Ukridge Starts a Bank Account

Except that he was quite well dressed and plainly prosperous, the man a yard or two ahead of me as I walked along Piccadilly looked exactly like my old friend Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, and I was musing on these odd resemblances and speculating idly as to what my little world would be like if there were two of him in it, when he stopped to peer into a tobacconist's window and I saw that it was Ukridge. It was months since I had seen that battered man of wrath, and though my guardian angel whispered to me that it would mean parting with a loan of five or even ten shillings if I made my presence known, I tapped him on the shoulder.

Usually, if you tap Ukridge on the shoulder, he leaps at least six inches into the air, a guilty conscience making him feel that the worst has happened and his sins have found him out; but now he merely beamed, as if being tapped by me had made his day.

"Corky, old horse!" he cried. "The very man I wanted to see. Come in here while I buy one of those cigarette lighters, and then you must have a bite of lunch with me. And when I say lunch, I don't mean the cup of coffee and roll and butter to which you are accustomed, but something more on the lines of a Babylonian orgy."

We went into the shop and he paid for the lighter from a wallet stuffed with currency.

"And now," he said, "that lunch of which I was speaking. The Ritz is handy."

It was perhaps tactless of me, but when we had seated ourselves and he had ordered spaciously, I started to probe the mystery of this affluence of his. It occurred to me that he might have gone to live again with his aunt, the wealthy novelist Miss Julia Ukridge, and I asked him if this was so. He said it was not.

"Then where did you get all that money?"

"Honest work, laddie, or anyway I thought it was honest when I took it on. The pay was good. Ten pounds a week and no expenses, for, of course, Percy attended to the household bills. Everything I got was velvet."

"Who was Percy?"

"My employer, and the job with which he entrusted me was selling antique furniture. It came about through my meeting Stout, my aunt's butler, in a pub, and the advice I would give to every young man starting life is always go into pubs, for you never know whether there won't be someone there who can do you a bit of good. For some minutes after entering the place, I had been using all my eloquence and persuasiveness to induce Flossie, the barmaid, to chalk my refreshment (continued on page 136)Ukridge(continued from page 79) up on the slate, my finances at the time being at a rather low ebb. It wasn't easy. I had to extend all my powers. But I won through at last, and I was returning to my seat with a well-filled flagon when a bloke accosted me and, with some surprise, I saw it was my Aunt Julia's major-domo.

"Hullo," I said. "Why aren't you buttling?"

It appeared that he no longer held office. Aunt Julia had given him the sack. This occasioned me no astonishment, for she is a confirmed sacker. You will probably recall that she has bunged me out of the home not once but many times. So I just said "Tough luck" or something to that effect, and we chatted of this and that. He asked me where I was living now and I told him, and after a pleasant quarter of an hour we parted, he to go and see his brother, or that's where he said he was going, I to trickle round to the Foreign Office and try to touch George Tupper for a couple of quid, which I was fortunately able to do, he luckily happening to be in amiable mood. Sometimes when you approach Tuppy for a small loan, you find him all agitated because mysterious veiled women have been pinching his secret treaties; and on such occasions, it is difficult to bend him to your will.

With this addition to my resources, I was in a position to pay my landlady the trifling sum I owed her, so when she looked in on me that night as I sat smoking my pipe and wishing I could somehow accumulate a bit of working capital, I met her eye without a tremor.

But she had not come to talk finance. She said there was a gentleman downstairs who wanted to see me, and I confess this gave me pause. What with the present world-wide shortage of money—affecting us all these days—I had been compelled to let one or two bills run up, and this might well be some creditor whom it would have been embarrassing to meet.

"What sort of a man is he?" I asked, and she said he was husky in the voice, which didn't get me much further; and when she added that she had told him I was in, I said she had better send him up; and a few moments later, in came a bloke who might have been Stout's brother. Which was as it should have been, for that was what he turned out to be.

"Evening," he said, and I could see why Mrs. Whatever-her-name-was had described him as husky. His voice was hoarse and muffled. Laryngitis or something, I thought.

"Name of Stout," he proceeded. "I think you know my brother Horace."

"Good Lord!" I said. "Is his name Horace?"

"That's right. And mine's Percy."

"Are you a butler, too?"

"Silver-ring bookie. Or was."

"You've retired?"

"For a while. Lost my voice calling the odds. And that brings me to what I've come about."

