Mr. Waring made no remark.
“The only thing that really interests me,” resumed Psmith, “is the matter of these tenements. I shall shortly be leaving this country to resume the strangle-hold on Learning which I relinquished at the beginning of the Long Vacation. If I were to depart without bringing off improvements down Pleasant Street way, I shouldn’t be able to enjoy my meals. The startled cry would go round Cambridge: ‘Something is the matter with Psmith. He is off his feed. He should try Blenkinsop’s Balm for the Bilious.’ But no balm would do me any good. I should simply droop and fade slowly away like a neglected lily. And you wouldn’t like that, Comrade Wilberfloss, would you?”
Mr. Wilberfloss, thus suddenly pulled into the conversation, again leaped in his seat.
“What I propose to do,” continued Psmith, without waiting for an answer, “is to touch you for the good round sum of five thousand and three dollars.”
Mr. Waring half rose.
“Five thousand dollars!”
“Five thousand and three dollars,” said Psmith. “It may possibly have escaped your memory, but a certain minion of yours, one J. Repetto, utterly ruined a practically new hat of mine. If you think that I can afford to come to New York and scatter hats about as if they were mere dross, you are making the culminating error of a misspent life. Three dollars are what I need for a new one. The balance of your cheque, the five thousand, I propose to apply to making those tenements fit for a tolerably fastidious pig to live in.”
“Five thousand!” cried Mr. Waring. “It’s monstrous.”
“It isn’t,” said Psmith. “It’s more or less of a minimum. I have made inquiries. So out with the good old cheque-book, and let’s all be jolly.”
“I have no cheque-book with me.”
“-I- have,” said Psmith, producing one from a drawer. “Cross out the name of my bank, substitute yours, and fate cannot touch us.”
Mr. Waring hesitated for a moment, then capitulated. Psmith watched, as he wrote, with an indulgent and fatherly eye.
“Finished?” he said. “Comrade Maloney.”
“Youse hollering fer me?” asked that youth, appearing at the door.
“Bet your life I am, Comrade Maloney. Have you ever seen an untamed mustang of the prairie?”
“Nope. But I’ve read about dem.”
“Well, run like one down to Wall Street with this cheque, and pay it in to my account at the International Bank.”
Pugsy disappeared.
“Cheques,” said Psmith, “have been known to be stopped. Who knows but what, on reflection, you might not have changed your mind?”
“What guarantee have I,” asked Mr. Waring, “that these attacks on me in your paper will stop?”
“If you like,” said Psmith, “I will write you a note to that effect. But it will not be necessary. I propose, with Comrade Wilberfloss’s assistance, to restore Cosy Moments to its old style. Some days ago the editor of Comrade Windsor’s late daily paper called up on the telephone and asked to speak to him. I explained the painful circumstances, and, later, went round and hob-nobbed with the great man. A very pleasant fellow. He asks to re-engage Comrade Windsor’s services at a pretty sizeable salary, so, as far as our prison expert is concerned, all may be said to be well. He has got where he wanted. Cosy Moments may therefore ease up a bit. If, at about the beginning of next month, you should hear a deafening squeal of joy ring through this city, it will be the infants of New York and their parents receiving the news that Cosy Moments stands where it did. May I count on your services, Comrade Wilberfloss? Excellent. I see I may. Then perhaps you would not mind passing the word round among Comrades Asher, Waterman, and the rest of the squad, and telling them to burnish their brains and be ready to wade in at a moment’s notice. I fear you will have a pretty tough job roping in the old subscribers again, but it can be done. I look to you, Comrade Wilberfloss. Are you on?”
Mr. Wilberfloss, wriggling in his chair, intimated that he was.
CONCLUSION
IT was a drizzly November evening. The streets of Cambridge were a compound of mud, mist, and melancholy. But in Psmith’s rooms the fire burned brightly, the kettle droned, and all, as the proprietor had just observed, was joy, jollity, and song. Psmith, in pyjamas and a college blazer, was lying on the sofa. Mike, who had been playing football, was reclining in a comatose state in an arm-chair by the fire.