The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 (40 page)

‘That big fellow?’

‘Big is right, though perhaps “supercolossal” would be more the
mot juste
. Well, Sir Watkyn, as I say, has confided his suspicions to Spode, and I have it from the latter personally that if that cow-creamer disappears, he will beat me to a jelly. That is why nothing constructive can be accomplished.’

A silence of some duration followed these remarks. I could see that she was chewing on the thing and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that it was no idle whim of Bertram’s that was causing him to fail her in her hour of need. She appreciated the cleft stick in which he found himself and, unless I am vastly mistaken, shuddered at it.

This relative is a woman who, in the days of my boyhood and adolescence, was accustomed frequently to clump me over the side of the head when she considered that my behaviour warranted this gesture, and I have often felt in these days that she was on the point of doing it again. But beneath this earhole-sloshing exterior there beats a tender heart, and her love for Bertram is, I know, deep-rooted. She would be the last person to wish to see him get his eyes bunged up and have that well-shaped nose punched out of position.

‘I see,’ she said, at length. ‘Yes. That makes things difficult, of course.’

‘Extraordinarily difficult. If you care to describe the situation as an
impasse
, it will be all right with me.’

‘Said he would beat you to a jelly, did he?’

‘That was the expression he used. He repeated it, so that there should be no mistake.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t for the world have you manhandled by that big stiff. You wouldn’t have a chance against a gorilla like that. He would tear the stuffing out of you before you could say “Pip-pip”. He would rend you limb from limb and scatter the fragments to the four winds.’

I winced a little.

‘No need to make a song about it, old flesh and blood.’

‘You’re sure he meant what he said?’

‘Quite.’

‘His bark may be worse than his bite.’

I smiled sadly.

‘I see where you’re heading, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said. ‘In another minute you will be asking if there wasn’t a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. There wasn’t. The policy which Roderick Spode outlined to me at our recent interview is the policy which he will pursue and fulfil.’

‘Then we seem to be stymied. Unless Jeeves can think of something.’ She addressed the man, who had just entered with the brandy – not before it was time. I couldn’t think why he had taken so long over it. ‘We are talking of Mr Spode, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, madam?’

‘Jeeves and I have already discussed the Spode menace,’ I said moodily, ‘and he confesses himself baffled. For once, that substantial brain has failed to click. He has brooded, but no formula.’

Aunt Dahlia had been swigging the brandy gratefully, and there now came into her face a thoughtful look.

‘You know what has just occurred to me?’ she said.

‘Say on, old thicker than water,’ I replied, still with that dark moodiness. ‘I’ll bet it’s rotten.’

‘It’s not rotten at all. It may solve everything. I’ve been wondering if this man Spode hasn’t some shady secret. Do you know anything about him, Jeeves?’

‘No, madam.’

‘How do you mean, a secret?’

‘What I was turning over in my mind was the thought that, if he had some chink in his armour, one might hold him up by means of it, thus drawing his fangs. I remember, when I was a girl, seeing your Uncle George kiss my governess, and it was amazing how it eased the strain later on, when there was any question of her keeping me in after school to write out the principal imports and exports of the United Kingdom. You see what I mean? Suppose we knew that Spode had shot a fox, or something? You don’t think much of it?’ she said, seeing that I was pursing my lips dubiously.

‘I can see it as an idea. But there seems to me to be one fatal snag – viz that we don’t know.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ She rose. ‘Oh well, it was just a random thought, I merely threw it out. And now I think I will be returning to my room and spraying my temples with
eau-de-Cologne
. My head feels as if it were about to burst like shrapnel.’

The door closed. I sank into the chair which she had vacated, and mopped the b.

‘Well, that’s over,’ I said thankfully. ‘She took the blow better than I had hoped, Jeeves. The Quorn trains its daughters well. But, stiff though her upper lip was, you could see that she felt it deeply, and that brandy came in handy. By the way, you were the dickens of a while bringing it. A St Bernard dog would have been there and back in half the time.’

