“Reggie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go away.”
“Go away?” I said. “Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that could have happened. This is where you come out strong.”
“She cut me.”
“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”
“She looked clean through me!”
“Of course she did. But don’t mind that. Put this thing in my hands. I’ll see you through. Now, what you want,” I said, “is to place her under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly thanking you. What you want——”
“But what’s she going to thank me timidly for?”
I thought for a moment.
“Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,” I said.
“I can’t swim,” said Freddie.
That was Freddie all over, don’t you know. A dear old chap in a thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over. There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in happier days I’ve heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn’t a man of enterprise.
Well, don’t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn’t be mistaken. She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle. On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the girl call her “aunt.” So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one of those round, bulging kids.
After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I’m a chump. Well, I don’t mind. I admit it. I am a chump. All the Peppers have been chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you’d least expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that’s what happened now. I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore, when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl wasn’t with him. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any one in sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought the whole thing out in a flash, don’t you know. From what I had seen of the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and practically saved his life, why, the girl’s gratitude is bound to make her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don’t you know, that, by George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.