The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (70 page)

‘Sir?’

‘Mr Slingsby practising Russian dances,’ I explained. ‘I rather think he has fractured an assortment of limbs. Better go in and see.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘If he is the wreck I imagine, put him in my room and send for the doctor. The flat is filling up nicely with the various units of the Pim family and its connections, eh, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I think the supply is about exhausted, but should any aunts or uncles by marriage come along and break their limbs, bed them out on the Chesterfield.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I, personally, Jeeves,’ I said, opening the front door and pausing on the threshold, ‘am off to Paris. I will wire you the address. Notify me in due course when the place is free from Pims and completely purged of Slingsbys, and I will return. Oh, and Jeeves.’

‘Sir?’

‘Spare no effort to mollify these birds. They think – at least, Slingsby (female) thinks, and what she thinks today he will think
tomorrow
– that it was I who ran over Mr Pim in my care. Endeavour during my absence to sweeten them.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘And now perhaps you had better be going in and viewing the body. I shall proceed to the Drones, where I shall lunch, subsequently catching the two o’clock train at Charing Cross. Meet me there with an assortment of luggage.’

It was a matter of three weeks or so before Jeeves sent me the ‘All clear’ signal. I spent the time pottering pretty perturbedly about Paris and environs. It is a city I am fairly fond of, but I was glad to be able to return to the old home. I hopped on to a passing aeroplane and a couple of hours later was bowling through Croydon on my way to the centre of things. It was somewhere down in the Sloane Square neighbourhood that I first caught sight of the posters.

A traffic block had occurred, and I was glancing idly this way and that, when suddenly my eye was caught by something that looked familiar. And then I saw what it was.

Pasted on a blank wall and measuring about a hundred feet each way was an enormous poster, mostly red and blue. At the top of it were the words:

and at the bottom:

And, in between, me. Yes, dash it, Bertram Wooster in person. A reproduction of the Pendlebury portrait, perfect in every detail.

It was the sort of thing to make a fellow’s eyes flicker, and mine flickered. You might say a mist seemed to roll before them. Then it lifted, and I was able to get a good long look before the traffic moved on.

Of all the absolutely foul sights I have ever seen, this took the biscuit with ridiculous ease. The thing was a bally libel on the Wooster face, and yet it was as unmistakable as if it had had my name under it. I saw now what Jeeves had meant when he said that the portrait had given me a hungry look. In the poster this look had become one of bestial greed. There I sat absolutely slavering through a monocle about six inches in circumference at a plateful of soup, looking as if I hadn’t had a meal for weeks. The whole thing seemed to take one straight away into a different and a dreadful world.

I woke from a species of trance or coma to find myself at the door of the block of flats. To buzz upstairs and charge into the home was with me the work of a moment.

Jeeves came shimmering down the hall, the respectful beam of welcome on his face.

‘I am glad to see you back, sir.’

‘Never mind about that,’ I yipped. ‘What about –?’

‘The posters, sir? I was wondering if you might have observed them.’

‘I observed them!’

‘Striking, sir?’

‘Very striking. Now, perhaps you’ll kindly explain –’

‘You instructed me, if you recollect, sir, to spare no effort to mollify Mr Slingsby.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘It proved a somewhat difficult task, sir. For some time Mr Slingsby, on the advice and owing to the persuasion of Mrs Slingsby, appeared to be resolved to institute an action in law against you – a procedure which I knew you would find most distasteful.’

‘Yes, but –’

‘And then, the first day he was able to leave his bed, he observed the portrait, and it seemed to me judicious to point out to him its possibilities as an advertising medium. He readily fell in with the suggestion and, on my assurance that, should he abandon the projected action in law, you would willingly permit the use of the portrait, he entered into negotiations with Miss Pendlebury for the purchase of the copyright.’

‘Oh? Well, I hope she’s got something out of it, at any rate?’

‘Yes, sir. Mr Pim, acting as Miss Pendlebury’s agent, drove, I understand, an extremely satisfactory bargain.’

‘He acted as her agent, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. In his capacity as fiancé to the young lady, sir.’

‘Fiancé!’

‘Yes, sir.’

