The Jeeves Omnibus (266 page)

I was completely at a loss to imagine what could have caused this in-and-out running on Stilton’s part. The thing didn’t make sense. When last seen, it will be remembered, he had had all the earmarks of one about whom Love had twined its silken fetters. His every word at that parting chat of ours had indicated this beyond peradventure
and
doubt. Dash it, I mean, you don’t go telling people you will break their spines in four places if they come oiling round the adored object unless you have more than a passing fancy for the bally girl.

So what had occurred to dim the lamp of love and all that sort of thing?

Could it be, I asked myself, that the strain of growing that moustache had proved too much for him? Had he caught sight of himself in the mirror about the third day – the third day is always the danger spot – and felt that nothing in the way of wedded bliss could make the venture worth while? Called upon to choose between the woman he loved and a hairless upper lip, had he cracked, with the result that the lip had had it by a landslide?

With a view to getting the inside stuff straight from the horse’s mouth, I hurried to the kitchen garden, where, if Percy was to be relied on, Florence would now be, probably pacing up and down with lowered head.

She was there with lowered head, though not actually pacing up and down. She was bending over a gooseberry bush, eating gooseberries in an overwrought sort of way. Seeing me, she straightened up, and I snapped into the
res
without preamble.

‘What’s all this I hear from Percy Gorringe?’ I said.

She swallowed a gooseberry with a passionate gulp that spoke eloquently of the churned-up soul, and I saw, as Percy’s words had led me to expect, that she was madder than a wet hen. Her whole aspect was that of a girl who would have given her year’s dress allowance for the privilege of beating G. D’Arcy Cheesewright over the head with a parasol.

I continued.

‘He says there has been a rift within the lute.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You and Stilton. According to Percy, the lute is not the lute it was. Stilton has broken the engagement, he tells me.’

‘He has. I’m delighted, of course.’

‘Delighted? You like the set-up?’

‘Of course I do. What girl would not be delighted who finds herself unexpectedly free from a man with a pink face and a head that looks as if it had been blown up with a bicycle pump?’

I clutched the brow. I am a pretty astute chap, and I could see that this was not the language of love. I mean, if you had heard Juliet saying a thing like that about Romeo, you would have raised the eyebrows in quick concern, wondering if all was well with the young couple.

‘But when I saw him last, everything seemed perfectly okey-doke. I could have sworn that, however reluctantly, he had reconciled himself to growing that moustache.’

She stooped and took another gooseberry.

‘It has nothing to do with moustaches,’ she said, reappearing on the surface. ‘The whole thing is due to the fact that D’Arcy Cheesewright is a low, mean, creeping, crawling, slinking, spying, despicable worm,’ she proceeded, dishing out the words from between clenched teeth. ‘Do you know what he did?’

‘I haven’t a notion.’

She refreshed herself with a further gooseberry and returned to the upper air, breathing a few puffs of flame through the nostrils.

‘He sneaked round to that night club yesterday and made inquiries.’

‘Oh, my gosh!’

‘Yes. You wouldn’t think a man could stoop so low, but he bribed people and was allowed to look at the head waiter’s book and found that a table had been reserved that night in your name. This confirmed his degraded suspicions. He knew that I had been there with you. I suppose,’ said Florence, diving at the gooseberry bush once more and starting to strip it of its contents, ‘a man gets a rotten, spying mind like that from being a policeman.’

To say that I was appalled would not be putting it any too strongly. I was, moreover, astounded. It was a revelation to me that a puff-faced poop like Stilton could have been capable of detective work on this uncanny scale. I had always respected his physique, of course, but had supposed that the ability to fell an ox with a single blow more or less let him out. Not for an instant had I credited him with reasoning powers which might well have made Hercule Poirot himself draw the breath in with a startled ‘What ho’. It just showed how one ought never to underestimate a man simply because he devotes his life to shoving oars into rivers and pulling them out again, this being about as silly a way of passing the time as could be hit upon.

No doubt, as Florence had said, this totally unforeseen snakiness was the result of his having been, if only briefly, a member of the police force. One presumes that when the neophyte has been issued his uniform and regulation boots, the men up top take him aside and teach him a few things likely to be of use to him in his chosen profession. Stilton, it was plain, had learned his lesson well and, if one did but know, was probably capable of measuring blood stains and collecting cigar ash.

