Evening Star Newspaper, May 21, 1929, Page 28

THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON. I €, TUESDAY, MAY 2r° 1929" AONEY FOR NOTHING---By P. G. Wodehouse When you are with a man you have been friendly apyright 1323, by Worth Amarican Newsnaper thrust you between himsell FIRST INSTALLMENT. ! HE pi in-t icturesque village of Rudge- he-Vale dozed in the sun Along High street y signs of life visible were a cat stropping its backbone against the Jubilee Watering Trough, some flies doing deep-breathing ex- ercises on the hot windowsills, and a little group of serious thinkers who, propped up against the wall of the Carmody Arms, were waiting for that establishment to open. At no time is “there ever much doing in Rudge’s | main throughfare, but the hour at which a stranger entering it, is least | likely to suffer the illusion that he has strayed into Broadway, Piccadilly, or the Rue de Rivoli is at 2 o'clock on & warm afternoon in July. Rudge-in-the-Vale is in that pleasant | section of rural England where the | gray stone of Gloucestershire gives place to Worcestershire's old red brick. Quiet, | in fact, almost unconscious. it nestles | beside the tiny river Skirme and lets the world go by, somnolently content | with its Norman church, its 11 public houses, its pop.—to quote the Auto- mobile Guide—of 3,541, and its only effort in the direction of modern prog- ress the emporium of Charles Bywater, chemist. Charles Bywater is a live wire. He takes no afternoon sietsta, but works while others sleep. Rudge is inclined, | after luncheon, to go into the back room. put a handkerchief over its face | and take things easy for a bit. But | not Charles ~ywater. At the moment | at which ti_s story begins he was nll‘ bustle and activity, and had just fln-‘ ished selling to Col. Meredith Wyvern a | bettle of Brophy’s Paramount Elixir (said to be good for gnat bites). Having concluded his purchase, Col Wyvern would have preferred to leave, but Mr. Bywater was a man who liked to sweeten trade with pleasant con- versation. Moreover, this was the first time the colonel had been inside his shop sinee that sensational affair up at the Hall two weeks ago, and Charles Bywater, who held the unofficial posi~ tion of chief gossip-monger to the vil- liage, was aching to get to the bottom of that. With the bare outline of the story | he was, of course, familiar. Rudge | Hall, seat of the Carmody family, con- | tained in its fine old park a number of | trees planted somewhere about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This meant that every now and then one of them would be found to have become a wobbly menace, so that experts had to be sent for to reduce it with dynamite | tc & harmless stump. Well, two weeks ago they had blown up one of the| Hall's Elizabethan oaks and as ne: as a toucher, Rudge learned, had blown up Col. Wyvern and Mr. Carmody with | it. The two friends had come walking | by just as the expert set fire to the | train and had had a very narrow | escape. Thus far the story was common prop- village, and had been di = water could not help feeling that there was more in it than this. He decided | to give his customer the opportunity of confiding in him. | “Warm day, colonel” he observed. “Ur," grunted Col. Wyvern. | “Glass going up, 1 see.” T ‘May be in for a spell of fine weather | last.” “Glad to see vou looking so well. colonel, after vour little accident,” said | Chas. Bywater, coming out into the| oper It had been Col. Wyvern's intention, s a man of testy habit, to| Bywater why he couldn't | vTap of Brophy's Elixir in brown paper and put a bit of string und it without taking the whole | on over the task; but, at these he abandoned ~ thi€ project a bright mauve and allowing | his luxuriant eyebrows to meet across | the top of his nose, he subjected the | other 40 a fearful glare ! “Little accident?” he said. eccident?” T w “Little | alluding——" “Little accident!” “T merely—" “If by little aceident” said Col.| Wyvern, in a thick, throaty voice, “you mean my miraculous escape from death when that fat thug up at the Hall did his very best to murder me, T shouid be obliged if you would choose Your expressions more carefully. Little | accidgnt!” Few things are more painful than zation that an estrangement ed between two old friends | ave ¢hared each other’s 1d the same politics, cigars, wine, ence of the younger . Bywater’s reaction, on Col. Wyvern describe Mr. Lester ody, of Rudge Hall, until two weeks ago his closest crony, as a t thug, should have been one of sober Such, however, was not the | Rather was he filled with an| unholy exultation. All along he had | maintained that there was more in that Hall business than had become officially | know and he stood there with his ears flapping, waiting for details. These followed in great profusion. Mr. Bywater. as he drank them