The Jeeves Omnibus (262 page)

I didn’t like the look of the old blister at all. His manner was austere, and as the tale proceeded his face, such as it was, grew hard and dark with menace. He kept shooting quick glances at me through his pince-nez, and the dullest eye could see that the constable was getting all the sympathy of the audience and that the citizen cast for the role of Heavy in this treatment was the prisoner Gadsby. More and more the feeling stole over me that the prisoner Gadsby was about to get it in the gizzard and would be lucky if he didn’t fetch up on Devil’s Island.

However, when the
J’accuse
stuff was over and I was asked if I had anything to say, I did my best. I admitted that on the occasion about which we had been chatting I had extended a foot causing the officer to go base over apex, but protested that it had been a pure accident without any
arrière-pensée
on my part. I said I had been feeling cramped after a longish sojourn at the table and had merely desired to unlimber the leg muscles.

‘You know how sometimes you want a stretch,’ I said.

‘I am strongly inclined,’ responded the beak, ‘to give you one. A good long stretch.’

Rightly recognizing this as comedy, I uttered a cordial guffaw to show that my heart was in the right place, and an officious blighter in the well of the court shouted ‘Silence!’ I tried to explain that I was convulsed by His Worship’s ready wit, but he shushed me again, and His Worship came to the surface once more.

‘However,’ he went on, adjusting his pince-nez, ‘in consideration of your youth I will exercise clemency.’

‘Oh, fine!’ I said.

‘Fine,’ replied the other half of the cross-talk act, who seemed to know all the answers, ‘is right. Ten pounds. Next case.’

I paid my debt to Society, and pushed off.

Jeeves was earning the weekly envelope by busying himself at some domestic task when I reached the old home. He cocked an inquiring eye at me, and I felt that an explanation was due to him. It would have surprised him, of course, to discover that my room was empty and my bed had not been slept in.

‘A little trouble last night with the minions of the Law, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Quite a bit of that Eugene-Aram-walked-between-with-gyves-upon-his-wrists stuff.’

‘Indeed, sir? Most vexing.’

‘Yes, I didn’t like it very much, but the magistrate – with whom I have just been threshing the thing out – had a wonderful time. I brought a ray of sunshine into his drab life all right. Did you know that these magistrates were expert comedians?’

‘No, sir. The fact had not been drawn to my attention.’

‘Think of Groucho Marx and you will get the idea. One gag after another, and all at my expense. I was just the straight man, and I found the experience most unpleasant, particularly as I had had no breakfast that any conscientious gourmet could call breakfast. Have you ever passed the night in chokey, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir. I have been fortunate in that respect.’

‘It renders the appetite unusually keen. So rally round, if you don’t mind, and busy yourself with the skillet. We have eggs on the premises, I presume?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall need about fifty, fried, with perhaps the same number of pounds of bacon. Toast, also. Four loaves will probably be sufficient, but stand by to weigh in with more if necessary. And don’t forget the coffee – say sixteen pots.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘And after that,’ I said with a touch of bitterness, ‘I suppose you will go racing round to the Junior Ganymede to enter this spot of
bother
of mine in the club book.’

‘I fear I have no alternative, sir. Rule Eleven is very strict.’

‘Well, if you must, you must, I suppose. I wouldn’t want you to be hauled up in a hollow square of butlers and have your buttons snipped off. That club book, Jeeves. You’re absolutely sure there’s nothing in it in the C’s under “Cheesewright”?’

‘Nothing but what I outlined last night, sir.’

‘And a lot of help that is!’ I said moodily. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Jeeves, that this Cheesewright has become a menace.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘And I had hoped that you might have found something in the club book which would have enabled me to spike his guns. Still, if you can’t, you can’t, of course. All right, rush along and dish up that breakfast.’

I had slept but fitfully on the plank bed which was all that Vinton Street Gestapo had seen their way to provide for the use of clients, so after partaking of a hearty meal I turned in between the sheets. Like Rollo Beaminster, I wanted to forget. It must have been well after the luncheon hour when the sound of the telephone jerked me out of the dreamless. Feeling a good deal refreshed, I shoved on a dressing-gown and went to the instrument.

