The Jeeves Omnibus (267 page)

Had circumstances been different from what they were – not, of course, that they ever are – I might have derived no little enjoyment from this after-dinner saunter, for the air was full of murmurous scents and a brave breeze sang like a bugle from a sky liberally studded with stars. But to appreciate a starlit garden one has to have a fairly tranquil
mind,
and mine was about as far from being tranquil as it could jolly well stick.

What to do? I was asking myself. It seemed to me that the prudent course, if I wished to preserve a valued spine intact, would be to climb aboard the two-seater first thing in the morning and ho for the open spaces. To remain
in statu quo
would, it was clear, involve a distasteful nippiness on my part, for only by the most unremitting activity could I hope to elude Stilton and foil his sinister aims. I would be compelled, I saw, to spend a substantial portion of my time flying like a youthful hart or roe over the hills where spices grow, as I remembered having heard Jeeves once put it, and the Woosters resent having to sink to the level of harts and roes, whether juvenile or getting on in years. We have our pride.

I had just reached the decision that on the morrow I would melt away like snow on the mountain-tops and go to America or Australia or the Fiji Islands or somewhere for awhile, when the murmurous summer scents were augmented by the aroma of a powerful cigar and I observed a dim figure approaching. After a tense moment when I supposed it to be Stilton and braced myself for a spot of that youthful-hart-or-roe stuff, I got it placed. It was only Uncle Tom, taking his nightly prowl.

Uncle Tom is a great lad for prowling in the garden. A man with greyish hair and a face like a walnut – not that that has anything to do with it, of course – I just mention it in passing – he likes to be among the shrubs and flowers early and late, particularly late, for he suffers a bit from insomnia and the tribal medicine man told him that a breath of fresh air before hitting the hay would bring relief.

Seeing me, he paused for station identification.

‘Is that you, Bertie, me boy?’

I conceded this, and he hove alongside, puffing smoke.

‘Why did you leave us?’ he asked, alluding to that quick duck of mine from the dining-room.

‘Oh, I thought I would.’

‘Well, you didn’t miss much. What a set! That man Trotter makes me sick.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘His stepson Percy makes me sick.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘And that fellow Cheesewright makes me sick. They all make me sick,’ said Uncle Tom. He is not one of your jolly-innkeeper-with-entrance-number-in-act-one hosts. He looks with ill-concealed aversion on at least ninety-four per cent of the guests within his gates and
spends
most of his time dodging them. ‘Who invited Cheesewright here? Dahlia, I suppose, though why we shall never know. A deleterious young slab of damnation, if ever I saw one. But she will do these things. I’ve even known her to invite her sister Agatha. Talking of Dahlia, Bertie, me boy, I’m worried about her.’

‘Worried?’

‘Exceedingly worried. I believe she’s sickening for something. Has her manner struck you as strange since you got here?’

I mused.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She seemed to be about the same as usual. How do you mean, strange?’

He waved a concerned cigar. He and the old relative are a fond and united couple.

‘It was just now, when I looked in on her in her room to ask if she would care to come for a stroll. She said No, she didn’t think she would, because if she went out at night she always swallowed moths and midges and things and she didn’t believe it was good for her on top of a heavy dinner. And we were talking idly of this and that, when she suddenly seemed to come over all faint.’

‘Swooned, do you mean?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say she actually swooned. She continued perpendicular. But she tottered, pressing her hand to the top of her head. Pale as a ghost she looked.’

‘Odd.’

‘Very. It worried me. I’m not at all easy in my mind about her.’

I pondered.

‘It couldn’t have been something you said that upset her?’

‘Impossible. I was talking about this fellow Sidcup who’s coming tomorrow to look at my silver collection. You’ve never met him, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Rather a fatheaded ass,’ said Uncle Tom, who thinks most of his circle fatheaded asses, ‘but apparently knows quite a bit about old silver and jewellery and all that sort of thing, and anyway he’ll only be here for dinner, thank God,’ he added in his hospitable way. ‘But I was telling you about your aunt. As I was saying, she tottered and looked as pale as a ghost. The fact of the matter is, she’s been overdoing it. This paper of hers, this Madame’s Nightshirt or whatever it’s called. It’s wearing her to a shadow. Silly nonsense. What does she want with a weekly paper? I’ll be thankful if she sells it to this man Trotter and gets rid of the damned thing, because apart from
wearing
her to a shadow it’s costing me a fortune. Money, money, money, there’s no end to it.’

