The Jeeves Omnibus (300 page)

THIS WAS THE
first time I had seen Ma Cream today, she having gone off around noon to lunch with some friends in Birmingham, and I would willingly not have seen her now, for something in her manner seemed to suggest that she spelled trouble. She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing-gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked. Fixing me with a penetrating eye, she said:

‘Oh, there you are, Mr. Wooster. I was looking for you.’

‘You wished speech with me?’

‘Yes. I wanted to say that now perhaps you’d believe me.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘About that butler.’

‘What about him?’

‘I’ll tell you about him. I’d sit down, if I were you. It’s a long story.’

I sat down. Glad to, as a matter of fact, for the legs were feeling weak.

‘You remember I told you I mistrusted him from the first?’

‘Oh ah, yes. You did, didn’t you?’

‘I said he had a criminal face.’

‘He can’t help his face.’

‘He can help being a crook and an imposter. Calls himself a butler, does he? The police could shake that story. He’s no more a butler than I am.’

I did my best.

‘But think of those references of his.’

‘I am thinking of them.’

‘He couldn’t have stuck it out as major-domo to a man like Sir Roderick Glossop, if he’d been dishonest.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘But Bobbie said –’

‘I remember very clearly what Miss Wickham said. She told me he had been with Sir Roderick Glossop for years.’

‘Well, then.’

‘You think that puts him in the clear?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. Sir Roderick Glossop has a large clinic down in Somersetshire at a place called Chuffnell Regis, and a friend of mine is there. I wrote to her asking her to see Lady Glossop and get all the information she could about a former butler of hers named Swordfish. When I got back from Birmingham just now, I found a letter from her. She says that Lady Glossop told her she had never employed a butler called Swordfish. Try that one on for size.’

I continued to do my best. The Woosters never give up.

‘You don’t know Lady Glossop, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t, or I’d have written to her direct.’

‘Charming woman, but with a memory like a sieve. The sort who’s always losing one glove at the theatre. Naturally she wouldn’t remember a butler’s name. She probably thought all along it was Fotheringay or Binks or something. Very common, that sort of mental lapse. I was up at Oxford with a man called Robinson, and I was trying to think of his name the other day and the nearest I could get to it was Fosdyke. It only came back to me when I saw in
The Times
a few days ago that Herbert Robinson (26) of Grove Road, Ponder’s End, had been had up at Bosher Street police court, charged with having stolen a pair of green and yellow checked trousers. Not the same chap, of course, but you get the idea. I’ve no doubt that one of these fine mornings Lady Glossop will suddenly smack herself on the forehead and cry “Sword-fish! Of
course
! And all this time I’ve been thinking of the honest fellow as Catbird!”’

She sniffed. And if I were to say that I liked the way she sniffed, I would be wilfully deceiving my public. It was the sort of sniff Sherlock Holmes would have sniffed when about to clap the darbies on the chap who had swiped the Maharajah’s ruby.

‘Honest fellow, did you say? Then how do you account for this? I saw Willie just now, and he tells me that a valuable eighteenth-century cow-creamer which he bought from Mr. Travers is missing. And where is it, you ask? At this moment it is tucked away in Swordfish’s bedroom in a drawer under his clean shirts.’

In stating that the Woosters never give up, I was in error. These words caught me amidships and took all the fighting spirit out of me, leaving me a spent force.

‘Oh, is it?’ I said. Not good, but the best I could do.

‘Yes, sir, that’s where it is. Directly Willie told me the thing had gone, I knew where it had gone to. I went to this man Swordfish’s room and searched it, and there it was. I’ve sent for the police.’

Again I had that feeling of having been spiritually knocked base over apex. I gaped at the woman.

‘You’ve sent for the police?’

‘I have, and they’re sending a sergeant. He ought to be here at any moment. And shall I tell you something? I’m going now to stand outside Swordfish’s door, to see that nobody tampers with the evidence. I’m not going to take any chances. I wouldn’t want to say anything to suggest that I don’t trust you implicitly, Mr. Wooster, but I don’t like the way you’ve been sticking up for this fellow. You’ve been far too sympathetic with him for my taste.’

‘It’s just that I think he may have yielded to sudden temptation and all that.’

‘Nonsense. He’s probably been acting this way all his life. I’ll bet he was swiping things as a small boy.’

