The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 (39 page)

‘What ho!’ said Gussie. ‘What ho! Hallo, Jeeves.’

‘Good evening, sir.’

‘Well, Bertie, what’s the news? Have you seen her?’

The pang of compash became more acute. I heaved a silent sigh.
It
was to be my mournful task to administer to this old friend a very substantial sock on the jaw, and I shrank from it.

Still, these things have to be faced. The surgeon’s knife, I mean to say.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’ve seen her. Jeeves, have we any brandy?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Could you get a spot?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Better bring the bottle.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He melted away, and Gussie stared at me in honest amazement.

‘What’s all this? You can’t start swigging brandy just before dinner.’

‘I do not propose to. It is for you, my suffering old martyr at the stake, that I require the stuff.’

‘I don’t drink brandy.’

‘I’ll bet you drink this brandy – yes, and call for more. Sit down, Gussie, and let us chat awhile.’

And depositing him in the armchair, I engaged him in desultory conversation about the weather and the crops. I didn’t want to spring the thing on him till the restorative was handy. I prattled on, endeavouring to infuse into my deportment a sort of bedside manner which would prepare him for the worst, and it was not long before I noted that he was looking at me oddly.

‘Bertie, I believe you’re pie-eyed.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Then what are you babbling like this for?’

‘Just filling in till Jeeves gets back with the fluid. Ah, thank you, Jeeves.’

I took the brimming beaker from his hand, and gently placed Gussie’s fingers round the stem.

‘You had better go and inform Aunt Dahlia that I shall not be able to keep our tryst, Jeeves. This is going to take some time.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I turned to Gussie, who was now looking like a bewildered halibut.

‘Gussie,’ I said, ‘drink that down, and listen. I’m afraid I have bad news for you. About that notebook.’

‘About the notebook?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t mean she hasn’t got it?’

‘That is precisely the nub or crux. She has, and she is going to give it to Pop Bassett.’

I had expected him to take it fairly substantially, and he did. His eyes, like stars, started from their spheres and he leaped from the chair, spilling the contents of the glass and causing the room to niff like the saloon bar of a pub on a Saturday night.

‘What!’

‘That is the posish, I fear.’

‘But, my gosh!’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t really mean that?’

‘I do.’

‘But why?’

‘She has her reasons.’

‘But she can’t realize what will happen.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘It will mean ruin!’

‘Definitely.’

‘Oh, my gosh!’

It has often been said that disaster brings out the best in the Woosters. A strange calm descended on me. I patted his shoulder.

‘Courage, Gussie! Think of Archimedes.’

‘Why?’

‘He was killed by a common soldier.’

‘What of it?’

‘Well, it can’t have been pleasant for him, but I have no doubt he passed out smiling.’

My intrepid attitude had a good effect. He became more composed. I don’t say that even now we were exactly like a couple of French aristocrats waiting for the tumbril, but there was a certain resemblance.

‘When did she tell you this?’

‘On the terrace not long ago.’

‘And she really meant it?’

‘Yes.’

‘There wasn’t –’

‘A twinkle in her eyes? No. No twinkle.’

‘Well, isn’t there any way of stopping her?’

I had been expecting him to bring this up, but I was sorry he had done so. I foresaw a period of fruitless argument.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There is. She says she will forgo her dreadful purpose if I steal old Bassett’s cow-creamer.’

‘You mean that silver cow thing he was showing us at dinner last night?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘But why?’

I explained the position of affairs. He listened intelligently, his face brightening.

‘Now I see! Now I understand! I couldn’t imagine what her idea was. Her behaviour seemed so absolutely motiveless. Well, that’s fine. That solves everything.’

I hated to put a crimp in his happy exuberance, but it had to be done.

‘Not quite, because I’m jolly well not going to do it.’

‘What! Why not?’

‘Because, if I do, Roderick Spode says he will beat me to a jelly.’

‘What’s Roderick Spode got to do with it?’

‘He appears to have espoused that cow-creamer’s cause. No doubt from esteem for old Bassett.’

‘H’m! Well, you aren’t afraid of Roderick Spode.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Nonsense! I know you better than that.’

‘No, you don’t.’

He took a turn up and down the room.

