The Jeeves Omnibus (335 page)

She heaved herself up from the chaise longue on which she was reclining. Her manner was peevish. In time, of course, she would get over her chagrin and start loving her Bertram again as of yore, but there was no getting away from it that an aunt’s affection was, as of even date, at its lowest ebb. She said gloomily:

‘I’ll have to do it myself.’

‘Are you going to see Bingley?’

‘I am going to see Bingley, and I am going to talk to Bingley, and I am going, if necessary, to take Bingley by the throat and shake him—’

‘Like a rat?’

‘Yes, like a rat,’ she said with the quiet confidence of a woman who had been shaking rats by the throat since she was a slip of a girl. ‘Five Ormond Crescent, here I come!’

It shows to what an extent happenings in and about Market Snodsbury had affected my mental processes that she had been gone at least ten minutes before the thought of Bastable floated into my mind, and I wished I had been able to give her a word of warning. That zealous employee of Rupert Bingley had been instructed to see to it that no callers were admitted to the presence, and I saw no reason to suppose that he would fail in his duty when the old ancestor showed up. He would not use
physical
violence – indeed, with a woman of her physique he would be unwise to attempt it – but it would be the work of an instant with him not to ask her to step this way, thus ensuring her departure with what Ma McCorkadale would call a flea in her ear. I could see her returning in, say, about a quarter of an hour a baffled and defeated woman.

I was right. It was some twenty minutes later, as I sat reading the Rex Stout which she had used as a guided missile, that heavy breathing became audible without and shortly afterwards she became visible within, walking with the measured tread of a saint going round St Paul’s. A far less discerning eye than mine could have spotted that she had been having Bastable trouble.

It would have been kinder, perhaps, not to have spoken, but it was one of those occasions when you feel you have to say something.

‘Any luck?’ I enquired.

She sank on to the chaise longue, simmering gently. She punched a cushion, and I could see she was wishing it could have been Bastable. He was essentially the sort of man who asks, nay clamours, to be treated in this manner.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t get in.’

‘Why was that?’ I asked, wearing the mask.

‘A beefy butler sort of bird slammed the door in my face.’

‘Too bad.’

‘And I was just too late to get my foot in.’

‘Always necessary to work quick on these occasions. The most precise timing is called for. Odd that he should have admitted me. I suppose my air of quiet distinction was what turned the scale. What did you do?’

‘I came away. What else could I have done?’

‘No, I can see how difficult it must have been.’

‘The maddening part of it is that I was all set to try to get that money out of L. P. Runkle this afternoon. I felt that today was the day. But if my luck’s out, as it seems to be, perhaps I had better postpone it.’

‘Not strike while the iron is hot?’

‘It may not be hot enough.’

‘Well, you’re the judge. You know,’ I said, getting back to the main issue, ‘the ambassador to conduct the negotiations with Bingley is really Jeeves. It is he who should have been given the assignment. Where I am speechless in Bingley’s presence
and
you can’t even get into the house, he would be inside and talking a blue streak before you could say What ho. And he has the added advantage that Bingley seems fond of him. He thinks he’s a cough drop.’

‘What on earth’s a cough drop?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s something Bingley admires. When he spoke of him as one, it was with a genuine ring of enthusiasm in his voice. Did you tell Jeeves about Bingley having the book?’

‘Yes, I told him.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘You know how Jeeves takes things. One of his eyebrows rose a little and he said he was shocked and astounded.’

‘That’s strong stuff for him. “Most disturbing” is as far as he goes usually.’

‘It’s a curious thing,’ said the aged relative thoughtfully. ‘As I was driving off in the car I thought I saw Jeeves coming away from Bingley’s place. Though I couldn’t be sure it was him.’

‘It must have been. His first move on getting the low-down from you about the book would be to go and see Bingley. I wonder if he’s back yet.’

‘Not likely. I was driving, he was walking. There wouldn’t be time.’

‘I’ll ring for Seppings and ask. Oh, Seppings,’ I said, when he answered the bell, ‘Is Jeeves downstairs?’

‘No, sir. He went out and has not yet returned.’

