The Jeeves Omnibus (16 page)

‘Yes, sir.’

‘By the way,
is
there a train to London tonight?’

‘Yes, sir. The 10.21. You should be able to catch it comfortably, sir. I fear it is not an express.’

I waved a hand.

‘As long as it moves, Jeeves, as long as the wheels revolve and it trickles from point to point, it will do me nicely. Good night, then.’

‘Good night, sir.’

It was with uplifted heart that I entered the cottage. Nor was my satisfaction lessened by the discovery that Brinkley had not yet
returned
. As an employer, I might look a bit askance at the idea of the blighter being given the evening off and taking a night and a day, but in the capacity of a private citizen with boot polish on his face, I was all for it. On such occasions, solitude is, as Jeeves would have said, of the essence.

I went up to the bedroom with all possible speed, and poured water from the jug into the basin, bath-rooms not being provided in Chuffy’s little homes. This done, I dipped the face and instituted a hearty soaping. Then, having rinsed thoroughly, I moved to the mirror, and picture my chagrin and dismay when I discovered that I was still as black as ever. You might say I had hardly so much as scratched the surface.

These are the moments that make a fellow think a bit, and it wasn’t long before I saw where the snag was. I remembered hearing or reading somewhere that in crises like this you have to have butter. I was just about to go downstairs and get some, when suddenly I heard a noise.

Now, a fellow in my position – virtually the hunted stag, I mean to say – has got to take considerable thought as to what his next move shall be when he hears a noise on the premises. Quite possibly, I felt, this might be J. Washburn Stoker baying on the trail, for if he had happened to drop into the state-room and observe that it was empty, the first thing he would do would be to come dashing to my cottage. So there was nothing of the lion leaping from its den about the way I now left the bedroom, but rather a bit more than a suggestion of a fairly diffident snail poking its head out of its shell during a thunderstorm. For the nonce, I merely stood in the doorway and listened.

There was plenty to listen to. Whoever was making the row was down in the sitting-room, and he seemed to me to be throwing the furniture about. And I think it was the reflection that a keen, practical man like Pop Stoker, if on my track, would hardly waste time doing this sort of thing that braced me at length to the point of tiptoeing to the banisters and peeping over.

What I describe as the sitting-room, I must tell you, was really more in the nature of a sort of lounge-hall. It was rather liberally furnished for such a smallish place, and contained a table, a grandfather clock, a sofa, two chairs, and from one to three glass cases with stuffed birds in them. From where I stood, looking over the banisters, I had a complete view of the entire lay-out. It was fairly dim down there, but I could see pretty well, because there was an
oil
lamp burning on the mantelpiece. By its light I was able to observe that the sofa had been upset, the two chairs thrown through the window, and the stuffed-bird cases smashed; and at the moment of going to press, a shadowy form was in the far corner, wrestling with the grandfather clock.

It was difficult to say with any certainty which of the pair was getting the better of it. If in sporting vein, I think I should have been inclined to put my money on the clock. But I was not in sporting vein. A sudden twist of the combatants had revealed to me the face of the shadowy f., and with a considerable rush of emotion I perceived that it was Brinkley. Like a sheep wandering back to the fold, this blighted Bolshevik had rolled home, twenty-four hours late, plainly stewed to the gills.

All the householder awoke in me. I forgot that it was injudicious of me to allow myself to be seen. All I could think of was that this bally Five-Year-Planner was smashing up the Wooster home.

‘Brinkley!’ I bellowed.

I imagine he thought at first it was the voice of the clock, for he flung himself upon it with renewed energy. Then suddenly, his eye fell on me and he broke away and stood staring. The clock, after rocking to and fro for a moment, settled into the perpendicular with a jerk and, having struck thirteen, relapsed into silence.

‘Brinkley!’ I repeated, and was about to add ‘Dash it!’ when a sort of gleam came into his eyes, the gleam of the man who understands all. For an instant he stood there, goggling. Then he uttered a cry.

‘Lor lumme! The Devil!’