It was a strange story he had to relate. It seemed that a client of his had let his obligations pile up—a thing I've often wished bookies would let me do—till he owed this Percy a pretty considerable sum, and finally he had settled by handing over a lot of antique furniture. The stuff being no good to Percy, he was anxious to dispose of it if the price was right, and the way to make the price right, he felt, was to enlist the services of someone of persuasive eloquence—someone with the gift of the gab was the way he put it—to sell it for him. Because, of course, he couldn't do it himself, his bronchial cords having turned blue on him. And his brother Horace, having heard of me in action, was convinced that they need seek no further. Any man, Horace said, who could persuade Flossie to give credit for two pints of mild and bitter was the man for Percy. He knew Flossie to be a girl of steel and iron, adamant to the most impassioned pleas; and he said that if he hadn't heard it with his own ears, he wouldn't have believed it possible.

So how about it, Percy asked.

Well, you know me, Corky. First and foremost the levelheaded man of business. What, I inquired, was there in it for me; and he said he would give me a commission. I said that I would prefer a salary; and when he suggested five pounds a week with board and lodging thrown in, it was all I could do to keep from jumping at it, for, as I told you, my financial position was not good. But I managed to sneer loftily, and in the end I got him up to ten.

"You say board and lodging," I said. "Where do I board and lodge?"

That, he said, was the most attractive part of the assignment. He wasn't going to take a shop in the metropolis but planned to exhibit his wares in a cottage equipped with honeysuckle, roses and all the fittings down in Kent. One followed his train of thought. Motorists would be passing to and fro in droves and the betting was that at least some of them, seeing the notice on the front gate, Antique Furniture for Sale. Genuine Period. Guaranteed, would stop off and buy. My Aunt Julia is an aficionada of old furniture and I knew that she had often picked up some good stuff at these wayside emporia. The thing looked to me like a snip, and he said he thought so, too. For mark you, Corky, though you and I wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with the average antique, there are squads of half-wits who value them highly—showing, I often say, that it takes all sorts to make a world. I told myself that this was going to be good. I slapped him on the back. He slapped me on the back. I shook his hand. He shook my hand. And—what made the whole thing a real love feast—he slipped me an advance of five quid. And the following afternoon found me at Rosemary Cottage, in the neighborhood of Tunbridge Wells, all eagerness to get my nose down to it.

• • •

My rosy expectations were fulfilled. For solid comfort, there is nothing to beat a jolly bachelor establishment. Women have their merits, of course, but if you are to live the good life, you don't want them around the home. They are always telling you to wipe your boots and they don't like you dining in your shirt sleeves. At Rosemary Cottage we were hampered by none of these restrictions. Liberty Hall about sums it up.

We were a happy little community. Percy had a fund of good stories garnered from his years on the turf, while Horace, though less effervescent as a conversationalist, played the harmonica with considerable skill, a thing I didn't know butlers ever did. The other member of our group was a substantial character named Erb, who was attached to Percy in the capacity of what is called a minder. In case the term is new to you, it means that if you owed Percy a fiver on the two o'clock at Plumpton and didn't brass up pretty quick, you got Erb on the back of your neck. He was one of those strong, silent men who don't speak till they're spoken to, and not often then; but he was fortunately able to play a fair game of bridge, so we had a four for after supper. Erb was vice-president in charge of the cooking, and I never wish to bite better pork chops than the ones he used to serve up. They melted in the mouth.

Yes, it was an idyllic life, and we lived it to the full. The only thing that cast a shadow was the fact that business might have been brisker. I sold a few of the ghastly objects, but twice I let promising prospects get away from me, and this made me uneasy. I didn't want to get Percy thinking that in entrusting the selling end of the business to me he might have picked the wrong man. With a colossal sum like ten quid a week at stake, it behooved me to do some quick thinking, and it wasn't long before I spotted where the trouble lay. My patter lacked the professional note.

You know how it is when you're buying old furniture. You expect the fellow who's selling it to weigh in with a lot of abstruse stuff that doesn't mean a damn thing to you but which you know ought to be there. It's much the same as when you're buying a car. If you aren't handed plenty of applesauce about springs and camshafts and differential gears and sprockets, you suspect a trap and tell the chap you'll think it over and let him know.

And, fortunately, I was in a position to correct this flaw in my technique without difficulty. Aunt Julia had shelves of books about old furniture that I could borrow and bone up on, thus acquiring the necessary double talk; so next morning I set out for The Cedars, Wimbledon Common, full of zeal and the will to win.

