A Damsel in Distress by P. G. Wodehouse (pocket ebook reader txt) 📕

or more of the evening papers. Today, sitting down to a solitary repast at the Piccadilly grillroom, he had brought with him an early edition of the Evening News. And one of the first items which met his eye was the following, embodied in a column on one of the inner pages devoted to humorous comments in prose and verse on the happenings of the day. This particular happening the writer had apparently considered worthy of being dignified by rhyme. It was headed:

The Peer and the Policeman

Outside the Carlton, ’tis averred,
these stirring happenings occurred.
The hour, ’tis said (and no one doubts)
was half-past two, or thereabouts.
The day was fair, the sky was blue,
and everything was peaceful too,
when suddenly a well-dressed gent
engaged in heated argument
and roundly to abuse began
another well-dressed gentleman.
His suede-gloved fist he raised on high
to dot the other in the eye.
Who knows what horrors might have been,
had there not come upon the scene
old London city’s favourite son,
Policeman C. 231.
“What means this conduct? Prithee stop!”
exclaimed that admirable slop.
With which he placed a warning hand
upon the brawler’s collarband.
We simply hate to tell the rest.
No subject here for flippant jest.
The mere remembrance of the tale
has made our ink turn deadly pale.
Let us be brief. Some demon sent
stark madness on the well-dressed gent.
He gave the constable a punch
just where the latter kept his lunch.
The constable said “Well! Well! Well!”
and marched him to a dungeon cell.
At Vine Street Station out it came⁠—
Lord Belpher was the culprit’s name.
But British Justice is severe
alike on pauper and on peer;
with even hand she holds the scale;
a thumping fine, in lieu of gaol,
induced Lord B. to feel remorse
and learn he mustn’t punch the Force.

George’s mutton chop congealed on the plate, untouched. The French fried potatoes cooled off, unnoticed. This was no time for food. Rightly indeed had he relied upon his luck. It had stood by him nobly. With this clue, all was over except getting to the nearest Free Library and consulting Burke’s Peerage. He paid his bill and left the restaurant.

Ten minutes later he was drinking in the pregnant information that Belpher was the family name of the Earl of Marshmoreton, and that the present earl had one son, Percy Wilbraham Marsh, educ. Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and what the book with its customary curtness called “one d.”⁠—Patricia Maud. The family seat, said Burke, was Belpher Castle, Belpher, Hants.

Some hours later, seated in a first-class compartment of a train that moved slowly out of Waterloo Station, George watched London vanish behind him. In the pocket closest to his throbbing heart was a single ticket to Belpher.

VI

At about the time that George Bevan’s train was leaving Waterloo, a grey racing car drew up with a grinding of brakes and a sputter of gravel in front of the main entrance of Belpher Castle. The slim and elegant young man at the wheel removed his goggles, pulled out a watch, and addressed the stout young man at his side.

“Two hours and eighteen minutes from Hyde Park Corner, Boots. Not so dusty, what?”

His companion made no reply. He appeared to be plunged in thought. He, too, removed his goggles, revealing a florid and gloomy face, equipped, in addition to the usual features, with a small moustache and an extra chin. He scowled forbiddingly at the charming scene which the goggles had hidden from him.

Before him, a symmetrical mass of grey stone and green ivy, Belpher Castle towered against a light blue sky. On either side rolling park land spread as far as the eye could see, carpeted here and there with violets, dotted with great oaks and ashes and Spanish chestnuts, orderly, peaceful and English. Nearer, on his left, were rose-gardens, in the centre of which, tilted at a sharp angle, appeared the seat of a pair of corduroy trousers, whose wearer seemed to be engaged in hunting for snails. Thrushes sang in the green shrubberies; rooks cawed in the elms. Somewhere in the distance sounded the tinkle of sheep bells and the lowing of cows. It was, in fact, a scene which, lit by the evening sun of a perfect spring day and fanned by a gentle westerly wind, should have brought balm and soothing meditations to one who was the sole heir to all this Paradise.

But Percy, Lord Belpher, remained uncomforted by the notable cooperation of Man and Nature, and drew no solace from the reflection that all these pleasant things would one day be his own. His mind was occupied at the moment, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the recollection of that painful scene in Bow Street Police Court. The magistrate’s remarks, which had been tactless and unsympathetic, still echoed in his ears. And that infernal night in Vine Street police station⁠ ⁠… The darkness⁠ ⁠… The hard bed⁠ ⁠… The discordant vocalising of the drunk and disorderly in the next cell.⁠ ⁠… Time might soften these memories, might lessen the sharp agony of them; but nothing could remove them altogether.

Percy had been shaken to the core of his being. Physically, he was still stiff and sore from the plank bed. Mentally, he was a volcano. He had been marched up the Haymarket in the full sight of all London by a bounder of a policeman. He had been talked to like an erring child by a magistrate whom nothing could convince that he had not been under the influence of alcohol at the moment of his arrest. (The man had said things about his liver, kindly be-warned-in-time-and-pull-up-before-it-is-too-late things, which would have seemed to Percy indecently frank if spoken by his medical adviser in the privacy of the sick chamber.) It is perhaps not to be wondered at that Belpher Castle, for all its beauty of scenery and architecture, should have left Lord Belpher a little cold. He was seething with a fury which the conversation of Reggie Byng had done nothing to allay in the course of the journey from London. Reggie was the last person he would willingly have