The Jeeves Omnibus (342 page)

‘Good Lord, Jeeves!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He really said that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No wonder his engagement’s off.’

‘I must confess it occasioned me no surprise, sir.’

I continued amazed. It seemed incredible that Ginger, whose long suit was muscle rather than brain, should have had the ingenuity and know-how to think up such a scheme for freeing himself from Florence’s clutches without forfeiting his standing as a fairly
preux chevalier
. It seemed to reveal him as possessed of snakiness of a high order, and I was just thinking that you never can tell about a fellow’s hidden depths, when one of those sudden thoughts of mine came popping to the surface.

‘Was this you, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

‘Did you put Ginger up to doing it?’

‘It is conceivable that Mr Winship may have been influenced by something I said, sir. He was very much exercised with regard to his matrimonial entanglements and he did me the honour of consulting me. It is quite possible that I may have let fall some careless remark that turned his thoughts in the direction they took.’

‘In other words, you told him to go to it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I was silent for a space. I was thinking how jolly it would be if he could dish up something equally effective with regard to me and M. Bassett. The thought also occurred to me that what had happened, while excellent for Ginger, wasn’t so good for his backers and supporters and the Conservative cause in general.

I mentioned this.

‘Tough on the fellows who betted on him.’

‘Into each life some rain must fall, sir.’

‘Though possibly a good thing. A warning to them in future to keep their money in the old oak chest and not risk it on wagers. May prove a turning point in their lives. What really saddens one is the thought that Bingley will now clean up. He’ll make a packet.’

‘He told me this afternoon that he was expecting to do so.’

‘You mean you’ve seen him?’

‘He came here at about five o’clock, sir.’

‘Stockish, hard and full of rage, I suppose?’

‘On the contrary, sir, extremely friendly. He made no allusion to the past. I gave him a cup of tea, and we chatted for perhaps half an hour.’

‘Strange.’

‘Yes, sir. I wondered if he might not have had an ulterior motive in approaching me.’

‘Such as?’

‘I must confess I cannot think of one. Unless he entertained some hope of inducing me to part with the club book, but that is hardly likely. Would there be anything further, sir?’

‘You want to get back to the stricken parlourmaid?’

‘Yes, sir. When you rang, I was about to see what a little weak brandy and water would do.’

I sped him on his errand of mercy and sat down to brood. You might have supposed that the singular behaviour of Bingley would have occupied my thoughts. I mean, when you hear that a chap of his well-established crookedness has been acting oddly, your natural impulse is to say ‘Aha!’ and wonder what his game is. And perhaps for a minute or two I did ponder on this. But I had so many other things to ponder on that Bingley soon got shoved into the discard. If I remember rightly, it was as I mused on Problem (b), the one about restoring the porringer to L. P. Runkle, and again drew a blank, that my reverie was interrupted by the entrance of the old ancestor.

She was wearing the unmistakable look of an aunt who has just been having the time of her life, and this did not surprise me. Hers since she sold the weekly paper she used to run, the one I did that piece on What The Well-Dressed Man Will Wear for, has been a quiet sort of existence, pleasant enough but lacking in incident and excitement. A really sensational event such as the egg-and-vegetable-throwing get-together she had just been present at must have bucked her up like a week at the seaside.

Her greeting could not have been more cordial. An aunt’s love oozed out from every syllable.

‘Hullo, you revolting object,’ she said. ‘So you’re back.’

‘Just arrived.’

‘Too bad you had that jury job. You missed a gripping experience.’

‘So Jeeves was telling me.’

‘Ginger finally went off his rocker.’

With the inside information which had been placed at my disposal I was able to correct this view.

‘It was no rocker that he went off, aged relative. His actions were motivated by the soundest good sense. He wanted to get Florence out of his hair without actually telling her to look elsewhere for a mate.’

‘Don’t be an ass. He loves her.’

‘No longer. He’s switched to Magnolia Glendennon.’

‘You mean that secretary of his?’

‘That identical secretary.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He told me so himself.’

‘Well, I’ll be blowed. He finally got fed up with Florence’s bossiness, did he?’

