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'Jeeves told me there was something about Wilbert Cream that someone
had told him when we were in New York. That might be significant.'
'Quite possibly. What was it?'
'He couldn't remember.'
'Too bad. Well, to return to what I was saying, the young man's
record appears to indicate some deep-seated neurosis, if not actual
schizophrenia, but against this must be set the fact that he gives no
sign of this in his conversation. I was having quite a long talk with
him yesterday morning, and found him most intelligent. He is interested
in old silver, and spoke with a great deal of enthusiasm of an
eighteenth-century cow-creamer in your uncle's collection.'
'He didn't say he was an eighteenth-century cow-creamer?'
'Certainly not.'
'Probably just wearing the mask.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I mean crouching for the spring, as it were. Lulling you into
security. Bound to break out sooner or later in some direction or
other. Very cunning, these fellows with deep-seated neuroses.'
He shook his head reprovingly.
'We must not judge hastily, Mr Wooster. We must keep an open mind.
Nothing is ever gained by not pausing to weigh the evidence. You may
remember that at one time I reached a hasty judgment regarding your
sanity. Those twenty-three cats in your bedroom.'
I flushed hotly. The incident had taken place several years
previously, and it would have been in better taste, I considered, to
have let the dead past bury its dead.
'That was explained fully.'
'Exactly. I was shown to be in error. And that is why I say I must
not form an opinion prematurely in the case of Wilbert Cream. I must
wait for further evidence.'
'And weigh it?'
'And, as you say, weigh it. But you rang, Mr Wooster. Is there
anything I can do for you?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, I wanted a whisky-and-soda, but I hate
to trouble you.'
'My dear Mr Wooster, you forget that I am, if only temporarily, a
butler and, I hope, a conscientious one. I will bring it immediately.'
I was wondering, as he melted away, if I ought to tell him that Mrs
Cream, too, was doing a bit of evidence-weighing, and about him, but
decided on the whole better not. No sense in disturbing his peace of
mind. It seemed to me that having to answer to the name of Swordfish
was enough for him to have to cope with for the time being. Given too
much to think about, he would fret and get pale.
When he returned, he brought with him not only the beaker full of
the warm south, on which I flung myself gratefully, but a letter which
he said had just come for me by the afternoon post. Having slaked the
thirst, I glanced at the envelope and saw that it was from Jeeves. I
opened it without much of a thrill, expecting that he would merely be
informing me that he had reached his destination safely and expressing
a hope that this would find me in the pink as it left him at present.
In short, the usual guff.
It wasn't the usual guff by a mile and a quarter. One glance at its
contents and I was Gosh-ing sharply, causing Pop Glossop to regard me
with a concerned eye.
'No bad news, I trust, Mr Wooster?'
'It depends what you call bad news. It's front-page stuff, all
right. This is from Jeeves, my man, now shrimping at Herne Bay, and it
casts a blinding light on the private life of Wilbert Cream.'
'Indeed? This is most interesting.'
'I must begin by saying that when Jeeves was leaving for his annual
vacation, the subject of W. Cream came up in the home, Aunt Dahlia
having told me he was one of the inmates here, and we discussed him at
some length. I said this, if you see what I mean, and Jeeves said that,
if you follow me. Well, just before Jeeves pushed off, he let fall that
significant remark I mentioned just now, the one about having heard
something about Wilbert and having forgotten it. If it came back to
him, he said, he would communicate with me. And he has, by Jove! Do you
know what he says in this missive? Give you three guesses.'
'Surely this is hardly the time for guessing games?'
'Perhaps you're right, though they're great fun, don't you think?
Well, he says that Wilbert Cream is a ... what's the word?' I referred
to the letter. 'A kleptomaniac,' I said. 'Which means, if the term is
not familiar to you, a chap who flits hither and thither pinching
everything he can lay his hands on.'
'Good gracious!'
'You might even go so far as "Lor' lumme!"'
'I never suspected this.'
'I told you he was wearing a mask. I suppose they took him abroad to
get him away from it all.'
'No doubt.'
'Overlooking the fact that there are just as many things to pinch in
England as in America. Does any thought occur to you?'
'It most certainly does. I am thinking of your uncle's collection of
old silver.'
'Me, too.'
'It presents a grave temptation to the unhappy young man.'
