Chapter 3

Next day, a Saturday, came the climax. Early in the evening an urgent telegram summoned Mr. Pottigrew back from Brighton. Hastening home, he was received by a wife distraught.

"What did I tell you?" she wailed. "Send for Sir CONAN DOYLE. Poor dear Aubrey! The doctor is upstairs with him."

Mr. Pottigrew hurriedly ascended to the bedroom of his son and heir, a fine healthy youth, just of an age to appreciate his father's cigars. (This, of course, is a pre-Budget story.)

The young fellow lying upon the bed smiled bravely as his father entered, but Mr. Pottigrew was shocked to see that he smiled with toothless gums. A grave professional-looking man rose from the bedside and beckoned Mr. Pottigrew out of the room.

"This extraordinary case, Sir," said the doctor as he closed the door behind him, "is the outcome of causes quite beyond the present scope of the medical profession. The sound, strong, firm teeth--a splendid set--of a healthy young man do not jump out of his head of their own accord, every one of them, for any natural reason."

He paused and lowered his voice as he continued: "I am afraid, Mr. Pottigrew, however reluctant we may be to admit the possibility, that there is no doubt that you have taken a haunted house. The previous tenant was a dentist--poor Mr. Acres. The room which is your study was his operating room. _He died in that room while administering gas to himself preparatory to extracting his own teeth._"

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* * * * *

MRS. GAMP REDIVIVA.

"Nurse; 39; experienced bottle fed; £40 to £50."--_Daily Paper._

* * * * *

SPEEDING THE PARTING GUEST.

"Oban is proving an attractive centre, for Lord ----, Lady ---- and many others have departed thence during the last day or so."--_Daily Paper._

We think it only kind to suppress the names.

* * * * *

"All new demands for capital, whether for private or public purposes, had been met out of the sayings of the people."--_Daily Paper._

Mr. Punch may perhaps be permitted to mention that he has himself given currency to a number of capital stories.

* * * * *

"It is to be hoped that, now that their unhappy country is in the throes of the most ghastly terror of her history, the irreconcilable elements in the Irish nation will see an all-compelling reason for exercising the demon of strife.--_Indian Paper._

Unfortunately they seem to be doing so only too freely.

* * * * *

ANOTHER WAR TO END WAR.

[An address to the League of Nations on learning that it is considering a scheme to tackle the rat plague.]

Not yours to lure the lands of Cross or Crescent Back from Bellona where she bangs her drum, Nor make this Hades, anyhow at present, The New Elysium.

For still the sword gleams mightier than the pen in Europe, you'll notice, at the Bolshies' beck; Confess now that the case of Mr. LENIN Gets you right in the neck.

So I have read with wondrous satisfaction, Feeling in this your hands are far from tied, That you propose to emulate the action Of _Hamelin's Piper (Pied)_.

And, though the task prove hard and ever harder, From your crusade, I trust, you'll never cease Till you've restored good-will to every larder And to each pantry peace.

Then, when the cocksure critic in his crudeness Pops you the question while his back he pats, "What have you done?" you'll find at last, thank goodness, One ready answer--"Rats!"

* * * * *

"Puccinni's three one-act operas, erroneously described as a typtich...."--_Evening Paper._

But what about the spelling of "Puccinni"? We fear our contemporary has, after all, been caught triptyching.

* * * * *

HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE.

The only way to build a house properly is to employ an architect to build it for you. All the best houses are built by architects--any architect will tell you that. But of course you will always be allowed to say that _you_ built it, so it will come to the same thing.

The walls of an architect's office are covered with drawings of enormous public buildings which the architect has erected in every capital of Europe. There are also a few of the statelier homes of England which he has put up in his spare time.

While you are waiting you compare these with your own scheme of the six-roomed villa you propose to build.

At last you are ushered into the presence and unless a stove-pipe protruding from your waistcoat pocket suggests that you are travelling in somebody's radiators you will probably be asked to sit down, and may even be given a cigarette. There is no difficulty in opening your business. The architect can see at a glance what you have come for and says quite simply, "You want to build a house?"

"I do," you reply.

"How many reception rooms?"

This rather staggers you. You had not intended to have any reception rooms at all. You never give receptions. All you wanted was a dining-room and a drawing-room, and a study with a round window over the fire-place.

But it is evidently impossible to confide this to the architect. All you can do is to reply as naturally as you can:--

"About half-a-dozen."

"Eight reception rooms," says the architect. "And how many bedrooms?"

"I don't really know; about one each."

"Twenty bedrooms," suggests the architect (there are three in your family). "And did you say a garage to hold two cars?"

By this time you realise that you are engaged in a game something like auction bridge and so far your opponent has done all the over-calling.

"Double two cars!" you cry excitedly.

"Five cars," rejoins the Architect.

