Appleby's Answer Read Online Free Page B

ha-ha ! – while the grass grows the steed mustn’t starve. Say five hundred down, and both names on the title-page. How about it?’
    â€˜You appear to be proposing a peculiar variant of what is called vanity publishing.’ Miss Pringle had decided that, after all, Captain Bulkington was harmless. ‘A sort of ghost-writing.’
    â€˜Call it what you like. But it would get a fellow in with that Colloquium crowd – journal and all?’
    As he asked this, the Captain got to his feet, and made a sudden lurch towards Miss Pringle. Her alarm was renewed, and then the thought suddenly occurred to her that she had perhaps been travelling with a drunkard. But Captain Bulkington didn’t smell of drink. And at once she realised that he had simply risen to secure his suitcase, and that his loss of balance had been occasioned merely by the train’s passing over some complicated system of points as it approached Paddington.
    â€˜Venture to give you my card,’ the Captain said. ‘Hope you won’t consider it impertinent. Professional matter, eh? We might fix something up between us yet. Basis, as they say, of mutual advantage. Shall remain great admirer of yours, in any case.’
    Miss Pringle had, of course, no need of Captain Bulkington’s card. His address was engraved on her memory as securely as on any piece of pasteboard, and she could find him if she wanted to – although no contingency could be less probable. But he hadn’t, so far, so much as mentioned his own name, and it would be rather rude simply to reject this valedictory gesture. She wouldn’t, naturally, give him her address, nor would her publisher divulge it to him without permission. So there was no great risk of this eccentric character’s proving a nuisance. Perhaps if she accepted the card with a faintly indicated air of amused indulgence he would take a hint from that. Miss Pringle evinced such an air, or hoped she did, and put the card in her bag.
    â€˜How very charming of you,’ she said in an appropriately conventional tone. ‘I shall remember our interesting talk. And now I must say goodbye.’
    The train had, in fact, come to a halt, and Captain Bulkington was gallantly getting her suitcase down from the rack and pulling back the door of the compartment. Although so curiously deranged, there was no question of his agreeable manners. No doubt he had himself been in what he called the Brigade – which meant the soldiers who looked so splendid when the Colours were trooped, or the Guard was changed at Buckingham Palace. He might even be personally known to the Queen, or at least to the Duke of Edinburgh. Miss Pringle decided to go so far as to shake hands.
    â€˜Share a taxi, perhaps?’ the Captain suggested hopefully. ‘Small economies necessary, these days. All those damned taxes.’
    â€˜Thank you, but I am being met by friends.’ Miss Pringle rather prided herself upon her adroitness with small social lies; she even believed that she could manage quite a big lie at a pinch. ‘In the station hotel,’ she added, by way of obviating any awkwardness on the platform.
    â€˜Then au revoir ,’ Captain Bulkington said easily. ‘Hope you have a jolly dinner. And pick up a tip or two, eh? I’ll be on the lookout for your next.’
    â€˜That will be extremely nice of you.’
    And thus Miss Pringle escaped into the almost open air of Paddington.

 
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3
    â€˜My dear Priscilla, you have made a conquest, I declare!’ Miss Vanderpump spoke with what she would herself have described as a merry tinkle in her voice. She tapped the card her friend had shown her – so vivaciously that her sherry jumped in its glass. ‘A beau – and a military officer!’ Being what is called a romantic novelist, Barbara Vanderpump felt it incumbent upon her to employ a slightly antique vocabulary. ‘And, you say, un vert galant