It was Florence.

‘Bertie?’ she yipped.

‘Hullo? I thought you said you were going to Brinkley today.’

‘I’m just starting. I rang up to ask how you got on after I left last night.’

I laughed a mirthless laugh.

‘Not so frightfully well,’ I replied. ‘I was scooped in by the constabulary.’

‘What! You told me they didn’t arrest you.’

‘They don’t. But they did.’

‘Are you all right now?’

‘Well, I have a pinched look.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why did they arrest you?’

‘It’s a long story. Cutting it down to the gist, I noticed that you were anxious to leave, so, observing that a rozzer was after you hell for leather, I put a foot out, tripping him up and causing him to lose interest in the chase.’

‘Good gracious!’

‘It seemed to me the prudent policy to pursue. Another moment and he would have had you by the seat of the pants, and of course we can’t have that sort of thing going on. The upshot of the affair
was
that I spent the night in a prison cell and had rather a testing morning with the magistrate at Vinton Street police court. However, I’m pulling round all right.’

‘Oh, Bertie!’ Seeming deeply moved, she thanked me brokenly, and I said Don’t mention it. Then she gasped a sudden gasp, as if she had received a punch on the third waistcoat button. ‘Did you say Vinton Street?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Oh, my goodness! Do you know who that magistrate was?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. No cards were exchanged. We boys in court called him Your Worship.’

‘He’s D’Arcy’s uncle!’

I goshed. It had startled me not a little.

‘You don’t mean that?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, the one who likes soup?’

‘Yes. Just imagine if after having dinner with him last night I had appeared before him in the dock this morning!’

‘Embarrassing. Difficult to know what to say.’

‘D’Arcy would never have forgiven me.’

‘Eh?’

‘He would have broken the engagement.’

I didn’t get this.

‘How do you mean?’

‘How do I mean what?’

‘How do you mean he would have broken the engagement? I thought it was off already.’

She gave what I believe is usually called a rippling laugh.

‘Oh, no. He rang me up this morning and climbed down. And I forgave him. He’s starting to grow a moustache today.’

I was profoundly relieved.

‘Well, that’s splendid,’ I said, and when she Oh-Bertied and I asked her what she was Oh-Bertying about, she explained that what she had had in mind was the fact that I was so chivalrous and generous.

‘Not many men in your place, feeling as you do about me, would behave like this.’

‘Quite all right.’

‘I’m very touched.’

‘Don’t give it another thought. It’s really all on again, is it?’

‘Yes. So mind you don’t breathe a word to him about my being at that place with you.’

‘Of course not.’

‘D’Arcy is so jealous.’

‘Exactly. He must never know.’

‘Never. Why, if he even found out I was telephoning to you now, he would have a fit.’

I was about to laugh indulgently and say that this was what Jeeves calls a remote contingency, because how the dickens could he ever learn that we had been chewing the fat, when my eye was attracted by a large object just within my range of vision. Slewing the old bean round a couple of inches, I was enabled to perceive that this large O was the bulging form of G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. I hadn’t heard the door bell ring, and I hadn’t seen him come in, but there unquestionably he was, haunting the place once more like a resident spectre.

IT WAS A
moment for quick thinking. One doesn’t want fellows having fits all over one’s sitting-room. I was extremely dubious, moreover, as to whether, should he ascertain who was at the other end of the wire, he would confine himself to fits.

‘Certainly, Catsmeat,’ I said. ‘Of course, Catsmeat. I quite understand, Catsmeat. But I’ll have to ring off now, Catsmeat, as our mutual friend Cheesewright has just come in. Good-bye, Catsmeat.’ I hung up the receiver and turned to Stilton. ‘That was Catsmeat,’ I said.

He made no comment on this information, but stood glowering darkly. Now that I had been apprised of the ties of blood linking him with mine host of Vinton Street, I could see the family resemblance. Both uncle and nephew had the same way of narrowing their gaze and letting you have it from beneath the overhanging eyebrow. The only difference was that whereas the former pierced you to the roots of the soul through rimless pince-nez, with the latter you got the eye nude.

