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- Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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It was past four o’clock when he returned to the Cosmopolis. Roscoe Sherriff was pacing the lobby of the hotel nervously, carrying a small hand-bag.
“Here you are at last! Good heavens, man, I’ve been waiting two hours.”
“Sorry, old bean. I was musing a bit and lost track of the time.”
The Press-agent looked cautiously round. There was nobody within earshot.
“Here he is!” he said.
“Who?”
“Peter.”
“Where?” said Archie, staring blankly.
“In this bag. Did you expect to find him strolling arm-in-arm with me round the lobby? Here you are! Take him!”
He was gone. And Archie, holding the bag, made his way to the lift. The bag squirmed gently in his grip.
The only other occupant of the lift was a striking-looking woman of foreign appearance, dressed in a way that made Archie feel that she must be somebody or she couldn’t look like that. Her face, too, seemed vaguely familiar. She entered the lift at the second floor where the tea-room is, and she had the contented expression of one who had tea’d to her satisfaction. She got off at the same floor as Archie, and walked swiftly, in a lithe, pantherish way, round the bend in the corridor. Archie followed more slowly. When he reached the door of his room, the passage was empty. He inserted the key in his door, turned it, pushed the door open, and pocketed the key. He was about to enter when the bag again squirmed gently in his grip.
From the days of Pandora, through the epoch of Bluebeard’s wife, down to the present time, one of the chief failings of humanity has been the disposition to open things that were better closed. It would have been simple for Archie to have taken another step and put a door between himself and the world, but there came to him the irresistible desire to peep into the bag now—not three seconds later, but now. All the way up in the lift he had been battling with the temptation, and now he succumbed.
The bag was one of those simple bags with a thingummy which you press. Archie pressed it. And, as it opened, out popped the head of Peter. His eyes met Archie’s. Over his head there seemed to be an invisible mark of interrogation. His gaze was curious, but kindly. He appeared to be saying to himself, “Have I found a friend?”
Serpents, or Snakes, says the Encyclopaedia, are reptiles of the saurian class Ophidia, characterised by an elongated, cylindrical, limbless, scaly form, and distinguished from lizards by the fact that the halves (rami) of the lower jaw are not solidly united at the chin, but movably connected by an elastic ligament. The vertebra are very numerous, gastrocentrous, and procoelous. And, of course, when they put it like that, you can see at once that a man might spend hours with combined entertainment and profit just looking at a snake.
Archie would no doubt have done this; but long before he had time really to inspect the halves (rami) of his new friend’s lower jaw and to admire its elastic fittings, and long before the gastrocentrous and procoelous character of the other’s vertebrae had made any real impression on him, a piercing scream almost at his elbow—startled him out of his scientific reverie. A door opposite had opened, and the woman of the elevator was standing staring at him with an expression of horror and fury that went through, him like a knife. It was the expression which, more than anything else, had made Mme. Brudowska what she was professionally. Combined with a deep voice and a sinuous walk, it enabled her to draw down a matter of a thousand dollars per week.
Indeed, though the fact gave him little pleasure, Archie, as a matter of fact, was at this moment getting about—including war-tax—two dollars and seventy-five cents worth of the great emotional star for nothing. For, having treated him gratis to the look of horror and fury, she now moved towards him with the sinuous walk and spoke in the tone which she seldom permitted herself to use before the curtain of act two, unless there was a whale of a situation that called for it in act one.
“Thief!”
It was the way she said it.
Archie staggered backwards as though he had been hit between the eyes, fell through the open door of his room, kicked it to with a flying foot, and collapsed on the bed. Peter, the snake, who had fallen on the floor with a squashy sound, looked surprised and pained for a moment; then, being a philosopher at heart, cheered up and began hunting for flies under the bureau.
A DISTURBED NIGHT FOR DEAR OLD SQUIFFY
Peril sharpens the intellect. Archie’s mind as a rule worked in rather a languid and restful sort of way, but now it got going with a rush and a whir. He glared round the room. He had never seen a room so devoid of satisfactory cover. And then there came to him a scheme, a ruse. It offered a chance of escape. It was, indeed, a bit of all right.
Peter, the snake, loafing contentedly about the carpet, found himself seized by what the Encyclopaedia calls the “distensible gullet” and looked up reproachfully. The next moment he was in his bag again; and Archie, bounding silently into the bathroom, was tearing the cord off his dressing-gown.
There came a banging at the door. A voice spoke sternly. A masculine voice this time.
“Say! Open this door!”
Archie rapidly attached the dressing-gown cord to the handle of the bag, leaped to the window, opened it, tied the cord to a projecting piece of iron on the sill, lowered Peter and the bag into the depths, and closed the window again. The whole affair took but a few seconds. Generals have received the thanks of their nations for displaying less resource on the field of battle.
He opened the door. Outside stood the bereaved woman, and beside her a bullet-headed gentleman with a bowler hat on the back of his head, in whom Archie recognised the hotel detective.
The hotel detective also recognised Archie, and the stern cast of his features relaxed. He even smiled a rusty but propitiatory smile. He imagined—erroneously—that Archie, being the son-in-law of the owner of the hotel, had a pull with that gentleman; and he resolved to proceed warily lest he jeopardise his job.
“Why, Mr. Moffam!” he said, apologetically. “I didn’t know it was you I was disturbing.”
