The Jeeves Omnibus (30 page)

G
USSIE
.

And the third:

I say, Bertie, why don’t you answer my telegrams? Sent you two
today
saying Come immediately serious rift Madeline and self. Unless you come earliest possible moment prepared lend every effort effect reconciliation, wedding will be broken off. Reply
.

G
USSIE
.

I have said that that sojourn of mine in the T. bath had done much to re-establish the
mens sana in corpore
whatnot. Perusal of these frightful communications brought about an instant relapse. My misgivings, I saw, had been well founded. Something had whispered to me on seeing those bally envelopes that here we were again, and here we were.

The sound of the familiar footstep had brought Jeeves floating out from the back premises. A glance was enough to tell him that all was not well with ye employer.

‘Are you ill, sir?’ he inquired solicitously.

I sank into a c. and passed an agitated h. over the b.

‘Not ill, Jeeves, but all of a twitter. Read these.’

He ran his eye over the dossier, then transferred it to mine, and I could read in it the respectful anxiety he was feeling for the well-being of the young seigneur.

‘Most disturbing, sir.’

His voice was grave. I could see that he hadn’t missed the gist. The sinister import of those telegrams was as clear to him as it was to me.

We do not, of course, discuss the matter, for to do so would rather come under the head of speaking lightly of a woman’s name, but Jeeves is in full possession of the facts relating to the Bassett-Wooster mix-up and thoroughly cognizant of the peril which threatens me from that quarter. There was no need to explain to him why I now lighted a feverish cigarette and hitched the lower jaw up with a visible effort.

‘What do you suppose has happened, Jeeves?’

‘It is difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.’

‘The wedding may be scratched, he says. Why? That is what I ask myself.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I have no doubt that that is what you ask yourself?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Deep waters, Jeeves.’

‘Extremely deep, sir.’

‘The only thing we can say with any certainty is that in some way
–
how, we shall presumably learn later – Gussie has made an ass of himself again.’

I mused on Augustus Fink-Nottle for a moment, recalling how he had always stood by himself in the chump class. The best judges had been saying it for years. Why, at our private school, where I had first met him, he had been known as ‘Fathead’, and that was in competition with fellows like Bingo Little, Freddie Widgeon and myself.

‘What shall I do, Jeeves?’

‘I think it would be best to proceed to Totleigh Towers, sir.’

‘But how can I? Old Bassett would sling me out the moment I arrived.’

‘Possibly if you were to telegraph to Mr Fink-Nottle, sir, explaining your difficulty, he might have some solution to suggest.’

This seemed sound. I hastened out to the post office, and wired as follows:

Fink-Nottle
,

Totleigh Towers
,

Totleigh-in-the-Wold
.

Yes, that’s all very well. You say come here immediately, but how dickens can I? You don’t understand relations between Pop Bassett and self. These not such as to make him welcome visit Bertram. Would inevitably hurl out on ear and set dogs on. Useless suggest putting on false whiskers and pretending be fellow come inspect drains, as old blighter familiar with features and would instantly detect imposture. What is to be done? What has happened? Why serious rift? What serious rift? How do you mean wedding broken off? Why dickens? What have you been doing to the girl? Reply
.

B
ERTIE
.

The answer to this came during dinner:

Wooster
,

Berkeley Mansions
,

Berkeley Square
,

London
.

See difficulty, but think can work it. In spite strained relations, still speaking terms Madeline. Am telling her have received urgent letter from you pleading be allowed come here. Expect invitation shortly
.

G
USSIE
.

And on the morrow, after a tossing-on-pillow night, I received a bag of three.

The first ran:

Have worked it. Invitation dispatched. When you come, will you bring book entitled
My Friends the Newts
by Loretta Peabody published Popgood and Grooly get any bookshop
.

G
USSIE
.

The second:

Bertie, you old ass, I hear you are coming here. Delighted, as something very important want you do for me
.

S
TIFFY
.

The third:

Please come here if you wish, but, oh Bertie, is this wise? Will not it cause you needless pain seeing me? Surely merely twisting knife wound
.

