The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (72 page)

And, as I tied, my thoughts turned in a moody sort of way to the subject of Woman.

I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.

Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn’t do. Take the females who were mixed up in this present business. Aunt Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle. Aunt Agatha’s closest friend, Miss Mapleton, of whom I can only say that on the single occasion on which I had met
her
she had struck me as just the sort of person who would be Aunt Agatha’s closest friend. Bobbie Wickham, a girl who went about the place letting the pure in heart in for the sort of thing I was doing now. And Bobbie Wickham’s cousin Clementina, who, instead of sticking sedulously to her studies and learning to be a good wife and mother, spent the springtime of her life filling ink-pots with sherbet –

What a crew! What a crew!

I mean to say, what a
crew!

I had just worked myself up into rather an impressive state of moral indignation, and was preparing to go even further, when a sudden bright light shone upon me from below and a voice spoke.

‘Ho!’ it said.

It was a policeman. Apart from the fact of his having a lantern, I knew it was a policeman because he had said ‘Ho!’ I don’t know if you recollect my telling you of the time I broke into Bingo Little’s house to pinch the dictaphone record of the mushy article his wife had written about him and sailed out of the study window right into the arms of the Force? On that occasion the guardian of the Law had said ‘Ho!’ and kept on saying it, so evidently policemen are taught this as part of their training. And after all, it’s not a bad way of opening conversation in the sort of circs in which they generally have to chat with people.

‘You come on down out of that,’ he said.

I came down. I had just got the flower-pot balanced on its branch, and I left it there, feeling rather as if I had touched off the time-fuse of a bomb. Much seemed to me to depend on its stability and poise, as it were. If it continued to balance, an easy nonchalance might still get me out of this delicate position. If it fell, I saw things being a bit hard to explain. In fact, even as it was, I couldn’t see my way to any explanation which would be really convincing.

However, I had a stab at it.

‘Ah, officer,’ I said.

It sounded weak. I said it again, this time with the emphasis on the ‘Ah!’ It sounded weaker than ever. I saw that Bertram would have to do better than this.

‘It’s all right, officer,’ I said.

‘All right, is it?’

‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’

‘What you doing up there?’

‘Me, officer?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘Nothing, sergeant.’

‘Ho!’

We eased into the silence, but it wasn’t one of those restful silences that occur in talks between old friends. Embarrassing. Awkward.

‘You’d better come along with me,’ said the gendarme.

The last time I had heard those words from a similar source had been in Leicester Square one Boat Race night when, on my advice, my old pal Oliver Randolph Sipperley had endeavoured to steal a policeman’s helmet at a moment when the policeman was inside it. On that occasion they had been addressed to young Sippy, and they hadn’t sounded any too good, even so. Addressed to me, they more or less froze the marrow.

‘No, I say, dash it!’ I said.

And it was at this crisis, when Bertram had frankly shot his bolt and could only have been described as nonplussed, that a soft step sounded beside us and a soft voice broke the silence.

‘Have you got them, officer? No, I see. It is Mr Wooster.’

The policeman switched the lantern round.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Mr Wooster’s personal gentleman’s gentleman.’

‘Whose?’

‘Mr Wooster’s.’

‘Is this man’s name Wooster?’

‘This gentleman’s name is Mr Wooster. I am in his employment as gentleman’s personal gentleman.

I think the cop was awed by the man’s majesty of demeanour, but he came back strongly.

‘Ho!’ he said. ‘Not in Miss Mapleton’s employment?’

‘Miss Mapleton does not employ a gentleman’s personal gentleman.’

‘Then what are you doing in her garden?’

‘I was in conference with Miss Mapleton inside the house, and she desired me to step out and ascertain whether Mr Wooster had been successful in apprehending the intruders.’

‘What intruders?’

‘The suspicious characters whom Mr Wooster and I had observed passing through the garden as we entered it.’

‘And what were you doing entering it?’

‘Mr Wooster had come to pay a call on Miss Mapleton, who is a close friend of his family. We noticed suspicious characters crossing the lawn. On perceiving these suspicious characters, Mr Wooster dispatched me to warn and reassure Miss Mapleton, he himself remaining to investigate.’