It shows how the sight of that poster had got into my ribs when I state that, instead of being laid out cold by this announcement, I merely said ‘Ha!’ or ‘Ho!’ or it may have been ‘H’m.’ After the poster, nothing seemed to matter.

‘After that poster, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘nothing seems to matter.’

‘No, sir?’

‘No, Jeeves. A woman has tossed my heart lightly away, but what of it?’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘The voice of Love seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number. Is that going to crush me?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No, Jeeves. It is not. But what does matter is this ghastly business of my face being spread from end to end of the Metropolis with the eyes fixed on a plate of Slingsby’s Superb Soup. I must leave London. The lads at the Drones will kid me without ceasing.’

‘Yes, sir. And Mrs Spenser Gregson –’

I paled visibly. I hadn’t thought of Aunt Agatha and what she might have to say about letting down the family prestige.

‘You don’t mean to say she has been ringing up?’

‘Several times daily, sir.’

‘Jeeves, flight is the only resource.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Back to Paris, what?’

‘I should not recommend the move, sir. The posters are, I understand, shortly to appear in that city also, advertising the
Bouillon Suprême
. Mr Slingsby’s products command a large sale in France. The sight would be painful for you, sir.’

‘Then where?’

‘If I might make a suggestion, sir, why not adhere to your original intention of cruising in Mrs Travers’ yacht in the Mediterranean? On the yacht you would be free from the annoyance of these advertising displays.’

The man seemed to me to be drivelling.

‘But the yacht started weeks ago. It may be anywhere by now.’

‘No, sir. The cruise was postponed for a month owing to the illness of Mrs Travers’ chef, Anatole, who contracted influenza. Mrs Travers refused to sail without him.’

‘You mean they haven’t started?’

‘Not yet, sir. The yacht sails from Southampton on Tuesday next.’

‘Why, then, dash it, nothing could be sweeter.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ring up Aunt Dahlia and tell her we’ll be there.’

‘I ventured to take the liberty of doing so a few moments before you arrived, sir.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, sir. I thought it probable that the plan would meet with your approval.’

‘It does! I’ve wished all along I was going on that cruise.’

‘I, too, sir. It should be extremely pleasant.’

‘The tang of the salt breezes, Jeeves!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The moonlight on the water!’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘The gentle heaving of the waves!’

‘Exactly, sir.’

I felt absolutely in the pink. Gwladys – pah! The posters – bah! That was the way I looked at it.

‘Yo-ho-ho, Jeeves!’ I said, giving the trousers a bit of a hitch.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In fact, I will go further. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’

‘Very good, sir. I will bring it immediately.’

IT HAS BEEN
well said of Bertram Wooster by those who know him best that, whatever other sporting functions he may see fit to oil out of, you will always find him battling to his sixteen handicap at the annual golf tournament of the Drones Club. Nevertheless, when I heard that this year they were holding it at Bingley-on-Sea, I confess I hesitated. As I stood gazing out of the window of my suite at the Splendide on the morning of the opening day, I was not exactly a-twitter, if you understand me, but I couldn’t help feeling I might have been rather rash.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘Now that we have actually arrived, I find myself wondering if it was quite prudent to come here.’

‘It is a pleasant spot, sir.’

‘Where every prospect pleases,’ I agreed. ‘But though the spicy breezes blow fair o’er Bingley-on-Sea, we must never forget that this is where my Aunt Agatha’s old friend, Miss Mapleton, runs a girls’ school. If the relative knew I was here, she would expect me to call on Miss Mapleton.’

‘Very true, sir.’

I shivered somewhat.

‘I met her once, Jeeves. ’Twas on a summer’s evening in my tent, the day I overcame the Nervii. Or, rather, at lunch at Aunt Agatha’s a year ago come Lammas Eve. It is not an experience I would willingly undergo again.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Besides, you remember what happened last time I got into a girls’ school?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Secrecy and silence, then. My visit here must be strictly incog. If Aunt Agatha happens to ask you where I spent this week, say I went to Harrogate for the cure.’

‘Very good, sir. Pardon me, sir, are you proposing to appear in those garments in public?’