"Six cars!"

"Garage to hold six cars," repeats the Architect, confessing defeat. "You are, of course, aware that a house on this scale will cost you at least twenty thousand pounds?"

"Of course," you reply, and you honestly think it would be cheap at the price.

After this the only thing to do is to get away as quickly as possible. It would be pure bathos to suggest any of your wife's labour-saving devices, or introduce the subject of that circular bath-room with a circular bath hanging by chains from the ceiling and a spirit-stove under it--your pet invention. Recall a pressing engagement, shake the architect firmly by the hand and promise to come and see him next Tuesday about details. In the interval you can compose a letter at your leisure, informing him that in view of the high cost of materials, etc., etc., you have decided to postpone the building of your house, but you desire to build _at once_ a gardener's cottage (so that the gardener can be getting the grounds into order) containing one dining-room, one drawing-room, one study (with one round window), three bedrooms, one circular bathroom (with one circular bath) and one tool-shed to hold one tool.

Even so you will probably have to make concessions. Your window will be hexagonal and your bath square. But your worries are over. The architect will choose a builder and between them they will build your house during the next six years, which you will spend in lodgings. It is a long time to wait, certainly, but you will find plenty of amusement in occasionally counting the number of bricks that have been laid since last time. And then in 1926, as you smoke your pipe in your study and gaze out of your hexagonal window, you will not covet the Paradise of ADAM, the first gardener.

* * * * *

RHYMES OF THE UNDERGROUND.

Adolphus Minns resides at Kew And does what people ought to do.

In boarding trains his instincts are To "let 'em first get off the car," Then "hurry up" himself to enter, And "pass along right down the centre."

Though nigh his destination be No selfish "door-obstructor" he: Rather than bear such imputation He'll travel on beyond his station.

His unexceptionable ways E'en liftmen have been known to praise-- A folk censorious and, as such, Not given to praising over-much.

Small need have they to shout a grim "No smoking in the lift" at him, Or ask if he's the only one For whom the lift is being run.

Adolphus Minns, who lives at Kew, Does all that people ought to do-- Retires to bed before eleven, Is up and shaved by half-past seven-- And, when he dies, he'll go to Heaven.

Perhaps he's gone; I've never met His like at Kew or elsewhere yet.

* * * * *

THE DISSIMULATION OF SUZANNE.

The telephone bell rang just as I was beginning breakfast.

"What is your number, please?" asked an imperious voice.

In an emergency I never can remember my own number.

"Just hold on a minute while I look it up," I begged. Feverishly I turned over the leaves of the telephone directory and, cutting with a blunt finger the page containing the small advertisement that keeps my name before the public eye, at last found and transmitted the desired information.

"Don't go away," said the voice again, this time with a shade of weariness in its tone. "Chesterminster wants you."

I wasn't going away, because before Suzanne left me to visit her relatives in Middleshire I had vowed that nothing would induce me to do so. But Chesterminster wanted me. What should that portend?

"Tell them," I declaimed into the mouthpiece while I instinctively posed for the camera, "that I feel greatly honoured by their invitation and in other circumstances I should have been delighted to come forward as their Candidate. The Parliamentary history of Chesterminster constitutes one of the most romantic chapters in the chronicles of England; but just now I am busy writing verses for next week's _Back Chat_, so--"

"If you will keep on talking to yourself you won't get connected," interrupted the voice. "You're thr-r-rough, Chesterminster."

"Are you Chelsea niner-seven-double-seven?" inquired a new voice, a little more distant but not so haughty.

"No, nine I mean niner-double-seven-seven," I replied.

"Same thing," said the voice of Chesterminster. "Stokehampton wants you."

"Tell them--" I began, but my oratory was drowned by a rapid succession of small explosions, and out of this unholy crepitation emerged a still small voice which said, "Is that you, darling?" Then I suddenly remembered that Stokehampton is Suzanne's relatives' nearest town of call.

"They want you to come tomorrow for the week-end," said Suzanne. "I lied to them and said you were busy working, but they said you can have the library to yourself whenever you want it, and spoke so nicely about you that I couldn't refuse to ring you up. Besides, I want you to come, and the figs and the mulberries are in splendid form."

Suzanne knows that my idea of Heaven is a garden full of fig-trees and mulberry-bushes at the appropriate season of the year. But it was raining hard, and I abominate week-ends; and Suzanne's relatives are well-meaning folk who always want to arrange your day for you.

"No, Suzanne," I said, "emphatically, no. I can't think of a convincing excuse at the moment, so you'd better say I'll be delighted to come. But tomorrow morning you'll get a wire from me announcing that I'm sick of the palsy--no, malaria, which they know I sometimes get--and that'll give you a good ground for returning yourself tomorrow. Your three minutes is up. Good-bye."

