The Jeeves Omnibus (127 page)

IN THE BRIEF
interval which elapsed before Boko sighted us and came to join our little circle, I fell to musing on this Clam and thinking how different he must be feeling all this from what he had been accustomed to.

Here, I mean to say, was one of those solid businessmen who are America’s pride, whose lives are as regular and placid as that of a bug in a rug. On my visits to New York I had met dozens of them, so I could envisage without difficulty a typical Clam day.

Up in the morning bright and early in his Long Island home. The bath. The shave. The eggs. The cereal. The coffee. The drive to the station. The 8.15. The cigar. The
New York Times
. The arrival at the Pennsylvania terminus. The morning’s work. The lunch. The afternoon’s work. The cocktail. The 5.50. The drive from the station. The return home. The kiss for the wife and tots, the pat for the welcoming dog. The shower. The change into something loose. The well-earned dinner. The quiet evening. Bed.

That was the year in, year out routine of a man like Chichester Clam, Sundays and holidays excepted, and it was one ill calculated to fit him for the raw excitements and jungle conditions of Steeple Bumpleigh. Steeple Bumpleigh must have come upon him as a totally new experience, causing him to wonder what had hit him – like a man who, stooping to pluck a nosegay of wild flowers on a railway line, is unexpectedly struck in the small of the back by the Cornish Express. As he now sat in the potting shed, listening to Boko’s view halloos, he was probably convinced that all this must be that Collapse of Civilization, of which he had no doubt so often spoken at the Union League Club.

In spite of the floor of heaven being thick inlaid with patines of bright gold, it was, as I have said, a darkish night, not easy to see things in. The visibility was, however, quite good enough to enable one to perceive that Boko was pretty pleased with himself. Indeed, it would not be overstating it to say that he had got it right up his nose. That this was so was borne in upon me by the fact that he started
right
away calling Uncle Percy ‘my dear Worplesdon’ – a thing which in his calmer moments he wouldn’t have done on a bet.

‘Ah, my dear Worplesdon,’ he said, having peered into the relative’s face and identified him, ‘so you’re up and about, are you? Capital, capital. Stilton, too? And Jeeves? And Bertie? Fine. Between the five of us, we ought to be well able to overpower the miscreant. I don’t know if you were listening to what I was saying just now, but I’ve locked a burglar up in the potting shed.’

He spoke these words with the air of a man getting ready to receive the thanks of the nation, tapping Uncle Percy’s chest the while as if to suggest that the latter was a lucky chap to have Boko Fittleworths working day and night in his interests. It did not surprise me to observe the relative’s growing restiveness under the treatment.

‘Will you stop prodding me, sir!’ he cried, plainly stirred. ‘What’s all this nonsense about burglars?’

Boko seemed taken aback. One could see that he was feeling that this was not quite the tone.

‘Nonsense, Worplesdon?’

‘How do you know the fellow’s a burglar?’

‘My dear Worplesdon! Would anybody but a burglar be lurking in potting sheds at this time of night? But, if you still need convincing, let me tell you that I was passing the scullery window just now, and I noticed that it was covered with a piece of brown paper.’

‘Brown paper?’

‘Brown paper. Pretty sinister, eh?’

‘Why?’

‘My dear Worplesdon, it proves to the hilt the man’s criminal intentions. You were possibly not aware of it, but when these fellows plan to enter a house and snaffle contents, they always stick a bit of brown paper on a window with treacle and then smash it with a blow of the fist. It’s the regular procedure. The fragments of glass adhere to the paper, and they were thus enabled to climb in without mincing themselves to hash. Oh, no, my dear Worplesdon, there can be no doubt concerning the scoundrel’s guilty purpose. I bottled him up in the nick of time. I heard something moving in the potting shed, peeped in, saw a dark form, and slammed the door and fastened it, thus laying him a dead stymie and foiling all his plans.’

This statement drew a word of professional approbation from the sleepless guardian of the law.

‘Good work, Boko.’

‘Thanks, Stilton.’

‘You showed great presence of mind.’

‘Nice of you to say so.’

‘I’ll go and pinch him.’

‘Just what I was about to suggest.’

‘Has he a gun?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll soon find out.’