in, began to realize that his companion had | grievances, and for two weeks he had | Been fuite | were, of course, with the injured man. | | friend for 20 years and are walking with him in his park and hear warning shouts and look up and realize that a charge of dynamite is shortly about 0 go off in your immediate neighbor- | 1ood, you expect A man who is a man | to L6 a man. You do not expect him | to thrust you between himself and the | point of danger, so that, when the ex- | plosion takes place, you get the full force of it and he escapes without so much as a singed eyebrow. “Quite,” sald Mr. Bywater, hitching | p_his ears another inch. | Col. Wyvern continued. Whether, if | in a condition to give the matter care- | ful thought, he would have selected Chas. Bywater ‘as a confidant, one can- not. say. But he was not in such a con- dition, The stoppered bottle does not care whose is the hand that removes its cork—all it wants is the chance to | fizz—and Col. Wyvern resembled such | 2 bottle.: Owing to the absence of his | daughter, Patricia, he hdd had no one | handy fo act as audience for his| ring torments, He told Chas. Bywater all. It was a very vivid picture that he conjured up. Mr. Bywater could see the whole thing as clearly as if he had been present in person—from the blast- ing gang's first horrified realization | that human beings had wandered into | the danger zone to the almost tenser moment wien, Tunning up to sort out the tangled heap on the ground, they had observed Col. Wyvern rise from his seat on Mr. Carmody’s face and had | heard him start to tell that gentleman | precisely what he thought of him. Pri- vately. Mr. Bywater considered that M: Carmody had acted with extraordin: presence of mind. But his sympathies He felt that Col. Wyvern had been | hardly treated, and was quite right to| be indignant about it. | “I'm suing him,” concluded Col. | ‘Wyvern, regarding an advertisement of Pringle’s Pills with a smoldering | eye. “Quite.” “The only thing in the world that super-fatted old Blackhander cares for is money, and FIl have his last penny out of him, if I have to take the case to | the House of Lords. | “Quite,” sald Mr. Bywater. | “I might have been killed. It was a | miracle T wasn’t. Pive thousand pounds is the lowest figure any jury could put | the damages at. And, if there were any justice in England, they'd ship the scoundrel off to pick oakum in prison.” Mr. Bywater made non-committal noises. Both parties to this unfortunate affajr were steady customers, and he did | not wish to alienate either by taking| sides. He hoped the eolonel' was not | going to ask him for his opinion of the | rights of the case. Col. Wyvern did not. Having re- lieved himself with some six minutes | of continuous speech, he seemed to have | become aware that he had bestowed his | confidences a little injudiciously. He | strode to the door, and, pushing it epen | with extreme violence, left the shop. The next moment the peace of the| drowsy summer afternoon was shattered | by a hideous uproar. Much of this con- sisted of a high, passionate barking, the remainder being contributed by the} volce of a retired military man, raised | in anger. Chas, Bywater blanched, and, | reaching out a hand toward an upper | shelf, brought down, in the order named a bundle of lint, a bottle of arnica and | one of the half-crown (or large) size po)s of Sooth-o, the recognized specific for cuts, burns, scratches, nettle stings, and dog bites. He believed in Prep&red-i ness. | While Col. Wyvern had been pour- | ing his troubles into the twiching ear| of Chas. Bywater. there had entered | the High street a young man in golf | clothes and Old Rugbian tie. This was | John Carroll, nephew of Mr. Carmody, of the Hall. He had walked down to the village, accompanied by his dog, Emily, to buy tobaceo, and his objective, there- | fore, was the same many-sided estab- lishment that was !urpl,\'lnx the colo- nel with Brophy’s Elixir. For' do not be decelved by that “Chemist” after Mr. Bywater’s name. 1t is mere modesty. Some whim leads | this great man to describe himself as a chemist, but in reality he goes much | deeper than that. Chas. deals in every-| thing, from crystal sets to mouse- traps. There are several places in the| village where you can get stuff they | call tobacco, but it cannot be considered | in the light of pipe-joy for the dis- criminating smoker. To obtain some- thing that will Jeave a little skin on| the Toof of the mouth, you must go to Mr. Bywater. John came up the High street with | slow, meditative strides, a large and muscular young man whose pleasant features betrayed, at the moment, an| inward gloom. What with being hope- | lessly in love and one thing and an- other, his soul was in rather a bruised sondition these days, and he found him- self deriving from the afternoon placid- | ity of