Frogs

1. The door of the cottage opened, and A__ reappeared. He had a shovel in his hand, and in this shovel one noted what seemed to be frogs. Yes, on a closer inspection, definitely frogs. He gave the shovel a jerk, shooting the dumb chums through the air as if he had been scattering confetti. They landed on the grass and went about their business. A__ paused, directed a hard look at B__, spat once more with all the old force and precision and withdrew, and B__, removing his hat, wiped his forehead. ...

"What had you been doing?"

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you."

"Oh," said B__ in an offhand way, as if it were only what might have been expected of an English gentleman, "I had been strewing frogs."

I goggled.

"Doing what?"

"Strewing frogs. In A__'s boudoir. The Vicar suggested it."

Name the frog-strewer.

2. "Come into money, has he? Much?"

"Wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, I gathered. That's why he let you have that frog. 'See, C__,' said D__, ducking under the bush and coming up with the batrachian, if batrachian is the word I want. 'A fine frog. Come in useful, this will.' 'You are going to keep it?' I said. 'Of course I am going to keep it,' he replied, adding that he proposed to teach it a few simple tricks and get it dates on television. Well, I talked him out of that. 'What do you need with performing frogs, D__?' I said. 'You are rich. Be broad, be generous. Share the wealth. Many a poor man would be glad of this frog.'"

Who is D, and to whom did he eventually give the frog?

3. "He will be coming to see you about it shortly, I imagine, so what I want you to do, E__, is to step out into the garden and gather some frogs. About half a dozen. To put down the back of his neck," explained F__. "You remember what a sensitive skin he has. We grab him and decant the frogs. I shall be vastly surprised if after the third, or possibly the fourth, frog has started to do the rock 'n' roll on his epidermis, he is not all eagerness to transfer the letter to you."

Who is advising whom to gather batrachians while he may?

4. So I nipped on to the outhouse roof and called "Hoy!" and the gardener came civilly up to ascertain my wishes. ...

"I say," I said. "I want a horned toad."

He seemed interested.

"For the usual purpose?"

"Yes."

"You desire quick delivery?"

"Immediate."

He sighed.

"I am sorry to say I am all out of horned toads at the moment."

"Oh, dash it."

"I could do you frogs," he said, on a more hopeful note.

I considered this.

"Yes, frogs will be all right. If slithery."

"The ones I have are very slithery. If you will wait, I will fetch them at once."

Who wants frogs, and why?

Extra Credit: Name the man who served as the inspiration and model for Ferdinand Frog.

Round 232 - 31 May 2005

Rats

We continue our Dumb Chums theme ... dogs, cats, frogs, and now rats. May you have better success among the rats than Galahad Threepwood's dog Towser.

First prize will be a sackful of rats, and second prize a visit to Ukridge's rat farm.

1. For a girl of iron resolution and unswerving purpose, A__'s inspection of the cellar was decidedly cursory. A distinct feeling of relief came over her as she stood at the top of the steps and saw by the light of the lamp how small and bare it was. For, impervious as she might be to the intimidation of beetles, her armour still contained a chink. She was terribly afraid of rats. And even when the rays of the lamp disclosed no scuttling horrors, she still lingered for a moment before descending. You never knew with rats. They pretended not to be there just to lure you on, and then came out and whizzed about your ankles.

Who is the ratophobe?

2. The air of the loft was close and musty and smelt of mildewed hay. It was not the sort of spot which one would have selected of one's own free will to sit in for any length of time. There was a rustling noise, and a rat scurried across the rickety floor, drawing a startled gasp from B__ and a disgusted "Oh, piffle!" from C__. Whatever merits this final refuge might have as a stronghold, it was beyond question a noisome place.

The beating on the stable-door was working up to a crescendo. Presently there came a crash that shook the floor on which we sat and sent our neighbours, the rats, scuttling to and fro in a frenzy of perturbation.

Name the people sharing the loft with the rats.

3. Another rat – unless it was an exceptionally large mouse – had begun to make its presence felt in the darkness. It seemed to be enjoying an early dinner off a piece of wood. D__ did not even notice it. She had reached out, and her hand had touched E__'s arm. Her fingers closed on it desperately.

