets himself get above himself is simply asking for it, for it
is just when things seem to be running as smooth as treacle out of a jug that
he finds Fate waiting for him round the corner with the stuffed eelskin.
    Turning
to the other parties in the conversation which had so dramatically begun,
Chippendale was listening with his ears pricked up like a Doberman pinscher’s,
while Crispin stood rigid with amazement, the receiver trembling in his grasp.
It was impossible for him to suppose that he had not heard correctly, for the speaker’s voice had nearly cracked his eardrum.
He could only think that his brother was labouring under some strange delusion.
It was unusual for Bill to have strange delusions, but he refused to believe
that a woman like Bernadette Clayborne could be guilty of the grave offence
with which that stentorian voice had charged her. Nice girls, he reasoned, don’t
steal things, and if Barney was not technically a girl, she was unquestionably
nice. His recent exchange of ideas with her had left him more convinced of that
than ever.
    ‘What?’
he said, and never had more consternation, agitation, indignation and
incredulity been condensed into the restricted limits of a monosyllable. ‘Is
this a joke, Bill?’
    There
was a brief interval here, probably occupied by Willoughby in foaming at the mouth.
At its conclusion he assured Crispin that it was not a joke.
    ‘It’s
gone. I went away for a few days, leaving it on the mantelpiece in my study,
and when I got back it wasn’t there.’
    ‘Have
you looked everywhere?’
    This
query, like the previous one, seemed to give offence.
    ‘Don’t
talk as if I had mislaid my spectacles!’
    ‘Did
you say you had mislaid your spectacles?’
    ‘No, I
did not say I had mislaid my spectacles.’
    ‘I’m always
mislaying my spectacles.’
    ‘Curse
your