‘But, Bertie, there’s nothing to be afraid of in a man like Spode, a mere mass of beef and brawn. He’s bound to be slow on his feet. He would never catch you.’

‘I don’t intend to try out as a sprinter.’

‘Besides, it isn’t as if you had to stay on here. You can be off the moment you’ve put the thing through. Send a note down to this curate after dinner, telling him to be on the spot at midnight, and then go to it. Here is the schedule, as I see it. Steal cow-creamer – say, twelve-fifteen to twelve-thirty, or call it twelve-forty, to allow for accidents. Twelve-forty-five, be at stables, starting up your car. Twelve-fifty, out on the open road, having accomplished a nice, smooth job. I can’t think what you’re worrying about. The whole thing seems childishly simple to me.’

‘Nevertheless –’

‘You won’t do it?’

‘No.’

He moved to the mantelpiece, and began fiddling with a statuette of a shepherdess of sorts.

‘Is this Bertie Wooster speaking?’ he asked.

‘It is.’

‘Bertie Wooster whom I admired so at school – the boy we used to call “Daredevil Bertie”?’

‘That’s right.’

‘In that case, I suppose there is nothing more to be said.’

‘No.’

‘Our only course is to recover the book from the Byng.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’

He pondered, frowning. Then the little grey cells seemed to stir.

‘I know. Listen. That book means a lot to her, doesn’t it?’

‘It does.’

‘This being so, she would carry it on her person, as I did.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘In her stocking, probably. Very well, then.’

‘How do you mean, very well, then?’

‘Don’t you see what I’m driving at?’

‘No.’

‘Well, listen. You could easily engage her in a sort of friendly romp, if you know what I mean, in the course of which it would be simple to … well, something in the nature of a jocular embrace …’

I checked him sharply. There are limits, and we Woosters recognize them.

‘Gussie, are you suggesting that I prod Stiffy’s legs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m not going to.’

‘Why not?’

‘We need not delve into my reasons,’ I said, stiffly. ‘Suffice it that the shot is not on the board.’

He gave me a look, a kind of wide-eyed, reproachful look, such as a dying newt might have given him, if he had forgotten to change its water regularly. He drew in his breath sharply.

‘You certainly have altered completely from the boy I knew at school,’ he said. ‘You seem to have gone all to pieces. No pluck. No dash. No enterprise. Alcohol, I suppose.’

He sighed and broke the shepherdess, and we moved to the door. As I opened it, he gave me another look.

‘You aren’t coming down to dinner like that, are you? What are you wearing a white tie for?’

‘Jeeves recommended it, to keep up the spirits.’

‘Well, you’re going to feel a perfect ass. Old Bassett dines in a velvet smoking-jacket with soup stains across the front. Better change.’

There was a good deal in what he said. One does not like to look conspicuous. At the risk of lowering the morale, I turned to doff the tails. And as I did so there came to us from the drawing room below the sound of a fresh young voice chanting, to the accompaniment of a piano, what exhibited all the symptoms of being an old English folk song. The ear detected a good deal of ‘Hey nonny nonny’, and all that sort of thing.

This uproar had the effect of causing Gussie’s eyes to smoulder behind the spectacles. It was as if he were feeling that this was just that little bit extra which is more than man can endure.

‘Stephanie Byng!’ he said bitterly. ‘Singing at a time like this!’

He snorted, and left the room. And I was just finishing tying the black tie, when Jeeves entered.

‘Mrs Travers,’ he announced formally.

An ‘Oh, golly!’ broke from my lips. I had known, of course, hearing that formal announcement, that she was coming, but so does a poor blighter taking a stroll and looking up and seeing a chap in an aeroplane dropping a bomb on his head know that that’s coming, but it doesn’t make it any better when it arrives.

I could see that she was a good deal stirred up – all of a doodah would perhaps express it better – and I hastened to bung her civilly into the armchair and make my apologies.

‘Frightfully sorry I couldn’t come and see you, old ancestor,’ I said. ‘I was closeted with Gussie Fink-Nottle upon a matter deeply affecting out mutual interests. Since we last met, there have been new developments, and my affairs have become somewhat entangled, I regret to say. You might put it that Hell’s foundations are quivering. That is not overstating it, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir.’

She dismissed my protestations with a wave of the hand.

