The Jeeves Omnibus (316 page)

‘To a certain extent. And you?’

‘I’m fine. Did I interrupt you in the middle of your tenth cocktail?’

‘My third,’ I corrected. ‘I usually stay steady at two, but Pop Bassett insisted on replenishing my glass. He’s a bit above himself at the moment and very much the master of the revels. I wouldn’t put it past him to have an ox roasted whole in the market place, if he can find an ox.’

‘Stinko, is he?’

‘Not perhaps stinko, but certainly effervescent.’

‘Well, if you can suspend your drunken orgy for a minute or two, I’ll tell you the news from home. I got back from London a quarter of an hour ago, and what do you think I found waiting on the mat? That newt-collecting freak Spink-Bottle, accompanied by a girl who looks like a Pekinese with freckles.’

I drew a deep breath and embarked on my speech for the defence. If Bertram was to be put in the right light, now was the moment. True, her manner so far had been affable and she had given no sign of being about to go off with a bang, but one couldn’t be sure that that wasn’t because she was just biding her time. It’s never safe to dismiss aunts lightly at times like this.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I heard he was on his way, complete with freckled human Pekinese. I am sorry, Aunt Dahlia, that you should have been subjected to this unwarrantable intrusion, and I would like to make it abundantly clear that it was not the outcome of any advice or encouragement from me. I was in total ignorance of his intentions. Had he confided in me his purpose of inflicting his presence on you, I should have –’

Here I paused, for she had asked me rather brusquely to put a sock in it.

‘Stop babbling, you ghastly young gas-bag. What’s all this silver-tongued-orator stuff about?’

‘I was merely expressing my regret that you should have been subjected –’

‘Well, don’t. There’s no need to apologize. I couldn’t be more pleased. I admit that I’m always happier when I don’t have Spink-Bottle breathing down the back of my neck and taking up space in the house which I require for other purposes, but the girl was as welcome as manna in the wilderness.’

Having won that prize for Scripture Knowledge I was speaking of, I had no difficulty in grasping her allusion. She was referring to an incident which occurred when the children of Israel were crossing some desert or other and were sorely in need of refreshment, rations being on the slender side. And they were just saying to one another how well a spot of manna would go down and regretting that there was none in the quartermaster’s stores, when blowed if a whole wad of the stuff didn’t descend from the skies, just making their day.

Her words had of course surprised me somewhat, and I asked her why Emerald Stoker had been as welcome as manna in the w.

‘Because her arrival brought sunshine into a stricken home. There couldn’t have been a smoother piece of timing. You didn’t see Anatole when you were over here this afternoon, did you?’

‘No. Why?’

‘I was wondering if you had noticed anything wrong with him. Shortly after you left he developed a
mal au foie
or whatever he called it and took to his bed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So was Tom. He was looking forward gloomily to a dinner cooked by the kitchen maid, who, though a girl of many sterling merits, always adopts the scorched earth policy when preparing a meal, and you know what his digestion’s like. Conditions looked dark, and then Spink-Bottle suddenly revealed that this Pekinese of his was an experienced chef, and she’s taken over. Who is she? Do you know anything about her?’

I was, of course, able to supply the desired information.

‘She’s the daughter of a well-to-do American millionaire called Stoker, who, I imagine, will be full of strange oaths when he hears she’s married Gussie, the latter being, as you will concede, not everybody’s cup of tea.’

‘So he isn’t going to marry Madeline Bassett?’

‘No, the fixture has been scratched.’

‘That’s definite, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t have been much success as a raisonneur.’

‘No.’

‘Well, I think she’ll make Spink-Bottle a good wife. Seems a very nice girl.’

‘Few better.’

‘But this leaves you in rather a spot, doesn’t it? If Madeline Bassett is now at large, won’t she expect you to fill in?’

‘That, aged relative, is the fear that haunts me.’

‘Has Jeeves nothing to suggest?’

‘He says he hasn’t. But I’ve known him on previous occasions to be temporarily baffled and then suddenly to wave his magic wand and fix everything up. So I haven’t entirely lost hope.’