‘When he does, tell him to come and see me, will you.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I thought of asking if Jeeves, when he left, had had the air of a man going to Number 5 Ormond Crescent, but decided that this might be trying Seppings too high, so let it go. He withdrew, and we sat for some time talking about Jeeves. Then, feeling that this wasn’t going to get us anywhere and that nothing constructive could be accomplished till he returned, we took up again the matter of L. P. Runkle. At least, the aged relative took it up, and I put the question I had been wanting to put at an earlier stage.

‘You say,’ I said, ‘that you felt today was the day for approaching him. What gave you that idea?’

‘The way he tucked into his lunch and the way he talked about it afterwards. Lyrical was the only word for it, and I wasn’t surprised. Anatole had surpassed himself.’

‘The Suprême de Foie Gras au Champagne?’

‘
And
the Neige aux Perles des Alpes.’

I heaved a silent sigh, thinking of what might have been. The garbage I had had to insult the Wooster stomach with at the pub had been of a particularly lethal nature. Generally these rural pubs are all right in the matter of browsing, but I had been so unfortunate as to pick one run by a branch of the Borgia family. The thought occurred to me as I ate that if Bingley had given his uncle lunch there one day, he wouldn’t have had to go to all the bother and expense of buying little-known Asiatic poisons.

I would have told the old relative this, hoping for sympathy, but at this moment the door opened, and in came Jeeves. Opening the conversation with that gentle cough of his that sounds like a very old sheep clearing its throat on a misty mountain top, he said:

‘You wished to see me, sir?’

He couldn’t have had a warmer welcome if he had been the prodigal son whose life story I had had to bone up when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize. The welkin, what there was of it in the drawing-room, rang with our excited yappings.

‘Come in, Jeeves,’ bellowed the aged relative.

‘Yes, come in, Jeeves, come in,’ I cried. ‘We were waiting for you with … with what?’

‘Bated breath,’ said the ancestor.

‘That’s right. With bated breath and—’

‘Tense, quivering nerves. Not to mention twitching muscles and bitten finger nails. Tell me, Jeeves, was that you I saw coming away from 5 Ormond Crescent about an hour ago?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘You had been seeing Bingley?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘About the book?’

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Did you tell him he had jolly well got to return it?’

‘No, madam.’

‘Then why on earth did you go to see him?’

‘To obtain the book, madam.’

‘But you said you didn’t tell him—’

‘There was no necessity to broach the subject, madam. He had not yet recovered consciousness. If I might explain. On my arrival at his residence he offered me a drink, which I accepted. He took one himself. We talked for awhile of this and that.
Then I succeeded in diverting his attention for a moment, and while his scrutiny was elsewhere I was able to insert a chemical substance in his beverage which had the effect of rendering him temporarily insensible. I thus had ample time to make a search of the room. I had assumed that he would be keeping the book there, and I had not been in error. It was in a lower drawer of the desk. I secured it, and took my departure.’

Stunned by this latest revelation of his efficiency and do-it-yourself-ness, I was unable to utter, but the old ancestor gave the sort of cry or yowl which must have rung over many a hunting field, causing members of the Quorn and the Pytchley to leap in their saddles like Mexican jumping beans.

‘You mean you slipped him a Mickey Finn?’

‘I believe that is what they are termed in the argot, madam.’

‘Do you always carry them about with you?’

‘I am seldom without a small supply, madam.’

‘Never know when they won’t come in handy, eh?’

‘Precisely, madam. Opportunities for their use are constantly arising.’

‘Well, I can only say thank you. You have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.’

‘It is kind of you to say so, madam.’

‘Much obliged, Jeeves.’

‘Not at all, madam.’

I was expecting the aged relative to turn to me at this point and tick me off for not having had the sense to give Bingley a Mickey Finn myself, and I knew, for you cannot reason with aunts, that it would be no use pleading that I hadn’t got any; but her jocund mood caused her to abstain. Returning to the subject of L. P. Runkle, she said this had made her realize that her luck was in, after all, and she was going to press it.

‘I’ll go and see him now,’ she yipped, ‘and I confidently expect to play on him as on a stringed instrument. Out of my way, young Bertie,’ she cried, heading for the door, ‘or I’ll trample you to the dust. Yoicks!’ she added, reverting to the patois of the old hunting days. ‘Tally ho! Gone away! Hark forrard!’