And, snatching up a carving knife which he appeared to have placed on the mantelpiece with a sort of idea that you never knew when these things may not come in useful, he came bounding up the stairs.

Well, it was a close thing. If I ever have grandchildren – which, at the moment, seems a longish shot – and they come clustering round my knee of an evening for a story, the one I shall tell them is about my getting back into the bedroom just one split second ahead of that carving knife. And if as a result they have convulsions during the night and wake up screaming, they will have got some rough idea of their aged relative’s emotions at this juncture. To say that Bertram, even when he had slammed the door, locked it, shoved a chair against it, and a bed against the chair, felt wholly at his ease would be a wilful overstatement. I cannot put my mental attitude more clearly than by saying that, if J. Washburn Stoker had happened
to
drop in at that moment, I would have welcomed him like a brother.

Brinkley was at the keyhole, begging me to come out and let him ascertain the colour of my insides; and, by Jove, what seemed to me to add the final touch to the whole unpleasantness was that he spoke in the same respectful voice he always used. Kept calling me “sir”, too, which struck me as dashed silly. I mean, if you’re asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it’s absurd to tack a ‘sir’ on to every sentence. The two things don’t go together.

At this point it seemed to me that my first move ought to be to clear up the obvious misunderstanding that existed in his mind.

I put the lips to the woodwork.

‘It’s all right, Brinkley.’

‘It will be if you come out, sir,’ he said civilly.

‘I mean, I’m not the Devil.’

‘Oh, yes, you are, sir.’

‘I’m not, I tell you.’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘I’m Mr Wooster.’

He uttered a piercing cry.

‘He’s got Mr Wooster in there!’

You don’t get the old-fashioned soliloquy much nowadays, so I took it that he was addressing some third party. And, sure enough, there was a sort of rumbling puffing and a tonsil-ridden voice spoke.

‘What’s all this?’

It was my sleepless neighbour, Police Sergeant Voules.

My first emotion on realizing that the Law was in our midst was one of pretty sizeable relief. There were lots of things about this vigilant man I didn’t like – his habit of poking his nose into people’s garages and potting sheds, for one – but, whatever you might feel about some of his habits, there was no denying that he was a useful chap to have around in a situation like this. Tackling a loony valet is not everyone’s job. You need a certain personality and presence. These this outsize guardian of the peace had got in full measure. And I was just about to urge him on with encouraging noises through the door, when something seemed to whisper to me that it would be more prudent to refrain.

You see, the whole thing about these vigilant police sergeants is that they detain and question. Finding Bertram Wooster in the
equivocal
position of going about the place with his face blacked up, Sergeant Voules would not just pass the thing off with a shrug of the shoulders and a light good night. He would, as I say, detain and question. Recalling our encounters of the previous night, he would view with concern. He would insist on my accompanying him to the police station while he sent for Chuffy to come and advise what to do for the best. Doctors would be summoned, ice packs applied. With the result that I would most certainly be confined to the neighbourhood quite long enough for old Stoker to discover that my room was empty and my bed had not been slept in and to come rushing ashore to scoop me up and carry me back to the yacht again.

On second thoughts, therefore, I said nothing. Merely breathed softly through the nose.

Outside the door, snappy dialogue was in progress; and I give you my honest word that, if I hadn’t had authoritative information to the contrary, I should have said that this extraordinary bird, Brinkley, was as sober as a teetotal Girl Guide. All that one of the biggest toots in history had done to him was to put a sort of precise edge on his speech and cause him to articulate with a crystal clearness which was more like a silver bell than anything.

‘The Devil is in there, murdering Mr Wooster, sir,’ he was saying. And, except in radio announcers, I’ve never heard anything more beautifully modulated.

You would call that a fairly sensational announcement, I suppose; but it didn’t seem to register immediately with Sergeant Voules. The sergeant was one of those men who like to take things in their proper order and tidy up as they go along; and for the moment, it seemed, he was interested exclusively in the carving knife.

‘What are you doing with that knife?’ he inquired.