'I don't know that I'd call him unhappy. He probably thoroughly
enjoys lifting the stuff.'
'We must go to the collection room immediately. There may be
something missing.'
'Everything except the floor and ceiling, I expect. He would have
had difficulty in getting away with those.'
To reach the collection room was not the work of an instant with us,
for Pop Glossop was built for stability rather than speed, but we
fetched up there in due course and my first emotion on giving it the
once-over was one of relief, all the junk appearing to be in statu quo.
It was only after Pop Glossop had said 'Woof!' and was starting to dry
off the brow, for the going had been fast, that I spotted the hiatus.
The cow-creamer was not among those present.
This cow-creamer, in case you're interested, was a silver jug or
pitcher or whatever you call it shaped, of all silly things, like a cow
with an arching tail and a juvenile-delinquent expression on its face,
a cow that looked as if it were planning, next time it was milked, to
haul off and let the milkmaid have it in the lower ribs. Its back
opened on a hinge and the tip of the tail touched the spine, thus
giving the householder something to catch hold of when pouring. Why
anyone should want such a revolting object had always been a mystery to
me, it ranking high up on the list of things I would have been
reluctant to be found dead in a ditch with, but apparently they liked
that sort of jug in the eighteenth century and, coming down to more
modern times, Uncle Tom was all for it and so, according to the
evidence of the witness Glossop, was Wilbert. No accounting for tastes
is the way one has to look at these things, one man's caviar being
another man's major-general, as the old saw says.
However, be that as it may and whether you liked the bally thing or
didn't, the point was that it had vanished, leaving not a wrack behind,
and I was about to apprise Pop Glossop of this and canvass his views,
when we were joined by Bobbie Wickham. She had doffed the shirt and
Bermuda-shorts which she had been wearing and was now dressed for her
journey home.
'Hullo, souls,' she said. 'How goes it? You look a bit hot and
bothered, Bertie. What's up?'
I made no attempt to break the n. gently.
'I'll tell you what's up. You know that cow-creamer of Uncle Tom's?'
'No, I don't. What is it?'
'Sort of cream jug kind of thing, ghastly but very valuable. One
would not be far out in describing it as Uncle Tom's ewe lamb. He loves
it dearly.'
'Bless his heart.'
'It's all right blessing his heart, but the damn thing's gone.'
The still summer air was disturbed by a sound like beer coming out
of a bottle. It was Pop Glossop gurgling. His eyes were round, his nose
wiggled, and one could readily discern that this news item had come to
him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base
of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.
'Gone?'
'Gone.'
'Are you sure?'
I said that sure was just what I wasn't anything but.
'It is not possible that you may have overlooked it?'
'You can't overlook a thing like that.'
He re-gurgled.
'But this is terrible.'
'Might be considerably better, I agree.'
'Your uncle will be most upset.'
'He'll have kittens.'
'Kittens?'
'That's right.'
'Why kittens?'
'Why not?'
From the look on Bobbie's face, as she stood listening to our cross-
talk act, I could see that the inner gist was passing over her head.
Cryptic, she seemed to be registering it as.
'I don't get this,' she said. 'How do you mean it's gone?'
'It's been pinched.'
'Things don't get pinched in country-houses.'
'They do if there's a Wilbert Cream on the premises. He's a klep-
whatever-it-is,' I said, and thrust Jeeves's letter on her. She perused
it with an interested eye and having mastered its contents said, 'Cor
chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree,' adding that you never knew what was
going to happen next these days. There was, however, she said, a bright
side.
'You'll be able now to give it as your considered opinion that the
man is as loony as a coot, Sir Roderick.'
A pause ensued during which Pop Glossop appeared to be weighing
this, possibly thinking back to coots he had met in the course of his
professional career and trying to estimate their dippiness as compared
with that of W. Cream.
'Unquestionably his metabolism is unduly susceptible to stresses
resulting from the interaction of external excitations,' he said, and
Bobbie patted him on the shoulder in a maternal sort of way, a thing I
wouldn't have cared to do myself though our relations were, as I have
indicated, more cordial than they had been at one time, and told him he
had said a mouthful.
'That's how I like to hear you talk. You must tell Mrs Travers that
when she gets back. It'll put her in a strong position to cope with
Upjohn in this matter of Wilbert and Phyllis. With this under her belt,
she'll be able to forbid the banns in no uncertain manner. "What price
his metabolism?" she'll say, and Upjohn won't know which way to look.
