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Page 90
Painful and absorbing as had been his encounter with the table,
Baxter had never lost sight of the fact that close beside him a
furious battle between unseen forces was in progress. He had
heard the bumping and the thumping and the tense breathing even
as he picked occasional china from his person. Such a combat, he
had felt, could hardly fail to result in personal injury to
either the party of the first part or the party of the second
part, or both. He knew now that worse than mere injury had
happened, and that he knelt in the presence of death.
There was no doubt that the man was dead. Insensibility alone
could never have produced this icy chill. He raised his head in
the darkness, and cried aloud to those approaching. He meant to
cry: "Help! Murder!" But fear prevented clear articulation. What
he shouted was: "Heh! Mer!" On which, from the neighborhood of
the staircase, somebody began to fire a revolver.
The Earl of Emsworth had been sleeping a sound and peaceful sleep
when the imbroglio began downstairs. He sat up and listened. Yes;
undoubtedly burglars! He switched on his light and jumped out of
bed. He took a pistol from a drawer, and thus armed went to look
into the matter. The dreamy peer was no poltroon.
It was quite dark when he arrived on the scene of conflict, in
the van of a mixed bevy of pyjamaed and dressing-gowned
relations. He was in the van because, meeting these relations in
the passage above, he had said to them: "Let me go first. I have
a pistol." And they had let him go first. They were, indeed,
awfully nice about it, not thrusting themselves forward or
jostling or anything, but behaving in a modest and self-effacing
manner that was pretty to watch.
When Lord Emsworth said, "Let me go first," young Algernon
Wooster, who was on the very point of leaping to the fore, said,
"Yes, by Jove! Sound scheme, by Gad!"--and withdrew into the
background; and the Bishop of Godalming said: "By all means,
Clarence undoubtedly; most certainly precede us."
When his sense of touch told him he had reached the foot of the
stairs, Lord Emsworth paused. The hall was very dark and the
burglars seemed temporarily to have suspended activities. And
then one of them, a man with a ruffianly, grating voice, spoke.
What it was he said Lord Emsworth could not understand. It
sounded like "Heh! Mer!"--probably some secret signal to his
confederates. Lord Emsworth raised his revolver and emptied it in
the direction of the sound.
Extremely fortunately for him, the Efficient Baxter had not
changed his all-fours attitude. This undoubtedly saved Lord
Emsworth the worry of engaging a new secretary. The shots sang
above Baxter's head one after the other, six in all, and found
other billets than his person. They disposed themselves as
follows: The first shot broke a window and whistled out into the
night; the second shot hit the dinner gong and made a perfectly
extraordinary noise, like the Last Trump; the third, fourth and
fifth shots embedded themselves in the wall; the sixth and final
shot hit a life-size picture of his lordship's grandmother in the
face and improved it out of all knowledge.
One thinks no worse of Lord Emsworth's grandmother because she
looked like Eddie Foy, and had allowed herself to be painted,
after the heavy classic manner of some of the portraits of a
hundred years ago, in the character of Venus--suitably draped, of
course, rising from the sea; but it was beyond the possibility of
denial that her grandson's bullet permanently removed one of
Blandings Castle's most prominent eyesores.
Having emptied his revolver, Lord Emsworth said, "Who is there?
Speak!" in rather an aggrieved tone, as though he felt he had
done his part in breaking the ice, and it was now for the
intruder to exert himself and bear his share of the social
amenities.
The Efficient Baxter did not reply. Nothing in the world could
have induced him to speak at that moment, or to make any sound
whatsoever that might betray his position to a dangerous maniac
who might at any instant reload his pistol and resume the
fusillade. Explanations, in his opinion, could be deferred until
somebody had the presence of mind to switch on the lights. He
flattened himself on the carpet and hoped for better things. His
cheek touched the corpse beside him; but though he winced and
shuddered he made no outcry. After those six shots he was through
with outcries.
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