The Jeeves Omnibus (10 page)

At this juncture the chump of a constable, who had hitherto not spoken, shoved his oar in.

‘I thought I did see a marauder getting through, Uncle Ted.’

‘What! Then why didn’t you tell me before, you young mutton-head? And don’t call me Uncle Ted when we’re on duty.’

‘No, Uncle Ted.’

‘You’d best let us make a search of the ’ouse, sir,’ said Sergeant Voules.

Well, I put the presidential veto on this pretty quick.

‘Certainly not, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘Quite out of the q.’

‘It would be wiser, sir.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but it can’t be done.’

He seemed piqued and discontented.

‘Well, please yourself, sir, but you’re shackling the police, that’s what you’re doing. There’s too much shackling of the police these days. There was a piece in the
Mail
about it yesterday. Perhaps you read it?’

‘No.’

‘On the middle page. Unshackle the police, it said because public alarm is growing in Great Britain owing to the continuous increase of crime in the lonely rural districts. I clipped it out to paste in my album. The number of indictable offences, it said, has rose from one three four five eight one in 1929 to one four seven nought three one in 1930, with a marked increase of seven per cent in crimes of violence, and is this disturbing state of things due to slackness on the part of the police, it said? No, it said, it’s not. It’s because the police are shackled.’

The man was obviously cut to the quick. Dashed awkward.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Yes, sir, and you’re going to be sorrier when you go upstairs to your bedroom and a marauder cuts your throat from ear to ear.’

‘Fight against these gloomy views, my dear old police sergeant,’ I said. ‘I anticipate no such contingency. I’ve just come from upstairs, and I give you my word there were not marauders.’

‘Probably lurking, sir.’

‘Biding their time,’ suggested Constable Dobson.

Sergeant Voules sighed heavily.

‘I wouldn’t like nothing to happen to you, sir, seein’ you’re a close friend of his lordship’s. But as you prove obdurate …’

‘Oh, nothing could happen to anyone in a place like Chuffnell Regis.’

‘Don’t you believe it, sir. Chuffnell Regis is going down. I would never have thought to have seen a troupe of nigger minstrels singing comic songs within a stone’s-throw of my police station.’

‘You view them with concern?’

‘There’s been fowls missing,’ said Sergeant Voules darkly. ‘Several fowls. And I have my suspicions. Well, come along, Constable. If we’re to be shackled, there’s nothing to keep us here. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night.’

I shut the door and buzzed back to the bedroom. Pauline was sitting up in bed, more or less agog.

‘Who was it?’

‘The constabulary.’

‘What did they want?’

‘Apparently they saw you getting in.’

‘What a lot of trouble I’m giving you, Bertie.’

‘Oh, no. Only too pleased. Well, I suppose I might as well be pushing along.’

‘Are you going?’

‘In the circumstances,’ I replied a little frigidly, ‘I can hardly doss on the premises. I shall withdraw to the garage.’

‘Isn’t there a sofa downstairs?’

‘There is. Noah’s. He brought it ashore on Mount Ararat. I shall be better off in the car.’

‘Oh, Bertie, I
am
giving you a lot of trouble.’

I softened slightly. After all, the poor girl was scarcely to be
blamed
for what had occurred. As Chuffy had remarked earlier in the evening, love’s love.

‘Don’t you worry, old thing. We Woosters can rough it when it is a matter of giving two fond hearts a leg-up. You put your little head on the pillow and curl your little pink toes up and doze off. I shall be all right.’

And, so saying, I uncorked a kindly smile, popped off, trickled down the stairs, opened the front door, and out into the scented night; and I don’t suppose I was a dozen yards from the house when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder, occasioning me both mental and physical distress, and a shadowy form said: ‘Gotcher!’

‘Ouch!’ I replied.

The shadowy form now revealed itself as that of Constable Dobson of the Chuffnell Regis police force. He was in apologetic vein.

‘I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you was the marauder.’

I forced myself to be airy and affable. The young squire setting the lower orders at their ease.

‘Quite all right, Constable. Quite all right. Just going for a stroll.’

‘I understand, sir. Breath of air.’

