Short Fiction by P. G. Wodehouse (me reader .txt) 📕

I recovered a bit. After all, it was fame for dear old Archie. As soon as I had had lunch I went down to the flat to congratulate him.

He was sitting there with Mrs. Archie. He was looking a bit dazed, but she was simmering with joy. She welcomed me as the faithful friend.

“Isn’t it perfectly splendid, Mr. Pepper, to think that Archie’s genius has at last been recognized? How quiet he kept it. I had no idea that Mr. Brackett was even interested in his work. I wonder how he heard of it?”

“Oh, these things get about,” I said. “You can’t keep a good man down.”

“Think of two thousand pounds for one picture⁠—and the first he has ever sold!”

“What beats me,” I said, “is how the papers got hold of it.”

“Oh, I sent it to the papers,” said Mrs. Archie, in an offhand way.

“I wonder who did the writing up,” I said.

“They would do that in the office, wouldn’t they?” said Mrs. Archie.

“I suppose they would,” I said. “They are wonders at that sort of thing.”

I couldn’t help wishing that Archie would enter into the spirit of the thing a little more and perk up, instead of sitting there looking like a codfish. The thing seemed to have stunned the poor chappie.

“After this, Archie,” I said, “all you have to do is to sit in your studio, while the police see that the waiting line of millionaires doesn’t straggle over the pavement. They’ll fight⁠—”

“What’s that?” said Archie, starting as if someone had dug a red-hot needle into his calf.

It was only a ring at the bell, followed by a voice asking if Mr. Ferguson was at home.

“Probably an interviewer,” said Mrs. Archie. “I suppose we shall get no peace for a long time to come.”

The door opened, and the cook came in with a card. “ ‘Renshaw Liggett,’ ” said Mrs. Archie “I don’t know him. Do you, Archie? It must be an interviewer. Ask him to come in, Julia.”

And in he came.

My knowledge of chappies in general, after a fairly wide experience, is that some chappies seem to kind of convey an atmosphere of unpleasantness the moment you come into contact with them. Renshaw Liggett gave me this feeling directly he came in; and when he fixed me with a sinister glance and said, “Mr. Ferguson?” I felt inclined to say “Not guilty.” I backed a step or two and jerked my head towards Archie, and Renshaw turned the searchlight off me and switched it onto him.

“You are Mr. Archibald Ferguson, the artist?”

Archie nodded pallidly, and Renshaw nodded, as much as to say that you couldn’t deceive him. He produced a sheet of paper. It was the middle page of the Mail.

“You authorized the publication of this?”

Archie nodded again.

“I represent Mr. Brackett. The publication of this most impudent fiction has caused Mr. Brackett extreme annoyance, and, as it might also lead to other and more serious consequences, I must insist that a full denial be published without a moment’s delay.”

“What do you mean?” cried Mrs. Archie. “Are you mad?”

She had been standing, listening to the conversation in a sort of trance. Now she jumped into the fight with a vim that turned Renshaw’s attention to her in a second.

“No, madam, I am not mad. Nor, despite the interested assertions of certain parties whom I need not specify by name, is Mr. Brackett. It may be news to you, Mrs. Ferguson, that an action is even now pending in New York, whereby certain parties are attempting to show that my client, Mr. Brackett, is non compos and should be legally restrained from exercising control over his property. Their case is extremely weak, for even if we admit their contention that our client did, on the eighteenth of June last, attempt to walk up Fifth Avenue in his pyjamas, we shall be able to show that his action was the result of an election bet. But as the parties to whom I have alluded will undoubtedly snatch at every straw in their efforts to prove that Mr. Brackett is mentally infirm, the prejudicial effect of this publication cannot be overestimated. Unless Mr. Brackett can clear himself of the stigma of having given two thousand pounds for this extraordinary production of an absolutely unknown artist, the strength of his case must be seriously shaken. I may add that my client’s lavish patronage of Art is already one of the main planks in the platform of the parties already referred to. They adduce his extremely generous expenditure in this direction as evidence that he is incapable of a proper handling of his money. I need scarcely point out with what sinister pleasure, therefore, they must have contemplated⁠—this.”

And he looked at “The Coming of Summer” as if it were a black beetle.

I must say, much as I disliked the blighter, I couldn’t help feeling that he had right on his side. It hadn’t occurred to me in quite that light before, but, considering it calmly now, I could see that a man who would disgorge two thousand of the best for Archie’s Futurist masterpiece might very well step straight into the nut factory, and no questions asked.

Mrs. Archie came right back at him, as game as you please.

“I am sorry for Mr. Brackett’s domestic troubles, but my husband can prove without difficulty that he did buy the picture. Can’t you, dear?”

Archie, extremely white about the gills, looked at the ceiling and at the floor and at me and Renshaw Liggett.

“No,” he said finally. “I can’t. Because he didn’t.”

“Exactly,” said Renshaw, “and I must ask you to publish that statement in tomorrow’s papers without fail.” He rose, and made for the door. “My client has no objection to young artists advertising themselves, realizing that this is an age of strenuous competition, but he firmly refuses to permit them to do it at his expense. Good afternoon.”

And he legged it, leaving behind him one of the most chunky silences I have ever been mixed up in. For the life of me, I couldn’t see who was to make the next remark. I was jolly certain