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You don't know him." "Yes, I do. And, what is more, he expressly asked me to call him Freddie. 'Oh, dash it, old top, don't keep on calling me Threepwood! Freddie to pals! Those were his very words." "George, you're making this up." "Not at all. We met last night at the National Sporting Club. Porky Jones was going twenty rounds with Eddie Flynn. I offered to give three to one on Eddie.
I assured Threepwood that my visit here would be a mere formality. I was quite sure you had no intention whatever of worrying him. I may tell him definitely, then, that you have destroyed the letters?" "Yes. Good-evening." "Good-evening, Miss Valentine."
In the big chair nearest the door the Honorable Frederick Threepwood Freddie to pals was reading. Next to him sat a young man whose eyes, glittering through rimless spectacles, were concentrated on the upturned faces of several neat rows of playing cards Rupert Baxter, Lord Emsworth's invaluable secretary, had no vices, but he sometimes relaxed his busy brain with a game of solitaire.
"Why, hullo!" said Freddie. "By Jove! I say! We've met before, what?" "Why, so we have!" "That lunch at Oddy's that young Threepwood gave, what?" "I wonder you remember." "Oh, I remember. Quite a time ago, eh? Miss Bryant was in that show, 'Follow the Girl, Jill, at the Regal." "Oh, yes. I remember you took me to see it." "Dashed odd meeting again like this!" said Freddie. "Really rummy!"
If I did it would all come out, and so far as the breaking off of my daughter's engagement to young Threepwood is concerned, it would be just as bad as though I had tried to get the thing back myself. "You've got to bear that in mind. You've got to remember it if you forget everything else. I don't appear in this business in any way whatsoever.
What he intended to convey to the reader was that Miss Aline Peters, of America, was going to marry the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, son of the Earl of Emsworth; and that was exactly the impression the average reader got. George Emerson, however, was not an average reader. The subeditor's work did not impress him. "You mustn't believe everything you see in the papers," he said.
Strictly speaking, Lord Emsworth thought nothing of it; and he was wondering how to veil this opinion in diplomatic words, when the providence that looks after all good men saved him by causing a knock at the door to occur. In response to Mr. Peters' irritated cry a maid entered. "If you please, sir, Mr. Threepwood wishes to speak with you on the telephone." Mr. Peters turned to his guest.
And I have been waiting to shoot him because he has taken Aline away from that goggle-eyed chump up in bed there! "Why, if she had married Threepwood I should have had grandchildren who would have sneaked my watch while I was dancing them on my knee! There is a taint of some sort in the whole family. Father sneaks my Cheops and sonny sneaks it from father. What a gang!
Except for a few of life's fundamental facts, such as that his check book was in the right-hand top drawer of his desk; that the Honorable Freddie Threepwood was a young idiot who required perpetual restraint; and that when in doubt about anything he had merely to apply to his secretary, Rupert Baxter except for these basic things, he never remembered anything for more than a few minutes.
He picked up his pen and began to write "The Adventure of the Wand of Death." In a bedroom on the fourth floor of the Hotel Guelph in Piccadilly, the Honorable Frederick Threepwood sat in bed, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and glared at the day with the glare of mental anguish. He had very little mind, but what he had was suffering. He had just remembered. It is like that in this life.