However, it was only a fleeting attention that I gave to this facet of the situation. My thoughts were concentrated on something of far
greater
pith and moment, as Jeeves would say. I allude to the position – now that the man knew all – of B. Wooster, which seemed to me sticky to a degree. Florence, having sated herself with gooseberries, was starting to move off, and I arrested her with a sharp ‘Hoy!’

‘That telegram,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘I do. Was there anything about me in it?’

‘Oh, yes, quite a lot.’

I swallowed a couple of times and passed a finger round the inside of my collar. I had thought there might be.

‘Did he hint at any plans he had with regard to me?’

‘He said he was going to break your spine in five places.’

‘
Five
places?’

‘I think he said five. Don’t you let him,’ said Florence warmly, and it was nice, of course, to know that she disapproved. ‘Breaking spines! I never heard of such a thing. He ought to be ashamed of himself.’

And she moved off in the direction of the house, walking like a tragedy queen on one of her bad mornings.

What I have heard Jeeves call the glimmering landscape was now fading on the sight, and it was getting on for the hour when dressing-gongs are beaten. But though I knew how rash it is ever to be late for one of Anatole’s dinners, I could not bring myself to go in and don the soup-and-fish. I had so much to occupy the mind that I lingered on in a sort of stupor. Winged creatures of the night kept rolling up and taking a look at me and rolling off again, but I remained motionless, plunged in thought. A man pursued by a thug like D’Arcy Cheesewright has need of all the thought he can get hold of.

And then, quite suddenly, out of the night that covered me, black as a pit from pole to pole, there shone a gleam of light. It spread, illuminating the entire horizon, and I realized that, taken by and large, I was sitting pretty.

You see, what I had failed till now to spot was the fact that Stilton hadn’t a notion that I was at Brinkley. Thinking me to be in the metropolis, it was there that he would be spreading his drag-net. He would call at the flat, ring bells, get no answer and withdraw, baffled. He would haunt the Drones, expecting me to drop in, and eventually, when I didn’t so drop, would slink away, baffled again. ‘He cometh not’, he would say, no doubt grinding his teeth, and a fat lot of good that would do him.

And of course, after what had occurred, there was no chance of him visiting Brinkley. A man who has broken off his engagement doesn’t go to the country house where he knows the girl to be. Well, I mean,
I
ask you. Naturally he doesn’t. If there was one spot on earth which could be counted on as of even date to be wholly free from Cheesewrights, it was Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Worcestershire.

Profoundly relieved, I picked up the feet and hastened to my room with a song on my lips. Jeeves was there, not actually holding a stop-watch but obviously shaking his head a bit over the young master’s tardiness. His left eyebrow quivered perceptibly as I entered.

‘Yes, I know I’m late, Jeeves,’ I said, starting to shed the upholstery. ‘I went for a stroll.’

He accepted the explanation indulgently.

‘I quite understand, sir. It had occurred to me that, the evening being so fine, you were probably enjoying a saunter in the grounds. I told Mr. Cheesewright that this was no doubt the reason for your absence.’

HALF IN AND
half out of the shirt, I froze like one of those fellows in the old fairy stories who used to talk out of turn to magicians and have spells cast upon them. My ears were sticking up like a wirehaired terrier’s, and I could scarcely believe that they had heard aright.

‘Mr. Chuch?’ I quavered. ‘What’s that, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

‘I don’t understand you. Are you saying … are you telling me … are you actually asserting that Stilton Cheesewright is on the premises?’

‘Yes, sir. He arrived not long ago in his car. I found him waiting here. He expressed a desire to see you and appeared chagrined at your continued absence. Eventually, the dinner-hour becoming imminent, he took his departure. He is hoping, I gathered from his remarks, to establish contact with you at the conclusion of the meal.’

I slid dumbly into the shirt and started to tie the tie. I was quivering, partly with apprehension, but even more with justifiable indignation. To say that I felt that this was a bit thick would not be straining the facts unduly. I mean, I know D’Arcy Cheesewright to be of coarse fibre, the sort of bozo who, as Percy had said, would look at a sunset and see in it only a resemblance to a slice of under-done roast beef, but surely one is entitled to expect even bozos of coarse fibre to have a certain amount of delicacy and decent feeling and what not. This breaking off his engagement to Florence with one hand and coming thrusting his society on her with the other struck me, as it would have struck any fine-minded man, as about as near the outside rim as it was possible to go.

