“Got distemper?”
“No. Worse. My landlord’s pinched them as security for his infernal rent! Sneaked the stock. Tied up the assets. Crippled the business at the very outset. Have you ever in your life heard of anything so dastardly? I know I agreed to pay the damned rent weekly and I’m about six weeks behind, but, my gosh! surely a man with a huge enterprise on his hands isn’t supposed to have to worry about these trifles when he’s occupied with the most delicate——Well, I put all that to old Nickerson, but a fat lot of good it did. So then I wired to you.”
“Ah!” I said, and there was a brief and pregnant pause.
“I thought,” said Ukridge, meditatively, “that you might be able to suggest somebody I could touch.”
He spoke in a detached and almost casual way, but his eye was gleaming at me significantly, and I avoided it with a sense of guilt. My finances at the moment were in their customary unsettled condition—rather more so, in fact, than usual, owing to unsatisfactory speculations at Kempton Park on the previous Saturday; and it seemed to me that, if ever there was a time for passing the buck, this was it. I mused tensely. It was an occasion for quick thinking.
“George Tupper!” I cried, on the crest of a brain-wave.
“George Tupper?” echoed Ukridge, radiantly, his gloom melting like fog before the sun. “The very man, by Gad! It’s a most amazing thing, but I never thought of him. George Tupper, of course! Big-hearted George, the old school-chum. He’ll do it like a shot and won’t miss the money. These Foreign Office blokes have always got a spare tenner or two tucked away in the old sock. They pinch it out of the public funds. Rush back to town, laddie, with all speed, get hold of Tuppy, lush him up, and bite his ear for twenty quid. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”
I had been convinced that George Tupper would not fail us, nor did he. He parted without a murmur—even with enthusiasm. The consignment was one that might have been made to order for him. As a boy, George used to write sentimental poetry for the school magazine, and now he is the sort of man who is always starting subscription lists and getting up memorials and presentations. He listened to my story with the serious official air which these Foreign Office fellows put on when they are deciding whether to declare war on Switzerland or send a firm note to San Marino, and was reaching for his cheque-book before I had been speaking two minutes. Ukridge’s sad case seemed to move him deeply.
“Too bad,” said George. “So he is training dogs, is he? Well, it seems very unfair that, if he has at last settled down to real work, he should be hampered by financial difficulties at the outset. We ought to do something practical for him. After all, a loan of twenty pounds cannot relieve the situation permanently.”
“I think you’re a bit optimistic if you’re looking on it as a loan.”