‘I don’t care if he has.’

‘The right spirit.’

‘I shall just make a quick spring –’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘– and disarm him.’

‘We will hope so. We will certainly hope so. Yes, let us hope for the best. Still, whatever happens, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done your duty.’

Throughout these exchanges, starting at the words ‘Good work’ and continuing right through to the tab line ‘done your duty’, Uncle Percy had been exhibiting much of the frank perturbation of a cat on hot bricks. Nor could one blame him. He had invited J. Chichester Clam for a quiet talk in the potting shed, and the thought of constables making quick springs at him must have been a very bitter one. You can’t conduct delicate business negotiations with that sort of thing going on. In his agony of spirit, he now began saying ‘What?’ again, leading Boko to apply that patronizing finger to his brisket once more.

‘It’s quite all right, my dear Worplesdon,’ said Boko, tapping like a woodpecker. ‘Have no concern about Stilton. He won’t get hurt. At least, I don’t think so. One may be wrong, of course. Anyway, he is paid to take these risks. Ah, Florence,’ he added, addressing the daughter of the house, who had just come alongside in a dressing-gown, with her hair in curling pins.

It was plain that Florence was not her usual calm and equable self. When she spoke, one noted a testiness.

‘Never mind the “Ah, Florence”. What is going on out here? What is all this noise and disturbance? I was woken up by someone shouting.’

‘Me,’ said Boko, and even in the uncertain light I could see that he was smirking. I doubt if in all Hampshire that night you could have found a fellow more thoroughly satisfied with himself. He had got it firmly rooted in his mind that he was the popular hero, beloved of all – little knowing that Uncle Percy’s favourite reading would have been his name on a tombstone. Rather saddening, the whole thing.

‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t. It is perfectly impossible to sleep, with people romping all over the garden.’

‘Romping? I was catching a burglar.’

‘Catching a burglar?’

‘You never spoke a truer word. A great desperate brute of a midnight marauder, who may or may not be armed to the teeth. That question we shall be able to answer better after Stilton has got together with him.’

‘But how did you catch a burglar?’

‘Oh, it’s just a knack.’

‘I mean, what were you doing here at this time of night?’

It was as if Uncle Percy had been waiting for someone to come along and throw him just that cue.

‘Exactly,’ he cried, having snorted the snort of a lifetime. ‘The very thing I want to know. The precise question I was about to ask myself. What the devil are you doing here? I am not aware that I invited you to infest my private grounds and go charging about them like a buffalo, making an appalling din and rendering peace and quiet impossible. You have a garden of your own, I believe? If you must behave like a buffalo, kindly go and do so there. And the idea of locking people in my potting shed! I never heard of anything so officious in my life.’

‘Officious?’

‘Yes, damned officious.’

Boko was patently stunned. One sensed that thoughts about birds biting the hand that fed them were racing through his mind. He stuttered a while before speaking.

‘Well!’ he said, as length, having ceased to imitate a motor bicycle. ‘Well, I’m dashed! Well, I must say! Well, I’m blowed! Officious, eh? That is the attitude you take, is it? Ha! One desires no thanks, of course, for these little good turns one does people – at some slight inconvenience to oneself, one might perhaps mention – but I should have thought that in the circumstances one was entitled to expect at least decent civility. Jeeves!’

‘Sir?’

‘What did Shakespeare say about ingratitude?’

‘“Blow, blow, thou winter wind”, sir, “thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude”. He also alludes to the quality as “thou marble-hearted fiend”.’

‘And he wasn’t so dashed far wrong! I brood over his house like a guardian angel, sacrificing my sleep and leisure to its interests. I sweat myself to the bone, catching burglars –’

Uncle Percy turned in again.

‘Burglars, indeed! All silly nonsense. The man is probably some
harmless
wayfarer, who had taken refuge in my potting shed from the storm –’

‘What storm?’

‘Never mind what storm.’

‘There isn’t a storm.’

‘All right, all right!’

‘It’s a lovely night. No suggestion of a storm.’