‘You have put it in a nutshell. A breath, as you astutely observe, of air. The house is quite close.’

‘Yes, sir. Just over there.’

‘I mean stuffy.’

‘Oh, yes, sir. Well, good night, sir.’

‘Tra-la, Constable.’

I proceeded on my way, a little shaken. I had left the garage door open, and I felt my way to the old two-seater, glad to be alone once more. In certain moods, no doubt, one would have found Constable Dobson a delightful and stimulating companion, but tonight I preferred his absence. I climbed into the car and, leaning back, endeavoured to compose myself for sleep.

Now, whether I should have been able to achieve the dreamless had the conditions remained right, I cannot say. The point is pretty moot. As two-seaters go, I had always found mine fairly comfortable, but then I had never before tried to get the eight hours in it, and you would be surprised at the number of knobs and protuberances which seem suddenly to sprout out of a car’s upholstery when you seek to convert it into a bed.

But, as it happened, I was not given a square chance of making the test. I don’t suppose I could have counted more than about a
platoon
and a half of sheep when a light suddenly flashed on the features and a voice instructed me to come on out of it.

I sat up.

‘Ah, Sergeant!’ I said.

Another awkward meeting. Embarrassment on both sides.

‘Is that you, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry to have disturbed you, sir.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Can’t say it occurred to me that it might be you in here, sir.’

‘I thought I’d try to get a bit of sleep in the old car, Sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Such a warm night.’

‘Just so, sir.’

His voice was respectful, but I could not conquer a suspicion that he was beginning to look a bit askance. There was something in his manner that gave me the idea that he considered Bertram eccentric.

‘Stuffy indoors.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I often park myself in the car in the summertime.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Good night, Sergeant.’

‘Good night, sir.’

Well, you know how it is when someone butts in on you just as you are shaping for the beauty sleep. It breaks the spell, if you know what I mean. I curled up again, but I soon saw that all efforts in the direction of the restful night in my present environment would be fruitless. I counted about five more medium-sized flocks, but it was no good. Steps, I realized, would have to be taken through other channels.

I hadn’t done a great deal of exploring in these grounds of mine, but it so happened that one morning a sharp shower had driven me to the shelter of a species of shed or outhouse down in the south-west corner of the estate where the gardener-by-the-day stacked his tools and flower-pots and what not. And, unless memory deceived me, there had been in that outhouse or shed a pile of sacking on the floor.

Well, you may say that sacking, considered in the light of a bed, isn’t everybody’s money, and in saying so you would be perfectly correct. But after half an hour in the seat of a Widgeon Seven, even sacking begins to look pretty good to you. It may be a little hardish
on
the frame, and it may smell a good deal of mice and the deep-delved earth, but there remains just one point to be put forward in its favour – viz that it enables one to stretch the limbs. And stretching the limbs was the thing I felt now that I wanted to do most.

In addition to smelling of mice and mould, the particular segment of sacking on which some two minutes later I was reclining had a marked aroma of by-the-day gardener; and there was a moment when I had to ask myself if the mixture wasn’t a shade too rich. But these things grow on one in time, and at the end of about a quarter of an hour I was rather enjoying the blend of scents than otherwise. I can recall inflating the lungs and more or less drinking it in. At the end of about half an hour a soothing drowsiness had begun to steal over me.

And at the end of about thirty-five minutes the door flew open and there was the old familiar lantern shining in again.

‘Ah!’ said Sergeant Voules.

And Constable Dobson said the same.

I realized that the time had come to strike a forceful note with these two pests. I am all for not shackling the police, but what I maintain is that if the police come dodging about a householder’s garden all night, routing him out every time he is on the point of snatching a little repose, they have jolly well got to be shackled.

‘Yes?’ I said, and there was a touch of the imperious old aristocrat in my manner. ‘What is it now?’

Constable Dobson had been saying something in a pretty self-satisfied sort of way about having seen me creeping through the darkness and tracking me like a leopard, and Sergeant Voules, who was a man who believed in keeping nephews in their place, was remarking that he had seen me first and had tracked me just as much like a leopard as Constable Dobson: but at these crisp words a sudden silence fell upon them.

