The Jeeves Omnibus (291 page)

I looked at him with a wild surmise. It seemed to me that there was but one meaning to be attached to his words.

‘You aren’t thinking of having a pop at it yourself?’

‘That is precisely my intention, Mr. Wooster.’

‘Lord love a duck!’

‘The expression is new to me, but I gather from it that you consider my conduct eccentric.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, but do you realize what you are letting yourself in for? You won’t enjoy meeting Ma Cream. She has an eye like … what are those things that have eyes? Basilisks, that’s the name I was groping for. She has an eye like a basilisk. Have you considered the possibility of having that eye go through you like a dose of salts?’

‘Yes, I can envisage the peril. But the fact is, Mr. Wooster, I regard what has happened as a challenge. My blood is up.’

‘Mine froze.’

‘And you may possibly not believe me, but I find the prospect of searching Mr. Cream’s room quite enjoyable.’

‘Enjoyable?’

‘Yes. In a curious way it restores my youth. It brings back to me my preparatory school days, when I would often steal down at night to the headmaster’s study to eat his biscuits.’

I started. I looked at him with a kindling eye. Deep had called to deep, and the cockles of the heart were warmed.

‘Biscuits?’

‘He kept them in a tin on his desk.’

‘You really used to do that at your prep school?’

‘Many years ago.’

‘So did I,’ I said, coming within an ace of saying, ‘My brother!’

He raised his bushy eyebrows, and you could see that his heart’s cockles were warmed, too.

‘Indeed? Fancy that! I had supposed the idea original with myself, but no doubt all over England today the rising generation is doing the same thing. So you too have lived in Arcady? What kind of biscuits were yours? Mine were mixed.’

‘The ones with pink and white sugar on?’

‘In many instances, though some were plain.’

‘Mine were ginger nuts.’

‘Those are very good, too, of course, but I prefer the mixed.’

‘So do I. But you had to take what you could get in those days. Were you ever copped?’

‘I am glad to say never.’

‘I was once. I can feel the place in frosty weather still.’

‘Too bad. But these things will happen. Embarking on the present venture, I have the sustaining thought that if the worst occurs and I
am
apprehended, I can scarcely be given six of the best bending over a chair, as we used to call it. Yes, you may leave this little matter entirely to me, Mr. Wooster.’

‘I wish you’d call me Bertie.’

‘Certainly, certainly.’

‘And might I call you Roderick?’

‘I shall be delighted.’

‘Or Roddy? Roderick’s rather a mouthful.’

‘Whichever you prefer.’

‘And you are really going to hunt the slipper?’

‘I am resolved to do so. I have the greatest respect and affection for your uncle and appreciate how deeply wounded he would be, were this prized object to be permanently missing from his collection. I would never forgive myself if in the endeavour to recover his property, I were to leave any –’

‘Stone unturned?’

‘I was about to say avenue unexplored. I shall strain every –’

‘Sinew?’

‘I was thinking of the word nerve.’

‘Just as
juste
. You’ll have to bide your time, of course.’

‘Quite.’

‘And await your opportunity.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Opportunity knocks but once.’

‘So I understand.’

‘I’ll give you one tip. The thing isn’t on top of the cupboard or
armoire
.’

‘Ah, that is helpful.’

‘Unless of course he’s put it there since. Well, anyway, best of luck, Roddy.’

‘Thank you, Bertie.’

If I had been taking Old Doctor Gordon’s Bile Magnesia regularly, I couldn’t have felt more of an inward glow as I left him and headed for the lawn to get the Ma Cream book and return it to its place on the shelves of Aunt Dahlia’s boudoir. I was lost in admiration of Roddy’s manly spirit. He was well stricken in years, fifty if a day, and it thrilled me to think that there was so much life in the old dog still. It just showed … well, I don’t know what, but something. I found myself musing on the boy Glossop, wondering what he had been like in his biscuit-snitching days. But except that I knew he wouldn’t have been bald then, I couldn’t picture him. It’s often this way when one contemplates one’s seniors. I remember how amazed I was to learn
that
my Uncle Percy, a tough old egg with apparently not a spark of humanity in him, had once held the metropolitan record for being chucked out of Covent Garden Balls.