I was sorry to be informed by Horace's successor on my arrival that she was in bed with a nasty cold, but he took my name up and came back to say that she could give me five minutes—not longer, because she was expecting the doctor. So I went up and found her sniffing eucalyptus and sneezing a good deal, plainly in rather poor shape. But her sufferings had not impaired her spirit, for the first thing she said to me was that she wouldn't give me a penny, and I was pained to see that that matter of the ormolu clock still rankled. What ormolu clock? Oh, just one that, needing a bit of capital at the time, I pinched from one of the spare rooms, little thinking that its absence would ever be noticed. I hastened to disabuse her of the idea that I had come in the hope of making a touch, and the strain that had threatened to mar the conversation became eased.

"Though I did come to borrow something, Aunt Julia," I said. "Do you mind if I take two or three books of yours about antique furniture? I'll return them shortly."

She sneezed skeptically.

"Or pawn them," she said. "Since when have you been interested in antique furniture?"

"I'm selling it."

"You're selling it?" she exclaimed like an echo in the Swiss mountains. "Do you mean you are working in a shop?"

"Well, not exactly a shop. We conduct our business at a cottage—Rosemary Cottage, to be exact—on the roadside not far from Tunbridge Wells. In this way, we catch the motoring trade. The actual selling is in my hands and so far I've done pretty well, but I have not been altogether satisfied with my work. I feel I need more technical stuff, and last night it occurred to me that if I read a few of your books, I'd be able to make my sales talk more convincing. So, if you will allow me to take a selection from your library—"

She sneezed again, but this time more amiably. She said that if I was really doing some genuine work, she would certainly be delighted to help me, adding in rather poor taste, I thought, that it was about time I stopped messing about and wasting my life as I had been doing. I could have told her, of course, that there is not a moment of the day, except possibly when relaxing over a mild and bitter at the pub, when I am not pondering some vast scheme that will bring me wealth and power, but it didn't seem humane to argue with a woman suffering from a nasty cold.

"Tomorrow, if I am well enough," she said, "I will come and see your stock myself."

"Will you really? That'll be fine."

"Or perhaps the day after tomorrow. But it's an extraordinary coincidence that you should be selling antique furniture, because—"

"Yes, it was odd that I should have happened to run into Stout."

"Stout? You mean my butler?"

"Your late butler. He gave me to understand that you had sacked him."

She sneezed grimly.

"I certainly did. Let me tell you what happened."

"No, let me tell you what happened," I said, and I related the circumstances of my meeting with Horace, prudently changing the pub to a milk bar. "I had been having an argument with a fellow at the next table," I concluded, "and my eloquence so impressed him that he asked me if I would come down to Rosemary Cottage and sell this antique furniture. He has a brother who recently acquired a lot of it."

"What!"

She sat up in bed, her eyes, though watery, flashing with all the old fire. It was plain that she was about to say something of significance; but before she could speak, the door opened and the medicine man appeared; and thinking they were best alone, I pushed off and got the books and legged it for the great open spaces.

There was a telephone booth at the end of the road and I went to it and rang up Percy. These long-distance calls run into money, but I felt that he ought to have the good news without delay, no matter what the expense.

It was Horace who answered the phone, and I slipped him the tidings of great joy.

"I've just been seeing my aunt," I said.

"Oh?" he said.

"She's got a nasty cold," I said.

"Ah," he said, and I seemed to detect a note of gratification in his voice, as if he was thinking well of heaven for having given her a sharp lesson that would teach her to be more careful in future how she went about giving good men the bum's rush.

"But she thinks she'll be all right tomorrow," I said, "and the moment the sniffles have ceased and the temperature has returned to normal, she's coming down to inspect our stock. I don't need to tell you what this means. Next to her novels, what she loves most in this world is old furniture. It is to her what catnip is to a cat. Confront her with some chair on which nobody could sit with any comfort, and provided it was made by Chippendale, if I've got the name right, the sky's the limit. She's quite likely to buy everything we've got, paying a prince's ransom for each article. I've been with her to sales and with my own eyes have observed her flinging the cash about like a drunken sailor. I know what you're thinking, of course. You feel that after what has passed between you, it will be painful for you to meet her again; but you must clench your teeth and stick it like a man. We're all working for the good of the show, so— Hullo? Hullo? Are you there?"

He wasn't. He had hung up. Mysterious, I thought, and most disappointing to one who, like myself, had been expecting paeans of joy. However, I was much too bucked to worry about the peculiar behavior of butlers; and feeling that the occasion called for something in the nature of a celebration, I went to the Foreign Office, gave George Tupper his two quid back and took him out to lunch.