‘Is that you
again
, sir?’ inquired the sergeant in rather an awed voice.

‘Yes, it is, dash it! What, may I ask, is the meaning of this incessant chivying? Sleep under these conditions becomes impossible.’

‘Very sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that it could be you.’

‘And why not?’

‘Well, sleeping in a shed, sir –’

‘You do not dispute the fact that it is my shed?’

‘No, sir. But it sort of seems funny.’

‘I see nothing funny in it whatsoever.’

‘Uncle Ted means “odd”, sir.’

‘Not so much of what Uncle Ted means. And don’t call me Uncle Ted. What it sort of seemed to us, sir, was peculiar.’

‘I cannot subscribe to your opinion, Sergeant,’ I said stiffly. ‘I have a perfect right, have I not, to sleep where I please?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Exactly. It might be the coal cellar. It might be the front-door steps. It happens to be this shed. I will now thank you, Sergeant, to withdraw. At this rate, I shan’t drop off till daybreak.’

‘Are you intending to remain here the rest of the night, sir?’

‘Certainly. Why not?’

I had got him. He was at a loss.

‘Well, I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, if you want to, sir. But it seems –’

‘Odd,’ said Constable Dobson.

‘Peculiar,’ said Sergeant Voules. ‘It seems peculiar, having a bed of your own, sir, if I might say so …’

I had had enough of this.

‘I hate beds,’ I said curtly. ‘Can’t stand them. Never could.’

‘Very good, sir.’ He paused a moment. ‘Quite a warm day today, sir.’

‘Quite.’

‘My young nephew here pretty near got a touch of the sun. Didn’t you, Constable?’

‘Ah!’ said Constable Dobson.

‘Made him come over all funny.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Yes, sir. Sort of seemed to addle the brain.’

I endeavoured without undue brusqueness to convey to this man the idea that I did not consider one in the morning a suitable time for discussing his nephew’s addled brain.

‘You must give me all the family medical gossip another day,’ I said. ‘At the moment, I wish to be alone.’

‘Yes, sir. Good night, sir.’

‘Good night, Sergeant.’

‘If I might ask the question, sir, do you feel a sort of burning feeling about the temples?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Does your head throb, sir?’

‘It’s beginning to.’

‘Ah! Well, good night, sir, again.’

‘Good night, Sergeant.’

‘Good night, sir.’

‘Good night, Constable.’

‘Good night, sir.’

The door closed softly. I could hear them whispering for a moment or two, like a couple of specialists holding a conference outside the sick-room. Then they appeared to ooze off, for all became quiet save for the lapping of the waves on the shore. And, by Jove, so sedulously did these waves lap that gradually a drowsiness crept over me and not ten minutes after I had made up my mind that I should never get to sleep again in this world I was off as comfortably as a babe or suckling.

It couldn’t last, of course – not in a place like Chuffnell Regis, a hamlet containing more Nosey Parkers to the square foot than any other spot in England. The next thing I remember is someone joggling my arm.

I sat up. There was the good old lantern once more.

‘Now, listen …’ I was beginning, with a generous strength, when the words froze on my lips.

The fellow who was joggling my arm was Chuffy.

IT HAS BEEN
well said of Bertram Wooster that he is a man who is at all times glad to see his friends and can be relied upon to greet them with a cheery smile and a gay quip. But though in the main this is correct, I make one proviso – viz that the conditions be right. On the present occasion they were not. When an old schoolmate’s fiancée is roosting in your bed in a suit of your personal pyjamas, it is hard to frisk round this old schoolmate with any abandon when he suddenly appears in the immediate vicinity.

I uttered, accordingly, no gay quip. I couldn’t even manage the cheery smile. I just sat goggling at the man, wondering how he had got there, how long he proposed to remain, and what the chances were of Pauline Stoker suddenly shoving her head out of the window and shouting to me to come and grapple with a mouse.

Chuffy was bending over me with a sort of bedside manner. In the background I could see Sergeant Voules hovering with something of the air of a trained nurse. What had become of Constable Dobson, I did not know. It seemed too jolly to think that he was dead, so I took it that he had returned to his beat.