“Yes, in a rough-and-tumble in a back alley. And nobody saw him do it.”
“Well, these things get about.”
“But two hundred pounds!”
“A fleabite, laddie, a fleabite. You can take it from me that we shall be asking a lot more than a measly couple of hundred for our services pretty soon. Thousands, thousands! Still, I’m not saying it won’t be something to be going on with. Well, as I say, old Billson came to me and said he had had this offer, and how about it? And when I realised that I was in halves, I jolly soon gave him my blessing and told him to go as far as he liked. So you can imagine how I felt when Flossie put her foot down like this.”
“Like what? About ten minutes ago when you started talking, you seemed to be on the point of explaining about Flossie. How does she come to be mixed up with the thing? What did she do?”
“Only wanted to stop the whole business, laddie, that was all. Just put the kybosh on the entire works. Said he mustn’t fight!”
“Mustn’t fight?”
“That was what she said. Just in that airy, careless way, as if the most stupendous issues didn’t hang on his fighting as he had never fought before. Said—if you’ll believe me, laddie; I shan’t blame you if you don’t—that she didn’t want his looks spoiled.” Ukridge gazed at me with lifted eyebrows while he let this evidence of feminine perverseness sink in. “His looks, old man! You got the word correctly? His looks! She didn’t want his looks spoiled. Why, damme, he hasn’t got any looks. There isn’t any possible manner in which you could treat that man’s face without improving it. I argued with her by the hour, but no, she couldn’t see it. Avoid women, laddie, they have no intelligence.”
“Well, I’ll promise to avoid Flossie’s mother, if that’ll satisfy you. How does she come into the thing?”
“Now, there’s a woman in a million, my boy. She saved the situation. She came along at the eleventh hour and snatched your old friend out of the soup. It seems she has a habit of popping up to London at intervals, and Flossie, while she loves and respects her, finds that from ten minutes to a quarter of an hour of the old dear gives her the pip to such an extent that she’s a nervous wreck for days.”