M
ADELINE
.

Jeeves was bringing me the morning cup of tea when I read these missives, and I handed them to him in silence. He read them in same. I was able to imbibe about a fluid ounce of the hot and strengthening before he spoke.

‘I think that we should start at once, sir.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I will pack immediately. Would you wish me to call Mrs Travers on the telephone?’

‘Why?’

‘She has rung up several times this morning.’

‘Oh? Then perhaps you had better give her a buzz.’

‘I think it will not be necessary, sir. I fancy that this would be the lady now.’

A long and sustained peal had sounded from the front door, as if an aunt had put her thumb on the button and kept it there. Jeeves left the presence, and a moment later it was plain that his intuition had not deceived him. A booming voice rolled through the flat, the voice which once, when announcing the advent of a fox in their
vicinity
, had been wont to cause members of the Quorn and Pytchley to clutch their hats and bound in their saddles.

‘Isn’t that young hound awake yet, Jeeves? … Oh, there you are.’

Aunt Dahlia charged across the threshold.

At all times and on all occasions, owing to years of fox-chivvying in every kind of weather, this relative has a fairly purple face, but one noted now an even deeper mauve than usual. The breath came jerkily, and the eyes gleamed with a goofy light. A man with far less penetration than Bertram Wooster would have been able to divine that there before him stood an aunt who had got the pip about something.

It was evident that information which she yearned to uncork was bubbling within her, but she postponed letting it go for a moment in order to reproach me for being in bed at such an hour. Sunk, as she termed it in her forthright way, in hoggish slumber.

‘Not sunk in hoggish slumber,’ I corrected. ‘I’ve been awake some little time. As a matter of fact, I was just about to partake of the morning meal. You will join me, I hope? Bacon and eggs may be taken as read, but say the word and we can do you a couple of kippers.’

She snorted with a sudden violence which twenty-four hours earlier would have unmanned me completely. Even in my present tolerably robust condition, it affected me rather like one of those gas explosions which slay six.

‘Eggs! Kippers! What I want is a brandy and soda. Tell Jeeves to mix me one. And if he forgets to put in the soda, it will be all right with me. Bertie, a frightful thing has happened.’

‘Push along into the dining-saloon, my fluttering old aspen,’ I said. ‘We shall not be interrupted there. Jeeves will want to come in here to pack.’

‘Are you off somewhere?’

‘Totleigh Towers. I have had a most disturbing –’

‘Totleigh Towers? Well, I’m dashed! That’s just where I came to tell you you had jolly well got to go immediately.’

‘Eh?’

‘Matter of life and death.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You’ll soon see, when I’ve explained.’

‘Then come along to the dining-room and explain at your earliest convenience.’

‘Now then, my dear old mysterious hinter,’ I said, when Jeeves had brought the foodstuffs and withdrawn, ‘tell me all.’

For an instant, there was silence, broken only by the musical sound of an aunt drinking brandy and soda and self lowering a cup of coffee. Then she put down her beaker, and drew a deep breath.

‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘I wish to begin by saying a few words about Sir Watkyn Bassett,
CBE
. May greenfly attack his roses. May his cook get tight on the night of the big dinner-party. May all his hens get the staggers.’

‘Does he keep hens?’ I said, putting a point.

‘May his cistern start leaking, and may white ants, if there are any in England, gnaw away the foundations of Totleigh Towers. And when he walks up the aisle with his daughter Madeline, to give her away to that ass Spink-Bottle, may he get a sneezing fit and find that he has come out without a pocket handkerchief.’

She paused, and it seemed to me that all this, while spirited stuff, was not germane to the issue.

‘Quite,’ I said. ‘I agree with you
in toto
. But what has he done?’

‘I will tell you. You remember that cow-creamer?’

I dug into a fried egg, quivering a little.

