Money for nothingWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
Money for nothing
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Greed -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Swindlers and swindling -- Fiction
Soapy's mind was in a whirl. He could almost feel the brains inside his
head heaving and tossing like an angry ocean. So that was what that
smooth old crook had done with the stuff--stored it away in a Left
Luggage office at a railway station! If circumstances had been such
as to permit of a more impartial and detached attitude of mind, Soapy
would have felt for Mr. Carmody's resource and ingenuity nothing but
admiration. A Left Luggage office was an ideal place in which to store
stolen property, as good as the innermost recesses of some safe deposit
company's deepest vault.
But, numerous as were the emotions surging in his bosom, admiration was
not one of them. For a while he gave himself up almost entirely to that
saddest of mental exercises, the brooding on what might have been. If
only he had known that John had the ticket...!
But he was a practical man. It was not his way to waste time torturing
himself with thoughts of past failures. The future claimed his
attention.
What to do?
All, he perceived, was not yet lost. It would be absurd to pretend
that things were shaping themselves ideally, but disaster might still
be retrieved. It would be embarrassing, no doubt, to meet Chimp Twist
after what had occurred, but a man who would win to wealth must learn
to put up with embarrassments. The only possible next move was to go
over to Healthward Ho, reveal to Chimp what had occurred, and with his
co-operation recover the ticket from John.
Soapy brightened. Another possibility had occurred to him. If he were
to reach Healthward Ho with the minimum of delay, it might be that
he would find both Chimp and John still under the influence of those
admirable drops, in which case a man of his resource would surely be
able to insinuate himself into John's presence long enough to be able
to remove a Left Luggage ticket from his person.
But if 'twere done, then, 'twere well 'twere done quickly. What he
needed was the Dex-Mayo. And the Dex-Mayo was standing outside the
stable yard, waiting for him. He became a thing of dash and activity.
For many years he had almost given up the exercise of running, but he
ran now like the lissom athlete he had been in his early twenties.
And as he came panting round the back of the house the first thing he
saw was the tail end of the car disappearing into the stable yard.
"Hi!" shouted Soapy, using for the purpose the last remains of his
breath.
The Dex-Mayo vanished. And Soapy, very nearly a spent force now,
arrived at the opening of the stable yard just in time to see Bolt, the
chauffeur, putting the key of the garage in his pocket after locking
the door.
Bolt was a thing of beauty. He gleamed in the sunshine. He was wearing
a new hat, his Sunday clothes, and a pair of yellow shoes that might
have been bits chipped off the sun itself. There was a carnation in his
buttonhole. He would have lent tone to a garden party at Buckingham
Palace.
He regarded Soapy with interest.
"Been having a little run, sir?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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