‘Yes, sir. I am sorry. I was detained in conversation by Mr Fink-Nottle.’

I sat pondering.

‘You know, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘that wasn’t at all a bad idea of Aunt Dahlia’s about getting the goods on Spode. Fundamentally, it was sound. If Spode had buried the body and we knew where, it would unquestionably render him a negligible force. But you say you know nothing about him.’

‘No, sir.’

‘And I doubt if there is anything to know, anyway. There are some chaps, one look at whom is enough to tell you that they are pukka sahibs who play the game and do not do the things that aren’t done, and prominent among these, I fear, is Roderick Spode. I shouldn’t imagine that the most rigorous investigation would uncover anything about him worse than that moustache of his, and to the world’s scrutiny of that he obviously has no objection, or he wouldn’t wear the damned thing.’

‘Very true, sir. Still, it might be worth while to institute inquiries.’

‘Yes, but where?’

‘I was thinking of the Junior Ganymede, sir. It is a club for gentlemen’s personal gentlemen in Curzon Street, to which I have belonged for some years. The personal attendant of a gentleman of Mr Spode’s prominence would be sure to be a member, and he would, of course, have confided to the secretary a good deal of material concerning him, for insertion in the club book.’

‘Eh?’

‘Under Rule Eleven, every new member is required to supply the club with full information regarding his employer. This not only provides entertaining reading, but serves as a warning to members who may be contemplating taking service with gentlemen who fall short of the ideal.’

A thought struck me, and I started. Indeed, I started rather violently.

‘What happened when you joined?’

‘Sir?’

‘Did you tell them all about me?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘What, everything? The time when old Stoker was after me and I had to black up with boot polish in order to assume a rudimentary disguise?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the occasion on which I came home after Pongo Twistleton’s birthday-party and mistook the standard lamp for a burglar?’

‘Yes, sir. The members like to have these things to read on wet afternoons.’

‘They do, do they? And suppose some wet afternoon Aunt Agatha reads them? Did that occur to you?’

‘The contingency of Mrs Spenser Gregson obtaining access to the club book is a remote one.’

‘I dare say. But recent events under this very roof will have shown you how women do obtain access to books.’

I relapsed into silence, pondering on this startling glimpse he had accorded me of what went on in institutions like the Junior Ganymede, of the existence of which I had previously been unaware. I had known, of course, that at nights, after serving the frugal meal, Jeeves would put on the old bowler hat and slip round the corner, but I had always supposed his destination to have been the saloon bar of some neighbouring pub. Of clubs in Curzon Street I had had no inkling.

Still less had I had an inkling that some of the fruitiest of Bertram Wooster’s possibly ill-judged actions were being inscribed in a book. The whole thing to my mind smacked rather unpleasantly of Abou ben Adhem and Recording Angels, and I found myself frowning somewhat.

Still, there didn’t seem much to be done about it, so I returned to what Constable Oates would have called the point at tissue.

‘Then what’s your idea? To apply to the Secretary for information about Spode?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You think he’ll give it to you?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘You mean he scatters these data – these extraordinarily dangerous data – these data that might spell ruin if they fell into the wrong hands – broadcast to whoever asks for them?’

‘Only to members, sir.’

‘How soon could you get in touch with him?’

‘I could ring him up on the telephone immediately, sir.’

‘Then do so, Jeeves, and if possible chalk the call up to Sir Watkyn Bassett and don’t lose your nerve when you hear the girl say “Three minutes”. Carry on regardless. Cost what it may, ye Sec. must be made to understand – and understand thoroughly – that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.’

‘I think I can convince him that an emergency exists, sir.’

‘If you can’t, refer him to me.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He started off on his errand of mercy.

‘Oh, by the way, Jeeves,’ I said, as he was passing through the door, ‘did you say you had been talking to Gussie?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Had he anything new to report?’

‘Yes, sir. It appears that his relations with Miss Bassett have been severed. The engagement is broken off.’

He floated out, and I leaped three feet. A dashed difficult thing to do, when you’re sitting in an armchair, but I managed it.