"Oh, E__!" she said.

The arm became animated. It clutched her, drew her along the mouse-and-mildew scented floor. And time stood still.

E__ was the first to break the silence.

"And to think that not so long ago I was wishing that a flash of lightning would strike me amidships!" he said.

The aroma of mouse and mildew had passed away. Violets seemed to be spreading their fragrance through the cottage. Violets and roses. The rat, a noisy feeder, had changed into an orchestra of harps, duclimers, and sackbuts that played soft music.

Again, name the rat's roommates.

4. And what an awful place to expect her to come to, if by some miracle she did come – where she would be stifled by the smell of mouldy hay, damped by raindrops and – reflected F__ gloomily as there was another scurry and scutter along the unseen floor – gnawed by rats. You could not expect a delicately-nurtured girl, accustomed to all the comforts of a home, to be bright and sunny with a platoon of rats crawling over her ...

Name the man and the delicately-nurtured g.

Extra Credit: "I am going to see X__, and I am going to talk to X__, and I am going, if necessary, to take X__ by the throat and shake him –"

"Like a rat?"

"Yes, like a rat," she said, with the quiet confidence of a woman who had been shaking rats by the throat since she was a slip of a girl.

Name the rat-shaker.

Round 233 - 8 June 2005

The Amazing Hat Mysteries

Nelson Cork and Percy Wimbolt aren't the only victims of the diseased sense of humour of those blighters in the Fourth Dimension. We have four more mysteries involving the sudden disappearance, reappearance and/or destruction of various varieties of head-joy to identify this week.

1. I took the hat from him and shoved it on my head.

“Good heavens!”

Beastly shock it was! The bally thing had absolutely engulfed me, if you know what I mean. Even as I was putting it on I got a sort of impression that it was a trifle roomy; and no sooner had I let go of it than it settled down over my ears like a kind of extinguisher.

“I say! This isn't my hat!”

“It is my hat!” said ___(A)___ in about the coldest, nastiest voice Id ever heard. “The hat which was stolen from me this morning as I drove in my car.”

(…)

I suppose Napoleon or somebody like that would have been equal to the situation, but I'm bound to say it was too much for me. I just stood there goggling in a sort of coma, while the old boy lifted the hat off me.

2. The cab stopped. The buffer alighted, his top hat gleaming in the sunshine.

(...)

The Brazil nut sang through the air. And the next moment ___(B)___ was staggering back with his hands to his eyes, a broken man. For the hat, struck squarely abaft the binnacle, had leaped heavenwards and he was down five quid.

And the worst was yet to come. About a minute later he was informed that ___(C)___ had called to see him. He went to the small smoking room and found his uncle standing on the hearth rug. He was staring in a puzzled sort of way at a battered top hat which he held in his hand.

“Most extraordinary thing,” he said. “As I was getting out of my cab just now, something suddenly came whizzing out of the void and knocked my hat off. I think it must have been a small meteor. I am going to write to The Times about it.”

3. At this moment, however, the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like GK Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. It was, as a matter of fact, only his hat dropping to the floor, but in the highly nervous state of mind into which he had been plunged by recent events it nearly deafened him. With one noiseless, agile spring, remarkable in one of his waist-measurement, he dived for shelter behind the arm-chair.

(…)

Then there was a gurgle, a heavy body sat up and a large hand passed within an inch of ___(D)___’s head and pressed the bell in the wall. And presently the door opened and a parlour maid entered.

“Jane,” said the man in the chair.

“Sir?”

“Something woke me up.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I got the impression … Jane!”

“Sir?”

“What is that top-hat doing on the floor? (…) This is a nice thing,” said the man, speaking querulously. “I compose myself for a refreshing sleep, and almost before I can close my eyes the room becomes full of top-hats. I come in here for a quiet rest, and without the slightest warning I find myself knee-deep in top-hats. Why the top-hat, Jane? I demand a categorical answer.”

“Perhaps Miss ___(E)___ put it there, sir.”