So everything's fine.'
'Everything,' I pointed out, 'except that Uncle Tom is short one ewe
lamb.'
She chewed the lower lip.
'Yes, that's true. You have a point there. What steps do we take
about that?'
She looked at me, and I said I didn't know, and then she looked at
Pop Glossop, and he said he didn't know.
'The situation is an extremely delicate one. You concur, Mr
Wooster?'
'Like billy-o.'
'Placed as he is, your uncle can hardly go to the young man and
demand restitution. Mrs Travers impressed it upon me with all the
emphasis at her disposal that the greatest care must be exercised to
prevent Mr and Mrs Cream taking -'
'Umbrage?'
'I was about to say offence.'
'Just as good, probably. Not much in it either way.'
'And they would certainly take offence, were their son to be accused
of theft.'
'It would stir them up like an egg whisk. I mean, however well they
know that Wilbert is a pincher, they don't want to have it rubbed in.'
'Exactly.'
'It's one of the things the man of tact does not mention in their
presence.'
'Precisely. So really I cannot see what is to be done. I am
baffled.'
'So am I.'
'I'm not,' said Bobbie.
I quivered like a startled what-d'you-call-it. She had spoken with a
cheery ring in her voice that told an experienced ear like mine that
she was about to start something. In a matter of seconds by Shrewsbury
clock, as Aunt Dahlia would have said, I could see that she was going
to come out with one of those schemes or plans of hers that not only
stagger humanity and turn the moon to blood but lead to some
unfortunate male - who on the present occasion would, I strongly
suspected, be me -getting immersed in what Shakespeare calls a sea of
troubles, if it was Shakespeare. I had heard that ring in her voice
before, to name but one time, at the moment when she was pressing the
darning needle into my hand and telling me where I would find Sir
Roderick Glossop's hot-water bottle. Many people are of the opinion
that Roberta, daughter of the late Sir Cuthbert and Lady Wickham of
Skeldings Hall, Herts, ought not to be allowed at large. I string along
with that school of thought.
Pop Glossop, having only a sketchy acquaintance with this female of
the species and so not knowing that from childhood up her motto had
been 'Anything goes', was all animation and tell-me-more.
'You have thought of some course of action that it will be feasible
for us to pursue, Miss Wickham?'
'Certainly. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Do you know which
Wilbert's room is?'
He said he did.
'And do you agree that if you snitch things when you're staying at a
country-house, the only place you can park them in is your room?'
He said that this was no doubt so.
'Very well, then.'
He looked at her with what I have heard Jeeves call a wild surmise.
'Can you be ... Is it possible that you are suggesting... ?'
'That somebody nips into Wilbert's room and hunts around? That's
right. And it's obvious who the people's choice is. You're elected,
Bertie.'
Well, I wasn't surprised. As I say, I had seen it coming. I don't
know why it is, but whenever there's dirty work to be undertaken at the
crossroads, the cry that goes round my little circle is always 'Let
Wooster do it.' It never fails. But though I hadn't much hope that any
words of mine would accomplish anything in the way of averting the
doom, I put in a rebuttal.
'Why me?'
'It's young man's work.'
Though with a growing feeling that I was fighting in the last ditch,
I continued rebutting.
'I don't see that,' I said. 'I should have thought a mature,
experienced man of the world would have been far more likely to bring
home the bacon than a novice like myself, who as a child was never any
good at hunt-the-slipper. Stands to reason.'
'Now don't be difficult, Bertie. You'll enjoy it,' said Bobbie,
though where she got that idea I was at a loss to understand. 'Try to
imagine you're someone in the Secret Service on the track of the naval
treaty which was stolen by a mysterious veiled woman diffusing a
strange exotic scent. You'll have the time of your life. What did you
say?'
'I said "Ha!" Suppose someone pops in?'
'Don't be silly. Mrs Cream is working on her book. Phyllis is in her
room, typing Upjohn's speech. Wilbert's gone for a walk. Upjohn isn't
here. The only character who could pop in would be the Brinkley Court
ghost. If it does, give it a cold look and walk through it. That'll
teach it not to come butting in where it isn't wanted, ha ha.'
'Ha ha,' trilled Pop Glossop.