‘Jeeves!’ I yelled.

But he had gone, leaving not a wrack behind.

From downstairs there came the sudden booming of the dinner gong.

IT HAS ALWAYS
given me a bit of a pang to look back at that dinner and think that agony of mind prevented me sailing into it in the right carefree mood, for it was one which in happier circumstances I would have got my nose down to with a will. Whatever Sir Watkyn Bassett’s moral shortcomings, he did his guests extraordinarily well at the festive board, and even in my preoccupied condition it was plain to me in the first five minutes that his cook was a woman who had the divine fire in her. From a Grade A soup we proceeded to a toothsome fish, and from the toothsome fish to a salmi of game which even Anatole might have been proud to sponsor. Add asparagus, a jam omelette and some spirited sardines on toast, and you will see what I mean.

All wasted on me, of course. As the fellow said, better a dinner of herbs when you’re all buddies together than a regular blow-out when you’re not, and the sight of Gussie and Madeline Bassett sitting side by side at the other end of the table turned the food to ashes in my m. I viewed them with concern.

You know what engaged couples are like in mixed company, as a rule. They put their heads together and converse in whispers. They slap and giggle. They pat and prod. I have even known the female member of the duo to feed her companion with a fork. There was none of this sort of thing about Madeline Bassett and Gussie. He looked pale and corpse-like, she cold and proud and aloof. They put in the time for the most part making bread pills and, as far as I was able to ascertain, didn’t exchange a word from start to finish. Oh, yes, once – when he asked her to pass the salt, and she passed the pepper, and he said ‘I meant the salt,’ and she said ‘Oh, really?’ and passed the mustard.

There could be no question whatever that Jeeves was right. Brass rags had been parted by the young couple, and what was weighing upon me, apart from the tragic aspect, was the mystery of it all. I could think of no solution, and I looked forward to the conclusion
of
the meal, when the women should have legged it and I would be able to get together with Gussie over the port and learn the inside dope.

To my surprise, however, the last female had no sooner passed through the door than Gussie, who had been holding it open, shot through after like a diving duck and did not return, leaving me alone with my host and Roderick Spode. And as they sat snuggled up together at the far end of the table, talking to one another in low voices, and staring at me from time to time as if I had been a ticket-of-leave man who had got in by crashing the gate and might be expected, unless carefully watched, to pocket a spoon or two, it was not long before I, too, left. Murmuring something about fetching my cigarette case, I sidled out and went up to my room. It seemed to me that either Gussie or Jeeves would be bound to look in their sooner or later.

A cheerful fire was burning in the grate, and to while away the time I pulled the armchair up and got out the mystery story I had brought with me from London. As my researches in it had already shown me, it was a particularly good one, full of crisp clues and meaty murders, and I was soon absorbed. Scarcely, however, had I really had time to get going on it, when there was a rattle at the door handle, and who should amble in but Roderick Spode.

I looked at him with not a little astonishment. I mean to say, the last chap I was expecting to invade my bedchamber. And it wasn’t as if he had come to apologize for his offensive attitude on the terrace, when in addition to muttering menaces he had called me a miserable worm, or for those stares at the dinner table. One glance at his face told me that. The first thing a chap who has come to apologize does is to weigh in with an ingratiating simper, and of this there was no sign.

As a matter of fact, he seemed to me to be looking slightly more sinister than ever, and I found his aspect so forbidding that I dug up an ingratiating simper myself. I didn’t suppose it would do much towards conciliating the blighter, but every little helps.

‘Oh, hallo, Spode,’ I said affably. ‘Come on in. Is there something I can do for you?’

Without replying, he walked to the cupboard, threw it open with a brusque twiddle and glared into it. This done, he turned and eyed me, still in that unchummy manner.

‘I thought Fink-Nottle might be here.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘So I See.’

‘Did you expect to find him in the cupboard?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh?’

There was a pause.

‘Any message I can give him if he turns up?’

‘Yes. You can tell him that I am going to break his neck.’

‘Break his neck?’