Rudge-in-the-Vale a certain balm and consolation. He had sunk | into a dreamy trance when he was | abruptly aroused by the horrible noise that had so shaken Chas. Bywater. The causes that had brought about this disturbance were simple and are | easily explained. It was the custom | of Emily, on tse occasions when John | brought her to Rudge to help him buy | J tobacco, to yield to an uncontrollable eagemess and gallop on ahead to Mr certain grounds for feeling a little an- noved. For when, as Col. Wyvern very ~e2nsibly argued, vou have been a Y Bywater’s shop, where, with her nose edged against the door, sh:u\luuld stand | -8 Alliance and Meiropolitan New-paper ery with for 20 years and a ¢ barge of dynamite is about to go off near you, you do not expect him to and the point of danger. came and opened it. She had a mor- bid passion for cough drops, and ex- perience had taught her that, by sit- ting and ogling Mr. Bywater with her liquid amber cves, she could generally secure two or three. Today, hurrying on as usual, she had just reached the door and begun to sniff when it suddenly opened and hit her sharply on the nose. And, as she shot back with a yelp of agony, out came Col. Wyvern, carrying his bottle of Brophy There is an etiquette in these mat- ters on which all right-minded dogs insist. When people trod on Emily she expected them immediately to fuss over | her, and the same procedure seemed to | her to be . in order when they hit her on the nose with doors. Waiting ex- pectantly, therefore, for Col. Wyvern to do the square thing, she was stunned to find that he apparently had no inten- tion of even apologizing. He was brushing past without a word. and all the woman in Emily rose in revolt against such boorishness. “Just_a minute!” ously. “Just one minute, if you please. Not so fast, my good man. A word with you, if T may trespass upon your valuable time.” The colonel, chafing beneath the weight of his wrongs, perceived that they had been added to by a beast of a hairy dog that stood and yapped at him. “Get out!” he bellowed. Emily became hysterical. “Indeed?” she said shrilly. “And who do you think you are, you poor clumsy Tobot? You come hifting ladies on_the nose as if you were the King of England, and as if that wasn't enough...” “Go away, sir."” “Who the devil are you calling sir?” | Emily had the twentieth century girl's freedom of speech and breadth of vo- cabulary. Tt's people like you that cause all this modern unrest and in- dustrial strife. I know your sort well. Robbers and oppresso; And let me tell you another thing..."” At this point the colonel very in- judiciously aimed a kick at Emily. It was not much of a kick, and it came nowhere near her, but it sufficed. Realizing the futility of words, Emily decided on action. And it was just as she had got a preliminary grip on the colonel’s left trouser leg that John arrived at the front. “Emily! ! !” roared John, shocked to the core of his being. He had excellent lungs. and he used them to the last ounce of their power. A young man who sees the father of the girl he loves being swallowed alive by a Welsh terrier does not spare his voice. the note of the last trump, and Col Wyvern. leaping spasmodically, dropped his bottle of Brophy. It fell on the pavement and exploded, and Emily, who could do her bit in a rough-and- | tumble, but barred bombs, tucked her tail between her legs and vanished. A | faint, sleepy cheering from outside the Carmody Arms announced that she had | passed that home from home and was going well. . John continued to be agitated. You would not have supposed, to look at Col. Wyvern, that he could have had | an attractive daughter, but such was the case, and John's manner was as con- | cerned and ingratiating as that of most young men in the presence of the fathers of attractive daughters. “I'm so sorry, colonel. you're not hurt, colonel.” The injured man, maintaining an icy silence, raked him with an eye before which sergeant-majors had once droop- | ed like withered roses, and walked into the shop. The anxious face of Charles Bywater loomed up over the counter John hovered in the background. “T want another bottle of that stuff,” said the eolonel hortly. “I'm awfully sorry,” said “T dropped the other outside. attacked by a savage dog.” “I'm frightfully sorry.” “People ought not to have these pests running loose and not under proper control.” “I'm fearfully sorry.” “A menace to the community and a nuisance to everybody,” said Col. Wy~ vern, “Quite,” said Mr. Bywater. Conversation languished. Charles By- water, realizing that this was no mo- ment 'for lingering lovingly over brown paper and toying dreamily with string, lowered the record for wrapping a bot tle of Brophy’s Paramount Elixir by such a margin that he set up a mark for other chemists to shootgat for all time. Col. Wyvern snatched it and stalked out, and