He then spoke with considerable fervour for awhile of income-tax and surtax, and after making a tentative appointment to meet me in the breadline at an early date popped off and was lost in the night. And I, feeling that the hour being now advanced, it might be safe to retire to my room, made my way thither.

As I started to get into something loose, I continued to brood on what he had told me about Aunt Dahlia. I found myself mystified. At dinner I had, of course, been distrait and preoccupied, but even so I would, I thought, have noticed if she had shown any signs of being in the grip of a wasting sickness or anything of that kind. As far as I could recollect, she had appeared to be tucking into the various items on the menu with her customary zip and brio. Yet Uncle Tom had spoken of her as looking as pale as a ghost, a thing which took some doing with a face as red as hers.

Odd, not to say mysterious.

I was still musing on this and wondering what Osborne Cross, the sleuth in
The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish
, would have made of it, when I was jerked out of my meditations by the turning of the door handle. This was followed by a forceful bang on the panel, and I realized how prudent I had been in locking up before settling in for the night. For the voice that now spoke was that of Stilton Cheesewright.

‘Wooster!’

I rose, laying down my
Crayfish
, into which I had been about to dip, and put my lips to the keyhole.

‘Wooster!’

‘All right, my good fellow,’ I said coldly. ‘I heard you the first time. What do you want?’

‘A word with you.’

‘Well, you jolly well aren’t going to have it. Leave me, Cheesewright. I would be alone. I have a slight headache.’

‘It won’t be slight, if I get at you.’

‘Ah, but you can’t get at me,’ I riposted cleverly, and returning to my chair resumed my literary studies, pleasantly conscious of having worsted him in debate. He called me a few derogatory names through the woodwork, banged and handle-rattled a bit more, and finally shoved off, no doubt muttering horrid imprecations.

It was about five minutes later that there was another knock on the door, this time so soft and discreet that I had no difficulty in identifying it.

‘Is that you, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just a moment.’

As I crossed the room to admit him, I was surprised to find that the lower limbs were feeling a bit filleted. That verbal duel with my recent guest had shaken me more than I had suspected.

‘I have just had a visit from Stilton Cheesewright, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Indeed, sir? I trust the outcome was satisfactory.’

‘Yes, I rather nonplussed the simple soul. He had imagined that he could penetrate into my sanctum without let or hindrance, and was struck all of a heap when he found the door locked. But the episode has left me a little weak, and I would be glad if you could dig me out a whisky-and-soda.’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘It wants to be prepared in just the right way. Who was that pal of yours you were speaking about the other day whose strength was as the strength of ten?’

‘A gentleman of the name of Galahad, sir. You err, however, in supposing him to have been a personal friend. He was the subject of a poem by the late Alfred, Lord Tennyson.’

‘Immaterial, Jeeves. All I was going to say was that I would like the strength of this whisky-and-soda to be as that of ten. Don’t flinch when pouring.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He departed on his errand of mercy, and I buckled down to the
Crayfish
once more. But scarcely had I started to collect clues and interview suspects when I was interrupted again. A clenched fist had sloshed against the portal with a disturbing booming sound. Assuming that my visitor was Stilton, I was about to rise and rebuke him through the keyhole as before, when there penetrated from the outer spaces an ejaculation so fruity and full of vigour that it could have proceeded only from the lips of one who had learned her stuff among the hounds and foxes.

‘Aunt Dahlia?’

‘Open this door!’

I did so, and she came charging in.

‘Where’s Jeeves?’ she asked, so plainly all of a-twitter that I eyed her in considerable alarm. After what Uncle Tom had been saying about her tottering I didn’t like this febrile agitation.

‘Is something the matter?’ I asked.

‘You bet something’s the matter. Bertie,’ said the old relative, sinking on to the chaise-longue and looking as if at any moment she
might
start blowing bubbles, ‘I’m up against it, and only Jeeves can save my name in the home from becoming mud. Produce the blighter, and let him exercise that brain of his as never before.’

