The Jeeves Omnibus (110 page)

‘Well, what’s to be done?’

‘You feel that Miss Bassett, despite what has occurred, still retains a fondness for Mr Fink-Nottle, sir?’

‘She’s pining for him.’

‘In that case, sir, surely the best plan would be to bring about a reconciliation between them.’

‘How? You see. You stand silent and twiddle the fingers. You are stumped.’

‘No, sir. If I twiddled my fingers, it was merely to assist thought.’

‘Then continue twiddling.’

‘It will not be necessary, sir.’

‘You don’t mean you’ve got a bite already?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You astound me, Jeeves. Let’s have it.’

‘The device which I have in mind is one that I have already mentioned to you, sir.’

‘When did you ever mention any device to me?’

‘If you will throw your mind back to the evening of our arrival, sir. You were good enough to inquire of me if I had any plan to put forward with a view to bringing Miss Angela and Mr Glossop together, and I ventured to suggest –’

‘Good Lord! Not the old fire-alarm thing?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘You’re still sticking to that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

It shows how much the ghastly blow I had received had shaken me when I say that, instead of dismissing the proposal with a curt ‘Tchah!’ or anything like that, I found myself speculating as to whether there might not be something in it, after all.

When he had first mooted this fire-alarm scheme of his, I had sat upon it, if you remember, with the maximum of promptitude and vigour. ‘Rotten’ was the adjective I had employed to describe it, and you may recall that I mused a bit sadly, considering the idea conclusive proof of the general breakdown of a once fine mind. But now it somehow began to look as if it might have possibilities. The fact of the matter was that I had about reached the stage where I was prepared to try anything once, however goofy.

‘Just run through that wheeze again, Jeeves,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I remember thinking it cuckoo, but it may be that I missed some of the finer shades.’

‘Your criticism of it at the time, sir, was that it was too elaborate, but I do not think it is so in reality. As I see it, sir, the occupants of the house, hearing the fire bell ring, will suppose that a conflagration has broken out.’

I nodded. One could follow the train of thought.

‘Yes, that seems reasonable.’

‘Whereupon Mr Glossop will hasten to save Miss Angela, while Mr Fink-Nottle performs the same office for Miss Bassett.’

‘Is that based on psychology?’

‘Yes, sir. Possibly you may recollect that it was an axiom of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, that the instinct of everyone, upon an alarm of fire, is to save the object dearest to them.’

‘It seems to me that there is a grave danger of seeing Tuppy come
out
carrying a steak-and-kidney pie, but resume, Jeeves, resume. You think that this would clean everything up?’

‘The relations of the two young couples could scarcely continue distant after such an occurrence, sir.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. But, dash it, if we go ringing fire bells in the night watches, shan’t we scare half the domestic staff into fits? There is one of the housemaids – Jane, I believe – who already skips like the high hills if I so much as come on her unexpectedly round a corner.’

‘A neurotic girl, sir, I agree. I have noticed her. But by acting promptly we should avoid such a contingency. The entire staff, with the exception of Monsieur Anatole, will be at the ball at Kingham Manor tonight.’

‘Of course. That just shows the condition this thing has reduced me to. Forget my own name next. Well, then, let’s just try to envisage. Bong goes the bell. Gussie rushes and grabs the Bassett … Wait. Why shouldn’t she simply walk downstairs?’

‘You are overlooking the effect of sudden alarm on the feminine temperament, sir.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Miss Bassett’s impulse, I would imagine, sir, would be to leap from her window.’

‘Well, that’s worse. We don’t want her spread out in a sort of
purée
on the lawn. It seems to me that the flaw in this scheme of yours, Jeeves, is that it’s going to litter the garden with mangled corpses.’

‘No, sir. You will recall that Mr Travers’s fear of burglars has caused him to have stout bars fixed to all the windows.’

