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Epub ISBN: 9781473553224
Version 1.0
Published by Arrow Books 2017
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Copyright © The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate
Cover Top hat © Alamy
Cover design by Natascha Nel
All stories from Young Men in Spats, first published in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins Ltd in 1936; published by Arrow Books in 2008
This collection first published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2017
Arrow Books
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www.wodehouse.co.uk
Arrow Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781787460126
A BEAN WAS in a nursing-home with a broken leg as the result of trying to drive his sports-model Poppenheim through the Marble Arch instead of round it, and a kindly Crumpet had looked in to give him the gossip of the town. He found him playing halma with the nurse, and he sat down on the bed and took a grape, and the Bean asked what was going on in the great world.
‘Well,’ said the Crumpet, taking another grape, ‘the finest minds in the Drones are still wrestling with the great Hat mystery.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You don’t mean you haven’t heard about it?’
‘Not a word.’
The Crumpet was astounded. He swallowed two grapes at once in his surprise.
‘Why, London’s seething with it. The general consensus of opinion is that it has something to do with the Fourth Dimension. You know how things go. I mean to say, something rummy occurs and you consult some big-brained bird and he wags his head and says “Ah! The Fourth Dimension!” Extraordinary nobody’s told you about the great Hat mystery.’
‘You’re the first visitor I’ve had. What is it, anyway? What hat?’
‘Well, there were two hats. Reading from left to right, Percy Wimbolt’s and Nelson Cork’s.’
The Bean nodded intelligently.
‘I see what you mean. Percy had one, and Nelson had the other.’
‘Exactly. Two hats in all. Top hats.’
‘What was mysterious about them?’
‘Why, Elizabeth Bottsworth and Diana Punter said they didn’t fit.’
‘Well, hats don’t sometimes.’
‘But these came from Bodmin’s.’
The Bean shot up in bed. ‘What?’
‘You mustn’t excite the patient,’ said the nurse, who up to this point had taken no part in the conversation.
‘But, dash it, nurse,’ cried the Bean, ‘you can’t have caught what he said. If we are to give credence to his story, Percy Wimbolt and Nelson Cork bought a couple of hats at Bodmin’s – at Bodmin’s, I’ll trouble you – and they didn’t fit. It isn’t possible.’
He spoke with strong emotion, and the Crumpet nodded understandingly. People can say what they please about the modern young man believing in nothing nowadays, but there is one thing every right-minded young man believes in, and that is the infallibility of Bodmin’s hats. It is one of the eternal verities. Once admit that it is possible for a Bodmin hat not to fit, and you leave the door open for Doubt, Schism, and Chaos generally.
‘That’s exactly how Percy and Nelson felt, and it was for that reason that they were compelled to take the strong line they did with E. Bottsworth and D. Punter.’
‘They took a strong line, did they?’
‘A very strong line.’
‘Won’t you tell us the whole story from the beginning?’ said the nurse.
‘Right ho,’ said the Crumpet, taking a grape. ‘It’ll make your head swim.’
‘So mysterious?’
‘So absolutely dashed uncanny from start to finish.’
You must know, to begin with, my dear old nurse (said the Crumpet), that these two blokes, Percy Wimbolt and Nelson Cork, are fellows who have to exercise the most watchful care about their lids, because they are so situated that in their case there can be none of that business of just charging into any old hattery and grabbing the first thing in sight. Percy is one of those large, stout, outsize chaps with a head like a water-melon, while Nelson is built more on the lines of a minor jockey and has a head like a peanut.
You will readily appreciate, therefore, that it requires an artist hand to fit them properly and that is why they have always gone to Bodmin. I have heard Percy say that his trust in Bodmin is like the unspotted faith of a young curate in his Bishop and I have no doubt that Nelson would have said the same, if he had thought of it.
It was at Bodmin’s door that they ran into each other on the morning when my story begins.
‘Hullo,’ said Percy. ‘You come to buy a hat?’
‘Yes,’ said Nelson. ‘You come to buy a hat?’
‘Yes.’ Percy glanced cautiously about him, saw that he was alone (except for Nelson, of course) and unobserved, and drew closer and lowered his voice. ‘There’s a reason!’
‘That’s rummy,’ said Nelson. He, also, spoke in a hushed tone. ‘I have a special reason, too.’
Percy looked warily about, and lowered his voice another notch.
‘Nelson,’ he said, ‘you know Elizabeth Bottsworth?’
‘Intimately,’ said Nelson.
‘Rather a sound young potato, what?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Pretty.’
‘I’ve often noticed it.’
‘Me, too. She is so small, so sweet, so dainty, so lively, so viv— what’s-the-word? – that a fellow wouldn’t be far out in calling her an angel in human shape.’
‘Aren’t all angels in human shape?’
