‘Yes, I do. He has an alibi.’
‘Well, you perfect chump,’ cried Nobby, ‘don’t you know that that dishes him? Haven’t you ever read any detective stories? Ask Lord Peter Wimsey what an alibi amounts to.’
‘Or Monsieur Poirot,’ I suggested.
‘Yes. Or Reggie Fortune, or Inspector French, or Nero Wolfe. I can’t understand a man of your intelligence falling for that alibi stuff.’
‘Incredible,’ I said. ‘The oldest trick in the game.’
‘Trot along and bust it, is my advice, Stilton,’ said Boko.
One might have expected a cop to wilt beneath all this, but it speedily became plain that the Cheesewrights were made of sterner stuff.
‘If you want to know why I accept young Edwin’s alibi,’ said Stilton, allowing his eyes to bulge a bit farther from the parent sockets, ‘it’s because it’s supported by the vicar, the vicar’s wife, the curate, the curate’s sister, the doctor, the doctor’s aunt, a scoutmaster, fifteen assorted tradesmen and forty-seven Boy Scouts. It appears that the doctor was giving a lecture on First Aid in the village hall yesterday evening, and Edwin was the chap who went on the platform and was illustrated on. At the moment when my uniform was pinched, he was lying on a table, swathed in bandages, showing what you have to do to a bloke with a fractured thigh bone.’
This, I admit, spiked our guns to no little extent. Nobby did say that it might have been an accomplice cunningly disguised to look like Edwin, but you could see that it was simply a suggestion.
‘Yes,’ said Boko, at length, ‘that does seem to let Edwin out. But I still don’t see where you get this extraordinary idea that Bertie is the culprit.’
‘I’ll tell you that, too,’ said Stilton, plainly resolved to keep nothing from us. ‘Edwin, questioned, had an amazing story to relate. He stated that, going to accused’s bedroom later in the evening to put a hedgehog in his bed—’
‘Ha!’ I exclaimed, and gave Boko a penitent look, remorseful that even in thought I should have wronged my kind host.
‘– he saw the uniform there. And I met a chap this morning who had been an extra waiter at the fancy dress ball at East Wibley last night, and he informs me that there was a loathsome-looking object taking part in the festivities, dressed in a policeman’s uniform six sizes too large for him. I am ready to step along, Wooster, if you are.’
It seemed to me a fair cop, as I believe the expression is, and I saw nothing to be gained by postponing the inevitable. I rose, and wiped the lips with the napkin, like a French aristocrat informed that the tumbrel is at the door.
Boko’s hat, however, was still in the ring.
‘Just a minute, Stilton,’ he said. ‘Not so fast, officer. Have you a warrant?’
The question seemed to discompose Stilton.
‘Why, I . . . Er, no.’
‘Must have a warrant,’ said Boko. ‘You can’t make a summary arrest on a serious charge like this.’
The momentary weakness passed. Stilton was himself again.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said stoutly. ‘I think you’re talking through your hat. Still, I’ll go to the station and ask the sergeant.’
He vanished, and Boko became brisk and efficient.
‘You’ll have to leg it, Bertie,’ he said, ‘and without a second’s delay. Get your car, drive to London and go abroad. They won’t be watching the ports yet. Better look in on the Cohen Bros.
en route
and buy a false moustache.’
It isn’t often that I would care to allow this borderline case’s counsel to rule my actions, but on this occasion it seemed to me that his advice was good. I had been thinking along the same lines myself. Oh, as a matter of fact, I had just been saying to myself at that very moment, for the wings of a dove. Briefly requesting him to get hold of Jeeves and tell him to follow with the personal effects, I streaked for the garage.
And I was just about to fling wide the gates, when there suddenly came from the other side of the door the sound of a hoarse voice, and I paused, astounded. Unless the ears had deceived me, there was a human soul inside the edifice.
It spoke again, and what enabled me to get abreast and identify the thorax from which it proceeded was the fact that one caught the name ‘Fittleworth’, preceded by a number of qualifying adjectives of a rugged and rather Elizabethan nature. In a flash, I got the whole set-up.
Driving away from the East Wibley Town Hall at the conclusion of the recent festivities, Boko must inadvertently have taken Uncle Percy with him. He had sped homewards with a song on his lips, and all unknown to him, overlooked while getting a spot of tired Nature’s sweet restorer in the back of the car, the old relative had come along for the ride.
