Free Money for Nothing by P. G. Wodehouse

and tooting of horns, which, though it sounded like something out of the repertoire of the Collegiate Buddies, was in reality the noise of the traffic in Regent Street.
    'All quiet along the Potomac,' said Miss Molloy with satisfaction. 'Now,' she added briskly, 'if you'll just fetch one of those ash-cans and put it alongside that wall and give me a leg-up and help me round that chimney and across that roof and down into the next yard and over another wall or two, I think everything will be more or less jake.'
V
    John sat in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in Curzon Street. A lifetime of activity and dizzy hustle had passed, but it had all been crammed into just under twenty minutes: and, after seeing his fair companion off in a taxi cab, he had made his way to the Lincoln, to ascertain from a sleepy night-porter that Miss Wyvern had not yet returned. He was now awaiting her coming.
    She came some little while later, escorted by Hugo. It was a fair summer night, warm and still, but with her arrival a keen east wind seemed to pervade the lobby. Pat was looking pale and proud, and Hugo's usually effervescent demeanour had become toned down to a sort of mellow sadness. He had the appearance of a man who has recently been properly ticked off by a woman for Taking Me to Places Like That.
    'Oh, hullo, John,' he murmured in a low, bedside voice. He brightened a little, as a man will who, after a bad quarter of an hour with an emotional girl, sees somebody who may possibly furnish an alternative target for her wrath. 'Where did you get to? Left early to avoid the rush?'
    'It was this way . . .' began John. But Pat had turned to the desk, and was asking the porter for her key. If a female martyr in the rougher days of the Roman Empire had had occasion to ask for a key, she would have done it in just the voice which Pat employed. It was not a loud voice, nor an angry one – just the crushed, tortured voice of a girl who has lost her faith in the essential goodness of humanity.
    'You see . . .' said John.
    'Are there any letters for me?' asked Pat.
    'No, no letters,' said the night-porter: and the unhappy girl gave a little sigh, as if that was just what might be expected in a world where men who had known you all your life took you to Places which they ought to have Seen from the start were just Drinking-Hells, while other men, who also had known you all your life, and, what was more, professed to love you, skipped through doors in the company of flashy women and left you to be treated by the police as if you were a common criminal.
    'What happened,' said John, 'was this . . .'
    'Good night,' said Pat.
    She followed the porter to the lift, and Hugo, producing a handkerchief, dabbed it lightly over his forehead.
    'Dirty weather, shipmate!' said Hugo. 'A very deep depression off the coast of Iceland, laddie.'
    He placed a restraining hand on John's arm, as the latter made a movement to follow the Snow Queen.
    'No good, John,' he said gravely. 'No good, old man, not the slightest. Don't waste your time trying to explain tonight. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and not many like a girl who's just had to give her name and address in a raided nightclub to a plain-clothes cop who asked her to repeat it twice and then didn't seem to believe her.'
    'But I want to tell her why . . .'
    'Never tell them why. It's no use. Let us talk of pleasanter things. John, I have brought off the coup of a lifetime. Not that it was my idea. It was Ronnie Fish who suggested it. There's a fellow with a brain, John. There's a lad who busts the seams of any hat that isn't a number eight.'
    'What are you talking about?'
    'I'm talking about this amazingly intelligent idea of old Ronnie's. It's absolutely necessary that by some means Uncle Lester shall be persuaded to cough up five hundred quid of my capital to enable me to go into a venture second in solidity only to the Mint. The one person who can talk him into it is Ronnie. So Ronnie's coming to