The Clicking of CuthbertWodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
General
The Clicking of Cuthbert
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Golf stories; Humorous stories
It had not occurred to me at the outset that my position in the affair
would be anything closer than that of a detached and mildly interested
spectator. Yet it was to me that Ralph came in his hour of need. When I
returned home one evening, I found that my man had brought him in and
laid him on the mat in my sitting-room.
I offered him a chair and a cigar, and he came to the point with
commendable rapidity.
"Leigh," he said, directly he had lighted his cigar, "is too small for
Arthur Jukes and myself."
"Ah, you have been talking it over and decided to move?" I said,
delighted. "I think you are perfectly right. Leigh _is_ over-built.
Men like you and Jukes need a lot of space. Where do you think of
going?"
"I'm not going."
"But I thought you said----"
"What I meant was that the time has come when one of us must leave."
"Oh, only one of you?" It was something, of course, but I confess I was
disappointed, and I think my disappointment must have shown in my
voice; for he looked at me, surprised.
"Surely you wouldn't mind Jukes going?" he said.
"Why, certainly not. He really is going, is he?"
A look of saturnine determination came into Ralph's face.
"He is. He thinks he isn't, but he is."
I failed to understand him, and said so. He looked cautiously about the
room, as if to reassure himself that he could not be overheard.
"I suppose you've noticed," he said, "the disgusting way that man Jukes
has been hanging round Miss Trivett, boring her to death?"
"I have seen them together sometimes."
"I love Amanda Trivett!" said Ralph.
"Poor girl!" I sighed.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Poor girl!" I said. "I mean, to have Arthur Jukes hanging round her."
"That's just what I think," said Ralph Bingham. "And that's why we're
going to play this match."
"What match?"
"This match we've decided to play. I want you to act as one of the
judges, to go along with Jukes and see that he doesn't play any of his
tricks. You know what he is! And in a vital match like this----"
"How much are you playing for?"
"The whole world!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"The whole world. It amounts to that. The loser is to leave Leigh for
good, and the winner stays on and marries Amanda Trivett. We have
arranged all the details. Rupert Bailey will accompany me, acting as
the other judge."
"And you want me to go round with Jukes?"
"Not round," said Ralph Bingham. "Along."
"What is the distinction?"
"We are not going to play a round. Only one hole."
"Sudden death, eh?"
"Not so very sudden. It's a longish hole. We start on the first tee
here and hole out in the town in the doorway of the Majestic Hotel in
Royal Square. A distance, I imagine, of about sixteen miles."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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