‘Yes, I think it must have been coming on for some time without him knowing it, subconsciously as Jeeves would say. Meeting Magnolia brought it to the surface.’

‘She seems a nice girl.’

‘Very nice, according to Ginger.’

‘I must congratulate him.’

‘You’ll have to wait a bit. They’ve gone up to London.’

‘So have Spode and Madeline. And Runkle ought to be leaving soon. It’s like one of those great race movements of the Middle Ages I used to read about at school. Well, this is wonderful. Pretty soon it’ll be safe for Tom to return to the nest. There’s still Florence, of course, but I doubt if she will be staying on. My cup runneth over, young Bertie. I’ve missed Tom sorely. Home’s not home without him messing about the place. Why are you staring at me like a halibut on a fishmonger’s slab?’

I had not been aware that I was conveying this resemblance to the fish she mentioned, but my gaze had certainly been on the intent side, for her opening words had stirred me to my depths.

‘Did you say,’ I – yes, I suppose, vociferated would be the word, ‘that Spode and Madeline Bassett had gone to London?’

‘Left half an hour ago.’

‘Together?’

‘Yes, in his car.’

‘But Spode told me she had given him the push.’

‘She did, but everything’s all right again. He’s not going to give up his title and stand for Parliament. Getting hit in the eye with that potato changed his plans completely. It made him feel that if that was the sort of thing you have to go through to get elected to the House of Commons, he preferred to play it safe and stick to the House of Lords. And she, of course, assured that there was going to be no funny business and that she would become the Countess of Sidcup all right, withdrew her objections to marrying him. Now you’re puffing like Tom when he goes upstairs too fast. Why is this?’

Actually, I had breathed deeply, not puffed, and certainly not like Uncle Tom when he goes upstairs too fast, but I suppose to an aunt there isn’t much difference between a deep-breathing nephew and a puffing nephew, and anyway I was in no mood to discuss the point.

‘You don’t know who it was who threw that potato, do you?’ I asked.

‘The one that hit Spode? I don’t. It sort of came out of the void. Why?’

‘Because if I knew who it was, I would send camels bearing apes, ivory and peacocks to his address. He saved me from the fate that is worse than death. I allude to marriage with the Bassett disaster.’

‘Was she going to marry you?’

‘According to Spode.’

A look almost of awe came into the ancestor’s face.

‘How right you were,’ she said, ‘when you told me once that you had faith in your star. I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve been definitely headed for the altar with apparently no hope of evading the firing squad, and every time something has happened which enabled you to wriggle out of it. It’s uncanny.’

She would, I think, have gone deeper into the matter, for already she had begun to pay a marked tribute to my guardian angel, who, she said, plainly knew his job from soup to nuts, but at this moment Seppings appeared and asked her if she would have a word with Jeeves, and she went out to have it.

And I had just put my feet up on the chaise longue and was starting to muse ecstatically on the astounding bit of luck which had removed the Bassett menace from my life, when my mood of what the French call
bien être
was given the sleeve across the windpipe by the entrance of L. P. Runkle, the mere sight of whom, circs being what they were, was enough to freeze the blood and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, as I have heard Jeeves put it.

I wasn’t glad to see him, but he seemed glad to see me.

‘Oh, there you are,’ he said. ‘They told me you had skipped. Very sensible of you to come back. It’s never any good going on the run, because the police are sure to get you sooner or later, and it makes it all the worse for you if you’ve done a bolt.’

With cold dignity I said I had had to go up to London on business. He paid no attention to this. He was scrutinizing me
rather
in the manner of the halibut on the fishmonger’s slab to which the ancestor had referred in our recent conversation.

‘The odd thing is,’ he said, continuing to scan me closely, ‘that you haven’t a criminal face. It’s a silly, fatuous face, but not criminal. You remind me of one of those fellows who do dances with the soubrette in musical comedy.’

Come, come, I said to myself, this is better. Spode had compared me to a member of the ensemble. In the view of L. P. Runkle I was at any rate one of the principals. Moving up in the world.

