Berry And Co. by Dornford Yates Page A

accepted with protests of gratitude. “You did better than you know,” I added.
    “May I ask,” said Berry unsteadily, “if this gentleman and you are in collusion?”
    “We were,” said I. “At least, I instructed him to purchase some furniture for me. Unfortunately we were outbid. But it’s of no consequence.”
    Berry raised his eyes to heaven and groaned.
    “Subtraction,” he said, “is not my strongest point, but I make it eighty pounds. Is that right?”
    I nodded, and he turned to Miss Childe.
    “That viper,” he said, “has stung the fool who feeds him to the tune of eighty pounds. Shall I faint here or by the hat-stand? Let’s be clear about it. The moment I enter the swoon—”
    “Still, as long as it’s in the family–” began Jill.
    “Exactly,” said I. “The main thing is, we’ve got it. And when you’ve heard my tale—”
    “Eighty paper pounds,” said Berry. “Can you beat it?”
    “That’d only be about thirty-five before the War,” said Miss Childe in a shaking voice.
    “Yes,” said I. “Look at it that way. And what’s thirty-five? A bagatelle, brother, a bagatelle. Now, if we were in Russia—”
    “Yes,” said Berry grimly, “and if we were in Patagonia, I suppose I should be up on the deal. You can cut that bit.”
    Miss Childe and Jill dissolved into peals of merriment.
    “That’s right,” said Berry. “Deride the destitute. Mock at bereavement. As for you,” he added, turning to Jill, “your visit to the Zoo is indefinitely postponed. Other children shall feel sick in the monkey-house and be taken to smell the bears. But you, never.” He turned to Miss Childe and laid a hand on her arm. “Shut your eyes, my dear, and repeat one of Alfred Austin’s odes. This place is full of the ungodly.”
     
    My determination to carry the tallboy chest to London in the Rolls met with stern opposition, but in the end I prevailed, and at six o’clock that evening it was safely housed in Mayfair.
    To do him justice, Berry’s annoyance was considerably tempered by the strange story which I unfolded during a belated tea.
    The house and park which I had seen we were unable to identify, and the Post Office Guide was silent as to the whereabouts of Colt. But the excitement which Daphne’s production of a tape-measure aroused was only exceeded by the depression which was created by our failure to discover anything unusual about the chest.
    We measured the cornice and we measured the plinth. We measured the frame and we measured the drawers. But if the linear measurements afforded us little satisfaction, the square measurements revealed considerably less, while, since no one of us was a mathematician, the calculation of the cubic capacity proved, not only unprofitable, but provocative of such bitter arguments and insulting remarks that Daphne demanded that we should desist.
    “All right,” said Berry, “if you don’t believe me, call in a consulting engineer. I’ve worked the blinking thing out three times. I admit the answers were entirely different, but that’s not my fault. I never did like astrology. I tell you the beastly chest holds twenty-seven thousand point nine double eight recurring cubic inches of air. Some other fool can reduce that to rods, and there you are. I’m fed up with it. Thanks to the machinations of that congenital idiot with the imitation mustachios, I’ve paid more than four times its value, and I’m not going to burst my brains trying to work out which drawer would have had a false bottom if it had been built by a dipsomaniac who kept fowls. And that’s that.”
    Tearfully Miss Childe announced that it was time for her to be going, and I elected to escort her as far as the garage. As we stepped on to the pavement—
    “I know a lot more about you than you think,” said I. “I never told you all half what I dreamed.”
    “What do you know?”
    “Oh, nothing momentous. Just the more intimate details of your everyday life. Your partiality