“Why would Miss ___(E)___ strew top-hats about the place?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean, Yes sir?”

“No, sir.”

“Very well. Another time think before you speak.”

4. Next morning, when I has having a bit of breakfast, in rolled old ___(F)___.

“I say,” said ___(F)___.

“Say on, laddie.”

“You know when you came to see me yesterday?”

“Yes. You’ve come to tell me you’ve changed your mind about that fiver?”

“No, I haven’t come to tell you I’ve changed my mind about that fiver. I was going to say that, when I started to leave the office, I found my top-hat had gone.”

“Too bad,” I said.

___(F)___ gave me a piercing glance. “You didn’t take it, I suppose?”

“Who, me? What would I want with a top-hat?”

“Well, it’s very mysterious.”

“I expect you’ll find it was pinched by an international spy or something.”

___(F)___ brooded for some minutes. “It’s all very odd,” he said. “I’ve never had it happen to me before.”

“One gets new experiences.”

5. (BONUS POINT! BONUS! BONUS! Can you identify the following mystified speaker, the speaker, the following speaker?)

“Shocking bad business. Shocking. Shocking. Do you know what we found on the head of that statue, eh? that statue, that statue? Your hat (…). Your hat. Your hat.”

Round 234 - 16 June 2005

Eggs, eggs, eggs! Damn all eggs!

Sadly, Lord Worplesdon isn’t the only Wodehouse character to display evidence of a strong Egg Complex. For example, Freddie Rooke, when in the throes of a severe hangover, has been known to instruct his man to take away his morning poached egg on the grounds that “it looks just like an old aunt of mine”. We have four more examples for you to identify this week.

1. ___(A)___’s imitation of a hen laying an egg was conceived on broad and sympathetic lines. (…) The rendition started quietly, almost inaudibly, with a sort of soft, liquid crooning – the joyful yet half incredulous murmur of a mother who can scarcely believe as yet that her union has really been blessed, and that is indeed she who is responsible for that oval mixture of chalk and albumen which she sees lying beside her in the straw.

“It looks like an egg,” one seems to hear her say “It feels like an egg. It’s shaped like an egg. Damme, it is an egg!”

And at that, all doubting resolved, the crooning changes; takes on a firmer note; soars into the upper register; and finally swells into a maternal paean of joy – a “Charawk-chawk-chawk-chawk” of such a calibre that few have ever been able to listen to it dry-eyed.

2. (…) there stole into his mind the thought that there might be eggs in the ice-box. He went thither and tested his theory and it was proved correct.

“Ha!” said ___(B)___. He remembered how he had frequently scrambled eggs at school.

But his school days lay half a century behind him, and time in its march robs us of our boyhood gifts. Since the era when he had worn Eton collars and ink spots on his face, he had lost the knack, and it all too speedily became apparent that Operation Eggs was not going to be the walkover he had anticipated. Came a moment when he would have been hard put to it to say whether he was scrambling the eggs or the eggs were scrambling him. And he had paused to clarify his thoughts on this point, when there was a ring at the front door bell. Deeply encrusted in yolk, he shuffled off to answer the summons.

3. On the afternoon of what was to be a momentous day (…) ___(C)___, having fed the hens and taken a wary look at the bees, came into the kitchen and found ___(D)___ there packing eggs in boxes, eyeing them morosely as she did so. She was a strikingly pretty girl, prettier even than ___(C)___, whom any discriminating male would have thought quite pretty enough. (…)

“Eggs!” said ___(D)___ disgustedly. “There ought to be a law.”

___(C)___ nodded sympathetically.

“I know what you mean. Here we are, young, ardent, idealistic, yearning for life and love and laughter, and what do we get? Eggs.”

4. “I remember the first time I saw that photograph. (…) It was the one of you in a riding habit, standing by your horse.”

“Oh, that one? … I think I will take eggs, after all.”

“Eggs? What eggs?”

“I don’t know. Oeufs â la something, weren’t they?”

“Wait!” said ___(E)___. He spoke as one groping his way through a maze. “Somehow or other we seem to have got on to the subject of eggs. I don’t want to talk about eggs.”