‘Of course, yes. Well, it sounds all right,’ I said, though still a bit doubtfully. ‘Quite possibly it may come off. But I have a feeling that it will slip up somewhere. However, I am in no position to cavil at even a 100 to 1 shot. I will adopt this policy of yours, Jeeves, though, as I say, with misgivings. At what hour would you suggest bonging the bell?’

‘Not before midnight, sir.’

‘That is to say, some time after midnight.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right ho, then. At 12.30 on the dot, I will bong.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I DON’T KNOW
why it is, but there’s something about the rural districts after dark that always has a rummy effect on me. In London I can stay out till all hours and come home with the milk without a tremor, but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me. The night wind stirs the tree tops, twigs crack, bushes rustle, and before I know where I am, the morale has gone phut and I’m expecting the family ghost to come sneaking up behind me, making groaning noises.

Dashed unpleasant, the whole thing, and if you think it improves matters to know that you are shortly about to ring the loudest fire bell in England and start an all-hands-to-the-pumps panic in that quiet, darkened house, you err.

I knew all about the Brinkley Court fire bell. The dickens of a row it makes. Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that might give you heart failure, but which you couldn’t possibly mistake for the drowsy chirping of a sparrow in the ivy.

When I was a kid and spent my holidays at Brinkley, we used to have fire drills after closing time, and many is the night I’ve had it jerk me out of the dreamless like the Last Trump.

I confess that the recollection of what this bell could do when it buckled down to it gave me pause as I stood that night at 12.30 p.m. prompt beside the outhouse where it was located. The sight of the rope against the whitewashed wall and the thought of the bloodsome uproar which was about to smash the peace of the night into hash served to deepen that rummy feeling to which I have alluded.

Moreover, now that I had had time to meditate upon it, I was more than ever defeatist about this scheme of Jeeves’s.

Jeeves seemed to take it for granted that Gussie and Tuppy, faced with a hideous fate, would have no thought beyond saving the Bassett and Angela.

I could not bring myself to share his sunny confidence.

I mean to say, I know how moments when they’re faced with a hideous fate affect chaps. I remember Freddie Widgeon, one of the most chivalrous birds in the Drones, telling me how there was an alarm of fire once at a seaside hotel where he was staying and, so far from rushing about saving women, he was down the escape within ten seconds of the kick-off, his mind concerned with but one thing – viz., the personal well-being of F. Widgeon.

As far as any idea of doing the delicately nurtured a bit of good went, he tells me, he was prepared to stand underneath and catch them in blankets, but no more.

Why, then, should this not be so with Augustus Fink-Nottle and Hildebrand Glossop?

Such were my thoughts as I stood toying with the rope, and I believe I should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing that bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it would probably startle her into a decline.

And so agreeable was this reflection that I waited no longer, but seized the rope, braced the feet and snapped into it.

Well, as I say, I hadn’t been expecting that bell to hush things up to any great extent. Nor did it. The last time I had heard it, I had been in my room on the other side of the house, and even so it had hoiked me out of bed as if something had exploded under me. Standing close to it like this, I got the full force and meaning of the thing, and I’ve never heard anything like it in my puff.

I rather enjoy a bit of noise, as a general rule. I remember Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright bringing a police rattle into the Drones one night and loosing it off behind my chair, and I just lay back and closed my eyes with a pleasant smile, like someone in a box at the opera. And the same applies to the time when my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos., put a match to the parcel of Guy Fawkes’ Day fireworks to see what would happen.

But the Brinkley Court fire bell was too much for me. I gave about half a dozen tugs, and then, feeling that enough was enough, sauntered round to the front lawn to ascertain what solid results had been achieved.

Brinkley Court had given of its best. A glance told me that we were playing to capacity. The eye, roving to and fro, noted here Uncle Tom in a purple dressing gown, there Aunt Dahlia in the old blue and yellow. It also fell upon Anatole, Tuppy, Gussie, Angela, the Bassett and Jeeves, in the order named. There they all were, present and correct.

But – and this was what caused me immediate concern – I could detect no sign whatever that there had been any rescue work going on.