‘Are they?’ said Percy, who was a bit foggy on angels. ‘Well, be that as it may,’ he went on, his cheeks suffused to a certain extent, ‘I love that girl, Nelson, and she’s coming with me to the first day of Ascot, and I’m relying on this new hat of mine to do just that extra bit that’s needed in the way of making her reciprocate my passion. Having only met her so far at country-houses, I’ve never yet flashed upon her in a topper.’
Nelson Cork was staring.
‘Well, if that isn’t the most remarkable coincidence I ever came across in my puff!’ he exclaimed, amazed. ‘I’m buying my new hat for exactly the same reason.’
A convulsive start shook Percy’s massive frame. His eyes bulged.
‘To fascinate Elizabeth Bottsworth?’ he cried, beginning to writhe.
‘No, no,’ said Nelson, soothingly. ‘Of course not. Elizabeth and I have always been great friends, but nothing more. What I meant was that I, like you, am counting on this forthcoming topper of mine to put me across with the girl I love.’
Percy stopped writhing.
‘Who is she?’ he asked, interested.
‘Diana Punter, the niece of my godmother, old Ma Punter. It’s an odd thing, I’ve known her all my life – brought up as kids together and so forth – but it’s only recently that passion has burgeoned. I now worship that girl, Percy, from the top of her head to the soles of her divine feet.’
Percy looked dubious.
‘That’s a pretty longish distance, isn’t it? Diana Punter is one of my closest friends, and a charming girl in every respect, but isn’t she a bit tall for you, old man?’
‘My dear chap, that’s just what I admire so much about her, her superb statuesqueness. More like a Greek goddess than anything I’ve struck for years. Besides, she isn’t any taller for me than you are for Elizabeth Bottsworth.’
‘True,’ admitted Percy.
‘And, anyway, I love her, blast it, and I don’t propose to argue the point. I love her, I love her, I love her, and we are lunching together the first day of Ascot.’
‘At Ascot?’
‘No. She isn’t keen on racing, so I shall have to give Ascot a miss.’
‘That’s Love,’ said Percy, awed.
‘The binge will take place at my godmother’s house in Berkeley Square, and it won’t be long after that, I feel, before you see an interesting announcement in the Morning Post.’
Percy extended his hand. Nelson grasped it warmly.
‘These new hats are pretty well bound to do the trick, I should say, wouldn’t you?’
‘Infallibly. Where girls are concerned, there is nothing that brings home the gravy like a well-fitting topper.’
‘Bodmin must extend himself as never before,’ said Percy.
‘He certainly must,’ said Nelson.
They entered the shop. And Bodmin, having measured them with his own hands, promised that two of his very finest efforts should be at their respective addresses in the course of the next few days.
Now, Percy Wimbolt isn’t a chap you would suspect of having nerves, but there is no doubt that in the interval which elapsed before Bodmin was scheduled to deliver he got pretty twittery. He kept having awful visions of some great disaster happening to his new hat: and, as things turned out, these visions came jolly near being fulfilled. It has made Percy feel that he is psychic.
What occurred was this. Owing to these jitters of his, he hadn’t been sleeping any too well, and on the morning before Ascot he was up as early as ten-thirty, and he went to his sitting-room window to see what sort of a day it was, and the sight he beheld from that window absolutely froze the blood in his veins.
For there below him, strutting up and down the pavement, were a uniformed little blighter whom he recognized as Bodmin’s errand-boy and an equally foul kid in mufti. And balanced on each child’s loathsome head was a top hat. Against the railings were leaning a couple of cardboard hat-boxes.
Now, considering that Percy had only just woken from a dream in which he had been standing outside the Guildhall in his new hat, receiving the Freedom of the City from the Lord Mayor, and the Lord Mayor had suddenly taken a terrific swipe at the hat with his mace, knocking it into hash, you might have supposed that he would have been hardened to anything. But he wasn’t. His reaction was terrific. There was a moment of sort of paralysis, during which he was telling himself that he had always suspected this beastly little boy of Bodmin’s of having a low and frivolous outlook and being temperamentally unfitted for his high office: and then he came alive with a jerk and let out probably the juiciest yell the neighbourhood had heard for years.
It stopped the striplings like a high-powered shell. One moment, they had been swanking up and down in a mincing and affected sort of way: the next, the second kid had legged it like a streak and Bodmin’s boy was shoving the hats back in the boxes and trying to do it quickly enough to enable him to be elsewhere when Percy should arrive.
And in this he was successful. By the time Percy had got to the front door and opened it, there was nothing to be seen but a hat-box standing on the steps. He took it up to his flat and removed the contents with a gingerly and reverent hand, holding his breath for fear the nap should have got rubbed the wrong way or a dent of any nature been made in the gleaming surface; but apparently all was well. Bodmin’s boy might sink to taking hats out of their boxes and fooling about with them, but at least he hadn’t gone to the last awful extreme of dropping them.