I ENDEAVOURED TO
soothe her with a kindly pat on the topknot. ‘Jeeves will be back in a moment,’ I said, ‘and will doubtless put everything right with one wave of his magic wand. Tell me, my fluttering old aspen, what seems to be the trouble?’

She gulped like a stricken bull pup. I had rarely seen a more jittery aunt.

‘It’s Tom!’

‘The uncle of that name?’

‘How many Toms do you think there are in this joint, for goodness’ sake?’ she said, with a return of her normal forcefulness. ‘Yes, Thomas Portarlington Travers, my husband.’

‘Portarlington?’ I said, a little shocked.

‘He came pottering into my room just now.’

I nodded intelligently. I remembered that he had spoken of having done so. It was on that occasion, you recall, that he had observed her pressing her hand to the top of her head.

‘I see. Yes, so far I follow you. Scene, your room. Discovered sitting, you. Enter Uncle Tom, pottering. What then?’

She was silent for a space. Then she spoke in what was for her a hushed voice. That is to say, while rattling the vases on the mantelpiece, it did not bring plaster down from the ceiling.

‘I’d better tell you the whole thing.’

‘Do, old ancestor. Nothing like getting it off the chest, whatever it is.’

She gulped like another stricken bull pup.

‘It’s not a long story.’

‘Good,’ I said, for the hour was late and I had had a busy day.

‘You remember when we were talking after you got here this evening … Bertie, you revolting object,’ she said, deviating momentarily from the main thread, ‘that moustache of yours is the most obscene thing I ever saw outside a nightmare. It seems to take one straight into another and a dreadful world. What made you commit this rash act?’

I tut-tutted a bit austerely.

‘Never mind my moustache, old flesh and blood. You leave it alone, and it’ll leave you alone. When we were talking this evening, you were saying?’

She accepted the rebuke with a moody nod.

‘Yes, I mustn’t get side-tracked. I must stick to the point.’

‘Like glue.’

‘When we were talking this evening, you said you wondered how I had managed to get Tom to cough up the price of the Daphne Dolores Morehead serial. You remember?’

‘I do. I’m still wondering.’

‘Well, it’s quite simple. I didn’t.’

‘Eh?’

‘Tom didn’t contribute a penny.’

‘Then how –?’

‘I’ll tell you how. I pawned my pearl necklace.’

I gazed at her … well, I suppose ‘awestruck’ would be the word. Acquaintance with this woman dating from the days when I was an infant mewling and puking in my nurse’s arms, if you will excuse the expression, had left me with the feeling that her guiding motto in life was ‘Anything goes’, but this seemed pretty advanced stuff even for one to whom the sky had always been the limit.

‘Pawned it?’ I said.

‘Pawned it.’

‘Hocked it, you mean? Popped it? Put it up the spout?’

‘That’s right. It was the only thing to do. I had to have that serial in order to salt the mine, and Tom absolutely refused to give me so much as a fiver to slake the thirst for gold of this blood-sucking Morehead. “Nonsense, nonsense”, he kept saying. “Quite out of the question, quite out of the question.” So I slipped up to London, took the necklace to Aspinall’s, told them to make a replica, and then went along to the pawnbroker’s. Well, when I say pawnbroker’s, that’s a figure of speech. My fellow was much higher class. More of a moneylender, you would call him.’

I whistled a bar or two.

‘Then that thing I picked up for you this morning was a dud?’

‘Cultured stuff.’

‘Golly!’ I said. ‘You aunts do live!’ I hesitated. I was loath to bruise that gentle spirit, especially at a moment when she was worried about something, but it seemed to me a nephew’s duty to point out the snag. ‘And when … I’m afraid this is going to spoil your day, but what happens when Uncle Tom finds out?’

‘That’s exactly the trouble.’

‘I thought it might be.’

She gulped like a third stricken bull pup.

‘If it hadn’t been for a foul bit of bad luck, he wouldn’t have found out in a million years. I don’t suppose Tom, bless him, would know the difference between the Koh-i-noor and something from Wool-worth’s.’

I saw her point. Uncle Tom, as I have indicated, is a red-hot collector of old silver and there is nothing you can teach him about sconces, foliation, scrolls and ribbon wreaths, but jewellery is to him, as to most of the male sex, a sealed book.