‘No, I expect you’ll wriggle out of it somehow, as you always do. I wish I had a fiver for every time you’ve been within a step of the altar rails and have managed to escape unscathed. I remember you telling me once that you had faith in your star.’

‘Quite. Still, it’s no good trying to pretend that peril doesn’t loom. It looms like the dickens. The corner in which I find myself is tight.’

‘And you would like to get that way, too, I suppose? All right, you can get back to your orgy when I’ve told you why I rang you up.’

‘Haven’t you?’ I said, surprised.

‘Certainly not. You don’t catch me wasting time and money chatting with you about your amours. Here is the nub. You know that black amber thing of Bassett’s?’

‘The statuette? Of course.’

‘I want to buy it for Tom. I’ve come into a bit of money. The reason I went to London today was to see my lawyer about a legacy someone’s left me. Old school friend, if that’s of any interest to you. It works out at about a couple of thousand quid, and I want you to get that statuette for me.’

‘It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it.’

‘Oh, you’ll manage. Go as high as fifteen hundred pounds, if you have to. I suppose you couldn’t just slip it in your pocket? It would save a lot of overhead. But probably that’s asking too much of you, so tackle Bassett and get him to sell it.’

‘Well, I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette. Rely on me, Aunt Dahlia.’

‘That’s my boy.’

I returned to the drawing-room in somewhat pensive mood, for my relations with Pop Bassett were such that it was going to be embarrassing trying to do business with him, but I was relieved that the aged relative had dismissed the idea of purloining the thing. Surprised, too, as well as relieved, because the stern lesson association with her over the years has taught me is that when she wants to do a loved husband a good turn, she is seldom fussy about the methods employed to that end. It was she who had initiated, if that’s the word I want,
the
theft of the cow-creamer, and you would have thought she would have wanted to save money on the current deal. Her view has always been that if a collector pinches something from another collector, it doesn’t count as stealing, and of course there may be something in it. Pop Bassett, when at Brinkley, would unquestionably have looted Uncle Tom’s collection, had he not been closely watched. These collectors have about as much conscience as the smash-and-grab fellows for whom the police are always spreading dragnets.

I was musing along these lines and trying to think what would be the best way of approaching Pop, handicapped as I would be by the fact that he shuddered like a jelly in a high wind every time he saw me and preferred when in my presence to sit and stare before him without uttering, when the door opened, and Spode came in.

THE FIRST THING
that impressed itself on the senses was that he had about as spectacular a black eye as you could meet with in a month of Sundays, and I found myself at a momentary loss to decide how it was best to react to it. I mean, some fellows with bunged-up eyes want sympathy, others prefer that you pretend that you’ve noticed nothing unusual in their appearance. I came to the conclusion that it was wisest to greet him with a careless ‘Ah, Spode,’ and I did so, though I suppose, looking back, that ‘Ah, Sidcup’ would have been more suitable, and it was as I spoke that I became aware that he was glaring at me in a sinister manner with the eye that wasn’t closed. I have spoken of these eyes of his as being capable of opening an oyster at sixty paces, and even when only one of them was functioning the impact of his gaze was disquieting. I have known my Aunt Agatha’s gaze to affect me in the same way.

‘I was looking for you, Wooster,’ he said.

He uttered the words in the unpleasant rasping voice which had once kept his followers on the jump. Before succeeding to his new title he had been one of those Dictators who were fairly common at one time in the metropolis, and had gone about with a mob of underlings wearing black shorts and shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ or words along those general lines. He gave it up when he became Lord Sidcup, but he was still apt to address all and sundry as if he were ticking off some erring member of his entourage whose shorts had got a patch on them.

‘Oh, were you?’ I said.

‘I was.’ He paused for a moment, continuing to give me the eye, then he said ‘So!’

‘So!’ is another of those things, like ‘You!’ and ‘Ha!’, which it’s never easy to find the right answer to. Nothing in the way of a come-back suggested itself to me, so I merely lit a cigarette in what I intended to be a nonchalant manner, though I may have missed it by a considerable margin, and he proceeded.

‘So I was right!’

‘Eh?’

‘In my suspicions.’

‘Eh?’

‘They have been confirmed.’

‘Eh?’

‘Stop saying “Eh?”, you miserable worm, and listen to me.’

