P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

“What the deuce are you doing with that tiller?” he inquired.

“My gentle somnambulist,” said Mr. Mifflin, aggrieved, “I was doing nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into what you were doing with that sheet. Were you asleep?”

“My fault,” said George; “I was thinking.”

“If you must break the habit of a lifetime,” said Mr. Mifflin, complainingly, “I wish you would wait till we get ashore. You nearly upset us.”

“It shan’t happen again. They are tricky, these sailing boats-turn over in a second. Whatever you do, don’t get her broadside on. There’s more breeze out here than I thought there was.”

Mr. Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” asked George.

“Just like a flash,” said Mr. Mifflin, complacently. “It’s always the way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps the man of genius. It beats me why I didn’t think of it before. Why, of course, a costume piece with a male star is a hundred times more effective.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I see now,” continued Mr. Mifflin, “that there was a flaw in my original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about the bathing down here, and Jane happened to say she could swim some, and it suddenly came to me.”

Jane was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.

“I said to myself, ‘George is a sportsman. He will be delighted to do a little thing like that.’ ”

“Like to do what?”

“Why, rescue Jane.”

“What!”

“She and you,” said Mr. Mifflin, “were to go in swimming together, while I waited on the sands, holding our bone-headed Press-agent on a leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert Callender, author of Fate’s Footballs, which opens at the Beach Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her. See! He has her. He is bringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her mother will be! And the public, what a bit of luck for them! They will be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday after all. Back you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong situation. I unleash the Press-agent, and off he shoots, in time to get the story into the evening paper. It was a great idea, but I see now there were one or two flaws in it.”

“You do, do you?” said George.

“It occurs to me on reflection that after all you wouldn’t have agreed to it. A something, I don’t know what, which is lacking in your nature, would have made you reject the scheme.”

“I’m glad that occurred to you.”

“And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you and it boomed Jane, but I didn’t get a thing out of it. My revised scheme is a thousand times better in every way.”

“Don’t say you have another.”

“I have. And,” added Mr. Mifflin, with modest pride, “it is a winner. This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one minute from now you will hear me exclaim, in a clear musical voice, the single word, ‘Jump!’ That is your cue to leap over the side as quick as you can move, for at that precise moment this spanking craft is going to capsize.”

George spun round in his seat. Mr. Mifflin’s face was shining with kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and that morning he had had his first swimming-lesson.

“A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents are common objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to keep myself afloat; so it’s up to you. I wouldn’t do this for everyone, but, seeing that we were boys together-Are you ready?”

“Stop!” cried George. “Don’t do it! Listen!”

“Are you ready?”

The Ocean Beauty gave a plunge.