“Always glad to have a chat,” said Archie, cordially. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“My snake!” cried the queen of tragedy. “Where is my snake?”
Archie, looked at the detective. The detective looked at Archie.
“This lady,” said the detective, with a dry little cough, “thinks her snake is in your room, Mr. Moffam.”
“Snake?”
“Snake’s what the lady said.”
“My snake! My Peter!” Mme. Brudowska’s voice shook with emotion. “He is here—here in this room.”
Archie shook his head.
“No snakes here! Absolutely not! I remember noticing when I came in.”
“The snake is here—here in this room. This man had it in a bag! I saw him! He is a thief!”
“Easy, ma’am!” protested the detective. “Go easy! This gentleman is the boss’s son-in-law.”
“I care not who he is! He has my snake! Here—here in this room!”
“Mr. Moffam wouldn’t go round stealing snakes.”
“Rather not,” said Archie. “Never stole a snake in my life. None of the Moffams have ever gone about stealing snakes. Regular family tradition! Though I once had an uncle who kept gold-fish.”
“Here he is! Here! My Peter!”
Archie looked at the detective. The detective looked at Archie. “We must humour her!” their glances said.
“Of course,” said Archie, “if you’d like to search the room, what? What I mean to say is, this is Liberty Hall. Everybody welcome! Bring the kiddies!”
“I will search the room!” said Mme. Brudowska.
The detective glanced apologetically at Archie.
“Don’t blame me for this, Mr. Moffam,” he urged.
“Rather not! Only too glad you’ve dropped in!”
He took up an easy attitude against the window, and watched the empress of the emotional drama explore. Presently she desisted, baffled. For an instant she paused, as though about to speak, then swept from the room. A moment later a door banged across the passage.
“How do they get that way?” queried the detective, “Well, g’bye, Mr. Moffam. Sorry to have butted in.”
The door closed. Archie waited a few moments, then went to the window and hauled in the slack. Presently the bag appeared over the edge of the window-sill.
“Good God!” said Archie.
In the rush and swirl of recent events he must have omitted to see that the clasp that fastened the bag was properly closed; for the bag, as it jumped on to the window-sill, gaped at him like a yawning face. And inside it there was nothing.
Archie leaned as far out of the window as he could manage without committing suicide. Far below him, the traffic took its usual course and the pedestrians moved to and fro upon the pavements. There was no crowding, no excitement. Yet only a few moments before a long green snake with three hundred ribs, a distensible gullet, and gastrocentrous vertebras must have descended on that street like the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath. And nobody seemed even interested. Not for the first time since he had arrived in America, Archie marvelled at the cynical detachment of the New Yorker, who permits himself to be surprised at nothing.
He shut the window and moved away with a heavy heart. He had not had the pleasure of an extended acquaintanceship with Peter, but he had seen enough of him to realise his sterling qualities. Somewhere beneath Peter’s three hundred ribs there had lain a heart of gold, and Archie mourned for his loss.
Archie had a dinner and theatre engagement that night, and it was late when he returned to the hotel. He found his father-in-law prowling restlessly about the lobby. There seemed to be something on Mr. Brewster’s mind. He came up to Archie with a brooding frown on his square face.
“Who’s this man Seacliff?” he demanded, without preamble. “I hear he’s a friend of yours.”
“Oh, you’ve met him, what?” said Archie. “Had a nice little chat together, yes? Talked of this and that, no!”
“We have not said a word to each other.”
“Really? Oh, well, dear old Squiffy is one of those strong, silent fellers you know. You mustn’t mind if he’s a bit dumb. He never says much, but it’s whispered round the clubs that he thinks a lot. It was rumoured in the spring of nineteen-thirteen that Squiffy was on the point of making a bright remark, but it never came to anything.”
Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings.
“Who is he? You seem to know him.”
“Oh yes. Great pal of mine, Squiffy. We went through Eton, Oxford, and the Bankruptcy Court together. And here’s a rummy coincidence. When they examined me, I had no assets. And, when they examined Squiffy, he had no assets! Rather extraordinary, what?”
Mr. Brewster seemed to be in no mood for discussing coincidences.
“I might have known he was a friend of yours!” he said, bitterly. “Well, if you want to see him, you’ll have to do it outside my hotel.”
“Why, I thought he was stopping here.”
“He is—to-night. To-morrow he can look for some other hotel to break up.”
“Great Scot! Has dear old Squiffy been breaking the place up?”
Mr. Brewster snorted.
“I am informed that this precious friend of yours entered my grill-room at eight o’clock. He must have been completely intoxicated, though the head waiter tells me he noticed nothing at the time.”
Archie nodded approvingly.
“Dear old Squiffy was always like that. It’s a gift. However woozled he might be, it was impossible to detect it with the naked eye. I’ve seen the dear old chap many a time whiffled to the eyebrows, and looking as sober as a bishop. Soberer! When did it begin to dawn on the lads in the grill-room that the old egg had been pushing the boat out?”
“The head waiter,” said Mr. Brewster, with cold fury, “tells me that he got a hint of the man’s condition when he suddenly got up from his table and went the round of the room, pulling off all the table-cloths, and breaking everything that was on them. He then threw a number of rolls at the diners, and left. He seems to
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