“Though I’m not positive it was â la something. I believe it was oeufs marseillaises or some word like that. Anyhow, just call the waiter and say eggs.”

___(E)___ called the waiter and said eggs. The waiter appeared not only to understand but to be gratified.

“The first time I saw that photograph –” he resumed.

“I wonder why they call those eggs oeufs marseillaises,” said ___(F)___ pensively. “Do you think it’s a special sort of egg they have in Marseilles?”

“I couldn’t say. You know,” said __(E)__, “I’m not really frightfully interested in eggs.”

Round 235 - 24 June 2005

Food Fight!

There are few things more distressing than to see good food go to waste, and, as we learned in Right Ho, Jeeves, Anatole would be the first to vouch for that. Perhaps even more distressing, however, is the sight of good food being used as an offensive weapon. Such as the following examples.

1. “Don‘t tell me,” he begged. “Let me think. I pride myself on my memory. You’re fatter and you’ve aged a lot, but you’re someone I used to know quite well at one time. In some odd way I seem to associate you with a side of beef. … Shorty Smith? … Stumpy Whiting? … No, I’ve got it, by gad! ___(A)___!” He beamed with honest satisfaction. “Not bad, that, considering that it must be fully twenty-five years since I saw you last. (…) How are you, __(A)__? Good Lord, this certainly puts the clock back. The last time I saw you must have been that night at Romano’s when __(B)__ started throwing bread and got a little over-excited, and one thing led to another and in about two minutes there you were on the floor, laid out cold by a dashed great side of beef and all the undertakers present making bids for the body. I can see your face now,” said __(C)__, chuckling. “Most amusing.”

2. To seize this child by the hand and drag him to the nearest confectioner and baker was with __(D)__ the work of a moment. He pulled out his notebook and was soon in possession of a fine quartern loaf. He thrust it into the child’s hands.

“Bread,” he said cordially.

(…) Gently patting the stripling’s head, he turned away, modestly anxious to be spared any tearful gratitude, and he had hardly gone a couple of steps when something solid struck him a violent blow on the nape of the neck. For an instant, he thought of thunderbolts, falling roofs., and explosions which kill ten. Then, looking down, he perceived the quartern loaf rolling away along the gutter.

The fact was, the child had been a little vexed. At first, when ___(D)___had started steering him toward the shop, he had supposed my nephew unbalanced. Then, observing that among the objects for sale at the emporium were chocolate bars, jujubes, and all-day suckers, he had brightened a little. Still dubious as to his companion’s sanity, he had told himself that an all-day sucker tastes just as good, even if it proceeds from a dotty donor. And then, just as hope had begun to rise high, this man had fobbed him off with a loaf of bread.

Little wonder that he had chafed. His mood was bitter. And when moods are bitter in Bottleton East, direct action follows automatically.

3. (…) “I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me.” __(E)__ started to clasp her hands in a desperate appeal: and, doing so, was aware that some obstacle prevented this gesture.

It was suddenly borne in upon her that she was still holding the pepper-pot. And suddenly a thought came like a full-blown rose, flushing her brow. (…) Turning coyly sideways, she began to unscrew the top of the pot.

“You will understand,” said the policeman deprecatingly, “that this is extremely unpleasant for me .. “

He was perfectly right. Unpleasant, he realized a moment later, was the exact adjective that the most punctilious stylist would have chosen. For suddenly the universe seemed to dissolve in one great cloud-burst of pepper. Pepper tickled his mouth: pepper filled his nose: pepper strayed into his eyes and caressed his Adam’s apple. For an instant he writhed blindly: Then, clutching at the table for support, he began to sneeze.

With the sound of those titanic sneezes ringing in her ears, __(E)__ bumped her way through the darkness till she came to the open window: then, galloping across the roof, hurled herself down the fire-escape.

4. He had almost reached the sideboard when the stout man patted the girl’s cheek, and to seize a huckleberry pie was with him the work of a moment. The next instant the pie had whizzed past the other’s head and burst like a shell against the wall.