I got the book, and ascertaining after reaching Aunt Dahlia’s lair that there remained some twenty minutes before it would be necessary to start getting ready for the evening meal I took a seat and resumed my reading. I had had to leave off at a point where Ma Cream had just begun to spit on her hands and start filling the customers with pity and terror. But I hadn’t put more than a couple of clues and a mere sprinkling of human gore under my belt, when the door flew open and Kipper appeared. And as the eye rested on him, he too filled me with pity and terror, for his map was flushed and his manner distraught. He looked like Jack Dempsey at the conclusion of his first conference with Gene Tunney, the occasion, if you remember, when he forgot to duck.

He lost no time in bursting into speech.

‘Bertie! I’ve been hunting for you all over the place!’

‘I was having a chat with Swordfish in his pantry. Something wrong?’

‘Something wrong!’

‘Don’t you like the Red Room?’

‘The Red Room!’

I gathered from his manner that he had not come to beef about his sleeping accommodation.

‘Then what is your little trouble?’

‘My little trouble!’

I felt that this sort of thing must be stopped at its source. It was only ten minutes to dressing-for-dinner time, and we could go on along these lines for hours.

‘Listen, old crumpet,’ I said patiently. ‘Make up your mind whether you are my old friend Reginald Herring or an echo in the Swiss mountains. If you’re simply going to repeat every word I say –’

At this moment Pop Glossop entered with the cocktails, and we cheesed the give-and-take. Kipper drained his glass to the lees and seemed to become calmer. When the door closed behind Roddy and he was at liberty to speak, he did so quite coherently. Taking another beaker, he said:

‘Bertie, the most frightful thing has happened.’

I don’t mind saying that the heart did a bit of sinking. In an earlier conversation with Bobbie Wickham it will be recalled that I had compared Brinkley Court to one of those joints the late Edgar Allan Poe used to write about. If you are acquainted with his works, you
will
remember that in them it was always tough going for those who stayed in country houses, the visitor being likely at any moment to encounter a walking corpse in a winding sheet with blood all over it. Prevailing conditions at Brinkley were not perhaps quite as testing as that, but the atmosphere had undeniably become sinister, and here was Kipper more than hinting that he had a story to relate which would deepen the general feeling that things were hotting up.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter,’ he said.

‘Yes, do,’ I said, and he did.

‘Bertie,’ he said, taking a third one. ‘I think you will understand that when I read that announcement in
The Times
I was utterly bowled over?’

‘Oh quite. Perfectly natural.’

‘My head swam, and –’

‘Yes, you told me. Everything went black.’

‘I wish it had stayed black,’ he said bitterly, ‘but it didn’t. After awhile the mists cleared, and I sat there seething with fury. And after I had seethed for a bit I rose from my chair, took pen in hand and wrote Bobbie a stinker.’

‘Oh, gosh!’

‘I put my whole soul into it.’

‘Oh, golly!’

‘I accused her in set terms of giving me the heave-ho in order that she could mercenarily marry a richer man. I called her a carrot-topped Jezebel whom I was thankful to have got out of my hair. I … Oh, I can’t remember what else I said but, as I say, it was a stinker.’

‘But you never mentioned a word about this when I met you.’

‘In the ecstasy of learning that that
Times
thing was just a ruse and that she loved me still it passed completely from my mind. When it suddenly came back to me just now, it was like getting hit in the eye with a wet fish. I reeled.’

‘Squealed?’

‘Reeled. I felt absolutely boneless. But I had enough strength to stagger to the telephone. I rang up Skeldings Hall and was informed that she had just arrived.’

‘She must have driven like an inebriated racing motorist.’

‘No doubt she did. Girls will be girls. Anyway, she was there. She told me with a merry lilt in her voice that she had found a letter from me on the hall table and could hardly wait to open it. In a shaking voice I told her not to.’

‘So you were in time.’

‘In time, my foot! Bertie, you’re a man of the world. You’ve known a good many members of the other sex in your day. What does a girl do when she is told not to open a letter?’

