Joy in the Morning (31 page)

I paused for a moment to listen to the tootling birds. Then I raised the map, and allowed the beaming sun to play on it.

‘Not a thing,’ I assured him.

‘You realize the position? She has returned you to store. No ruddy wedding bells for you.’

‘Quite.’

‘Good. You will be leaving here fairly soon, I take it?’

‘Almost at once.’

‘Good,’ said Stilton, and sprang on his bicycle as if it had been a mettlesome charger.

Nor did I linger. I did the distance from the gate to the kitchen in about three seconds flat. From the window of the bathroom, as I passed, there came the voice of Uncle Percy as he sluiced the frame. He was singing some gay air. A sea chanty, probably, which he had learned from Clam or one of the captains in his employment.

Jeeves was pacing the kitchen floor, deep in thought. He looked round, as I entered, and his manner was apologetic.

‘It appears, sir, I regret to say, that there is no anchovy paste. It was finished yesterday.’

I didn’t actually slap him on the back, but I gave him the dickens of a beaming smile.

‘Never mind the anchovy paste, Jeeves. It will not be required. I’ve just seen Stilton. A reconciliation has taken place between him and Lady Florence, and they are once more headed for the altar rails. So, there being nothing to keep us in Steeple Bumpleigh, let’s go.’

‘Very good, sir. The car is at the door.’

I paused.

‘Oh, but, dash it, we can’t.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’ve just remembered I promised Uncle Percy to go to the Hall with him and help him cope with Aunt Agatha.’

‘Her ladyship is not at the Hall, sir.’

‘What! But you said she was.’

‘Yes, sir. I fear I was guilty of a subterfuge. I regretted the necessity, but it seemed to me essential in the best interests of all concerned.’

I goggled at the man.

‘Egad, Jeeves!’

‘Yes, sir.’

Faintly from the distance there came the sound of Uncle Percy working through his chanty.

‘How would it be,’ I suggested, ‘to zoom off immediately, without waiting to pack?’

‘I was about to suggest such a course myself, sir.’

‘It would enable one to avoid tedious explanations.’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘Then shift ho, Jeeves,’ I said.

It was as we were about half-way between Steeple Bumpleigh and the old metrop, that I mentioned that there was an expression on the tip of my tongue which seemed to me to sum up the nub of the recent proceedings.

‘Or, rather, when I say an expression, I mean a saying. A wheeze. A gag. What, I believe, is called a saw. Something about Joy . . .’

But we went into all that before, didn’t we?

IN ARROW BOOKS

If you have enjoyed Jeeves and Wooster, you’ll love Blanding

Uncle Fred in the Springtime

T
he door of the Drones Club swung open, and a young man in form-fitting tweeds came down the steps and started to walk westwards. An observant passer-by, scanning his face, would have fancied that he discerned on it a keen, tense look, like that of an African hunter stalking a hippopotamus. And he would have been right. Pongo Twistleton – for it was he – was on his way to try to touch Horace Pendlebury-Davenport for two hundred pounds.

To touch Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, if you are coming from the Drones, you go down Hay Hill, through Berkeley Square, along Mount Street and up Park Lane to the new block of luxury flats which they have built where Bloxham House used to be: and it did not take Pongo long to reach journey’s end. It was perhaps ten minutes later that Webster, Horace’s man, opened the door in answer to his ring.

‘What ho, Webster. Mr Davenport in?’

‘No, sir. He has stepped out to take a dancing lesson.’

‘Well, he won’t be long, I suppose, what? I’ll come in, shall I?’

‘Very good, sir. Perhaps you would not mind waiting in the library. The sitting-room is in some little disorder at the moment.’

‘Spring cleaning?’

‘No, sir. Mr Davenport has been entertaining his uncle, the Duke of Dunstable, to luncheon, and over the coffee His Grace broke most of the sitting-room furniture with the poker.’

To say that this information surprised Pongo would be correct. To say that he was astounded, however, would be going too far. His Uncle Alaric’s eccentricities were a favourite theme of conversation with Horace Davenport, and in Pongo he had always found a sympathetic confidant, for Pongo had an eccentric uncle himself. Though hearing Horace speak of his Uncle Alaric and thinking of his own Uncle Fred, he felt like Noah listening to someone making a fuss about a drizzle.

‘What made him do that?’

‘I am inclined to think, sir, that something may have occurred to annoy His Grace.’

This seemed plausible, and in the absence of further data Pongo left it at that. He made his way to the small apartment dignified by the name of library, and wandering to the window stood looking out on Park Lane.

It was a cheerless prospect that met his eyes. Like all English springs, the one which had just come to London seemed totally unable to make up its fat-headed mind whether it was supposed to be that ethereal mildness of which the poet sings or something suitable for ski-ers left over from the winter. A few moments before, the sun had been shining with extraordinary brilliance, but now a sort of young blizzard was raging, and the spectacle had the effect of plunging Pongo into despondency.

Horace was engaged to marry his sister Valerie, but was it conceivable, he asked himself, that any man, even to oblige a future brother-in-law, would cough up the colossal sum of two hundred potatoes? The answer, he felt, was in the negative, and with a mournful sigh he turned away and began to pace the room.

If you pace the library of Number 52 Bloxham Mansions, starting at the window and going straight across country, your outward journey takes you past the writing-table. And as Pongo reached this writing-table, something there attracted his eye. From beneath the blotter the end of a paper was protruding, and on it were written the intriguing words:

(
Private Investigator
)

They brought him up with as round a turn as if he had seen a baronet lying on the floor with an Oriental paper-knife of antique design in his back. An overwhelming desire came upon him to see what all this was about. He was not in the habit of reading other people’s letters, but here was one which a man of the nicest scruples could scarcely be expected to pass up.