There are, no doubt, restaurants where this sort of thing would have excited little comment, but [name of restaurant] was not one of them. Everyone had something to say, but the only one among those present who had anything sensible to say was the child in the sailor suit.

“Do it again!” said the child, cordially.

The ___(F, two words)___ did it again. He took up a fruit salad, poised it for a moment, then decanted it over Mr __(G)__’s bald head. The child’s happy laughter rang over the restaurant. Whatever anybody else might think about the affair, this child liked it and was prepared to go on record to that effect.

5. (And, for a bonus point, we have an example that was dropped at the last minute from last week’s “Eggs” Quiz due to a lack of space.)

It was at this point that I noticed something in his appearance which I had overlooked. A trifle, but I’m rather observant.

“You’ve got egg in your hair,” I said.

“Of course I’ve got egg in my hair,” he said, his manner betraying impatience. “What did you expect me to have in my hair, Chanel Number Five?”

“Did somebody throw an egg at you?”

“Everybody threw eggs at everybody. Correction. Some of them threw turnips and potatoes.”

(Several pages later we are introduced to another survivor of the carnage.)

He broke off (….) because __(H)__ had joined us, and her appearance immediately claimed his attention. She was far from being dapper. It was plain that she had been in the forefront of the late battle, for whereas __(I)__ had merely had egg in his hair, she was, as it were, festooned in egg. She had evidently been right in the centre of the barrage. In all political meetings of the stormier kind these things are largely a matter of luck. A escapes unscathed, B becomes a human omelette.

Round 236 - 4 July 2005

First Impressions

There’s no doubt about it. A good first impression is vital if you want to establish warm and cordial relations with a new acquaintance. This is especially true when a young man in love comes face to face for the first time with the father of the adored object. It is, for example, generally considered to be a good idea not to throw cats at the aged parent, at least until after you have been formally introduced to him. This week we examine a few other relationships that got off to a rocky start.

1. “We now come to ____(A)____. At our very first meeting I could see that I was not his dream man. (…) I became engaged to ___(A’s daughter)___, as you know, at ___(another country house)___. The news of the betrothal was, therefore, conveyed to him by letter, and I imagine that the dear girl must have hauled up her slacks about me in a way that led him to suppose that what he was getting was a sort of cross between Robert Taylor and Einstein. At any rate, when I was introduced to him as the man who was to marry his daughter, he just stared for a moment and said ‘What?’ Incredulously, you know, as if he were hoping that this was some jolly practical joke and that the real chap would shortly jump out from behind a chair and say ‘Boo!’ When he at last got on to it that there was no deception, he went off into a corner and sat there for some time, holding his head in his hands. After that I used to catch him looking at me over the top of his pince-nez. It unsettled me.”

2. (In the interests of full disclosure, this example doesn’t fully qualify under the above conditions in that when B met C, B was NOT the father of C’s “adored object”. In fact, C was engaged to some other girl and B’s daughter was engaged to some other chap. In the fullness of time, however ….)

___(B)___’s voice trailed away in a sort of rasping howl. A scratched phonograph record would have produced a similar sound. For the first time, he had scrutinized himself closely in the mirror opposite the chair, and it was plain that what he saw there was having a disastrous effect on his morale. Little bubbling noises proceeded from him, and his face deepened slowly to a ripe magenta. Then, after an instant in which time seemed to stand still, he bounded up and turned on ___(C)___, red-eyed.

___(C)___ understood his emotion and sympathized with it. What with being a novice with the scissors and having allowed his concentration to be impaired by the necessity of drinking in what these two had been saying about their private affairs, he had undeniably made something approaching a devastated area of that noble white mop. He had shortened it, yes, but he had shortened in a series of irregular ridges which, though picturesque and interesting, might, he realized, quite easily not appeal to an owner of orthodox views.

3. When an ex-Governor, seeking (a or an) ____(D)____, arrives in the drawing-room where that ___(D)___ ought to be and finds no ___(D)___ there, he does not stand twiddling his thumbs and wondering what to do. He inflates his lungs and shouts.

“___(DDDDD)____!” thundered ___(E)___.

It seemed to him, as the echoes died away, that he could hear the sound of movements in the collection room across the hall. He went thither, and poked his head in.