I humoured him. You might have supposed that having so recently seen him knocked base over apex by the Rev. H.P. Pinker and subsequently laid out cold by Emerald Stoker and her basin of beans I would have regarded him with contempt as pretty small-time stuff and rebuked him sharply for calling me a miserable worm, but the idea never so much as crossed my mind. He had suffered reverses, true, but they had left him with his spirit unbroken and the muscles of his brawny arms just as much like iron bands as they had always been, and the way I looked at it was that if he wanted me to go easy on the word ‘Eh?’ he had only to say so.

Continuing to pierce me with the eye that was still on duty, he said:

‘I happened to be passing through the hall just now.’

‘Oh?’

‘I heard you talking on the telephone.’

‘Oh?’

‘You were speaking to your aunt.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t keep saying “Oh?”, blast you.’

Well, these restrictions were making it a bit hard for me to hold up my end of the conversation, but there seemed nothing to be done about it. I maintained a rather dignified silence, and he resumed his remarks.

‘Your aunt was urging you to steal Sir Watkyn’s amber statuette.’

‘She wasn’t!’

‘Pardon me. I thought you would try to deny the charge, so I took the precaution of jotting down your actual words. The statuette was mentioned and you said “It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it.” She then presumably urged you to spare no effort, for you said “Well, I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette. Rely on me, Aunt Dahlia.” What the devil are you gargling about?’

‘Not gargling,’ I corrected. ‘Laughing lightly. Because you’ve got the whole thing wrong, though I must say the way you’ve managed to record the dialogue does you a good deal of credit. Do you use shorthand?’

‘How do you mean I’ve got it wrong?’

‘Aunt Dahlia was asking me to try to buy the thing from Sir Watkyn.’

He snorted and said ‘Ha!’ and I thought it a bit unjust that he should say ‘Ha!’ if I wasn’t allowed to say ‘Eh?’ and ‘Oh?’ There should always be a certain give and take in these matters, or where are you?

‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

‘Don’t you believe it?’

‘No, I don’t. I’m not an ass.’

This, of course, was a debatable point, as I once heard Jeeves describe it, but I didn’t press it.

‘I know that aunt of yours,’ he proceeded. ‘She would steal the filling out of your back teeth if she thought she could do it without detection.’ He paused for a moment, and I knew that he was thinking of the cow-creamer. He had always – and, I must admit, not without reason – suspected the old flesh-and-blood of being the motive force behind its disappearance, and I imagine it had been a nasty knock to him that nothing could be proved. ‘Well, I strongly advise you, Wooster, not to let her make a catspaw of you this time, because if you’re caught, as you certainly will be, you’ll be for it. Don’t think that Sir Watkyn will hush the thing up to avoid a scandal. You’ll go to prison, that’s where you’ll go. He dislikes you intensely, and nothing would please him more than to be able to give you a long stretch without the option.’

I thought this showed a vindictive spirit in the old wart hog and one that I deplored, but I felt it would be injudicious to say so. I merely nodded understandingly. I was thankful that there was no danger of this contingency, as Jeeves would have called it, arising. Strong in the knowledge that nothing would induce me to pinch their ruddy statuette, I was able to remain calm and nonchalant, or as calm and nonchalant as you can be when a fellow eight foot six in height with one eye bunged up and the other behaving like an oxyacetylene blowpipe is glaring at you.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Spode, ‘it’ll be chokey for you.’

And he was going on to say that he would derive great pleasure from coming on visiting days and making faces at me through the bars, when Pop Bassett returned.

But a very different Bassett from the fizzy rejoicer who had exited so short a while before. Then he had been all buck and beans, as any father would have been whose daughter was not going to marry Gussie Fink-Nottle. Now his face was drawn and his general demeanour that of an incautious luncher who discovers when there is no time to draw back that he has swallowed a rather too elderly oyster.

‘Madeline tells me,’ he began. Then he saw Spode’s eye, and broke off. It was the sort of eye which, even if you have a lot on your mind, you can’t help noticing. ‘Good gracious, Roderick,’ he said, ‘did you have a fall?’

‘Fall, my foot,’ said Spode, ‘I was socked by a curate.’