The thing was cast in narrative form, being, he found on examination, a sort of saga in which the leading character – a star part, if ever there was one – was somebody referred to as The Subject. From the activities of this individual Claude Pott seemed unable to tear himself away.

The Subject, who appeared to be abroad somewhere, for there was frequent mention of a Casino, was evidently one of those people who live for pleasure alone. You didn’t catch The Subject doing good to the poor or making a thoughtful study of local political conditions. When he – or she – was not entering Casino in comp. of friends (two male, one female) at 11.17 p.m., he – or she, for there was no clue as to whether this was a story with a hero or a heroine – was playing tenn., riding h’s, out on the golf links, lunching with three f’s, driving to Montreuil with one m., or dancing with party consisting of four m’s, ditto f’s, and in this latter case keeping it up into the small hours. Pongo was familiar with the expression ‘living the life of Riley,’ and that it was a life of this nature that The Subject had been leading was manifest in the document’s every sentence.

But what the idea behind the narrative could be he found himself unable to divine. Claude Pott had a nice, crisp style, but his work was marred by the same obscurity which has caused complaint in the case of the poet Browning.

He had begun to read it for the third time, hoping for enlightenment, when the click of a latchkey came to his ears, and as he hastily restored the paper to its place the door opened and there entered a young man of great height but lacking the width of shoulder and ruggedness of limb which make height impressive. Nature, stretching Horace Davenport out, had forgotten to stretch him sideways, and one could have pictured Euclid, had they met, nudging a friend and saying. ‘Don’t look now, but this chap coming along illustrates exactly what I was telling you about a straight line having length without breadth.’

Farthest north of this great expanse there appeared a tortoise-shell-rimmed-spectacled face of so much amiability of expression that Pongo, sighting it, found himself once again hoping for the best.

‘What ho, Horace,’ he said, almost exuberantly.

‘Hullo, Pongo. You here? Has Webster told you about my uncle’s latest?’

‘He did just touch on it. His theory is that the old boy was annoyed about something. Does that seem to fit the facts?’

‘Absolutely. He was annoyed about quite a number of things. In the first place, he was going off to the country to-day and he had been counting on that fellow Baxter, his secretary, to go with him. He always likes to have someone with him on a railway journey.’

‘To dance before him, no doubt, and generally entertain him?’

‘And at the last moment Baxter said he would have to stay on in London to do some work at the British Museum in connection with that Family History Uncle Alaric has been messing about with for years. This made him shirty, for a start. He seemed to think it came under the head of being thwarted.’

‘A touch of thwarting about it, perhaps.’

And before coming to me he had been to see my cousin Ricky, and Ricky had managed to put his back up about something. So he was in dangerous mood when he got here. And we had scarcely sat down to lunch, when up popped a
soufflé
looking like a diseased custard. This did not help to ease the strain. And when we had had our coffee, and the time came for him to catch his train and he told me to go to the station with him and I said I couldn’t, that seemed to touch him off. He reached for the poker and started in.’

‘Why wouldn’t you go to the station with him?’

‘I couldn’t. I was late for my dancing lesson.’

‘I was going to ask you about that. What’s this idea of your suddenly taking dancing lessons?’

‘Valerie insisted on it. She said I danced like a dromedary with the staggers.’

Pongo did not blame his sister. Indeed, in comparing her loved one to a dromedary with the staggers she had been, he thought, rather complimentary.

‘How are you coming along?’

‘I think I’m making progress. Polly assures me so. Polly says I shall be able to go to the Ball to-morrow night. The Bohemian Ball at the Albert Hall. I’m going as a Boy Scout. I want to take Valerie to it and surprise her. Polly thinks I can get by all right.’

‘But isn’t Val at Le Touquet?’

‘She’s flying back to-day.’

‘Oh, I see. Tell me, who is this Polly who has crept into your conversation?’

‘She’s the girl who’s teaching me. I met her through Ricky. She’s a friend of his. Polly Pott. A nice, sympathetic sort of girl I’d always found her, so when this business of staggering dromedaries came up, I asked her if she would give me a few lessons.’

A pang of pity for this heroine shot through Pongo. He himself was reading for the Bar and had sometimes felt like cracking under the strain of it all, but he saw that compared with Polly Pott he was on velvet. Between trying to extract some meaning from the rambling writings of the Messrs. Coke and Littleton and teaching dancing to Horace Davenport there was a substantial difference, and it was the person on whom life had thrust the latter task who must be considered to have drawn the short straw. The trouble was, he reflected, that Horace was so tall. A chap of that length didn’t really get on to what his feet were doing till some minutes after it had happened. What you wanted, of course, was to slice him in half and have two Horaces.

‘Polly Pott, eh? Any relation to Claude Pott, private investigator?’

‘His daughter. What do you know about Claude Pott, private investigator?’

Pongo stirred uneasily. Too late, he saw that he had rather invited the question.

‘Well, the fact is, old man, happening to pass the writing-table just now, and chancing inadvertently to catch sight of that document—’

‘I wish you wouldn’t read my letters.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t. But I could see that this wasn’t a letter. Just a document. So I ran my eye over it. I thought it might possibly be something with reference to which you were going to seek my advice, knowing me to be a bit of a nib in legal matters, and I felt that a lot of time would be saved if I had the
res
at my Wngers’ ends.’

‘And now I suppose you’ll go racing off to Valerie to tell her I had her watched by detectives while she was at Le Touquet.’