Nothing could have been more civil and deferential than Brinkley’s response.

‘I caught it up to attack the Devil, sir.’

‘What devil?’ asked Sergeant Voules, taking the next point in rotation.

‘A black devil, sir.’

‘Black?’

‘Yes, sir. He is in this room, murdering Mr Wooster.’

Now that he had at last got round to it, Sergeant Voules seemed interested.

‘In this room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Murdering Mr Wooster?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We can’t have that sort of thing,’ said Sergeant Voules, rather austerely. And I heard him click his tongue.

There was an authoritative rap on the door.

‘Oy!’

I preserved a prudent silence.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I heard Brinkley say, and from the sound of feet on the stairs I took it that he was leaving our little symposium. Possibly to have another go at the clock.

Knuckles smote the woodwork again.

‘In there. Oy!’

I made no remark.

‘Are you in there, Mr Wooster?’

I was beginning to feel that this conversation was a bit one-sided, but I didn’t see what could be done about it. I moved to the window and looked out, more with the idea of just doing something to pass the time than anything else, and it was now – and only now, if you’ll believe me – that the idea came to me that it might be possible to edge away from this distasteful scene. It wasn’t so much of a drop to the ground, and with a good deal of relief I started to tie knots in a sheet with a view to the getaway.

It was at this moment that I heard Sergeant Voules suddenly give tongue.

‘Oy!’

And from down below Brinkley’s voice.

‘Sir?’

‘Look out what you’re doing with that lamp.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’ll upset it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oy!’

‘Sir?’

‘You’ll set the house on fire!’

‘Yes, sir.’

And then there came a far-off crash of glass, and the sergeant went bounding down the stairs. This was followed by a sound which gave me the impression that Brinkley, feeling that he had done his bit, had galloped to the front door and slammed if after him. And after that another slam, as if the Sergeant, too, had made a break
for
the open. And then, filtering through the keyhole, came a little puff of smoke.

I don’t suppose there is anything that makes much better burning than one of these old country cottages. You just put a match to them – or upset a lamp in the hall, as the case may be – and up they go. It couldn’t have been more than half a minute before a merry crackling came to my ears and a bit of the floor over in the corner suddenly burst into a cheerful flame.

It was enough for Bertram. A moment before, I had been messing about with knotted sheets with a view to what you might call the departure
de luxe
and generally loafing about and taking my time over the thing. I now quickened up quite a good deal. It was borne in upon me that anything in the nature of leisurely comfort was off. In the next thirty seconds cats on hot bricks could have picked up hints from me.

I remember reading in a paper once one of those Interesting Problem things about Suppose You were in a Burning House, what would you save? If I recollect rightly, a baby entered into it. Also a priceless picture and, if I am not mistaken, a bed-ridden aunt. I know there was a wide choice, and you were supposed to knit the brow and think the thing out from every angle.

On the present occasion I did not hesitate. I looked round immediately for my banjolele. Conceive my dismay when I remembered that I had left it in the sitting-room.

Well, I wasn’t going down to that sitting-room even for the faithful old musical instrument. Already it was beginning to be a very moot point whether I wouldn’t get cooked to a crisp, because that genial glow over in the corner had now spread not a little. With a regretful sigh I hopped hurriedly to the window, and the next moment I was dropping like the gentle dew upon the place beneath.

Or is it rain? I always forget.

Jeeves would know.

I made a smooth landing and shot silently through the hedge at the junction between my back garden and Sergeant Voules’s little bit, and continued to leg it till I was in a sort of wood – I suppose about half a mile from the pulsing centre of affairs. The sky was all lit up, and in the distance I could hear the sound of the local fire brigade going about its duties.

I sat down on a stump, and took time off to pass the situation under review.

*

Wasn’t it Robinson Crusoe or someone who, when things were working out a bit messily for him, used to draw up a sort of Credit and Debit account, in order to see exactly where he stood and ascertain whether he was behind or ahead of the game at that particular moment? I know it was someone, and I had always thought it rather a sound idea.