The Jeeves Omnibus (145 page)

He seemed a bit doubtful; but he staggered. I shoved the parcel into a drawer, locked it, trousered the key, and felt better. I might be a chump, but, dash it, I could out-general a mere kid with a face like a ferret. I went downstairs again. Just as I was passing the smoking-room door out curveted Edwin. It seemed to me that if he wanted to do a real act of kindness he would commit suicide.

‘I’m snipping them,’ he said.

‘Snip on! Snip on!’

‘Do you like them snipped much, or only a bit?’

‘Medium.’

‘All right. I’ll be getting on, then.’

‘I should.’

And we parted.

Fellows who know all about that sort of thing – detectives, and so on – will tell you that the most difficult thing in the world is to get rid of the body. I remember, as a kid, having to learn by heart a poem about a bird by the name of Eugene Aram, who had the deuce of a job in this respect. All I can recall of the actual poetry is the bit that goes:

Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tumty-tum,

I slew him, tum-tum tum!

But I recollect that the poor blighter spent much of his valuable time dumping the corpse into ponds and burying it, and what not, only to have it pop out at him again. It was about an hour after I had shoved the parcel into the drawer when I realized that I had let myself in for just the same sort of thing.

Florence had talked in an airy sort of way about destroying the manuscript; but when one came down to it, how the deuce can a chap destroy a great chunky mass of paper in somebody else’s house in the middle of summer? I couldn’t ask to have a fire in my bedroom, with the thermometer in the eighties. And if I didn’t burn the thing, how else could I get rid of it? Fellows on the battlefield eat dispatches to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy, but it would have taken me a year to eat Uncle Willoughby’s Recollections.

I’m bound to say the problem absolutely baffled me. The only thing seemed to be to leave the parcel in the drawer and hope for the best.

I don’t know whether you have ever experienced it, but it’s a dashed unpleasant thing having a crime on one’s conscience. Towards the end of the day the mere sight of the drawer began to depress me. I found myself getting all on edge; and once when Uncle Willoughby trickled silently into the smoking-room when I was alone there and spoke to me before I knew he was there, I broke the record for the sitting high jump.

I was wondering all the time when Uncle Willoughby would sit up and take notice. I didn’t think he would have time to suspect that anything had gone wrong till Saturday morning, when he would be expecting, of course, to get the acknowledgement of the manuscript
from
the publishers. But early on Friday evening he came out of the library as I was passing and asked me to step in. He was looking considerably rattled.

‘Bertie,’ he said – he always spoke in a precise sort of pompous kind of way – ‘an exceedingly disturbing thing has happened. As you know, I dispatched the manuscript of my book to Messrs Riggs and Ballinger, the publishers, yesterday afternoon. It should have reached them by the first post this morning. Why I should have been uneasy I cannot say, but my mind was not altogether at rest respecting the safety of the parcel. I therefore telephoned to Messrs Riggs and Ballinger a few moments back to make inquiries. To my consternation they informed me that they were not yet in receipt of my manuscript.’

‘Very rum!’

‘I recollect distinctly placing it myself on the hall table in good time to be taken to the village. But here is a sinister thing. I have spoken to Oakshott, who took the rest of the letters to the post office, and he cannot recall seeing it there. He is, indeed, unswerving in his assertions that when he went to the hall to collect the letters there was no parcel among them.’

‘Sounds funny!’

‘Bertie, shall I tell you what I suspect?’

‘What’s that?’

‘The suspicion will no doubt sound to you incredible, but it alone seems to fit the facts as we know them. I incline to the belief that the parcel has been stolen.’

‘Oh, I say! Surely not!’

‘Wait! Hear me out. Though I have said nothing to you before, or to anyone else, concerning the matter, the fact remains that during the past few weeks a number of objects – some valuable, others not – have disappeared in this house. The conclusion to which one is irresistibly impelled is that we have a kleptomaniac in our midst. It is a peculiarity of kleptomania, as you are no doubt aware, that the subject is unable to differentiate between the intrinsic values of objects. He will purloin an old coat as readily as a diamond ring, or a tobacco pipe costing but a few shillings with the same eagerness as a purse of gold. The fact that this manuscript of mine could be of no possible value to any outside person convinces me that –’

‘But, Uncle, one moment; I know all about those things that were stolen. It was Meadowes, my man, who pinched them. I caught him snaffling my silk socks. Right in the act, by Jove!’