CHAPTER 28
I
drew in the breath with a startled whoosh, and for some moments stood rooted to the s., the brow furrowed, the eyes bulging. To say that this thing had come upon me like a sock behind the ear from a stuffed eelskin would be in no wise to overstate the facts. As I stood there with my ear against the door, listening to what was filtering through the woodwork, it is not too much to say that melancholy marked me for its own.
Consider the posish, I mean. The one thing that was of the essence was that Boko should keep this man a thing of sweetness and light, and it was absurd to suppose that this could be done by locking him up all night in garages in the costume of Sindbad the Sailor. A man of generous spirit, like Uncle Percy, inevitably chafes at such treatment.
He was chafing now. I could hear him. The tone of his observations left no room for misunderstanding. They were not the obiter dicta of one who, when released, would laugh heartily at the amusing little misunderstanding, but rather of a man whose earnest endeavour it would be to skin the person responsible for his incarceration.
Indeed, it was upon this very point that he had now begun to touch. And not only was he resolved to skin Boko. He stressed in unmistakable terms his intention of doing it lingeringly and with a blunt knife. In short, it was abundantly clear that, however beautiful might have been the friendship which had been started overnight between his host and himself, it had now taken a bad toss and definitely come unstuck.
I found myself frankly unable to cope with the situation. It was one of those which seemed to call imperiously for a word or two of advice from Jeeves. And I was just regretting that he was not there, when a gentle cough in my rear told me that he was. It was as if some sort of telepathy, if that’s the word I want, had warned him that the young master had lost his grip and could do with twopennyworth of feudal assistance.
‘Jeeves!’ I cried, and clutched him by the coat sleeve, like a lost child hooking on to its mother. When I had finished pouring my tale into his receptive ear, it was plain that he had not failed to grasp the nub.
‘Most disturbing, sir,’ he said.
‘Most,’ I responded.
I refrained from wounding him with any word of censure and rebuke, but I could not but feel, as I have so frequently felt before, that a spot of leaping about and eyeball-rolling would have been more in keeping with the gravity of the situation. If Jeeves has a fault, as I think I have already mentioned, it is that he is too prone merely to tut at times when you would prefer to see his knotted and combined locks do a bit of parting.
‘His lordship, you gather, sir, is incensed?’
I could answer that one.
‘Yes, Jeeves. His remarks, as far as I was able to catch them, were unquestionably those of a man a good deal steamed up. What is the Death of the Thousand Cuts?’
‘It is a penal sentence in vogue in Chinese police courts for minor offences. Roughly equivalent to our fourteen days with the option of a fine. Why do you ask, sir?’
‘Uncle Percy happened to mention it in passing. It’s one of the things he is planning to do to Boko when they get together. Good Lord, Jeeves!’ I exclaimed.
‘Sir?’
The reason I had exclaimed as above was that this mention of police courts and penal sentences had suddenly reminded me of my own position. For abrief space, the mind, occupied with this business of uncles in garages, had slid away from the fact that I was a fugitive from a chain gang.
‘You haven’t heard the latest. Stilton. He has found out about that uniform and has gone off to get warrants and things.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. Young Edwin, creeping into my room last night in order to insinuate a hedgehog into my bed, saw the thing lying there, and went and squealed to Stilton, the degraded little copper’s nark. Only by making an immediate getaway can I hope to escape undergoing the utmost rigours of the Law. You see the frightful dilemma I’m on the horns of. My car’s in the garage. To get it, I shall have to open the door. And opening the door involves having Uncle Percy come popping out like a cork out of a bottle.’
‘You shrink from an encounter with his lordship, sir?’
‘Yes, Jeeves. I shrink from an encounter with his lordship. Oh, I know what you are going to say. You are about to point out that it was Boko who lodged him in the coop, not me.’
‘Precisely, sir. You are armed so strong in honesty that his lordship’s displeasure will pass by you as the idle wind, which you respect not.’
‘I dare say. But have you ever removed a wounded puma from a trap?’
‘No, sir. I have not had that experience.’
‘Well, anyone will tell you that on such occasions the animal does not pause to pick and choose. It just goes baldheaded for the nearest innocent bystander in sight.’
‘I appreciate your point, sir. It might be better if you were to return to the house and allow me to extricate his lordship.’
His nobility stunned me.
‘Would you, Jeeves?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘Pretty white of you.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
‘You could turn the key, shout “All clear,” and then run like a rabbit.’
‘I would prefer to linger on the scene, sir, in the hope of doing something to smooth his lordship’s wounded feelings.’