‘Only biscuits.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Or crackers you would call them, wouldn’t you? He was telling me he occasionally pinched a cracker or two in his salad days.’

‘Well, there you are. You start with crackers and you end up with silver jugs. That’s life,’ she said, and buzzed off to keep her vigil, leaving me kicking myself because I’d forgotten to say anything about the quality of mercy not being strained. It isn’t, as I dare say you know, and a mention of this might just have done the trick.

I was still brooding on this oversight and wondering what was to be done for the best, when Bobbie and Aunt Dahlia came in, looking like a young female and an elderly female who were sitting on top of the world.

‘Roberta tells me she has got Upjohn to withdraw the libel suit,’ said Aunt Dahlia. ‘I couldn’t be more pleased, but I’m blowed if I can imagine how she did it.’

‘Oh, I just appealed to his better feelings,’ said Bobbie, giving me one of those significant glances. I got the message. The ancestor, she was warning me, must never learn that she had achieved her ends by jeopardizing the delivery of the Upjohn speech to the young scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School on the morrow. ‘I told him that the quality of mercy … What’s the matter, Bertie?’

‘Nothing. Just starting.’

‘What do you want to start for?’

‘I believe Brinkley Court is open for starting in at about this hour, is it not? The quality of mercy, you were saying?’

‘Yes. It isn’t strained.’

‘I believe not.’

‘And in case you didn’t know, it’s twice bless’d and becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown. I drove over to the “Bull and Bush” and put this to Upjohn, and he saw my point. So now everything’s fine.’

I uttered a hacking laugh.

‘No,’ I said, in answer to a query from Aunt Dahlia. ‘I have not accidentally swallowed my tonsils, I was merely laughing hackingly. Ironical that the young blister should say that everything is fine, for at this very moment disaster stares us in the eyeball. I have a story to relate which I think you will agree falls into the fretful porpentine class,’ I said, and without further pourparlers I unshipped my tale.

I had anticipated that it would shake them to their foundation garments, and it did. Aunt Dahlia reeled like an aunt struck behind the ear with a blunt instrument, and Bobbie tottered like a red-haired girl who hadn’t known it was loaded.

‘You see the set-up,’ I continued, not wanting to rub it in but feeling that they should be fully briefed. ‘Glossop will return from his afternoon off to find the awful majesty of the Law waiting for him, complete with handcuffs. We can hardly expect him to accept an exemplary sentence without a murmur, so his first move will be to establish his innocence by revealing all. “True,” he will say, “I did pinch this bally cow-creamer, but merely because I thought Wilbert had pinched it and it ought to be returned to store,” and he will go on to explain his position in the house – all this, mind you, in front of Ma Cream. So what ensues? The sergeant removes the gloves from his wrists, and Ma Cream asks you if she may use your telephone for a moment, as she wishes to call her husband on long distance. Pop Cream listens attentively to the tale she tells, and when Uncle Tom looks in on him later, he finds him with folded arms and a forbidding scowl. “Travers,” he says, “the deal’s off.” “Off?” quivers Uncle Tom. “Off,” says Cream. “O-ruddy-double-f. I don’t do business with guys whose wives bring in loony-doctors to observe my son.” A short while ago Ma Cream was urging me to try something on for size. I suggest that you do the same for this.’

Aunt Dahlia had sunk into a chair and was starting to turn purple. Strong emotion always has this effect on her.

‘The only thing left, it seems to me,’ I said, ‘is to put our trust in a higher power.’

‘You’re right,’ said the relative, fanning her brow. ‘Go and fetch Jeeves, Roberta. And what you do, Bertie, is get out that car of yours and scour the countryside for Glossop. It may be possible to head him off. Come on, come on, let’s have some service. What are you waiting for?’

I hadn’t exactly been waiting. I’d only been thinking that the enterprise had more than a touch of looking for a needle in a haystack about it. You can’t find loony-doctors on their afternoon off just by driving around Worcestershire in a car; you need bloodhounds and handkerchiefs for them to sniff at and all that professional stuff. Still, there it was.

‘Right ho,’ I said. ‘Anything to oblige.’

AND, OF COURSE
, as I had anticipated from the start, the thing was a wash-out. I stuck it out for about an hour and then, apprised by a hollow feeling in the midriff that the dinner hour was approaching, laid a course for home.