I thought their mirth ill-timed and in dubious taste, and I let them
see it by my manner as I strode off. For of course I did stride off.
These clashings of will with the opposite sex always end with Bertram
Wooster bowing to the inev. But I was not in jocund mood, and when
Bobbie, speeding me on my way, called me her brave little man and said
she had known all along I had it in me, I ignored the remark with a
coldness which must have made itself felt.
It was a lovely afternoon, replete with blue sky, beaming sun,
buzzing insects and what not, an afternoon that seemed to call to one
to be out in the open with God's air playing on one's face and
something cool in a glass at one's side, and here was I, just to oblige
Bobbie Wickham, tooling along a corridor indoors on my way to search a
comparative stranger's bedroom, this involving crawling on floors and
routing under beds and probably getting covered with dust and fluff.
The thought was a bitter one, and I don't suppose I have ever come
closer to saying 'Faugh!' It amazed me that I could have allowed myself
to be let in for a binge of this description simply because a woman
wished it. Too bally chivalrous for our own good, we Woosters, and
always have been.
As I reached Wilbert's door and paused outside doing a bit of
screwing the courage to the sticking point, as I have heard Jeeves call
it, I found the proceedings reminding me of something, and I suddenly
remembered what. I was feeling just as I had felt in the old Malvem
House epoch when I used to sneak down to Aubrey Upjohn's study at dead
of night in quest of the biscuits he kept there in a tin on his desk,
and there came back to me the memory of the occasion when, not letting
a twig snap beneath my feet, I had entered his sanctum in pyjamas and a
dressing-gown, to find him seated in his chair, tucking into the
biscuits himself. A moment fraught with embarrassment. The What-does-
this-mean-Wooster-ing that ensued and the aftermath next morning - six
of the best on the old spot - had always remained on the tablets of my
mind, if that's the expression I want.
Except for the tapping of a typewriter in a room along the corridor,
showing that Ma Cream was hard at her self-appointed task of curdling
the blood of the reading public, all was still. I stood outside the
door for a space, letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would', as Jeeves
tells me cats do in adages, then turned the handle softly, pushed -
also softly - and, carrying on into the interior, found myself
confronted by a girl in housemaid's costume who put a hand to her
throat like somebody in a play and leaped several inches in the
direction of the ceiling.
'Coo!' she said, having returned to terra firma and taken aboard a
spot of breath. 'You gave me a start, sir!'
'Frightfully sorry, my dear old housemaid,' I responded cordially.
'As a matter of fact, you gave me a start, making two starts in all.
I'm looking for Mr Cream.'
'I'm looking for a mouse.'
This opened up an interesting line of thought.
'You feel there are mice in these parts?'
'I saw one this morning, when I was doing the room. So I brought
Augustus,' she said, and indicated a large black cat who until then had
escaped my notice. I recognized him as an old crony with whom I had
often breakfasted, I wading into the scrambled eggs, he into the saucer
of milk.
'Augustus will teach him,' she said.
Now, right from the start, as may readily be imagined, I had been
wondering how this housemaid was to be removed, for of course her
continued presence would render my enterprise null and void. You can't
search rooms with the domestic staff standing on the sidelines, but on
the other hand it was impossible for anyone with any claim to be a
preux chevalier to take her by the slack of her garment and heave her
out. For a while the thing had seemed an impasse, but this statement of
hers that Augustus would teach the mouse gave me an idea.
'I doubt it,' I said. 'You're new here, aren't you?'
She conceded this, saying that she had taken office only in the
previous month.
'I thought as much, or you would be aware that Augustus is a broken
reed to lean on in the matter of catching mice. My own acquaintance
with him is a longstanding one, and I have come to know his psychology
from soup to nuts. He hasn't caught a mouse since he was a slip of a
kitten. Except when eating, he does nothing but sleep. Lethargic is the
word that springs to the lips. If you cast an eye on him, you will see
that he's asleep now.'
'Coo! So he is.'
'It's a sort of disease. There's a scientific name for it. Trau-
something. Traumatic symplegia, that's it. This cat has traumatic
symplegia. In other words, putting it in simple language adapted to the
lay mind, where other cats are content to get their eight hours,
Augustus wants his twenty-four. If you will be ruled by me, you will
abandon the whole project and take him back to the kitchen. You're
simply wasting your time here.'