It wasn't a very animated lunch, because Tuppy hardly said a word. He seemed dazed. I've noticed the same thing before in fellows to whom I've repaid a small loan. They get a sort of stunned look, as if they had passed through some great spiritual experience. Odd. But it took more than a silent Tuppy to damp my jocund mood, and I was feeling on top of my form when, an hour or two later, I crossed the threshold of Rosemary Cottage.

"Yoo-hoo!" I cried. "I'm back."

I expected shouts of welcome—not, of course, from Erb, but certainly from Horace and Percy. Instead of which, complete silence reigned. They might all have gone for a walk, but that didn't seem likely; because while Percy sometimes enjoyed a little exercise, Horace and Erb hadn't set a foot outdoors since we'd been there. And it was as I stood puzzling over this that I noticed that except for a single table—piecrust tables, the things are called—all the furniture had gone, too. I don't mind telling you, Corky, that it baffled me. I could make nothing of it, and I was still making nothing of it when I had that feeling you get sometimes that you are not alone, and, turning, I saw that I had company. Standing beside me was a policeman.

There have been times, I will not conceal it from you, when such a spectacle would have chilled me to the marrow; for you never know what may ensue, once the force starts popping up; and it just shows how crystal clear my conscience was that I didn't quail but greeted him with a cheery "Good evening, officer."

"Good evening, sir," he responded courteously. "Is this Rosemary Cottage?"

"Nothing but. Anything I can do for you?"

"I've come on behalf of Miss Julia Ukridge."

It seemed strange to me that Aunt Julia should have dealings with the police, but aunts notoriously do the weirdest things, so I received the information with a polite "Oh, really?"—adding that she was linked to me by ties of blood, being indeed the sister of my late father—and he said "Was that so?" and expressed the opinion that it was a small world, a sentiment in which I concurred.

"She was talking of looking me up here," I said.

"So I understood, sir. But she was unable to come herself, so she sent her maid with the list. She has a nasty cold."

"Probably caught it from my aunt."

"Sir?"

"You said the maid had a nasty cold."

"No, sir, it's Miss Ukridge who has the nasty cold."

"Ah, now we have got it straight. What did she send the maid for?"

"To bring us the list of the purloined objects."

I don't know how it is with you, Corky, but the moment anyone starts talking about purloined objects in my presence, I get an uneasy feeling. It was with not a little goose flesh running clown my spine that I gazed at the officer.

"Purloined objects?"

"A number of valuable pieces of furniture. Antiques, they call them."

"Oh, my aunt!"

"Yes, sir, they were her property. They were removed from her residence on Wimbledon Common during her absence. She states that she had gone to Brussels to attend one of these conferences where writers assemble, she being a writer, I understand, and she left her butler in charge of the house. When she came back, the valuable pieces of antique furniture weren't there. The butler, questioned, stated that he had taken the afternoon off and gone to the dog races and nobody more surprised than himself when he returned and found that the objects had been purloined. He was dismissed, of course, but that didn't help Miss Ukridge's bereavement much. Just locking the stable door after the milk has been spilt, as you might say. And there, till this morning, the matter rested. But this morning, on information received, the lady was led to suspect that the purloined objects were in this Rosemary Cottage, and she got in touch with the local police, who got in touch with us. She thinks, you see, that the butler did it. Worked in with an accomplice, I mean to say, and the two of them got away with the purloined objects, no doubt in a plain van."

I believe I once asked you, Corky, if during a political discussion in a pub you had ever suddenly been punched on the nose; and if I remember rightly, you replied in the negative. But I have been—twice—and on each occasion, I was conscious of feeling dazed and stunned, like George Tupper when I paid him back the two quid he had lent me and took him to lunch. The illusion that the roof had fallen in and landed on top of my head was extraordinarily vivid. Drinking the constable in with a horrified gaze, I seemed to be looking at two constables, both doing the shimmy.

For his words had removed the scales from my eyes, and I saw Horace and Percy no longer as pleasant business associates but as what they were, a wolf in butler's clothing and a bookie who did not know the difference between right and wrong. Yes, yes, as you say, I have sometimes been compelled by circumstances to pinch an occasional trifle like a clock from my aunt, but there is a sharp line drawn between swiping a clock and getting away with a houseful of assorted antique furniture. No doubt they had done it precisely as the constable had said, and it must have been absurdly simple. Nothing to it. No, Corky, you are wrong. I do not wish I had thought of it myself. I would have scorned such an action, even though knowing the stuff was fully insured and my aunt would be far better off without it.

