“Well, my gosh, I don’t see why there should have been such a fuss about that. What does a bit of hand-holding amount to? The whole thing, Corky, my boy, boils down to the question, Is any man safe? It’s got so nowadays,” said Ukridge, with a strong sense of injury, “that you’ve only to throw a girl a kindly word, and the next thing you know you’re in the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, picking the rice out of your hair.”
“Well, you must own that you were asking for it. You rolled up in a new Daimler and put on enough dog for half a dozen millionaires. And you took the family for rides, didn’t you?”
“Perhaps a couple of times.”
“And talked about your aunt, I expect, and how rich she was?”
“I may have touched on my aunt occasionally.”
“Well, naturally these people thought you were sent from heaven. The wealthy son-in-law.” Ukridge projected himself from the depths sufficiently to muster up the beginnings of a faint smile of gratification at the description. Then his troubles swept him back again. “All you’ve got to do, if you want to get out of it, is to confess to them that you haven’t a bob.”
“But, laddie, that’s the difficulty. It’s a most unfortunate thing, but, as it happens, I am on the eve of making an immense fortune, and I’m afraid I hinted as much to them from time to time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Since I saw you last I’ve put all my money in a bookmaker’s business.”
“How do you mean—all your money? Where did you get any money?”