What I had been hoping, of course, was to see Tuppy bending solicitously over Angela in one corner, while Gussie fanned the Bassett with a towel in the other. Instead of which, the Bassett was one of the group which included Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom and seemed to be busy trying to make Anatole see the bright side, while Angela and Gussie were, respectively, leaning against the sundial with a peeved look and sitting on the grass rubbing a barked shin. Tuppy was walking up and down the path, all by himself.

A disturbing picture, you will admit. It was with a rather imperious gesture that I summoned Jeeves to my side.

‘Well, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

I eyed him sternly. ‘Sir?’ forsooth!

‘It’s no good saying “Sir?” Jeeves. Look round you. See for yourself. Your scheme has proved a bust.’

‘Certainly it would appear that matters have not arranged themselves quite as we anticipated, sir.’

‘We?’

‘As I had anticipated, sir.’

‘That’s more like it. Didn’t I tell you it would be a flop?’

‘I remember that you did seem dubious, sir.’

‘Dubious is no word for it, Jeeves. I hadn’t a scrap of faith in the idea from the start. When you first mooted it, I said it was rotten, and I was right. I’m not blaming you, Jeeves. It is not your fault that you have sprained your brain. But after this – forgive me if I hurt your feelings, Jeeves – I shall know better than to allow you to handle any but the simplest and most elementary problems. It is best to be candid about this, don’t you think? Kindest to be frank and straightforward?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘I mean, the surgeon’s knife, what?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘I consider –’

‘If you will pardon me for interrupting you, sir, I fancy Mrs Travers is endeavouring to attract your attention.’

And at this moment a ringing ‘Hoy!’ which could have proceeded only from the relative in question, assured me that his view was correct.

‘Just step this way a moment, Attila, if you don’t mind,’ boomed
that
well-known – and under certain conditions, well-loved – voice, and I moved over.

I was not feeling unmixedly at my ease. For the first time it was beginning to steal upon me that I had not prepared a really good story in support of my questionable behaviour in ringing fire bells at such an hour, and I have known Aunt Dahlia to express herself with a hearty freedom upon far smaller provocation.

She exhibited, however, no signs of violence. More a sort of frozen calm, if you know what I mean. You could see that she was a woman who had suffered.

‘Well, Bertie, dear,’ she said, ‘here we all are.’

‘Quite,’ I replied guardedly.

‘Nobody missing, is there?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Splendid. So much healthier for us out in the open like this than frowsting in bed. I had just dropped off when you did your bell-ringing act. For it was you, my sweet child, who rang that bell, was it not?’

‘I did ring the bell, yes.’

‘Any particular reason, or just a whim?’

‘I thought there was a fire.’

‘What gave you that impression, dear?’

‘I thought I saw flames.’

‘Where, darling? Tell Aunt Dahlia.’

‘In one of the windows.’

‘I see. So we have all been dragged out of bed and scared rigid because you have been seeing things.’

Here Uncle Tom made a noise like a cork coming out of a bottle, and Anatole, whose moustache had hit a new low, said something about ‘some apes’ and, if I am not mistaken, a ‘
rogommier
’ – whatever that is.

‘I admit I was mistaken. I am sorry.’

‘Don’t apologize, ducky. Can’t you see how pleased we all are? What were you doing out here, anyway?’

‘Just taking a stroll.’

‘I see. And are you proposing to continue your stroll?’

‘No, I think I’ll go in now.’

‘That’s fine. Because I was thinking of going in, too, and I don’t believe I could sleep knowing you were out here giving rein to that powerful imagination of yours. The next thing that would happen would be that you would think you saw a pink elephant sitting on the drawing-room windowsill and start throwing bricks at it … Well,
come
on, Tom, the entertainment seems to be over … But wait. The newt king wishes a word with us … Yes, Mr Fink-Nottle?’

Gussie, as he joined our little group, seemed upset about something.

‘I say!’

‘Say on, Augustus.’

‘I say, what are we going to do?’

‘Speaking for myself, I intend to return to bed.’