"The only thing is," the officer was proceeding, "I don't see any antique furniture here. There's that table, but it's not on the list. And if there had been antique furniture here, you'd have noticed it. Looks to me as if they'd sent me to the wrong place," he said; and with a word of regret that I had been troubled, he mounted his bicycle and pedaled off.

He left me, as you can readily imagine, with my mind in a turmoil, and you are probably thinking that what was giving me dark circles under the eyes was the discovery that I had been lured by a specious bookie into selling hot furniture and so rendering myself liable to a sharp sentence as an accessory or whatever they call it, but it wasn't. That was bad enough, but what was worse was the realization that my employer had gone off owing me six weeks' salary. You see, when we had made that gentleman's agreement of ours, he had said that if it was all the same to me, he would prefer to pay me in a lump sum at the end of my term of office instead of week by week, and I had seen no objection. Foolish of me, of course. I cannot impress it on you too strongly, Corky, old horse, that if anyone comes offering you money, you should grab it at once and not assent to any suggestion of payment at some later date. Only so can you be certain of trousering the stuff.

So, as I say, I stood there draining the bitter cup, and while I was thus engaged, a car stopped in the road outside and a man came up the garden path.

He was a tall man with gray hair and a funny sort of twist to his mouth, as if he had just swallowed a bad oyster and was wishing he hadn't.

"I see you advertise antique furniture," he said. "Where do you keep it?"

I was just about to tell him it had all gone, when he spotted the piecrust table.

"This looks a nice piece," he said; and as he spoke, I saw in his eye the unmistakable antique-furniture-collector's gleam that I had so often seen in my Aunt Julia's at sales, and I quivered from hair to shoe sole.

You have often commented on my lightning brain and ready resource, Corky ... well, if it wasn't you, it was somebody else ... and I don't suppose I've ever thought quicker than I did then. In a sort of blinding flash, it came to me that if I could sell Percy's piecrust table for what he owed me, the thing would be a standoff and my position stabilized.

"You bet it's a nice piece," I said, and proceeded to give him the works. I was inspired. I doubt if I have ever, not even when pleading with Flossie that credit was the lifeblood of commerce, talked more persuasively. The golden words simply flowed out, and I could see that I had got him going. It seemed but a moment before he had produced his checkbook and was writing me a check for 60 pounds.

"Who shall I make it out to?" he asked, and I said S. F. Ukridge; and he did so and told me where to send the table—somewhere in the Mayfair district of London—and we parted on cordial terms.

And not ten minutes after he had driven off, who should show up but Percy. Yes, Percy in person, the last bloke I had expected to see. I don't think I described him to you, did I, but his general appearance was that of a clean-shaven Santa Claus, and he was looking now more like Santa Claus than ever. Bubbling over with good will and joie de vivre. He couldn't have been chirpier if he had just seen the heavily backed favorite in the big race stub its toe on a fence and come a purler.

"Hullo, cocky," he said. "So you got back."

Well, you might suppose that after what I had heard from the rozzer, I would have started right away to reproach him for his criminal activities and to urge him to give his better self a chance to guide him, but I didn't—partly because it's never any use trying to jerk a bookie's better self to the surface, but principally because I wanted to lose no time in putting our financial affairs on a sound basis. First things first has always been my motto.

"You!" I said. "I thought you had skipped."

Have you ever seen a bookie cut to the quick? I hadn't till then. He took it big. There's a word my aunt is fond of using in her novels when the hero has said the wrong thing to the heroine and made her hot under the collar. "She" — what is it?—"bridled," that's the word I mean. Percy bridled.

"Who, me?" he said. "Without paying you your money? What do you think I am—dishonest?"

I apologized. I said that, naturally, when I returned and found him gone and all the furniture removed, it had started a train of thought.

"Well, I had to get the stuff away before your aunt arrived, didn't I? How much do I owe you? Sixty quid minus the five advance, isn't it? Here you are," he said, pulling out a wallet the size of an elephant. "What's that you've got there?"

And I'm blowed if in my emotion at seeing him again, I hadn't forgotten all about the twisted-lip man's check. I endorsed it with a hasty fountain pen and pushed it across. He eyed it with some surprise.

"What's this?"

I may have smirked a bit, for I was not a little proud of my recent triumph of salesmanship.

