Nothing Serious Read Free

self-respect. I will sell you this ticket, Bingo, for the nominal
price of a flyer.”
    A sharp
cry of agony escaped Bingo. He had sufficient capital for the club luncheon at
four-and-sixpence, but no more. Then an idea struck him.
    “Will
you hold it open for a couple of hours?”
    “Certain,”
said Oofy. “I shall be here till a quarter past one. Slip me the money then,
and the ticket is yours.”
    The
idea that had struck Bingo was this. In his bedroom at home there was a set of
diamond cuff links, a present from Mrs Bingo on his last birthday, worth, he
estimated, five pounds of any pawnbroker’s money. What simpler than to secure
these, thrust them up the spout, snaffle the Horace Davenport ticket, get his
hooks on the thirty-three pounds ten, rush back to the pawnbroker’s, de-spout
the links and return to Position One? It would afford a masterly solution of
the whole difficulty.
    The
Bingo residence, being one of those houses off Wimbledon Common, takes a bit of
getting to, but he made good time there and sneaking in unobserved was able to
present himself at the club at ten minutes past one. Oofy was still there. The
five changed hands. And Bingo, who had stuck out for eight pounds ten at the
pawnbroker’s so as to have a bit of spending money, went off to the Savoy grill
to revel. There are moments in a man’s life when the club luncheon at
four-and-sixpence is not enough.
    And he
had just got back to the office after the repast and was about to settle down
to the composition of a thoughtful editorial on What Tiny Hands Can Do For
Nannie, wishing that his own tiny hands could take her by the scruff of the
neck and heave her out on her left ear, when Mrs Bingo rang up to say that, her
mother having had one of her spells at her South Kensington abode, she was
buzzing along there and would not be able to get home to-night.
    Bingo
said he would miss her sorely, and Mrs Bingo said she knew he would, and Bingo
was preparing to toodle-oo and ring off, when Mrs Bingo uttered a sudden yip.
    “Oh,
Bingo, I knew there was something else. All this excitement about Mother put
it out of my head. Your diamond links have been stolen!”
    It was
a pure illusion, of course, but Bingo tells me that as he heard these words it
seemed to him that P. P. Purkiss, who was visible through the doorway of the
inner office, suddenly started doing an Ouled Nail Stomach dance. His heart
leaped sharply and became entangled with his tonsils. It was a matter of some
moments before he was able to disengage it and reply.
    “My
links? Stolen? Absurd!”
    “Well,
Nannie says she was tidying your room just now and couldn’t find them anywhere.”
    Bingo
was himself again.
    “Nannie
Byles,” he said sternly, “is temperamentally incapable of finding a brass drum
in a telephone booth. You are familiar with my views on that gibbering old
fathead. Don’t listen to a word she says.”
    “Then you
wouldn’t advise sending for the police?”
    “Certainly
not. The police are busy men. It is not fair to waste their time.”
    “Nannie
says they would go round and make enquiries at all the pawnshops.”
    “Exactly.
And while they were doing it, what would happen? About fifty murders would be
taking place and not a rozzer on duty to attend to them. One wishes sometimes
that these Nannies had the rudiments of a civic conscience. Don’t you worry
about those links. I can tell you just where they are. They are… no, I’ve
forgotten. But it’ll come back. Well, pip-pip, light of my life,” said Bingo,
and rang off.
    His
first act on replacing the receiver was, you will scarcely be surprised to
learn, to grab his hat and nip round to the Drones for a quick one; for despite
the intrepid front he had put up the news that the A.W.O.L.ness of those links
had been discovered had shaken him to his foundations, and he was feeling a
little like some Eliza who, crossing the ice, heard the baying of the pursuing
bloodhounds.
    But
with the first sip of the