Arriving there, I found Bobbie in the drawing-room. She had the air of a girl who was waiting for something, and when she told me that the cocktails would be coming along in a moment, I knew what it was.

‘Cocktails, eh? I could do with one or possibly more,’ I said. ‘My fruitless quest has taken it out of me. I couldn’t find Glossop anywhere. He must be somewhere, of course, but Worcestershire hid its secret well.’

‘Glossop?’ she said, seeming surprised. ‘Oh, he’s been back for ages.’

She wasn’t half as surprised as I was. The calm with which she spoke amazed me.

‘Good Lord! This is the end.’

‘What is?’

‘This is. Has he been pinched?’

‘Of course not. He told them who he was and explained everything.’

‘Oh, gosh!’

‘What’s the matter? Oh, of course, I was forgetting. You don’t know the latest developments. Jeeves solved everything.’

‘He did?’

‘With a wave of the hand. It was so simple, really. One wondered why one hadn’t thought of it oneself. On his advice, Glossop revealed his identity and said your aunt had got him down here to observe
you
.’

I reeled, and might have fallen, had I not clutched at a photograph on a near-by table of Uncle Tom in the uniform of the East Worcestershire Volunteers.

‘
No
?’ I said.

‘And of course it carried immediate conviction with Mrs. Cream. Your aunt explained that she had been uneasy about you for a long
time,
because you were always doing extraordinary things like sliding down water-pipes and keeping twenty-three cats in your bedroom and all that, and Mrs. Cream recalled the time when she had found you hunting for mice under her son’s dressing-table, so she quite agreed that it was high time you were under the observation of an experienced eye like Glossop’s. She was greatly relieved when Glossop assured her that he was confident of effecting a cure. She said we must all be very, very kind to you. So everything’s nice and smooth. It’s extraordinary how things turn out for the best, isn’t it?’ she said, laughing merrily.

Whether I would or would not at this juncture have taken her in an iron grasp and shaken her till she frothed is a point on which I can make no definite announcement. The chivalrous spirit of the Woosters would probably have restrained me, much as I resented that merry laughter, but as it happened the matter was not put to the test, for at this moment Jeeves entered, bearing a tray on which were glasses and a substantial shaker filled to the brim with the juice of the juniper berry. Bobbie drained her beaker with all possible speed and left us, saying that if she didn’t get dressed, she’d be late for dinner, and Jeeves and I were alone, like a couple of bimbos in one of those movies where two strong men stand face to face and might is the only law.

‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘Miss Wickham has been telling me all.’

‘Ah yes, sir.’

‘The words “Ah yes, sir” fall far short of an adequate comment on the situation. A nice … what is it? Begins with an i … im-something.’

‘Imbroglio, sir?’

‘That’s it. A nice imbroglio you’ve landed me in. Thanks to you …’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t say “Yes, sir.” Thanks to you I have been widely publicized as off my rocker.’

‘Not widely, sir. Merely to your immediate circle now resident at Brinkley Court.’

‘You have held me up at the bar of world opinion as a man who has not got all his marbles.’

‘It was not easy to think of an alternative scheme, sir.’

‘And let me tell you,’ I said, and I meant this to sting, ‘it’s amazing that you got away with it.’

‘Sir?’

‘There’s a flaw in your story that sticks up like a sore thumb.’

‘Sir?’

‘It’s no good standing there saying “Sir?”, Jeeves. It’s obvious. The cow-creamer was in Glossop’s bedroom. How did he account for that?’

‘On my suggestion, sir, he explained that he had removed it from your room, where he had ascertained that you had hidden it after purloining it from Mr. Cream.’

I started.

‘You mean,’ I … yes, thundered would be the word, ‘You mean that I am now labelled not only as a loony in a general sort of way but also as a klept-whatever-it-is?’

‘Merely to your immediate circle now resident at Brinkley Court, sir.’

‘You keep saying that, and you must know it’s the purest apple sauce. You don’t really think the Creams will maintain a tactful reserve? They’ll dine out on it for years. Returning to America, they’ll spread the story from the rockbound coasts of Maine to the Everglades of Florida, with the result that when I go over there again, keen looks will be shot at me at every house I go into and spoons counted before I leave. And do you realize that in a few shakes I’ve got to show up at dinner and have Mrs. Cream being very, very kind to me? It hurts the pride of the Woosters, Jeeves.’