My eloquence was not without its effect. She said 'Coo!' again,
picked up the cat, who muttered something drowsily which I couldn't
follow, and went out, leaving me to carry on.
The first thing I noticed when at leisure to survey my surroundings
was that the woman up top, carrying out her policy of leaving no stone
unturned in the way of sucking up to the Cream family, had done Wilbert
well where sleeping accommodation was concerned. What he had drawn when
clocking in at Brinkley Court was the room known as the Blue Room, a
signal honour to be accorded to a bachelor guest, amounting to being
given star billing, for at Brinkley, as at most country-houses, any old
nook or cranny is considered good enough for the celibate contingent.
My own apartment, to take a case in point, was a sort of hermit's cell
in which one would have been hard put to it to swing a cat, even a
smaller one than Augustus, not of course that one often wants to do
much cat-swinging. What I'm driving at is that when I blow in on Aunt
Dahlia, you don't catch her saying 'Welcome to Meadowsweet Hall, my
dear boy. I've put you in the Blue Room, where I am sure you will be
comfortable.' I once suggested to her that I be put there, and all she
said was 'You?' and the conversation turned to other topics.
The furnishing of this Blue Room was solid and Victorian, it having
been the GHQ of my Uncle Tom's late father, who liked things
substantial. There was a four-poster bed, a chunky dressing-table, a
massive writing table, divers chairs, pictures on the walls of fellows
in cocked hats bending over females in muslin and ringlets and over at
the far side a cupboard or armoire in which you could have hidden a
dozen corpses. In short, there was so much space and so many things to
shove things behind that most people, called on to find a silver cow-
creamer there, would have said 'Oh, what's the use?' and thrown in the
towel.
But where I had the bulge on the ordinary searcher was that I am a
man of wide reading. Starting in early boyhood, long before they were
called novels of suspense, I've read more mystery stories than you
could shake a stick at, and they have taught me something -viz. that
anybody with anything to hide invariably puts it on top of the cupboard
or, if you prefer it, the armoire. This is what happened in Murder at
Mistleigh Manor, Three Dead on Tuesday, Excuse my Gat, Guess Who and a
dozen more standard works, and I saw no reason to suppose that Wilbert
Cream would have deviated from routine. My first move, accordingly, was
to take a chair and prop it against the armoire, and I had climbed on
this and was preparing to subject the top to a close scrutiny, when
Bobbie Wickham, entering on noiseless feet and speaking from about
eighteen inches behind me, said:
'How are you getting on?'
Really, one sometimes despairs of the modern girl. You'd have
thought that this Wickham would have learned at her mother's knee that
the last thing a fellow in a highly nervous condition wants, when he's
searching someone's room, is a disembodied voice in his immediate ear
asking him how he's getting on. The upshot, I need scarcely say, was
that I came down like a sack of coals. The pulse was rapid, the blood
pressure high, and for awhile the Blue Room pirouetted about me like an
adagio dancer.
When Reason returned to its throne, I found that Bobbie, no doubt
feeling after that resounding crash that she was better elsewhere, had
left me and that I was closely entangled in the chair, my position
being in some respects similar to that of Kipper Herring when he got
both legs wrapped round his neck in Switzerland. It seemed improbable
that I would ever get loose without the aid of powerful machinery.
However, by pulling this way and pushing that, I made progress, and
I'd just contrived to de-chair myself and was about to rise, when
another voice spoke.
'For Pete's sake!' it said, and, looking up, I found that it was
not, as I had for a moment supposed, from the lips of the Brinkley
Court ghost that the words had proceeded, but from those of Mrs Homer
Cream. She was looking at me, as Sir Roderick Glossop had recently
looked at Bobbie, with a wild surmise, her whole air that of a woman
who is not abreast. This time, I noticed, she had an ink spot on her
chin.
'Mr Wooster!' she yipped.
Well, there's nothing much you can say in reply to 'Mr Wooster!'
except 'Oh, hullo,' so I said it.
'You are doubtless surprised,' I was continuing, when she hogged the
conversation again, asking me (a) what I was doing in her son's room
and (b) what in the name of goodness I thought I was up to.
'For the love of Mike,' she added, driving her point home.