With the inspiration still fresh upon me I wrote out the telegram and rang for Evangeline.

"Evangeline," I said, "I may possibly be detained in bed tomorrow morning. In case that should happen"--she never betrayed even a flicker of the eye, although she could, an she would, tell Suzanne some damning tales of late rising during her absence--please send this telegram off before breakfast; that is, before _your_ breakfast."

Evangeline curtseyed and withdrew. I had spent my leisure moments during the week teaching her the trick, as a surprise for Suzanne on her return.

Next morning, as I lay in bed thinking out the subject of my next Message to the Nation, I was gratified to notice that the rain had ceased and the sun was shining genially. I thought of Suzanne and the refreshing fruit in Suzanne's relatives' attractive gardens. Should I go after all? I rang the bell.

"Has that wire gone yet?" I asked.

"Indeed I took it these two hours back," replied Evangeline.

I looked at my watch and grunted.

"Bring me a telegram-form," I commanded, "and some hotter hot water."

So, having wired to Suzanne: "Malaria false alarm only passing effects of overwork coming by the one-thirty PERCIVAL," I found myself at tea-time being nursed back to health on mulberries-and-cream administered by the solicitous hands of Aunt-by-acquisition Lucy.

"Well," I said to Suzanne a little later as we strolled in the direction of the fig-trees, "how did it go off--my first wire, I mean?"

"Oh, I think I did it very well," she replied; "I gave a most realistic exhibition of wifely concern, and the car had just come to take me to the station when your second wire arrived."

"Then they didn't spot anything?"

"No," said Suzanne--"no, I don't think so."

After dinner that night I was playing billiards with Toby, who is Suzanne's aunt's nephew-by-marriage. We had the room to ourselves.

"Dull part of the world this," he remarked. "By the way, what about that malaria of yours?"

"What about it?" I observed shortly.

"Comes and goes rather suddenly, doesn't it?"

"Very," I agreed. "It's one of the suddenest diseases ever invented."

"'Invented' is a good word," said Toby. "You're a bit of an inventor, aren't you?"

"What do you mean? Are you venturing to imply--"

"I imply nothing. I merely state that this morning Suzanne came down to breakfast in her travelling-clothes. And that wasn't all."

"Wasn't it?" I inquired weakly. "Tell me the worst."

"All through breakfast," continued Toby with relish, "she was restless and off her feed, and appeared to be listening for something. Afterwards nothing could induce her to leave the house, and I myself caught her surreptitiously studying the time-table. Every time a step was heard coming up the drive she started to her feet. At last a telegraph-boy arrived. Before anybody could discover whom the wire was addressed to, Suzanne snatched it from the boy, tore it open, placed her hand in the region of her heart and exclaimed, 'Oh, how provoking! Poor Percival's--' then she turned it the right way up, looked unutterably foolish and meekly handed it over to Aunt Lucy. It was from the old lady's stockbroker and referred to some transaction or other in Housing Bonds."

"And what did Aunt Lucy say?" I asked.

"Oh, she just looked the least little bit surprised," replied Toby, "but she didn't utter. Suzanne had to embrace the muddiest of all the cocker pups to hide her flaming cheeks."

"Well, what happened then?"

"Then? Oh, then the telegraph-boy fished out another wire from his wallet. I took it, glanced at the envelope and handed it to Suzanne. This time she read it very gingerly before exclaiming in a highly unemotional voice: 'Oh, how provoking! Poor Percival's got one of his sudden attacks of malaria and can't come. So, if you don't mind, Aunt Lucy, I'll catch the eleven-fifteen back.' Aunt Lucy was very sympathetic and went up to help her with her packing, which was accomplished in a surprisingly short time; as a matter of fact she had practically done it all before breakfast. Just as she was going to drive off to the station up came another telegraph-boy. That was your second wire, and Suzanne didn't seem any too pleased to receive it. I'm not at all convinced," concluded Toby, "that your wife would make her fortune on the stage."

"Do you think Aunt Lucy suspects?" I asked.

"Bless you, no. The dear old thing has the heart of a child."

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Suzanne's aunt insisted on my staying a week as a preventive against a nervous breakdown, and the tonic with which she herself dosed me several times a day was the most repulsive beverage I had ever tasted, effectually ruining the savour of figs and mulberries. Can it be that Aunt Lucy is not only of a suspicious but also of a revengeful nature?

Suzanne ridicules my doublings and declares that she could make her aunt swallow anything. I wish she could have made her swallow my tonic.