It was as he had suspected. Something, presumably of (a or an) ___(D)___ian nature, was standing there. He crossed the threshold, and these two representatives of the older and the younger generation were enabled to see each other steadily and see each other whole.

On both sides the reaction to the scrutiny was unfavourable. ___(D)___, gazing apprehensively at the rugged face with its top dressing of moustache, was thinking that this ___(E)___, so far from being the kindly Dickens character of his dreams, was without exception the hardest old gumboil he had ever encountered in a career by no means free from gumboils of varying hardness: while ___(E)___, drinking ___(D)___ in from his lemon-coloured hair to his clocked socks and suede shoes, was feeling how right he had been in anticipating that his future son-in-law would be a pot of cyanide and a deleterious young slab of damnation. He could see at a glance that he was both.

(For a bonus point what had __(D)___ been up to in the collection room immediately prior to ___(E)__’s arrival – an activity that, when discovered, caused __(E)__ to wear a “scowl of such malignity that ___(D)___ had the illusion that his interior organs were being scooped out with a spade or trowel”?)

4. If ___(F)___ had thought that mutual esteem would spring up between her father and her betrothed during this week-end visit, she was doomed to disappointment. The thing was a failure from the start. ___(G)___’s host did him extremely well, giving him the star guest-room, the Blue Suite, and bringing out the oldest port for his benefit, but it was plain that he thought little of the young man. The colonel’s subjects were sheep (in sickness and in health), manure, wheat, mangold-wurzels, huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’: while ___(G)___ was at his best on Proust, the Russian ballet, Japanese prints, and the Influence of James Joyce on the younger Bloomsbury novelists. There was no fusion between these men’s souls. (The colonel) did not actually bite ___(G)___ on the leg, but when you had said that you had said everything.

Round 237 - 12 July 2005

Bastille Day

On the 14th July, the French celebrate their national holiday, or Fête nationale, as they put it (I can’t do the dialect, of course). In English, it is generally referred to as Bastille Day, after the famous Paris cooler which was stormed by enthusiastic members of the public on that day in the year 1789. This week’s quiz is devoted to that rather depressing establishment. Can you identify the modern-day inmates of the following virtual Bastilles?

1. But the moments went by, and there was no knock. A___ began to grow impatient. The last few minutes of waiting in a cupboard are always the hardest. Time seemed to stretch out again interminably. Once he thought he heard footsteps but they led to nothing. Eventually, having strained his ears and finding everything still, he decided to take a chance. He fished in his pocket for the key, cautiously unlocked the door, opened it by slow inches, and peered out.

The room was in blackness. The house was still. All was well. With the feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to crawl stiffly forward; and it was just then that the first of the disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the cuckoo clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession before subsiding with another rattle; but to A___ it sounded like the end of the world.

2. "You don’t mean it would be chokey?"

"I said that I was not prepared to confide in you, but having gone so far I will. The answer to your question, Mr B___, is in the affirmative."

There was a silence. He sat tapping his finger with the pen. I, if memory serves me correctly, straightening my tie. I was deeply concerned. The thought of poor old C___ being bunged into the Bastille was enough to disturb anyone with a kindly interest in his career and prospects. Nothing retards a curate’s advancement in his chosen profession more surely than a spell in the jug.

3. If the management of the Hotel D___, that London landmark, could have been present at three o’clock one afternoon in early January in the sitting-room of the suite which they had assigned to Mrs E___, late of New York, they might well have felt a little aggrieved. Philosophers amongst them would possibly have meditated on the limitations of human effort; for they had done their best for Mrs E___. They had housed her well. They had fed her well. They had caused inspired servants to anticipate her every need. Yet here she was, in the midst of all these aids to a contented mind, exhibiting a restlessness and impatience of her surroundings that would have been noticeable in a caged tigress or a prisoner of the Bastille.

4. "I thought of calling on your aunt, and trying to reason with her."

F___ took his old friend’s arm sympathetically and drew him away.