‘With honeyed words, you mean?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
I drew a deep breath.
‘You wouldn’t consider at least climbing a tree?’
‘No, sir.’
I drew another one.
‘Well, all right, if you say so. You know best. Carry on, then, Jeeves.’
‘Very good, sir. I will bring your car to the front door, so that you will be enabled to make an immediate start. I will follow later in the day with the suitcases.’
It was some slight consolation to me in this dark hour to reflect, as I tooled back to the house, that the news I was bearing would, if he were still eating sardines, cause those sardines to turn to ashes in Boko’s mouth. I am not a vindictive man, but I was feeling in no amiable frame of mind towards this literary screwball. I mean, it’s all very well for a chap to plead that he’s an author and expect on the strength of that to get away with conduct which would qualify the ordinary man for a one-way ticket to Colney Hatch, but even an author, I felt – and I think with justice – ought to have had the sense to glance through his car before he locked it up for the night, to make sure there weren’t any shipping magnates dozing in the back seat.
As it happened, he was past the sardines phase. He was lolling in his chair in quiet enjoyment of the after-breakfast pipe, while Nobby, at his side, did the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. At the sight of Bertram, both expressed surprise.
‘Why, hullo!’ said Nobby.
‘Haven’t you gone yet?’ said Boko.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied, and laughed a hard, mirthless one.
It caused Boko to frown disapprovingly.
‘What’s the idea of coming here and trilling with laughter?’ he asked austerely. ‘You must try to get it into your head, my lad, that this is not the time for that sort of thing. Don’t you realize your position? Unless you’re across the Channel by nightfall, you haven’t a hope. Where’s your car?’
‘In the garage.’
‘Then get it out of the garage.’
‘I can’t,’ I said, letting him have it right in the gizzard. ‘Uncle Percy’s there.’
And in a few crisp words I slipped him the lowdown.
I had anticipated that my statement would get in amongst him a bit, and this expectation was fulfilled. Man and boy, I have seen a good many lower jaws fall, but never one that shot down with such a sudden swoop as his. It was surprising that the thing didn’t come off its hinges.
‘But how was he in my car? He can’t have been in my car. Why didn’t I notice him?’
This, of course, was susceptible of a ready explanation.
‘Because you’re a fathead.’
Nobby, who since the initial spilling of the beans had been sitting bolt upright in her chair with gleaming eyes, making little gulping noises and chewing the lower lip with pearly teeth, endorsed this.
‘Fathead,’ she concurred, speaking in a strange, strangled voice, ‘is right. Of all—’
Preoccupied though Boko was, there must have penetrated to his consciousness some inkling of what the harvest would be, were she permitted to get going and really start hauling up her slacks. He strove to head her off with a tortured gesture.
‘Just a minute, darling.’
‘Of all the—’
Yes, yes.’
‘Of all the gibbering—’
‘Quite, quite. But half a second, angel. Bertie and I are threshing out an important point. Let me just try to envisage what happened after you left last night, Bertie. Here is the sequence, as I recall it. I had my talk with old Worplesdon, and, as I told you, secured a guardian’s blessing: and then – yes, then I went back to the ballroom to tread the measure for a while.’
‘Of all the gibbering, half-witted—’
‘Exactly, exactly. But don’t interrupt the flow of my thoughts, precious. I’m trying to get this thing straight. I danced a saraband or two, and then looked in at the bar for a moment. I wanted to get a snootful and muse over my happiness. And I was doing this, when it suddenly occurred to me that Nobby was probably tossing sleeplessly on her pillow, dying to hear how everything had come out, and I felt that I must get home immediately and go and bung gravel at her window. I raced back to the car, accordingly, sprang to the wheel and drove off. I see now why I didn’t notice old Worplesdon. Obviously, the man by that time had passed out and was lying on the floor. Well, dash it, a chap in my frame of mind, all joy and ecstasy and excitement, with his soul full to the brim of tender thoughts of the girl he loved, couldn’t be expected to go over the floor of his car with a magnifying-glass, on the chance that there might be Worplesdons there. Naturally, not observing him, I assumed that he had gone off on his push bike. Would you have had me borrow a couple of bloodhounds and search the
tonneau
from end to end? I’m sure you understand everything now, darling, and will be the first to withdraw the adjective “gibbering”. Oh, I am not angry,’ said Boko, ‘in fact, not even surprised that in the heat of the moment you should have spoken as you did. Just so long as you realize that I am innocent, blameless . . .’