‘It’s monstrous, Jeeves!’ I cried. ‘Has this pumpkin-headed oaf no sense of what is fitting? Has he no tact, no discretion? Are you aware that this very evening, through the medium of a telegram which I have every reason to believe was a stinker, he severed his relations with Lady Florence?’

‘No, sir, I had not been apprised. Mr. Cheesewright did not confide in me.’

‘He must have stopped off
en route
to compose the communication, for it arrived not so very long before he did. Fancy doing the thing by telegram, thus giving some post-office clerk the laugh of a lifetime. And then actually having the crust to come barging in here! That, Jeeves, is serving it up with cream sauce. I don’t want to be harsh, but there is only one word for D’Arcy Cheesewright – the word “uncouth”. What are you goggling at?’ I asked, noticing that his gaze was fixed upon me in a meaning manner.

He spoke with quiet severity.

‘Your tie, sir. It will not, I fear, pass muster.’

‘Is this a time to talk of ties?’

‘Yes, sir. One aims at the perfect butterfly shape, and this you have not achieved. With your permission, I will adjust it.’

He did so, and I must say made a very fine job of it, but I continued to chafe.

‘Do you realize, Jeeves, that my life is in peril?’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘I assure you. That hunk of boloney … I allude to G. D’Arcy Cheesewright … has formally stated his intention of breaking my spine in five places.’

‘Indeed, sir? Why is that?’

I gave him the facts, and he expressed the opinion that the position of affairs was disturbing.

I shot one of my looks at him.

‘You would go so far as that, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir. Most disturbing.’

‘Ho!’ I said, borrowing a bit of Stilton’s stuff, and was about to tell him that if he couldn’t think of a better word than that to describe what was probably the ghastliest imbroglio that had ever broken loose in the history of the human race, I would be glad to provide him with a Roget’s
Thesaurus
at my personal expense, when the gong went and I had to leg it for the trough.

I do not look back to that first dinner at Brinkley Court as among the pleasantest functions which I have attended. Ironically, considering the circumstances, Anatole, that wizard of the pots and pans, had come through with one of his supremest efforts. He had provided the company with, if memory serves me correctly,

Le Caviar Frais

Le Consommé aux Pommes d’Amour

Les Sylphides à la crème d’Écrevisses

Les Fried Smelts

Le Bird of some kind with chipped potatoes

Le Ice Cream

and, of course, les fruits and le café, but for all its effect on the Wooster soul it might have been corned beef hash. I don’t say I pushed it away untasted, as Aunt Dahlia had described Percy doing with his daily ration, but the successive courses turned to ashes in my mouth. The sight of Stilton across the table blunted appetite.

I suppose it was just imagination, but he seemed to have grown quite a good deal both upwards and sideways since I had last seen him, and the play of expression on his salmon-coloured face showed only too clearly the thoughts that were occupying his mind, if you could call it that. He gave me from eight to ten dirty looks in the course of the meal, but except for a remark at the outset to the effect that he was hoping to have a word with me later, did not address me.

Nor, for the matter of that, did he address anyone. His demeanour throughout was that of a homicidal deaf mute. The Trotter female, who sat on his right, endeavoured to entertain him with a saga about Mrs. Alderman Blenkinsop’s questionable behaviour at a recent church bazaar, but he confined his response to gaping at her like some dull, half-witted animal, as Percy would have said, and digging silently into the foodstuffs.

Sitting next to Florence, who spoke little, merely looking cold and proud and making bread pills, I had ample leisure for thought during the festivities, and by the time the coffee came round I had formed my plans and perfected my strategy. When eventually Aunt Dahlia blew the whistle for the gentler sex to buzz off and leave the men to their port, I took advantage of their departure to execute a quiet sneak through the french windows into the garden, being well in the open before the first of the procession had crossed the threshold. Whether or not this clever move brought a hoarse cry to Stilton’s lips, I cannot say for certain, but I fancied I heard something that sounded like the howl of a timber wolf that has stubbed its toe on a passing rock. Not bothering to go back and ask if he had spoken, I made my way into the spacious grounds.