“This,” I declared, “will not do.”
Greeves agreed. “Most disturbing, sir.”
There sprang into my mind, like Athena springing from the brow of Zeus, only the other way round, a plan. First, a bath; then breakfast; then a brisk and businesslike dialogue with Baldie, leading to the earliest possible embarkation on Slithy’s contraption; and so to home.
I gathered myself and issued instructions. Greeves moved out of view, and, an instant later, I heard water running in the bathroom. “Right,” I said, shedding the pajamas like a snake with a pressing agenda while figuratively girding myself for strife. “And off we go.”
—–—
“Baldie,” I said, over the remains of a remarkably large kipper and an even larger than remarkable egg, “we must speak.”
“Agreed, Bartie,” he said. “It’s why I had Slithy bring you.”
I should pause briefly to furnish a sketch of Archibald Spotts-Binkle, the better to focus the reader’s inner eye on the proceedings. Imagine a fish in a fairy-godmother tale, magically transformed into a man afflicted with horn-rimmed specs, except that the f-g in question has skimped on the incantation, so that the transmogrification was only nine parts out of ten. Bulbous eyes, protruding lips that are ever moist, glabrous skin with just a hint of scaliness. Now add a voice that sounds like the product of a child’s first involuntary sawings at the violin, and you have Baldie taped and targeted. Thus it would come as no surprise to discover that the sole abiding passion of his existence has been a fascination with newts.
This was the pallid apparition that blinked dully at me across the breakfast table as I unburdened myself of a few trenchant observations on the damage done to a lifelong friendship by a “ruddy shanghaiing off to a sodden planet one wouldn’t wish on one’s direst foe.”
When in distress, it was Baldie’s habit to draw his neck into his meager shoulders to a depth greater than ought to have been anatomically possible. The effect was rather like that of a fish trying on an impression of a turtle. He performed this maneuver now, and I formed the view that once I ceased beleaguering him, he would advance a suitably penitent apology, allowing me to be magnanimous in victory, as befits my nature.
I therefore softened my tone and relinquished the floor, although as we were sitting I’m not sure exactly what I was relinquishing. But, instead of tendering his regrets, my old chum thrust his narrow neck back out of concealment, and said, “Oh, fie, Bartie!”
“Fie?” I said. I am often taken aback when confronted by raw injustice.
“Yes, fie!” he returned. “And double fie at that!”
“Steady on, Baldie,” I said. “Bear in mind that some fies, once launched, can ne’er be recalled.”
He elevated his negligible chin. “I don’t care, Bartie,” he told me. “It’s all meaningless, else.”
“Else what?”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“What do you mean?” I said.
The bulging eyes blinked several times. “Stop repeating what I say!” he snapped. “This is no time for childish games!”
“Childish games?” I said. “Well, I must say, that’s a bit over the top, coming from a fellow who would have a dashed hard time demonstrating that he’s reached man’s estate!”
His pale skin grew even paler and flecks of spittle appeared on his lower lip. I experienced a sudden memory of the only time Baldie Spotts-Binkle, in our long-ago school days, had lost his rag while being bullied by Roderick Bass-Humptingdon, a thug in an Eton collar who reigned over the junior form in much the same way Tiglath-Pileser, if that’s the bloke I want, had lorded it over the Ten Lost Tribes. I remembered piercing shrieks and a flailing of stick-thin limbs, like a stringed puppet whose master is overcome by a fit of apoplexy. All ending, of course, in tears, Bass-Humptingdon’s schoolyard sobriquet of Basher being well earned.
But, here in Baldie’s breakfast room, the anticipated frenzy did not occur. Instead, he burst into tears, then buried his snuffles in his cold, long-fingered hands. It was a good thing I had already breakfasted since here was a sight to quell the appetite of a Cyclops.
“Steady on, Baldie,” I said for the second time in mere moments, but my tone was now softer. Bartie Gloster might be able to summon the stern eye and the censorious word as warranted, but when an old pal breaks down and blubs across the breakfast table, the better angels sit up and seize the reins. Admittedly, I waffled a bit as to whether I should bluffly encourage the stiff upper lip or offer the consoling pat on the shoulder. In the latter department, Spotts-Binkle’s specimens were not such as to invite contact, being more in the line of the Carpathian Mountains—sharp, hard, and like to bruise the tender flesh.
But a decision was soon reached, and I extended a hand to pat the upthrust bony protrusion, adding the traditional, “Now, now,” “there there,” and “what’s all this?” as indicated.
The result was a fresh gusher, leading me to believe that I’d taken a wrong turn. I reviewed my stock of consoling phrases and realized that I had already emptied the store. I was considering a tactical shift toward the stiff u l when the door opened and Slithy Tove-Whippley entered the breakfast room with only slightly less swagger than your average pirate exhibits when boarding a prize.
“What ho, Bartie!” he said, sashaying over to the sideboard to survey the goods.
I welcomed the change of focus. For it was he who, while purporting to show me the rocket ship he’d assembled on the lawn, had led me into its cramped saloon and asked for my views on a new cocktail he’d devised. An “atom-smasher” he’d called it. I took a first sip, and said, “I say, Slithy,” as the brew’s potency made itself felt. But no further words passed the numbed Gloster lips. Instead, the lights went out and I was plunged down a rabbit hole from which I did not emerge until I awoke in the depths of space.
“Don’t you ‘what ho’ me,” I said, rising and casting aside a furious napkin. The phrases “unmitigated gall,” “dastardly trick,” and “absolute stinker” were jostling one another in my brain to see which would be first out of the gate. I was also considering “sharper than a serpent’s bosom,” though I wasn’t quite sure it scanned well.
But Slithy showed me the backs of his fingers, moving in a way suggestive of crumbs that were swept aside. “Come on, Bartie,” he said, helping himself to scrambled eggs and a rasher of bacon I had thought looked a bit dodgy, it being an odd shade of green, “can’t you take a joke?”
“A joke? Well, that takes the biscuit!” I had now marshaled gall, trick, and rotter into a single devastating phalanx and was about to send it crashing into Tove-Whippley’s line. But just then, Baldie gave forth with another freshet of woe, and it seemed somehow not the done thing to be offering battle when there were wounded in need of comforting.
Comfort, though, was not Slithy’s style. “Buck up, there, Baldie!” he said, in a parade-ground tone, before sitting down and addressing himself to his plate in a manner that put one in mind of a wolf that had mastered the rudiments of wielding cutlery. I recalled that, at school meals, the other boys had always left a clear space around Tove-Whippley; hands other than his that penetrated the pale risked sudden and not inconsiderable injury.
While I was thus briefly immersed in reminiscence, Baldie Spotts-Binkle rose from the table and, dashing tears from his eyes, fled the room. Slithy detroughed himself long enough to grunt an ambiguous comment—or he might just have been loosening some morsel lodged in his throat—then returned to the clashing of silver on porcelain.
Concern for Baldie drove my anger to the rear. I said, “I say, Slithy, what has cast Spotts-Binkle into the slough of despond?”
He looked up at me, and, around a mouthful of egg, said, “Newts.”