John, who had opened the door for him and had not been thanked, tottered back to the counter and in a low voice expressed a wish for two ounces of the Special Mixture. “Quite,” said Mr. Bywater. “In one moment, Mr. John With the passing of Col. Wyvern, a cloud seemed to have rolled away from the chemist's world. He was his old, charmingly chatty self again. He gave John his tobacco, and, detaining him by the simple means of not handing over his change, surrendered himself 1o the joys of conversation. ‘The colonel appears a little upset . ‘Have you got my change?” said John. 1 was seems to me he hasn't been the same man since that unfortunate epi- sode up at the hall. Notat all the sam® cunny gentieman.” y change2” s oy she sald danger- | The word came out of him like | I do hl!,pEw “A very unfortunate episode, that,” sighed Mr. Bywater. | “My change2” | “I could see the moment he walked in here that he was not himself. Shaken. Something in the way he Jooked at one. I said to myself, ‘The colonel's shaken'!" John, who had had such recent ex- perience of the way Col. Wyvern looked at one, agreed. He then asked if he | might have his change. i | “No doubt, he misses Miss Wyvern,” said Charles Bywater, ignoring the re- quest with an indulgent smile. *“When A man's had a shock like the colonel’s had—when he’s shaken, if you under- stand what I mean—he likes to have his loved ones around him. Stands to reason,” said Mr. Bywater, John had been anxious to leave, but he was so constituted that he could not tear himself away from any one | who had touched on the subject of Patricia Wyvern. He edged a little nearer. “Well, ghe'll be home again soon,” | sald Charles Bywater., “Tomorrow, I understand.” A powerful current of electricity seemed to pass itself through John's body. Pat Wyvern had been away so long that he had fallen into a sort of dull apathy, in which he wondered snmle(uncs if he would ever see her again. “Yes, sir. She returned from France yesterday. She had a good crossing. She is at the Lincoln Hotel, Curzon street, London. She thinks of taking the 3 o'clock train tomorrow. She is in_excellent health.” 1t did not occur to John to question the accuracy of the other’s information, nor to be surprised at its minuteness of detail. Mr. Bywater, he was aware, had a daughter in the post office, “Tomorrow!"” he gasped. “Yes, sir. Tomorrow." “Give me my change,” said John. He yearned to be off. He wanted to ponder over this wonderful news. “No doubt,” said Mr. Bywater, “ghn s . “Give ‘me my change,” said John. Charles Bywater, happening to catch his eye, did so. | To reach Rudge Hall from the door | of Charles Bywater's shop you go uj the High street, turn sharp to the left down River lane, cross the stone bridge that spans the slow-flowing Skirme as | it potters past on its way to join the | Severn, carry on along the road till you | come to the gates of Col. Wyvern's | nice little house and then climb a stile | and take to the felds. And presently | vou are in the park and ean see through the trees the tall chimneys and red walls of the ancient home of the Car- modys. | The scene. when they are not touch- ing off dynamite there under the noses | of retired military officers, is one of quiet peace. For John it had always held a peculiar magic. In the 14 years since the Wyverns had first come to settle in Rudge Pat had contrived, so far as he was concerned, to impress her personality ineffaceably on the | | landscape. Almost every inch of it | was in some way associated with her. Stumps on which she had sat and swung her brown-stockinged legs; trees beneath which she had taken shelter with him from Summer storms; gates on which she had climbed. fields across which she had raced and thorny bushes into which she had urged him to penetrate in search of birds' eggs they met his eye on every side. The very air seemed to be alive with her | laughter. And not even the racollec- tion that that laughter had generally | | beeny directed at himself was able to | diminish_for John the glamour of this | mile of Fairyland. Half-way across the park Emily re- joined him with a defensive where-on- | earth-did-you-disappear-to manner, and they moved on in company till ‘they [CUTICURA HEALS | REDPIMPLES | | On Face and Neck. In | | Patches. Very Painful. | “My face and neck began to break out in small, red patches which later turned into innumerable | |pimples. I would wake up in the { night and find myself scratching them. They were very painful and | Jcaused me much embarrassment. | |Towards the end of my wouble the pimples festered. “'I read an advertisement for Cu- ticura Soap and Ointment and sent | |for a free sample. After using it I ' could see a change so.purchased more, and in about three months I was healed.”” (Signed)R. E.Norton, Box 226, Ashtabula, Ohio. Insure against skin troubles by daily use of