Or words to that effect.

12

HER DEPARTURE – AT,
I should estimate, some sixty m.p.h. – left behind it the sort of quivering stillness you get during hurricane time in America, when the howling gale, having shaken you to the back teeth, passes on to tickle up residents in spots further west. Kind of a dazed feeling it gives you. I turned to Jeeves, and found him, of course, as serene and unmoved as an oyster on the half shell. He might have been watching yowling aunts shoot out of rooms like bullets from early boyhood.

‘What was that she said, Jeeves?’

‘Yoicks, sir, if I am not mistaken. It seemed to me that Madam also added Tally-ho, Gone away and Hark forrard.’

‘I suppose members of the Quorn and the Pytchley are saying that sort of thing all the time.’

‘So I understand, sir. It encourages the hounds to renewed efforts. It must, of course, be trying for the fox.’

‘I’d hate to be a fox, wouldn’t you, Jeeves?’

‘Certainly I can imagine more agreeable existences, sir.’

‘Not only being chivvied for miles across difficult country but having to listen to men in top hats uttering those uncouth cries.’

‘Precisely, sir. A very wearing life.’

I produced my cambric handkerchief and gave the brow a mop. Recent events had caused me to perspire in the manner popularized by the fountains at Versailles.

‘Warm work, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Opens the pores a bit.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How quiet everything seems now.’

‘Yes, sir. Silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of sound.’

‘Shakespeare?’

‘No, sir. The American author Oliver Wendell Holmes. His
poem,
“The Organ Grinders”. An aunt of mine used to read it to me as a child.’

‘I didn’t know you had any aunts.’

‘Three, sir.’

‘Are they as jumpy as the one who has just left us?’

‘No, sir. Their outlook on life is uniformly placid.’

I had begun to feel a bit more placid myself. Calmer, if you know what I mean. And with the calm had come more charitable thoughts.

‘Well, I don’t blame the aged relative for being jumpy,’ I said. ‘She’s all tied up with an enterprise of pith and something.’

‘Of great pith and moment, sir?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Let us hope that its current will not turn awry and lose the name of action.’

‘Yes, let’s. Turn what?’

‘Awry, sir.’

‘Don’t you mean agley?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then it isn’t the poet Burns?’

‘No, sir. The words occur in Shakespeare’s drama
Hamlet
.’

‘Oh, I know
Hamlet
. Aunt Agatha once made me take her son Thos to it at the Old Vic. Not a bad show, I thought, though a bit highbrow. You’re sure the poet Burns didn’t write it?’

‘Yes, sir. The fact, I understand, is well established.’

‘Then that settles that. But we have wandered from the point, which is that Aunt Dahlia is up to her neck in this enterprise of great pith and moment. It’s about Tuppy Glossop.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘It ought to interest you, because I know you’ve always liked Tuppy.’

‘A very pleasant young gentleman, sir.’

‘When he isn’t looping back the last ring over the Drones swimming-pool, yes. Well, it’s too long a story to tell you at the moment, but the gist of it is this. L. P. Runkle, taking advantage of a legal quibble … is it quibble?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did down Tuppy’s father over a business deal … no, not exactly a business deal, Tuppy’s father was working for him, and he took advantage of the small print in their contract to rob him of the proceeds of something he had invented.’

‘It is often the way, sir. The financier is apt to prosper at the expense of the inventor.’

‘And Aunt Dahlia is hoping to get him to cough up a bit of cash and slip it to Tuppy.’

‘Actuated by remorse, sir?’

‘Not just by remorse. She’s relying more on the fact that for quite a time he has been under the spell of Anatole’s cooking, and she feels that this will have made him a softer and kindlier financier, readier to oblige and do the square thing. You look dubious, Jeeves. Don’t you think it will work? She’s sure it will.’

‘I wish I could share Madam’s confidence, but—’

‘But, like me, you look on her chance of playing on L. P. Runkle as on a stringed instrument as … what? A hundred to eight shot?’

‘A somewhat longer price than that, sir. We have to take into consideration the fact that Mr Runkle is …’