Read Online Ice in the Bedroom by P. G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online
Authors: P. G. Wodehouse
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appearance conveyed the suggestion that in the not distant past he had undergone some spiritual experience which he had found disturbing. Only too plainly he was in the grip of that grief - void, dark and drear, which finds no natural outlet, no relief, in word or sigh or tear - which in the early eighteen-hundreds had depressed the poet Coleridge.
He sank into a chair and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief which his helpmeet had picked up at Harrod's one afternoon last winter and given him for Christmas.
'Gosh!' he said in a voice that might well have come from a tomb.
Dolly was a good wife. Though quivering with curiosity and burning to ask questions, she knew that first things must come first. Some quarter of an hour ago Room Service had deposited on a side table a tray containing ice and glasses, and she hurried to a cupboard and extracted from it gin, vermouth and a shaker. A musical tinkling broke the silence that had fallen on the room, and presently Soapy, after he had had one quick and had got started on another rather slower, gave evidence of being sufficiently restored to be able to render his report.
Dolly, observing these improved conditions, felt that the need for restraint was past and that questions were now in order.
'What happened. Soapy? Did you go there? Did you see her? What's she like?'
Soapy winced. The question had touched an exposed nerve. As had been the case with Freddie Widgeon, he had expected to find in Leila Yorke a frail little wisp of a thing who would be corn before his sickle, and right from the start her personality had intimidated him. He had found those bright, piercing blue eyes of hers particularly disturbing, and later, when she had produced that shot-gun…He shivered at the recollection. He was a man not easy to disconcert - if you make your living selling stock in derelict oil wells, you learn to present a confident, even a brassy, face to the world - but Leila Yorke had done it.
'She's a tough egg,' he said, drying his forehead again. 'You remember Soup Slattery?'
'Of course.' That eminent safe-blower had been one of their intimate circle in the old Chicago days. 'But what's Soup got to do with it?'
'She's a little like him. Better-looking, of course, but that same way of giving you the cold, glassy eye that Soup has when you're playing poker with him and he's got the idea that it's not all according to Hoyle. Those eyes of hers sort of go through you and come out on the other side. Moment I saw her, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I never dreamed things were going to turn out the way they did. No, sir, it never occurred to me.'
Nothing is more irritating to a woman of impatient habit, wanting to get the news headlines quick, than to try to obtain them from a man who seems intent on speaking in riddles, and a less affectionate wife than Dolly might well at this point have endeavoured to accelerate her husband by striking him with the cocktail shaker. It is to her credit that she confined herself to words.
'What way? How do you mean? What happened?’
Soapy marshalled his thoughts. He had finished that second martini now, and was feeling calmer. The knowledge that seven miles separated him from Leila Yorke had done much to restore his composure. And he was reminding himself, as Dolly had reminded him yesterday, that you can't win 'em all. It was a comforting reflection. He was not entirely his old hearty self as he began his story, but he had shaken off that dizzy feeling which comes to the man who pays a social call and suddenly finds his hostess jabbing a shot-gun into his diaphragm.
Well, sir, I got to Castlewood and rang the bell. The front door bell. I rang it. Yes, sir, I rang the front door bell.'
Though accustomed to her loved one's always deliberate methods as a raconteur, Dolly could not repress a sharp yelp of exasperation. She needed her lunch, and it looked as though this was going to take some time.
'Get on, get on! I didn't think you
He sank into a chair and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief which his helpmeet had picked up at Harrod's one afternoon last winter and given him for Christmas.
'Gosh!' he said in a voice that might well have come from a tomb.
Dolly was a good wife. Though quivering with curiosity and burning to ask questions, she knew that first things must come first. Some quarter of an hour ago Room Service had deposited on a side table a tray containing ice and glasses, and she hurried to a cupboard and extracted from it gin, vermouth and a shaker. A musical tinkling broke the silence that had fallen on the room, and presently Soapy, after he had had one quick and had got started on another rather slower, gave evidence of being sufficiently restored to be able to render his report.
Dolly, observing these improved conditions, felt that the need for restraint was past and that questions were now in order.
'What happened. Soapy? Did you go there? Did you see her? What's she like?'
Soapy winced. The question had touched an exposed nerve. As had been the case with Freddie Widgeon, he had expected to find in Leila Yorke a frail little wisp of a thing who would be corn before his sickle, and right from the start her personality had intimidated him. He had found those bright, piercing blue eyes of hers particularly disturbing, and later, when she had produced that shot-gun…He shivered at the recollection. He was a man not easy to disconcert - if you make your living selling stock in derelict oil wells, you learn to present a confident, even a brassy, face to the world - but Leila Yorke had done it.
'She's a tough egg,' he said, drying his forehead again. 'You remember Soup Slattery?'
'Of course.' That eminent safe-blower had been one of their intimate circle in the old Chicago days. 'But what's Soup got to do with it?'
'She's a little like him. Better-looking, of course, but that same way of giving you the cold, glassy eye that Soup has when you're playing poker with him and he's got the idea that it's not all according to Hoyle. Those eyes of hers sort of go through you and come out on the other side. Moment I saw her, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I never dreamed things were going to turn out the way they did. No, sir, it never occurred to me.'
Nothing is more irritating to a woman of impatient habit, wanting to get the news headlines quick, than to try to obtain them from a man who seems intent on speaking in riddles, and a less affectionate wife than Dolly might well at this point have endeavoured to accelerate her husband by striking him with the cocktail shaker. It is to her credit that she confined herself to words.
'What way? How do you mean? What happened?’
Soapy marshalled his thoughts. He had finished that second martini now, and was feeling calmer. The knowledge that seven miles separated him from Leila Yorke had done much to restore his composure. And he was reminding himself, as Dolly had reminded him yesterday, that you can't win 'em all. It was a comforting reflection. He was not entirely his old hearty self as he began his story, but he had shaken off that dizzy feeling which comes to the man who pays a social call and suddenly finds his hostess jabbing a shot-gun into his diaphragm.
Well, sir, I got to Castlewood and rang the bell. The front door bell. I rang it. Yes, sir, I rang the front door bell.'
Though accustomed to her loved one's always deliberate methods as a raconteur, Dolly could not repress a sharp yelp of exasperation. She needed her lunch, and it looked as though this was going to take some time.
'Get on, get on! I didn't think you
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