Edward. Albert sneezed.
“Where’s your dressing gown? Every man in your position ought to have a wadded dressing gown.”
“I bin shivering all day. I think I got a cold,”
“That’s where that whisky comes in, my boy. Lemon? No lemon! You ought always to have a lemon. Get into bed. I’ll get you some boiling water and then I’ll tuck you up. Best man indeed! I’m your nurse and your valet Say your evening prayer. Go on. Ladies and gentlemen and you, my dear Evangeline, I never made a speech in my life. Go on,... Good! Now for the whisky, oh Lamb made ready for the Sacrifice....
“I’ll leave it here beside you. And so to sleep, my Benedict, Sleep well.”
But that was exactly what Edward Albert could not do. A great horror of darkness and self-disgust came upon him.
Something about Pip, something about everybody’s behaviour, told him he was being made a fool of. He had been in Evangeline’s arms again that afternoon and he was in a phase of nervous exhaustion. He had been excited and then told he was no good. Always she was saying he was unsatisfactory. Nice thing to tell a fellow. And egging him on again. And here he was to be dressed up like a fool.... He wouldn’t stand it. He would not stand it. He would be damned if he stood it. He was a free man in a free country. Smash up the whole thing he would even now, and be damned to their wedding breakfast!
He got out of bed. He sneezed violently. He’d smash that hat anyhow. But face to face with that immaculate hat, his heart failed him. It found the cringing snob in him. He crept back into bed and sat up for a time looking at it. But in an hour he was raving again and repeating his invincible objection to marrying. He’d been led into it. He’d been W. It wasn’t what he’d meant....
Mr Pip, dressed as the ideal best man, was a little late and impatient. He had a white gardenia in his button hole and he carried another, with its stem in silver paper, for his victim. He rang for ten minutes almost continuously; he banged and kicked the door, and he was at last admitted by Edward Albert in pyjamas. The bridegroom’s eyes were red, swollen and half-closed, he said nothing, and he scuttled back hastily to bed.
“What on earth’s this?” demanded Mr Pip, round-eyed.
Edward Albert rolled over away from him and became a bunch of bedclothes.
“I can’t do it, o’ fellow,” he wheezed hoarsely. “I got a frightful cold. You got to manage without me,”
“Say that again,” cried Pip, incredulous but delighted.
“Say that again.”
Edward Albeit said it again but lower and more wheezily.
“You got to manage without me!” echoed Pip. “Oh lovely! Oh perfect! Of all the larks!”
He cackled with laughter. He danced about the room. He waved his arms about. “I can see them. I can see them all. Managing without him!” He aimed two tremendous punches at the roll of bedclothes that was the bridegroom and then went off to the pantry in search of whisky.
He came back with a glass of whisky and soda in his hand and put it down on the night table to enable him to punch the defaulter some more. “Oh Lord! what are we to do?” he said. “You, hey, toad.”
“Bring ’em all here,” he tried. “Get the parson and the bride and everyone here. Not legal. Get an ambulance and take you there. What’s the time? Past eleven. You can’t marry after twelve. Get you up now and dress you by force? Get up!”
He tried to strip off the bedclothes but Edward Albert had wrapped them too tightly round himself.
“I tell you I won’t” he shouted. “I can’t and I won’t. I won’t. I changed my mind.”
Pip desisted.
“Ever had the pleasure of meeting Inspector Birkenhead, Tewler?” he asked.
“Don’ wan’ meet ’im.”
“You will.”
Then Pip had his brightest idea. “I know. You’ve got a temperature of 105, Tewler, and I’m going to telephone. They’ll send for a doctor—who’ll expose you. And then? I don’t know. God help you I Why the hell haven’t you had a telephone put in here? As I told you. I’ll have to go out to a call office.”
When the flat had ceased to reverberate with Pip’s presence, Edward Albert rolled up into a vertical position, a sort of cocoon of bedclothes surmounted by a rueful face and a disorder of hair, and finished Pip’s whisky and soda.
“I never thought of that old father,” he whispered, and his face was white with premonition.
XIV. Fizz Pop
Inspector Birkenhead looked like the quintessence of all those Scotland Yard Inspectors who have figured in that vast and ever-growing field of literature, detective stories. He was indeed the only begetter of a great family. His position at Scotland Yard brought him into immediate contact with all the journalists, writers, curious persons and so forth who came in ever-increasing volume to study the type. He was Scotland Yard’s first line of defence, and the first to break cover from the thickets upon the encircled criminal. Subtler minds up-stairs remained hidden from the public eye and the public imagination. Criminals never saw them, knew nothing about them. Camera men never got hold of them. Between them and the amateur detective, a great gulf, in the shape of Inspector Birkenhead, was fixed. Edward Albert had met him already in a dozen stories under a dozen names.
The Inspector was a big heavy man, big enough indeed to be a lot of people. Edward Albert watched him place a chair for himself in the middle of the room and adjust himself firmly to its creaking accommodation, rest his hands upon his thighs and stick out his elbows. “Edward Albert Tewler, I believe.” he said.
There is no hiding things from these detectives,
“Yes,” said Edward Albert and the word half choked him.
His mouth was dry with fear.
He glanced in hope of some moral support from Pip, but Pip appeared to be lost in admiration of Enfin seul.
“I’m told you engaged to marry my daughter and that at the very last moment when everything was prepared for the ceremony, you insulted her and everybody by absenting yourself, absenting yourself without leave, from the ceremony. Have I been correctly informed?”
“I really did ’ave a temperature, Sir. Over 104 it was. Five degrees above normal.”
“Nothing to what you’ll have some day,” said the Inspector prosaically.
“But Mr Chaser here knows—Reely, Sir.”
“We won’t argue about that. We won’t trouble Mr Chaser about that. I should say by the look of you she was well out of a thoroughly silly marriage, if it wasn’t—”
The Inspector stopped, unable to continue for a time. His face was suffused, His mouth closed grimly and he appeared to be inhaling intensely. His eyes protruded. He seemed to be swelling. He must have been full of very highly compressed air. It looked as though he might explode at any moment, but as a matter of fact he was exercising self-control.
Mr Pip Chaser had stopped looking at the picture and had come round to a position from which to observe the Inspector better. Even his expression of expectant amusement was mitigated by a touch, of awe. There was, if one may say so, a. sort of humming silence of apprehension throughout the room. What became: of all that air it is idle to speculate. It disappears from tills story. When the Inspector spoke his voice was calm and stern. He deflated imperceptibly.
“My daughter, if she is my daughter, was her mother’s child. That woman.—That woman brought disgrace upon my name. A wanton. A loose woman. And now.... Once again. No, I cannot have that sort of thing happen over again.”
“But I mean to marry her, Sir. I’m going to marry her.”
“You’d better. If you don’t—” And speaking as always, with the quiet dignity of a man accustomed to the use of studiously irreproachable language, he used these by no means irreproachable words: “I’ll bloody-well knock your silly block off for you! You understand me, Sir?”