‘I found him up a tree.’

‘If Mr Wooster was up a tree, I have no doubt he was actuated by excellent motives and had only Miss Mapleton’s best interests at heart.’

The policeman brooded.

‘Ho!’ he said. ‘Well, if you want to know, I don’t believe a word of it. We had a telephone call at the station saying there was somebody in Miss Mapleton’s garden, and I found this fellow up a tree. It’s my belief you’re both in this, and I’m going to take you in to the lady for identification.’

Jeeves inclined his head gracefully.

‘I shall be delighted to accompany you, officer, if such is your wish. And I feel sure that in this connection I may speak for Mr Wooster also. He too, I am confident, will interpose no obstacle in the way of your plans. If you consider that circumstances have placed Mr Wooster in a position that may be termed equivocal, or even compromising, it will naturally be his wish to exculpate himself at the earliest possible –’

‘Here! said the policeman, slightly rattled.

‘Officer?’

‘Less of it.’

‘Just as you say, officer.’

‘Switch it off and come along.’

‘Very good, officer.’

I must say that I have enjoyed functions more than that walk to the front door. It seemed to me that the doom had come upon me, so to speak, and I thought it hard that a gallant effort like Jeeves’s, well reasoned and nicely planned, should have failed to click. Even to me his story had rung almost true in spots, and it was a great blow that the man behind the lantern had not sucked it in without question. There’s no doubt about it, being a policeman warps a man’s mind and ruins that sunny faith in his fellow human beings which is the foundation of a lovable character. There seems no way of avoiding this.

I could see no gleam of light in the situation. True, the Mapleton would identify me as the nephew of her old friend, thus putting the stopper on the stroll to the police station and the night in the prison cell, but, when you came right down to it, a fat lot of use that was. The kid Clementina was presumably still out in the night somewhere, and she would be lugged in and the full facts revealed, and then the burning glance, the few cold words and the long letter to Aunt Agatha. I wasn’t sure that a good straight term of penal servitude wouldn’t have been a happier ending.

So, what with one consideration and another, the heart, as I toddled in through the front door, was more or less bowed down with weight of woe. We went along the passage and into the study, and there, standing behind a desk with the steel-rimmed spectacles glittering as nastily as on the day when I had seen them across Aunt Agatha’s luncheon-table, was the boss in person. I gave her one swift look, then shut my eyes.

‘Ah!’ said Miss Mapleton.

Now, uttered in a certain way – dragged out, if you know what I mean, and starting high up and going down into the lower register – the word ‘Ah!’ can be as sinister and devastating as the word ‘Ho!’ In fact, it is a very moot question which is the scalier. But what stunned me was that this wasn’t the way she had said it. It had been, or my ears deceived me, a genial ‘Ah!’ A matey ‘Ah!’ The ‘Ah!’ of one old buddy to another. And this startled me so much that, forgetting the dictates of prudence, I actually ventured to look at her again. And a stifled exclamation burst from Bertram’s lips.

The breath-taking exhibit before me was in person a bit on the short side. I mean to say, she didn’t tower above one, or anything like that. But, to compensate for this lack of inches, she possessed to a remarkable degree that sort of quiet air of being unwilling to stand any rannygazoo which females who run schools always have. I had noticed the same thing when
in statu pupillari
, in my old headmaster, one glance from whose eye had invariably been sufficient to make me confess all. Sergeant-majors are like that, too. Also traffic-cops and some post office girls. It’s something in the way they purse up their lips and look through you.

In short, through years of disciplining the young – ticking off Isabel and speaking with quiet severity to Gertrude and that sort of thing – Miss Mapleton had acquired in the process of time rather the air of a female lion-tamer; and it was this air which had caused me after the first swift look to shut my eyes and utter a short prayer. But now, though she still resembled a lion-tamer, her bearing had most surprisingly become that of a chummy lion-tamer – a tamer who, after tucking the lions in for the night, relaxes in the society of the boys.