He was tremendously impressed.

‘You amaze me, Bertie! Send for the man at once and question him.’

‘But he isn’t here. You see, directly I found that he was a sock-sneaker I gave him the boot. That’s why I went to London – to get a new man.’

‘Then, if the man Meadowes is no longer in the house it could not be he who purloined my manuscript. The whole thing is inexplicable.’

After which we brooded for a bit. Uncle Willoughby pottered about the room, registering baffledness, while I sat sucking at a cigarette, feeling rather like a chappie I’d once read about in a book, who murdered another cove and hid the body under the dining-room table, and then had to be the life and soul of a dinner party, with it there all the time. My guilty secret oppressed me to such an extent that after a while I couldn’t stick it any longer. I lit another cigarette and started for a stroll in the grounds, by way of cooling off.

It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away. The sun was sinking over the hills and the gnats were fooling about all over the place, and everything smelled rather topping – what with the falling dew and so on – and I was just beginning to feel a little soothed by the peace of it all when suddenly I heard my name spoken.

‘It’s about Bertie.’

It was the loathsome voice of young blighted Edwin! For a moment I couldn’t locate it. Then I realized that it came from the library. My stroll had taken me within a few yards of the open window.

I had often wondered how those Johnnies in books did it – I mean the fellows with whom it was the work of a moment to do about a dozen things that ought to have taken them about ten minutes. But, as a matter of fact, it was the work of a moment with me to chuck away my cigarette, swear a bit, leap about ten yards, dive into a bush that stood near the library window, and stand there with my ears flapping. I was as certain as I’ve ever been of anything that all sorts of rotten things were in the offing.

‘About Bertie?’ I heard Uncle Willoughby say.

‘About Bertie and your parcel. I heard you talking to him just now. I believe he’s got it.’

When I tell you that just as I heard these frightful words a fairly substantial beetle of sorts dropped from the bush down the back of my neck, and I couldn’t even stir to squash the same, you will understand that I felt pretty rotten. Everything seemed against me.

‘What do you mean, boy? I was discussing the disappearance of
my
manuscript with Bertie only a moment back, and he professed himself as perplexed by the mystery as myself.’

‘Well, I was in his room yesterday afternoon, doing him an act of kindness, and he came in with a parcel. I could see it, though he tried to keep it behind his back. And then he asked me to go to the smoking-room and snip some cigars for him; and about two minutes afterwards he came down – and he wasn’t carrying anything. So it must be in his room.’

I understand they deliberately teach these dashed Boy Scouts to cultivate their powers of observation and deduction and what not. Devilish thoughtless and inconsiderate of them, I call it. Look at the trouble it causes.

‘It sounds incredible,’ said Uncle Willoughby, thereby bucking me up a trifle.

‘Shall I go and look in his room?’ asked young blighted Edwin. ‘I’m sure the parcel’s there.’

‘But what could be his motive for perpetrating this extraordinary theft?’

‘Perhaps he’s a – what you said just now.’

‘A kleptomaniac? Impossible!’

‘It might have been Bertie who took all those things from the very start,’ suggested the little brute hopefully. ‘He may be like Raffles.’

‘Raffles?’

‘He’s a chap in a book who went about pinching things.’

‘I cannot believe that Bertie would – ah – go about pinching things.’

‘Well, I’m sure he’s got the parcel. I’ll tell you what you might do. You might say that Mr Berkeley wired that he had left something here. He had Bertie’s room, you know. You might say you wanted to look for it.’

‘That would be possible. I –’

I didn’t wait to hear any more. Things were getting too hot. I sneaked softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn’t the key. It wasn’t for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it out again.