Up to this point our conversation had been friendly and cordial, but I now perceived that the jarring note had been struck. I had been wondering when my new plus-fours would come under discussion, and I was prepared to battle for them like a tigress for her young.

‘Certainly, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Why? Don’t you like them?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You think them on the bright side?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A little vivid, they strike you as?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I think highly of them, Jeeves,’ I said firmly.

There already being a certain amount of chilliness in the air, it seemed to me a suitable moment for springing another item of information which I had been keeping from him for some time.

‘Er – Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘I ran into Miss Wickham the other day. After chatting of this and that, she invited me to join a party she is getting up to go to the Antibes this summer.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

He now looked definitely squiggle-eyed. Jeeves, as I think I have mentioned before, does not approve of Bobbie Wickham.

There was what you might call a tense silence. I braced myself for an exhibition of the good old Wooster determination. I mean to say, one has got to take a firm stand from time to time. The trouble with Jeeves is that he tends occasionally to get above himself. Just because he has surged round and – I admit it freely – done the young master a bit of good in one or two crises, he has a nasty way of conveying the impression that he looks on Bertram Wooster as a sort of idiot child who, but for him, would conk in the first chukka. I resent this.

‘I have accepted, Jeeves,’ I said in a quiet, level voice, lighting a cigarette with a careless flick of the wrist.

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘You will like Antibes.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘So shall I.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘That’s settled, then.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I was pleased. The firm stand, I saw, had done its work. It was plain that the man was crushed beneath the iron heel – cowed, if you know what I mean.

‘Right-ho, then, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I had not expected to return from the arena until well on in the evening, but circumstances so arranged themselves that it was barely three o’clock when I found myself back again. I was wandering moodily to and fro on the pier, when I observed Jeeves shimmering towards me.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said. ‘I had not supposed that you would be returning quite so soon, or I would have remained at the hotel.’

‘I had not supposed that I would be returning quite so soon myself, Jeeves,’ I said, sighing somewhat. ‘I was outed in the first round, I regret to say.’

‘Indeed, sir? I am sorry to hear that.’

‘And, to increase the mortification of defeat, Jeeves, by a blighter who had not spared himself at the luncheon table and was quite noticeably sozzled. I couldn’t seem to do anything right.’

‘Possibly you omitted to keep your eye on the ball with sufficient assiduity, sir?’

‘Something of that nature, no doubt. Anyway, here I am, a game and popular loser and …’ I paused, and scanned the horizon with some interest. ‘Great Scott, Jeeves! Look at that girl just coming on to the pier. I never saw anybody so extraordinarily like Miss Wickham. How do you account for these resemblances?’

‘In the present instance, sir, I attribute the similarity to the fact that the young lady
is
Miss Wickham.’

‘Eh?’

‘Yes, sir. If you notice, she is waving to you now.’

‘But what on earth is she doing down here?’

‘I am unable to say, sir.’

His voice was chilly and seemed to suggest that whatever had brought Bobbie Wickham to Bingley-on-Sea, it could not, in his opinion, be anything good. He dropped back into the offing, registering alarm and despondency, and I removed the old Homburg and waggled it genially.

‘What-ho!’ I said.

Bobbie came to anchor alongside.

‘Hullo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

‘I am,’ I assured her.

‘In mourning?’ she asked, eyeing the trouserings.

‘Rather natty, aren’t they?’ I said, following her gaze. ‘Jeeves doesn’t like them, but then he’s notoriously hidebound in the matter of leg-wear. What are you doing in Bingley?’

‘My cousin Clementina is at school here. It’s her birthday and I thought I would come down and see her. I’m just off there now. Are you staying here tonight?’

‘Yes. At the Splendide.’

‘You can give me dinner there if you like.’

Jeeves was behind me, and I couldn’t see him, but at these words I felt his eye slap warningly against the back of my neck. I knew what it was that he was trying to broadcast – viz. that it would be tempting Providence to mix with Bobbie Wickham even to the extent of giving her a bite to eat. Dashed absurd, was my verdict. Get entangled with young Bobbie in the intricate lie of a country-house, where almost anything can happen, and I’m not saying. But how any doom or disaster could lurk behind the simple pronging of a spot of dinner together, I failed to see. I ignored the man.