‘So you did not find them, Mr Wooster?’ she said. ‘I am sorry. But I am none the less grateful for the trouble you have taken, nor lacking in appreciation of your courage. I consider that you have behaved splendidly.’

I felt the mouth opening feebly and the vocal chords twitching but I couldn’t manage to say anything. I was simply unable to follow her
train
of thought. I was astonished. Amazed. In fact, dumbfounded about sums it up.

The hell-hound of the Law gave a sort of yelp, rather like a wolf that sees its Russian peasant getting away.

‘You identify this man, ma’am?’

‘Identify him? In what way identify him?’

Jeeves joined the symposium.

‘I fancy the officer is under the impression, madam, that Mr Wooster was in your garden for some unlawful purpose. I informed him that Mr Wooster was the nephew of your friend, Mrs Spenser Gregson, but he refused to credit me.’

There was a pause. Miss Mapleton eyed the constable for an instant as if she had caught him sucking acid-drops during the Scripture lesson.

‘Do you mean to tell me, officer,’ she said, in a voice that hit him just under the third button of the tunic and went straight through to the spinal column, ‘that you have had the imbecility to bungle this whole affair by mistaking Mr Wooster for a burglar?’

‘He was up a tree, ma’am.’

‘And why should he not be up a tree? No doubt you had climbed the tree in order to watch the better, Mr Wooster?’

I could answer that. The first shock over, the old sang-froid was beginning to return.

‘Yes. Rather. That’s it. Of course. Certainly. Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Watch the better. That’s it in a nutshell.’

‘I took the liberty of suggesting that to the officer, madam, but he declined to accept the theory as tenable.’

‘The officer is a fool,’ said Miss Mapleton. It seemed a close thing for a moment whether or not she would rap him on the knuckles with a ruler. ‘By this time, no doubt, owing to this idiocy, the miscreants have made good their escape. And it is for this,’ said Miss Mapleton, ‘that we pay rates and taxes!’

‘Awful!’ I said.

‘Iniquitous.’

‘A bally shame.’

‘A crying scandal,’ said Miss Mapleton.

‘A grim show,’ I agreed.

In fact, we were just becoming more like a couple of love-birds than anything, when through the open window there suddenly breezed a noise.

I’m never at my best at describing things. At school, when we used to do essays and English composition, my report generally read ‘Has
little
or no ability, but does his best,’ or words to that effect. True, in the course of years I have picked up a vocabulary of sorts from Jeeves, but even so I’m not nearly hot enough to draw a word-picture that would do justice to that extraordinarily hefty crash. Try to imagine the Albert Hall falling on the Crystal Palace, and you will have got the rough idea.

All four of us, even Jeeves, sprang several inches from the floor. The policeman uttered a startled ‘Ho!’

Miss Mapleton was her calm masterful self again in a second.

‘One of the men appears to have fallen through the conservatory roof,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you will endeavour at the eleventh hour to justify your existence, officer, by proceeding there and making investigations.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And try not to bungle matters this time.’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘Please hurry, then. Do you intend to stand there gaping all night?’

‘Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am. Yes, ma’am.’

It was pretty to hear him.

‘It is an odd coincidence, Mr Wooster,’ said Miss Mapleton, becoming instantly matey once more as the outcast removed himself. ‘I had just finished writing a letter to your aunt when you arrived. I shall certainly reopen it to tell her how gallantly you have behaved tonight. I have not in the past entertained a very high opinion of the modern young man, but you have caused me to alter it. To track these men unarmed through a dark garden argues courage of a high order. And it was most courteous of you to think of calling upon me. I appreciate it. Are you making a long stay in Bingley?’

This was another one I could answer.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Afraid not. Must be in London tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps you could lunch before your departure?’

‘Afraid not. Thanks most awfully. Very important engagement that I can’t get out of. Eh, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have to catch the ten-thirty train, what?’

‘Without fail, sir.’

‘I am sorry,’ said Miss Mapleton. ‘I had hoped that you would be able to say a few words to my girls. Some other time perhaps?’