* * * * *

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* * * * *

KAMENEFF to KRASSIN (on applying for passports): "_Cras ingens iterabimus æquor._"

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* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

It would certainly have been a thousand pities if the coming of Peace had deprived us of anything so cheerfully stimulating as the tales of "SAPPER" (CYRIL MCNEILE). His _Bull-Dog Drummond_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) shows all the old breathless invention as active as ever, while the pugnacity--to give it no stronger term--is wholly unrestrained, even by what might seem the unpromising atmosphere of Godalming in 1919. It would, of course, be utterly beyond my scope to give in barest outline any list of the wild and whirling events that begin when _Captain Hugh Drummond_ selects the most encouraging of the answers to his "Bored ex-soldier" advertisement and meets the writer, a cryptic but lovely lady, in the Carlton lounge. (Judging by contemporary fiction, what histories could those walls reveal!) After that the affair almost instantly develops into one lurid sequence of battle, murder, bluff and the kind of ten-minutes-here-for-courtship which proves that there is a gentler side even to the process of tracking crime. As usual, though less in this business than most, because of the engaging humour of the hero, I experienced a mild sympathy for the arch-villains; and indeed they might well feel some bitterness when, after being described as the master-intellects of the age, the author required them to conduct their most secret affairs in a lighted ground-floor room with the curtains undrawn. Most of them turn out to be Bolshevists, or at least in the receipt of Soviet subsidies--though I see a well-known Labour Daily reviewed the plot as unconvincing. Odd! Anyhow, a rattling story.

* * * * *

I am aware that, in confessing to an entire ignorance of any one of the so-called _Books of Artemas_, I place myself in a minority so small as to be almost beneath notice. This certainly is how the publishers regard the matter if one may judge by their ecstatically jubilant, "Artemas has written a novel! 7s. 6d. net," on the wrapper of _A Dear Fool_ (WESTALL). Well, I have read the novel carefully, even I trust generously, with the unhappy result that (knowing how elusive and individual a thing is laughter) I can hardly bring myself to say how dull I found it. But the fact remains. It is all about nothing--a preposterous little plot for the identification, at a wildly inhuman reception, of an anonymous dramatist, revealed finally as the journalist hero who was nearly sacked for writing the play's only bad notice. In my day I have met both editors and critics; even dramatists. I don't say they were all pleasant people; many of them were not. But--here is my point--practically every one of them had at least sufficient of our common humanity to prevent them from behaving for one instant as their representatives do in this book. Let us charitably leave it at that. Probably the next man I meet will have invited apoplexy over his enjoyment of the same pages that moved me only to an irritated bewilderment. You never can tell.

* * * * *

I rather think that _The Man with the Rubber Soles_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is Sir ALEXANDER BANNERMAN'S firstling, at least as far as fiction is concerned. If so, many others will share my hope that it may prove to be the eldest of a large family. For the author has not merely the knack of telling a good mystery story in a way that keeps one interested until the last page is turned; he tells it in a curiously dry matter-of-fact way that makes really startling adventures seem the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. The story concerns the pursuit of a gang of men who are engaged in importing forged Treasury notes on a large scale and uttering them through skilfully organised agencies. The police and various civilians between them--there is no super-sleuth to weary us with his machine-like prowess--run the thing to earth, partly by skill and partly by good luck, and the civilians in particular have a stirring time doing it. Bombs, automatic pistols, even soldiers and a submarine, assist quite naturally in sustaining the interest. And a pleasant little romance is really woven into the plot, not just pushed in anyhow. Altogether _The Man with the Rubber Soles_ is a most excellent story of its kind, a real novel because plot and treatment are alike new, and one can safely prophesy that when Sir ALEXANDER BANNERMAN produces his nextling he will find a large and appreciative circle of readers waiting to welcome it.

* * * * *

Three things charmed me particularly about _Henry Elizabeth_ (HURST AND BLACKETT), whose remarkable second name was due to the fact that he was born in the same year as the Virgin Queen and that his father had hoped that he too would be a girl. In the first place he became the greatest swordsman of his age and I was thus able to add him to my fine collection of Elizabethan heroes who have achieved this honour. What happens when two of these champions meet in those shadowy regions of romance where all costume novels are merged I do not know. It must be rather like the irresistible force and the immovable object. In the second place _H.E._ (no one could better deserve these formidable initials) was given the job of clearing Lundy Island of its piratical tenants, and I happened to have Lundy Island just opposite me as I read the book. It is not often that a reviewer has the chance of checking local colour with so little pains. And in the third place Mr. JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY informs me, on page 101, that his hero will "gaze one day upon rivers to which the Thames should seem little better than a pitiful rivulet." As _Henry_ never gets further from his native Devon than London in the course of this novel I take it that this is a delicate allusion to the possibility of a sequel. I hope it is so, and that I shall hear of _Henry_ in days to come, after a trip or two with RALEIGH or DRAKE, rebuilding his manor of Braginton, which was unfortunately burnt to the ground, and settling down to plant potatoes and tobacco in prosperity and peace.

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