"No earthly good, old man. If a woman won’t buy G___, it means she has some sort of mental kink and it’s no use trying to reason with her. We must think of some other procedure. So H___ is at I___, is she? She would be. The family seem to look on the place as a sort of Bastille. Whenever the young of the species make a floater like falling in love with the wrong man, they are always shot off to I___ to recover. The guv’nor has often complained about it bitterly."

Round 238 - 20 July 2005

In The Cellar With No Takers

From the good old Bastille to this week’s quiz theme is but a small step. Most houses in the world of Wodehouse are equipped with a place where, if the emergency arises, people can handily be put under lock and key, the just and the wicked alike.

1. It was characteristic of A___ that it was to the erring domestic rather than the rescuing nephew that she turned first.

"B___," she hissed, as far as a woman, even of her intellectual gifts, is capable of hissing the word "B___", "why didn’t you come when I rang?"

"I did not hear the bell, madam. I was –"

"You must have heard the bell."

"No, madam."

"Why not?"

"Because I was in the coal-cellar, madam."

"What on earth were you doing in the coal-cellar?"

"I was induced to go there, madam, by a man. He intimidated me with a pistol. He then locked me in."

2. "Perhaps he has gone," suggested C___ hopefully.

"No," said D___. "I can see his eyes gleaming over there at the back."

The statement was like a bugle call to E___. It was never her way to stand bandying words when there was a possibility of action. Grasping the poker, she strode into the darkness, and C___, with only the merest suspicion of a pause, strode in after her.

He had scarcely crossed the threshold, a little weak about the knees but conscious that this was a far, far better thing that he did than he had ever done, when the door slammed behind him and he heard the key turn in the lock.

3. "Mr F___."

"Leave me," he said, "I am thinking."

"I thought you would like to know," said G___, "that I’ve just locked those cops in the coal-cellar."

As in the final reel of a super-super-film eyes brighten and faces light up at the entry of the United States Marines, so at these words did Mr F___, Mr H___ and Mr I___ perk up as if after a draught of some magic elixir.

4. "He seemed to be manipulating an electric torch, m’lord."

"And then –?"

"J___ sprang out and overpowered him."

"Excellent! And where is the fellow now?"

"Temporarily incarcerated in the coal-cellar, m’lord."

"Bring him to me at once."

"K___, do we want this man, whoever he is, in here?"

"Yes, we do want him in here."

5. L___ had entered, slightly soiled from his sojourn among the coal, and he was closely followed by M___, who seemed to be prodding him in the small of the back with her weapon. At the sight of N___ his sombre face lightened, excluding the portions of it which were covered with coal dust.

"N___! Thank God!"

"What on earth is all this about, L___?"

"It’s a long story. Would you mind telling this girl to take her damned pistol out of my ribs."

"It’s all right, M___. This is a friend of mine."

"Well, why didn’t he say so? I caught him getting away with your plaything."

"My what?"

"That bear," said M___. "If it is a bear."

Round 239 - 28 July 2005

Libraries

Those who are longing for a spot of fresh air, after the last two rounds, will be sadly disappointed. We exchange the mouldy smell of the coal-cellar for the stuffy atmosphere of the library ...

1. The library of A___ at his house at Westbury, Long Island, was a room which caused bibliophiles on entering it to run round in ecstatic circles, prying and sniffing and uttering short excited whining noises like dogs suddenly plunged into the middle of a hundred entrancing smells. Its fame, one might say, was international [...] On each wall were shelves, and on each shelf volume after volume of oddly ill-assorted sizes – here a massive tome, there next to it a squat dwarf of a book; yonder a thing that looked like a book but was really a box containing a book. The mere sight of these affected those who appreciated that sort of thing like some powerful drug.

2. The library, whither B___ had made his way after leaving C___, was a large room on the ground floor, looking out on the street that ran parallel to the south side of the house. It had French windows opening on to a strip of lawn that ended in a high stone wall with a small gate in it, the general effect of these things being to create a resemblance to a country house rather than to one in the centre of the city. D___'s town residence was full of these surprises.

