P. G. Wodehouse: Uneasy Money

Chapter 13 (continued)

Lady Wetherby finished her letters. She cut them short, for Eustace's insurgence had interfered with her flow of ideas. She went into the drawing-room, where she found Roscoe Sherriff strumming on the piano.

'Eustace has been raising Cain,' she said.

The Press-agent looked up hopefully. He had been wearing a rather preoccupied air.

'How's that?' he asked.

'Throwing eggs and plates in the kitchen.'

The gleam of interest which had come into Roscoe Sherriff's face died out.

'You couldn't get more than a fill-in at the bottom of a column on that,' he said, regretfully. 'I'm a little disappointed in that monk. I hoped he would pan out bigger. Well, I guess we've just got to give him time. I have an idea that he'll set the house on fire or do something with a punch like that one of these days. You mustn't get discouraged. Why, that puma I made Valerie Devenish keep looked like a perfect failure for four whole months. A child could have played with it. Miss Devenish called me up on the phone, I remember, and said she was darned if she was going to spend the rest of her life maintaining an animal that might as well be stuffed for all the liveliness it showed, and that she was going right out to buy a white mouse instead. Fortunately, I talked her round.

'A few weeks later she came round and thanked me with tears in her eyes. The puma had suddenly struck real mid-season form. It clawed the elevator-boy, bit a postman, held up the traffic for miles, and was finally shot by a policeman. Why, for the next few days there was nothing in the papers at all but Miss Devenish and her puma. There was a war on at the time in Mexico or somewhere, and we had it backed off the front page so far that it was over before it could get back. So, you see, there's always hope. I've been nursing the papers with bits about Eustace, so as to be ready for the grand-stand play when it comes--and all we can do is to wait. It's something if he's been throwing eggs. It shows he's waking up.'