‘Must be a great help to you in your business. Lulls people into a false security. They think there can’t be any danger from someone who looks like you, they’re off their guard, and
wham
! you’ve got away with their umbrellas and cameras. No doubt you owe all your successes to this. But you know the old saying about the pitcher going too often to the well. This time you’re for it. This time—’

He broke off, not because he had come to an end of his very offensive remarks but because Florence had joined us, and her appearance immediately claimed his attention. She was far from being dapper. It was plain that she had been in the forefront of the late battle, for whereas Ginger had merely had egg in his hair, she was, as it were, festooned in egg. She had evidently been right in the centre of the barrage. In all political meetings of the stormier kind these things are largely a matter of luck. A escapes unscathed, B becomes a human omelette.

A more tactful man than L. P. Runkle would have affected not to notice this, but I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him to affect not to notice things.

‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘You’ve got egg all over you.’

Florence replied rather acidly that she was aware of this.

‘Better change your dress.’

‘I intend to. Would you mind, Mr Runkle, if I had a word with Mr Wooster alone?’

I think Runkle was on the point of saying ‘What about?’, but on catching her eye he had prudent second thoughts. He lumbered off, and she proceeded to have the word she had mentioned.

She kept it crisp. None of the ‘Er’ stuff which was such a feature of Ginger’s oratory. Even Demosthenes would have been slower in coming to the nub, though he, of course, would have been handicapped by having to speak in Greek.

‘I’m glad I found you, Bertie.’

A civil ‘Oh, ah’ was all the reply I could think of.

‘I have been thinking things over, and I have made up my mind. Harold Winship is a mere lout, and I am having nothing more to do with him. I see now that I made a great mistake when I broke off my engagement to you. You have your faults, but they are easily corrected. I have decided to marry you, and I think we shall be very happy.’

‘But not immediately,’ said L. P. Runkle, rejoining us. I described him a moment ago as lumbering off, but a man like that never lumbers far if there is a chance of hearing what somebody has to say to somebody else in private. ‘He’ll first have to do a longish stretch in prison.’

His reappearance had caused Florence to stiffen. She now stiffened further, her aspect similar to that of the old ancestor when about to go into her
grande dame
act.

‘Mr Runkle!’

‘I’m here.’

‘I thought you had gone.’

‘I hadn’t.’

‘How dare you listen to a private conversation!’

‘They’re the only things worth listening to. I owe much of my large fortune to listening to private conversations.’

‘What is this nonsense about prison?’

‘Wooster won’t find it nonsense. He has sneaked a valuable silver porringer of mine, a thing I paid nine thousand pounds for, and I am expecting a man any minute now who will produce the evidence necessary to convict. It’s an open and shut case.’

‘Is this true, Bertie?’ said Florence with that touch of the prosecuting District Attorney I remembered so vividly, and all I could say was ‘Well … I … er … well.’

With a guardian angel like mine working overtime, it was enough. She delivered judgment instantaneously.

‘I shall not marry you,’ she said, and went off haughtily to de-egg herself.

‘Very sensible of her,’ said L. P. Runkle. ‘The right course to take. A man like you, bound to be in and out of prison, couldn’t possibly be a good husband. How is a wife to make her plans … dinner parties, holidays, Christmas treats for the children, the hundred and one things a woman has to think of … when she doesn’t know from one day to another whether the head of the house won’t be telephoning to say he’s been
arrested
again and no bail allowed? Yes?’ said Runkle, and I saw that Seppings had appeared in the offing.

‘A Mr Bingley has called to see you, sir.’

‘Ah, yes, I was expecting him.’

He popped off, and scarcely had he ceased to pollute the atmosphere when the old ancestor blew in.

She was plainly agitated, the resemblance to a cat on hot bricks being very marked. She panted a good deal, and her face had taken on the rather pretty mauve colour it always does when the soul is not at rest.

‘Bertie,’ she boomed, ‘when you went away yesterday, did you leave the door of your bedroom unlocked?’

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘Well, Jeeves says it’s open now.’

‘It can’t be.’