Where the dickens were my evening things? I had looked all over the place before I remembered that Jeeves must have taken them away to brush. To leap at the bell and ring it was, with me, the work of a moment. I had just rung it when there was a footstep outside, and in came Uncle Willoughby.

‘Oh, Bertie,’ he said, without a blush, ‘I have – ah – received a telegram from Berkeley, who occupied this room in your absence, asking me to forward him his – er – his cigarette-case, which, it would appear, he inadvertently omitted to take with him when he left the house. I cannot find it downstairs; and it has, therefore, occurred to me that he may have left it in this room. I will – er – just take a look round.’

It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I’ve ever seen – this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.

‘I haven’t seen it anywhere,’ I said.

‘Nevertheless, I will search. I must – ah – spare no effort.’

‘I should have seen it if it had been here – what?’

‘It may have escaped your notice. It is – er – possibly in one of the drawers.’

He began to nose about. He pulled out drawer after drawer, pottering round like an old bloodhound, and babbling from time to time about Berkeley and his cigarette-case in a way that struck me as perfectly ghastly. I just stood there, losing weight every moment.

Then he came to the drawer where the parcel was.

‘This appears to be locked,’ he said, rattling the handle.

‘Yes; I shouldn’t bother about that one. It – it’s – er – locked, and all that sort of thing.’

‘You have not the key?’

A soft, respectful voice spoke behind me.

‘I fancy, sir, that this must be the key you require. It was in the pocket of your evening trousers.’

It was Jeeves. He had shimmered in, carrying my evening things, and was standing there holding out the key. I could have massacred the man.

‘Thank you,’ said my uncle.

‘Not at all, sir.’

The next moment Uncle Willoughby had opened the drawer. I shut my eyes.

‘No,’ said Uncle Willoughby, ‘there is nothing here. The drawer is empty. Thank you, Bertie. I hope I have not disturbed you. I fancy – er – Berkeley must have taken his case with him after all.’

When he had gone I shut the door carefully. Then I turned to Jeeves. The man was putting my evening things out on a chair.

‘Er – Jeeves!’

‘Sir?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

It was deuced difficult to know how to begin.

‘Er-Jeeves!’

‘Sir?’

‘Did you – Was there – Have you by chance –’

‘I removed the parcel this morning, sir.’

‘Oh – ah – why?’

‘I considered it more prudent, sir.’

I mused for a while.

‘Of course, I suppose all this seems tolerably rummy to you, Jeeves?’

‘Not at all, sir. I chanced to overhear you and Lady Florence speaking of the matter the other evening, sir.’

‘Did you, by Jove?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well – er – Jeeves, I think that, on the whole, if you were to – as it were – freeze on to that parcel until we get back to London –’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘And then we might – er – so to speak – chuck it away somewhere – what?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘I’ll leave it in your hands.’

‘Entirely, sir.’

‘You know, Jeeves, you’re by way of being rather a topper.’

‘I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir.’

‘One in a million, by Jove!’

‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir.’

‘Well, that’s about all, then, I think.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Florence came back on Monday. I didn’t see her till we were all having tea in the hall. It wasn’t till the crowd had cleared away a bit that we got a chance of having a word together.

‘Well, Bertie?’ she said.

‘It’s all right.’

‘You have destroyed the manuscript?’

‘Not exactly; but –’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean I haven’t absolutely –’

‘Bertie, your manner is furtive!’

‘It’s all right. It’s this way –’

And I was just going to explain how things stood when out of
the
library came leaping Uncle Willoughby, looking as braced as a two-year-old. The old boy was a changed man.

‘A most remarkable thing, Bertie! I have just been speaking with Mr Riggs on the telephone, and he tells me he received my manuscript by the first post this morning. I cannot imagine what can have caused the delay. Our postal facilities are extremely inadequate in the rural districts. I shall write to headquarters about it. It is insufferable if valuable parcels are to be delayed in this fashion.’

I happened to be looking at Florence’s profile at the moment, and at this juncture she swung round and gave me a look that went right through me like a knife. Uncle Willoughby meandered back to the library, and there was a silence that you could have dug bits out of with a spoon.