I got his drift.

‘Opens it?’

‘Exactly. I heard the envelope rip, and the next moment … No, I’d rather not think of it.’

‘She took umbrage?’

‘Yes, and she also took my head off. I don’t know if you have ever been in a typhoon on the Indian Ocean.’

‘No, I’ve never visited those parts.’

‘Nor have I, but from what people tell me what ensued must have been very like being in one. She spoke for perhaps five minutes –’

‘By Shrewsbury clock.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. What did she say?’

‘I can’t repeat it all, and wouldn’t if I could.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.’

‘One can’t sometimes.’

‘Women talk so damn quick.’

‘How well I know it! And what was the final score?’

‘She said she was thankful that I was glad to have got her out of my hair, because she was immensely relieved to have got me out of hers, and that I had made her very happy because now she was free to marry you, which had always been her dearest wish.’

In this hair-raiser of Ma Cream’s which I had been perusing there was a chap of the name of Scarface McColl, a gangster of sorts, who, climbing into the old car one morning and twiddling the starting key, went up in fragments owing to a business competitor having inserted a bomb in his engine, and I had speculated for a moment, while reading, as to how he must have felt. I knew now. Just as he had done, I rose. I sprang to the door, and Kipper raised an eyebrow.

‘Am I boring you?’ he said rather stiffly.

‘No, no. But I must go and get my car.’

‘You going for a ride?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s nearly dinner time.’

‘I don’t want any dinner.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Herne Bay.’

‘Why Herne Bay?’

‘Because Jeeves is there, and this thing must be placed in his hands without a moment’s delay.’

‘What can Jeeves do?’

‘That,’ I said, ‘I cannot say, but he will do something. If he has been eating plenty of fish, as no doubt he would at a seashore resort, his brain will be at the top of its form, and when Jeeves’s brain is at the top of its form, all you have to do is press a button and stand out of the way while he takes charge.’

IT’S CONSIDERABLY MORE
than a step from Brinkley Court to Herne Bay, the one being in the middle of Worcestershire and the other on the coast of Kent, and even under the best of conditions you don’t expect to do the trip in a flash. On the present occasion, held up by the Arab steed getting taken with a fit of the vapours and having to be towed to a garage for medical treatment, I didn’t fetch up at journey’s end till well past midnight. And when I rolled round to Jeeves’s address on the morrow, I was informed that he had gone out early and they didn’t know when he would be back. Leaving word for him to ring me at the Drones, I returned to the metropolis and was having the pre-dinner keg of nails in the smoking-room when his call came through.

‘Mr. Wooster? Good evening, sir. This is Jeeves.’

‘And not a moment too soon,’ I said, speaking with the emotion of a lost lamb which after long separation from the parent sheep finally manages to spot it across the meadow. ‘Where have you been all this time?’

‘I had an appointment to lunch with a friend at Folkestone, sir, and while there was persuaded to extend my visit in order to judge a seaside bathing belles contest.’

‘No, really? You do live, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How did it go off?’

‘Quite satisfactorily, sir, thank you.’

‘Who won?’

‘A Miss Marlene Higgins of Brixton, sir, with Miss Lana Brown of Tulse Hill and Miss Marilyn Bunting of Penge honourably mentioned. All most attractive young ladies.’

‘Shapely?’

‘Extremely so.’

‘Well, let me tell you, Jeeves, and you can paste this in your hat, shapeliness isn’t everything in this world. In fact, it sometimes seems to me that the more curved and lissome the members of the opposite
sex,
the more likely they are to set Hell’s foundations quivering. I’m sorely beset, Jeeves. Do you recall telling me once about someone who told somebody he could tell him something which would make him think a bit? Knitted socks and porcupines entered into it, I remember.’

‘I think you may be referring to the ghost of the father of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, sir. Addressing his son, he said “I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine.”’

‘That’s right. Locks, of course, not socks. Odd that he should have said porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt, as so often happens with ghosts. Well, he had nothing on me, Jeeves. It’s a tale of that precise nature that I am about to unfold. Are you listening?’