Full Moon by P. G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online

of a thrill of apprehension, faint for the moment, but beginning to gather strength.
    'There,' he said, as Bill came into action for the fourth time.
    'Where?' said the barman, looking up from his mixing.
    'It's gone again,' said Tipton.
    'Oh, yes, sir?' said the barman. 'Nice day,' he added, to keep the conversation going.
    Tipton sat for a while in thought. That thrill of apprehension had now become quite a definite thrill. Then he reflected that
there was a very simple way of easing his mind. He went to the door and opened it.
    In the interval between Bill's fourth inspection and Tipton's courageous investigation a new factor had come into the affair – the awakening of the pride of the Listers. Quite suddenly there had come upon Bill a feeling of revulsion at the ignoble part he was playing. He saw himself for what he was, a poltroon who was allowing himself to be intimidated by a man in uniform. A spirit of defiance awoke in him. Was he, a finalist in the heavyweight division of last year's Amateur Boxing Championship contests, to be scared by a mere doorkeeper, even if the latter was about eight feet in height and richly apparelled? Put like that, the question caused him to burn with shame. In the space of time – about forty seconds – in which Tipton had sat in thought, he had turned away with squared shoulders and pushed masterfully through the swing doors. And his bravery was rewarded. The ex-King happened at the moment to be scooping a duke or a marquess or some such person out of an automobile, so did not see him. Feeling a little like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego after their passage through the burning fiery furnace, Bill strode past and set off in the direction of the Brompton Road and its registry office.
    And so it came about that Tipton, flinging wide the door and glancing sharply to right, to left, and in front of him, beheld only emptiness. And it was as if a hand of ice had been placed on his heart.
    He returned to the counter, and the barman slapped down his latest effort before him. But he did not raise it to his lips. A new respect for E. Jimpson Murgatroyd had begun to burgeon within Tipton Plimsoll. No longer could he regard that medical Jeremiah in the old, off-hand, careless way as a talker of applesauce. You might not like E. Jimpson Murgatroyd. His whiskers and depressing outlook on life might jar your sensibilities. But you had to hand it to him in one respect. He knew his stuff.
III
    Bill continued on his way to the Brompton Road. The momentary feeling of exaltation which had come upon him as the result of his defiance of the ex-King of Ruritania had passed, and he was again in the grip of that overmastering desire for a couple of quick ones which had animated him in the lobby of Barribault's. Once more the mere quivering jelly of nerves he had been since he had woken to the realization that this was his wedding day, he panted for these quick ones as the hart pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase.
    And it was as he drew abreast of the Park Hotel, which stands but a stone's throw from the Brompton Road Registry Office, that it came to him that here was his last chance of getting them. Once past the Park Hotel, moving westward, you are in the desert.
    He went in, and sank gratefully on to a stool at the counter. And it was not five minutes later that Tipton Plimsoll, sighting the Park Hotel through the window of his cab, tapped on the glass.
    'Hey!' he said to the driver, and the driver said: 'Hey?'
    'Stop the machinery,' said Tipton. 'I'm getting off.'
    It does not take a swift taxi more than about ten minutes to
go from Barribault's to the Park Hotel, and this one of Tipton's
had been exceptionally swift. But in ten minutes a strong man
can easily rally from a shock and become himself again. As
Tipton stood outside the Park Hotel, he was blushing hotly at the thought that he had left a cocktail untested simply because a face had happened to bob up and pop off again.
    A dozen