‘Remember it? I shall never forget it. You will scarcely believe this, Aunt Dahlia, but when I got to the shop, who should be there by the most amazing coincidence but this same Bassett –’

‘It wasn’t a coincidence. He had gone there to have a look at the thing, to see if it was all Tom had said it was. For – can you imagine such lunacy, Bertie? – that chump of an uncle of yours had told the man about it. He might have known that the fiend would hatch some devilish plot for his undoing. And he did. Tom lunched with Sir Watkyn Bassett at the latter’s club yesterday. On the bill of fare was a cold lobster, and this Machiavelli sicked him on to it.’

I looked at her incredulously.

‘You aren’t going to tell me,’ I said, astounded, for I was familiar with the intensely delicate and finely poised mechanism of his tummy, ‘that Uncle Tom ate lobster? After what happened last Christmas?’

‘At this man’s instigation, he appears to have eaten not only pounds of lobster, but forests of sliced cucumber as well. According to his story, which he was able to tell me this morning – he could only groan when he came home yesterday – he resisted at first. He was strong and resolute. But then circumstances were too much for him. Bassett’s club, apparently, is one of those clubs where they
have
the cold dishes on a table in the middle of the room, so placed that wherever you sit you can’t help seeing them.’

I nodded.

‘They do at the Drones, too. Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright once hit the game pie from the far window six times with six consecutive rolls.’

‘That was what caused poor old Tom’s downfall. Bassett’s lobster sales-talk he might have been strong enough to ignore, but the sight of the thing was too much for him. He yielded, tucked in like a starving Esquimau, and at six o’clock I got a call from the hall porter, asking me if I would send the car round to fetch away the remains, which had been discovered by a page boy writhing in a corner of the library. He arrived half an hour later, calling weakly for bicarbonate of soda. Bicarbonate of soda, my foot!’ said Aunt Dahlia, with a bitter, mirthless laugh. ‘He had to have two doctors and a stomach-pump.’

‘And in the meantime –?’ I said, for I could see whither the tale was tending.

‘And in the meantime, of course, the fiend Bassett had nipped down and bought the cow-creamer. The man had promised to hold it for Tom till three o’clock, but naturally when three o’clock came and he didn’t turn up and there was another customer clamouring for the thing, he let it go. So there you are. Bassett has the cow-creamer, and took it down to Totleigh last night.’

It was a sad story, of course, and one that bore out what I had so often felt about Pop Bassett – to wit, that a magistrate who could nick a fellow for five pounds, when a mere reprimand would more than have met the case, was capable of anything, but I couldn’t see what she thought there was to be done about it. The whole situation seemed to me essentially one of those where you just clench the hands and roll the eyes mutely up to Heaven and then start a new life and try to forget. I said as much, while marmalading a slice of toast.

She gazed at me in silence for a moment.

‘Oh? So that’s how you feel, is it?’

‘I do, yes.’

‘You admit, I hope, that by every moral law that cow-creamer belongs to Tom?’

‘Oh, emphatically.’

‘But you would take this foul outrage lying down? You would allow this stick-up man to get away with the swag? Confronted with
the
spectacle of as raw a bit of underhanded skulduggery as has ever been perpetrated in a civilized country, you would just sit tight and say “Well, well!” and do nothing?’

I weighed this.

‘Possibly not “Well, well!” I concede that the situation is one that calls for the strongest comment. But I wouldn’t do anything.’

‘Well, I’m going to do something. I’m going to pinch the damn thing.’

I stared at her, astounded. I uttered no verbal rebuke, but there was a distinct ‘Tut, tut!’ in my gaze. Even though the provocation was, I admitted, severe, I could not approve of these strong-arm methods. And I was about to try to awaken her dormant conscience by asking her gently what the Quorn would think of these goings-on – or, for the matter of that, the Pytchley – when she added:

‘Or, rather, you are!’

I had just lighted a cigarette as she spoke these words, and so, according to what they say in the advertisements, ought to have been nonchalant. But it must have been the wrong sort of cigarette, for I shot out of my chair as if somebody had shoved a bradawl through the seat.

‘Who, me?’

‘That’s right. See how it all fits in. You’re going to stay at Totleigh. You will have a hundred excellent opportunities of getting your hooks on the thing –’

‘But, dash it!’