‘All right, all
right
! We aren’t talking about the weather. We’re talking about this poor waif in my potting shed. I say he is probably just some harmless wayfarer, and I refuse to persecute the unfortunate fellow. What harm has he done? All the riff-raff for miles around have been using my garden as if it were their own, so why shouldn’t he? This is Liberty Hall, damn it – or seems to be.’

‘So you don’t think he’s a burglar?’

‘No, I do not.’

‘Worplesdon, you’re a silly ass. How about the brown paper? What price the treacle?’

‘Damn the treacle. Curse the brown paper. And how dare you call me a silly ass? Jeeves!’

‘M’lord?’

‘Here’s ten shillings. Go and give it to the poor chap and let him go. Tell him to buy himself a warm bed and supper.’

‘Very good, m’lord.’

Boko uttered a sharp, yapping sound, like a displeased hyena.

‘And, Jeeves!’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘When he’s got the warm bed, better tuck him up and see that he has a hot water bottle.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Ten shillings, eh? Supper, egad? Warm bed, forsooth? Well, this lets me out,’ said Boko. ‘I wash my hands of the whole affair. This is the last occasion on which you may expect my help when you have burglars in this loony bin. Next time they come flocking round, I shall pat them on the back and hold the ladder for them.’

He strode off into the darkness, full to the brim of dudgeon, and I can’t say I was much surprised. The way things had panned out had been enough to induce dudgeon in the mildest of men, let alone a temperamental young author, accustomed to calling on his publishers and raising hell at the smallest provocation.

But though seeing his viewpoint, I mourned. In fact, I would go further, I groaned in spirit. The tender Wooster heart had been deeply touched by the non-smooth running of the course of the
Boko-Nobby
true love, and I had hoped that tonight’s rannygazoo would have culminated in a thorough sweetening of Uncle Percy and a consequent straightening out of the tangle.

Instead of which, this impulsive scrivener had gone and deposited himself lower down among the wines and spirits than ever. If the betting against his scooping in a guardian’s consent had been about four to one up to this point, it could scarcely be estimated now at anything shorter than a hundred to eight – and even at that generous price I doubt if the punters would have invested.

I was just wondering whether it would be any use my putting in a soothing word, and feeling on the whole perhaps not, when there came to my ears a low whistle, which may or may not have been the note of the lesser screech owl, and I observed something indistinct but apparently feminine bobbing about behind a distant tree. Everything seeming to point to this being Nobby, I detached myself from the main body and oiled off in her direction.

My surmise was correct. It was Nobby, in a dressing-gown but not curling pins. Apparently, with her style of hair you don’t use them. She was fizzing with excitement and the desire to learn the latest hot news.

‘I didn’t like to join the party,’ she said, after the preliminary what-hoes had been exchanged. ‘Uncle Percy would have sent me to bed. How’s it coming along, Bertie?’

It wrenched the heart-strings to have to ladle out bad tidings to the eager young prune, but the painful task could not be avoided.

‘Not too well,’ I replied sombrely.

As I had foreseen, the statement got right in amongst her. She uttered a stricken yowl.

‘Not too well?’

‘No.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘It would be better to ask what went right. The enterprise was a flop from start to finish.’

She sharp-exclamationed, and I saw that she was giving me one of those unpleasant, suspicious looks.

‘I suppose you fell down on your end of the thing?’

‘Nothing of the kind. I did all that man could have done. But there was one of those unfortunate concatenations of circumstances, which led to what we had anticipated would be a nice little night’s work for the two of us becoming a mob scene. We were just getting on with it most satisfactorily, when the gardens and messuages became a seething mass of Uncle Percies, Jeeveses, Stiltons, Florences and
what
not. It dished our aims completely. And I am sorry to say that Boko did not show himself at his best.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He would keep calling Uncle Percy “my dear Worplesdon”. You can’t address a man like that as “my dear Worplesdon” for long without something cracking under the strain. Heated words ensued, quite a few being contributed by Boko. The scene, a most painful one, concluded with him calling Uncle Percy a silly ass, and turning on his heel and stalking off. I fear his standing with the above has hit a new low.’

She moaned softly, and I considered for a moment the idea of patting her head. Not much use, though, I felt on consideration, and gave it a miss.

‘I did think I could have trusted Boko not to make an ass of himself just for once,’ she murmured with a wild regret.