For a moment I was under the impression that my visitor’s emotion was due to his having found me at this advanced hour in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, a costume which, if worn at three o’clock in the afternoon, is always liable to start a train of thought. But it seemed that this was not so. More serious matters were on the agenda paper.

‘Wooster,’ he said, in a rumbling voice like the Cornish express going through a tunnel, ‘where were you last night?’

I own the question rattled me. For an instant, indeed, I rocked on my base. Then I reminded myself that nothing could be proved against me, and was strong again.

‘Ah, Stilton,’ I said cheerily, ‘come in, come in. Oh, you are in, aren’t you? Well, take a seat and tell me all your news. A lovely day, is it not? You’ll find a lot of people who don’t like July in London, but I am all for it myself. It always seems to me there’s a certain sort of something about it.’

He appeared to be one of those fellows who are not interested in July in London, for he showed no disposition to pursue the subject, merely giving one of those snorts of his.

‘Where were you last night, you blighted louse?’ he said, and I noticed that the face was suffused, the cheek muscles twitching and the eyes, like stars, starting from their spheres.

I had a pop at being cool and nonchalant.

‘Last night?’ I said, musing. ‘Let me see, that would be the night of July the twenty-second, would it not? H’m. Ha. The night of –’

He swallowed a couple of times.

‘I see you have forgotten. Let me assist your memory. You were in a low night club with Florence Craye, my fiancée.’

‘Who, me?’

‘Yes, you. And this morning you were in the dock at Vinton Street police court.’

‘You’re sure you mean me?’

‘Quite sure. I had the information from my uncle, who is the magistrate there. He came to lunch at my flat today, and as he was leaving he caught sight of your photograph on the wall.’

‘I didn’t know you kept my photograph on your wall, Stilton. I’m touched.’

He continued to ferment.

‘It was a group photograph,’ he said curtly, ‘and you happened to be in it. He looked at it, sniffed sharply and said “Do you know this young man?” I explained that we belonged to the same club, so it was not always possible to avoid you, but that was the extent of our association. I was going on to say that, left to myself, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, when he proceeded. Still sniffing, he said he was glad I was not a close friend of yours, because you weren’t at all the sort of fellow he liked to think of any nephew of his being matey with. He said you had been up before him this morning, charged with assaulting a policeman, who stated that he had arrested you for tripping him up while he was chasing a girl with platinum hair in a night club.’

I pursed the lips. Or, rather, I tried to, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the machinery. Still, I spoke boldly and with spirit.

‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘Personally I would be inclined to attach little credence to the word of the sort of policeman who spends his time chasing platinum-haired girls in night clubs. And as for this uncle of yours, with his wild stories of me having been up before him – well, you know what magistrates are. The lowest form of pond life. When a fellow hasn’t the brains and initiative to sell jellied eels, they make him a magistrate.’

‘You mean that when he said that about your photograph he was deceived by some slight resemblance?’

I waved a hand.

‘Not necessarily a slight resemblance. London’s full of chaps who look like me. I’m a very common type. People have told me that there is a fellow called Ephraim Gadsby – one of the Streatham Common Gadsbys – who is positively my double. I shall, of course, take this into consideration when weighing the question of bringing an action for slander and defamation of character against this uncle of yours, and shall probably decide to let justice be tempered with mercy. But it would be a kindly act to warn the old son of a bachelor to be more careful in future how he allows his tongue to run away with him. There are limits to one’s forbearance.’

He brooded darkly for about forty-five seconds.

‘Platinum hair, the policeman said,’ he observed at the end of this lull. ‘This girl had platinum hair.’

‘No doubt very becoming.’

‘I find it extremely significant that Florence has platinum hair.’

‘I don’t see why. Hundreds of girls have. My dear Stilton, ask yourself if it is likely that Florence would have been at a night club like the … what did you say the name was?’

‘I didn’t. But I believe it was called The Mottled Oyster.’

‘Ah, yes, I have heard of it. Not a very nice place, I understand. Quite incredible that she would have gone to a joint like that. A fastidious, intellectual girl like Florence? No, no.’