In one corner of the room a massive safe had been let into the wall, striking a note of incongruity, for the remainder of the wall space was completely covered with volumes of all sorts and sizes, which filled the shelves and overflowed into a small gallery, reached by a short flight of stairs and running along the north side of the room over the door.

3. E___, meanwhile, in the library, had begun with the aid of a whisky and soda to feel a little better. There was something about the library with its sombre half tones that soothed his bruised spirit. The room held something of the peace of a deserted city. The world, with its violent adventures and tall policemen, did not enter here. There was balm in those rows and rows of books which nobody ever read, those vast writing tables at which nobody ever wrote. From the broad mantelpiece the bust of some unnamed ancient looked down almost sympathetically. Something remotely resembling peace had begun to steal into E___’s soul, when it was expelled by the abrupt opening of the door and the entry of F___ and his father. One glance at the face of the former was enough to tell E___ that she knew all.

4. The library was on the second floor, a large sombre room brooded over by hundreds of grim calf-bound books assembled in the days when the reading public went in for volumes of collected sermons and had not yet acquired a taste for anything with spies and a couple of good murders in it. It had always oppressed G___, but it had this one great advantage, that it was never invaded by paying guests. Once there, a man could meditate without fear of interruption.

Round 240 - 5 August 2005

Blue Rooms

We end our guided tour of the English country house in the Blue Room (or Suite, as the case may be). Bertie Wooster once suggested to Aunt Dahlia that he be put there during a stay at Brinkley Court, and all the old ancestor said was "You?" Can you identify this week's guests of honour?

1. "I take it I am in the Blue Suite, as before?"

"No," said A___. "You’re in the Garden Room. You see –"

"I see perfectly," said B___ curtly.

He turned on his heel and stalked to the door.

The indignation which B___ had felt on seeing C___ at the station was as nothing compared with that which seethed within him as he dressed for dinner. That C___ should be at D___ at all was monstrous. That he should have been given the star bedroom in preference to himself, B___, was one of those things before which the brain reels. (...)

It was not simply that the Blue Suite was the only one in the house with a bathroom of its own: it was the principle of the thing. The fact that he was pigging it in the Garden Room, while C___ wallowed in luxury in the Blue Suite was tantamount to a declaration on A___’s part that she intended to get back at him for the attitude which he had taken over her luncheon-party. It was a slight, a deliberate snub, and B___ came down to dinner coldly resolved to nip all this nonsense in the bud without delay.

2. A dim figure was approaching across the terrace, and he changed his tone to one of a rather sickening geniality.

"What a lovely evening, is it not? Extraordinarily mild for the time of year. Well, I mustn’t keep you any longer. You will be wanting to go and dress for dinner. Just a black tie. We are quite informal here. Yes?"

The word was addressed to the dim figure. A familiar cough revealed its identity.

"I wished to speak to Mr D___, sir. I have a message for him from Mrs E___. Mrs E___ presents her compliments, sir, and desires me to say that she is in the Blue Room and would be glad if you could make it convenient to call upon her there as soon as possible. She has a matter of importance which she wishes to discuss."

3. "Good evening, sir."

"Good evening."

On F___’s mobile lips, in spite of the heaviness of heart, there had appeared a faint, respectful smile; the smile of a butler who sees that an amusing blunder has been made by those higher-up. G.H.Q. had told him that he would find G___ in the Blue Room. This was unquestionably the Blue Room, but the man before him was not his old buddy.

"Excuse me, sir, I must have misunderstood her ladyship. I supposed her to say that G___ was occupying this apartment."

"I’m G___."

4. The first thing I noticed, when at leisure to survey my surroundings, was that the woman up top, carrying out her policy of leaving no stone unturned in the way of sucking up to the H___ family, had done I___ well where sleeping accomodation was concerned. What he had drawn when clocking in at J___ was the room known as the Blue Room, a signal honour to be accorded to a bachelor guest, amounting to being given star billing, for at J___, as at most country houses, any old nook or cranny is considered good enough for the celibate contingent. My own apartment, to take a case in point, was a sort of hermit’s cell in which one would have been hard put to it to swing a cat, even a smaller one than K___, not of course that one often wants to do much cat-swinging.