Cuticura Soap, assisted by CuticuraOintmentwhen required. rounded the corner of the house and| came to the stable vard. John had a couple of rooms over the stables. an thither he made his way, leaving Emi; to fuss around Bolt, the chauffeur, who | was washing the Dex-Mayo. | Arrived in his sitting room. he sank into a_deck chair and filled his pipe with Mr. Bywater's special mixture. { Then. putting his feet up on the table, | he sfared hard and earnestly at the | photograph of Pat on the matelpiece. It was a pretty face that he was look- ing at—one whose charm not even a fashionable modern photographer of the type that prefers to depict his sit- ters in a gray fog. with most of their features hidden from view. could alto- gether obscure. In the eyes. a liftle slanting, there was a_Puck-like look and the curving lips hinted demurely at amusing secrets. The nose had that appealing vet provocative air that slight tip tltedness gives. It seemed to challenge, and, at the same time, to withdraw This was the latest of the Pat photo- graphs. and she had given it to him three months ago, just before she left to o and stay with friends at Le Touquet And now she was coming home. John Carroll was one of those solid persons who do not waver in their lovalties. He had always been in love with Pat, and he alwavs would be though he would have had to admit that she gave him very little encourag: ment. There had been a period w he being 15 and she 10, Pat had la:- ished on him all the worship of a small 2irl for a big boy who can wiggle his { ears and is not afraid of cows. But | since then ber attitude had changed. Her | manner toward him mowadays alter- i nated between that of a nurse toward a | ehild who is not quite right in the head and that of the owner of a clumsy, but rather likeable, dog. Nevertheless, he loved her, was coming home. . . . John sat up suddenly.” He was a slow thinker, and only now did it occur to| him just what the position of affairs would be when she did come home With this infernal Yeud going on.be- | tween Uncle Lester and. the old colonel. | she would probably look on him as in| the enemy's camp and refuse to see or speak to him. | The thought chilled him to the mar- row. Something, he felt. must be done. | and swiftly. And, with a flash of in- spiration of a kind that rarely came to | him, he saw what that something was. | He must go up to London this after-| | noon, tell her the facts and throw him- | self on her clemency. If he could coi vince her that he was whole-heartedly pro-colonel and regarded Uncle Lester as the logical successor to Dr. Crippen and the Brides-in-the-Bath murderer, things might straighten themselves. Once the brain gets working, there is no knowing where it will stop. The very next instant there had come to John Carroll a thought so new and | breath-taking that he uttered an audible | Bas | | | And she 1. surfaces. ity finish. That Soap %e. Ointm e, Taleam 26e. Sold [y free' " Address: N, Maldon, Mase”, T Why shouldn’t he ask Pat to marry | him? | John sat tingling from head to foot. | The scales seemed to have fallen from | his eyes, and he saw clearly where he might quite conceivably have been mak- | ing a grave blunder all these years Deeply as he had always loved Pat, he had never—now he came to think of it—told her so. And, in this sort of situation, the spoken word is quite apt to make all the difference. | Perhaps that was why she laughed at him so frequently—because she was = him. “I want to get the two-seater. entertained by the spectacle of a man, up “Two-seater, sir?" obviously in love with her, refraining year after vear from making and verbal | “Yes. I'm going to London.” comment on the state of his emotions. | “It's not there. Mr. John,” said the Resolution poured over John in a |chauffeur. with the gloomy satisfaction strengthening flood. He looked at his | he usually reserved for telling his em- watch. It was nearly 3. If he got the | ployer that the battery had run down. two-seater and started at once, he could | “Not there? What do you mean~" be in London in nice time to take | “Mr. Hugo took it, sir,"an hour ago. her to dinner somewhere. He hurried |He told me he was going over to see down the stairs and out into the stable | Mr. Carmody at Healthwood Ho. Said yara he had important business and knew “Shove that car out of the way, Bolt.” | vou wouldn't object.” sald John. eluding Emily, who, wet to | - the last hair, was endeavoring to climb (To Be Continued.) Get rid of moths and bfigs { Houseclean with Dethol! oD way urw way. DETHOL WAY 14 improvements—one every since the first ARS OF INTENSIVE scientific research perfected Rogers Brushing Lacquer be- fore the first can was ever offered for sale. The first Rogers lacquer established a hitherto unheard of standard of perfection. 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