‘So you’re having your troubles, too, are you? Well, I don’t know what new developments there have been at your end, but there has been a new development at mine, and it’s a stinker. That’s why I’ve come down here in such a hurry. The most rapid action has got to be taken, or the home will be in the melting-pot.’

I began to wonder if even the Mona Lisa could have found the
going
so sticky as I was finding it. One thing after another, I mean to say.

‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened?’

She choked for a moment, then contrived to utter a single word.

‘Anatole!’

‘Anatole?’ I took her hand and pressed it soothingly. ‘Tell me, old fever patient,’ I said, ‘what, if anything, are you talking about? How do you mean, Anatole?’

‘If we don’t look slippy, I shall lose him.’

A cold hand seemed to clutch at my heart.

‘Lose him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even after doubling his wages?’

‘Even after doubling his wages. Listen, Bertie. Just before I left home this afternoon, a letter arrived for Tom from Sir Watkyn Bassett. When I say “just before I left home”, that was what made me leave home. Because do you know what was in it?’

‘What?’

‘It contained an offer to swap the cow-creamer for Anatole, and Tom is seriously considering it!’

I stared at her.

‘What? Incredulous!’

‘Incredible, sir.’

‘Thank you, Jeeves. Incredible! I don’t believe it. Uncle Tom would never contemplate such a thing for an instant.’

‘Wouldn’t he? That’s all you know. Do you remember Pomeroy, the butler we had before Seppings?’

‘I should say so. A noble fellow.’

‘A treasure.’

‘A gem. I never could think why you let him go.’

‘Tom traded him to the Bessington-Copes for an oviform chocolate pot on three scroll feet.’

I struggled with a growing despair.

‘But surely the delirious old ass – or, rather, Uncle Tom – wouldn’t fritter Anatole away like that?’

‘He certainly would.’

She rose, and moved restlessly to the mantelpiece. I could see that she was looking for something to break as a relief to her surging emotions – what Jeeves would have called a palliative – and courteously drew her attention to a terra cotta figure of the Infant
Samuel
at Prayer. She thanked me briefly, and hurled it against the opposite wall.

‘I tell you, Bertie, there are no lengths to which a really loony collector will not go to secure a coveted specimen. Tom’s actual words, as he handed me the letter to read, were that it would give him genuine pleasure to skin old Bassett alive and personally drop him into a vat of boiling oil, but that he saw no alternative but to meet his demands. The only thing that stopped him wiring him there and then that it was a deal was my telling him that you had gone to Totleigh Towers expressly to pinch the cow-creamer, and that he would have it in his hands almost immediately. How are you coming along in that direction, Bertie? Formed your schemes? All your plans cut and dried? We can’t afford to waste time. Every moment is precious.’

I felt a trifle boneless. The news, I saw, would now have to be broken, and I hoped that that was all there would be. This aunt is a formidable old creature, when stirred, and I could not but recall what had happened to the Infant Samuel.

‘I was going to talk to you about that,’ I said. ‘Jeeves, have you that document we prepared?’

‘Here it is, sir.’

‘Thank you, Jeeves. And I think it might be a good thing if you were to go and bring a spot more brandy.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He withdrew, and I slipped her the paper, bidding her read it attentively. She gave it the eye.

‘What’s all this?’

‘You will soon see. Note how it is headed. “Wooster, B. – position of.” Those words tell the story. They explain,’ I said, backing a step and getting ready to duck, ‘why it is that I must resolutely decline to pinch that cow-creamer.’

‘What!’

‘I sent you a telegram to that effect this afternoon, but, of course, it missed you.’

She was looking at me pleadingly, like a fond mother at an idiot child who has just pulled something exceptionally goofy.

‘But, Bertie, dear, haven’t you been listening? About Anatole? Don’t you realize the position?’

‘Oh, quite.’

‘Then have you gone cuckoo? When I say “gone”, of course –’

I held up a checking hand.

‘Let me explain, aged r. You will recall that I mentioned to you that there had been some recent developments. One of these is that Sir Watkyn Bassett knows all about this cow-creamer-pinching scheme and is watching my every movement. Another is that he has confided his suspicions to a pal of his named Spode. Perhaps on your arrival here you met Spode?’