"I just sold the piecrust table to a man who came by in a car."

"Good boy," said Percy. "I knew I hadn't made a mistake in making you vice-president in charge of sales. I've had that table on my hands for months. Took it for a bad debt. How much did you get for it?" He looked at the check. "Sixty quid? Splendid. I only got forty."

"Eh?"

"From the chap I sold it to this morning."

"You sold it to somebody this morning?"

"That's right."

"Then which of them gets it?"

"Why, your chap, of course. He paid more. We've got to do the honest thing."

"And you'll give your chap his money back?"

"Now don't be silly," said Percy, and would probably have gone on to reproach me further, but at this moment we had another visitor, a gaunt, lean, spectacled popper-in who looked as if he might be a professor or something on that order.

"I see you advertise antique furniture," he said. "I would like to look at ... ah," he said, spotting the table. He nuzzled it a good deal and turned it upside down and once or twice looked as if he were going to smell it.

"Beautiful," he said. "A lovely bit of work."

"You can have it for eighty quid," said Percy.

The professor smiled one of those gentle smiles.

"I fear it is hardly worth that. When I called it beautiful and lovely, I was alluding to Tancy's workmanship. Ike Tancy, possibly the finest forger of old furniture we have today. At a glance, I would say that this was an example of his middle period."

Percy blew a few bubbles.

"You mean it's a fake? But I was told—"

"Whatever you were told, your informant was mistaken. And may I add that if you persist in this policy of yours of advertising and selling forgeries as genuine antiques, you are liable to come into uncomfortable contact with the law. It would be wise to remove that notice you have on your gate. Good evening, gentlemen, good evening."

He left behind him what you might call a strained silence, broken after a moment or so by Percy, saying, "Cor!"

"This calls for thought," he said. "We've sold that table."

"Yes."

"Twice."

"Yes."

"And got the money for it."

"Yes."

"And it's a fake."

"Yes."

"And we passed it off as genuine."

"Yes."

"And it seems there's a law against that."

"Yes."

"We'd better go to the pub and talk it over."

"Yes."

"You be walking on. There's something I want to attend to in the kitchen. By the way, got any matches? I've used all mine."

I gave him a box and strolled on, deep in thought, and presently he joined me, seeming deep in thought, too. We sat on a stile, both of us plunged in meditation, and then he suddenly uttered a cry.

"What a lovely sunset," he said, "and how peculiar that the sun's setting in the east. I've never known it to do that before. Why, strike me pink, I believe the cottage is on fire."

And, Corky, he was perfectly accurate. It was.

• • •

Ukridge broke off his narrative, readied for his wallet and laid it on the table preparatory to summoning the waiter to bring the check. I ventured a question.

"The cottage was reduced to ashes?"

"It was."

"The piecrust table, too?"

"Yes, I think it must have burned briskly."

"A bit of luck for you."

"Very fortunate. Very fortunate."

"Percy was probably careless with those matches."

"One feels he must have been. But he certainly brought about the happy ending. Percy's happy. He's made a good thing out of it. I'm happy. I've made a good thing out of it, too. Aunt Julia has the insurance money, so she also is happy, provided, of course, that her nasty cold has now yielded to treatment. I doubt if the insurance blokes are happy, but we must always remember that the more cash these insurance firms get taken off them, the better it is for them. It makes them more spiritual."

"How about the two owners of the table?"

"Oh, they've probably forgotten the whole thing by now. Money means nothing to fellows like that. The fellow I sold it to was driving a Rolls-Royce. So looking on the episode from the broad viewpoint— I beg your pardon?"

"I said, 'Good afternoon, Mr. Ukridge,' " said the man who had suddenly appeared at our table, and I saw Ukridge's jaw fall like an express elevator going down. And I wasn't surprised, for this was a tall man with gray hair and a curiously twisted mouth. His eyes, as they bored into Ukridge, were bleak.

"I've been looking for you for a long time and hoping to meet you again. I'll trouble you for sixty pounds."

"I haven't got sixty pounds."

"Spent some of it, eh? Then let's see what you have got," said the man, turning the contents of the wallet out on the tablecloth and counting it in an efficient manner. "Fifty-three pounds, six and threepence. That's near enough."

"But who's going to pay for my lunch?"

"Ah, that we shall never know," said the man.

But I knew, and it was with a heavy heart that I reached into my hip pocket for the thin little bundle of pound notes that I had been hoping would last me for another week.