It is frequently said of Bertram Wooster that he is a man who can
think on his feet, and if the necessity arises he can also use his loaf
when on all fours. On the present occasion I was fortunate in having
had that get-together with the housemaid and the cat Augustus, for it
gave me what they call in France a point d'appui. Removing a portion of
chair which had got entangled in my back hair, I said with a candour
that became me well:
'I was looking for a mouse.'
If she had replied, 'Ah, yes, indeed. I understand now. A mouse, to
be sure. Quite,' everything would have been nice and smooth, but she
didn't.
'A mouse?' she said. 'What do you mean?'
Well, of course, if she didn't know what a mouse was, there was
evidently a good deal of tedious spadework before us, and one would
scarcely have known where to start. It was a relief when her next words
showed that that 'What do you mean?' had not been a query but more in
the nature of a sort of heart-cry.
'What makes you think there is a mouse in this room?'
'The evidence points that way.'
'Have you seen it?'
'Actually, no. It's been lying what the French call perdu.'
'What made you come and look for it?'
'Oh, I thought I would.'
'And why were you standing on a chair?'
'Sort of just trying to get a bird's-eye view, as it were.'
'Do you often go looking for mice in other people's rooms?'
'I wouldn't say often. Just when the spirit moves me, don't you
know?'
'I see. Well...'
When people say 'Well' to you like that, it usually means that they
think you are outstaying your welcome and that the time has come to
call it a day. She felt, I could see, that Woosters were not required
in her son's sleeping apartment, and realizing that there might be
something in this, I rose, dusted the knees of the trousers, and after
a courteous word to the effect that I hoped the spine-freezer on which
she was engaged was coming out well, left the presence. Happening to
glance back as I reached the door, I saw her looking after me, that
wild surmise still functioning on all twelve cylinders. It was plain
that she considered my behaviour odd, and I'm not saying it wasn't. The
behaviour of those who allow their actions to be guided by Roberta
Wickham is nearly always odd.
The thing I wanted most at this juncture was to have a heart-to-
heart talk with that young femme fatale, and after roaming hither and
thither for a while I found her in my chair on the lawn, reading the Ma
Cream book in which I had been engrossed when these doings had started.
She greeted me with a bright smile, and said:
'Back already? Did you find it?'
With a strong effort I mastered my emotion and replied curtly but
civilly that the answer was in the negative.
'No,' I said, 'I did not find it.'
'You can't have looked properly.'
Again I was compelled to pause and remind myself that an English
gentleman does not slosh a sitting redhead, no matter what the
provocation.
'I hadn't time to look properly. I was impeded in my movements by
half-witted females sneaking up behind me and asking how I was getting
on.'
'Well, I wanted to know.' A giggle escaped her. 'You did come down a
wallop, didn't you? How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of
the morning, I said to myself. You're so terribly neurotic, Bertie. You
must try to be less jumpy. What you need is a good nerve tonic. I'm
sure Sir Roderick would shake you up one, if you asked him. And
meanwhile?'
'How do you mean, "And meanwhile"?'
'What are your plans now?'
'I propose to hoik you out of that chair and seat myself in it and
take that book, the early chapters of which I found most gripping, and
start catching up with my reading and try to forget.'
'You mean you aren't going to have another bash?'
'I am not. Bertram is through. You may give this to the press, if
you wish.'
'But the cow-creamer. How about your Uncle Tom's grief and agony
when he learns of his bereavement?'
'Let Uncle Tom eat cake.'
'Bertie! Your manner is strange.'
'Your manner would be strange if you'd been sitting on the floor of
Wilbert Cream's sleeping apartment with a chair round your neck, and Ma
Cream had come in.'
'Golly! Did she?'
'In person.'
'What did you say?'
'I said I was looking for a mouse.'
'Couldn't you think of anything better than that?'
'No.'
'And how did it all come out in the end?'
'I melted away, leaving her plainly convinced that I was off my
rocker. And so, young Bobbie, when you speak of having another bash, I
merely laugh bitterly,' I said, doing so. 'Catch me going into that
sinister room again! Not for a million pounds sterling, cash down in
small notes.'
She made what I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it, is called a
moue. Putting the lips together and shoving them out, if you know what
I mean. The impression I got was that she was disappointed in Bertram,
having expected better things, and this was borne out by her next
words.
'Is this the daredevil spirit of the Woosters?'
'As of even date, yes.'
'Are you man or mouse?'
'Kindly do not mention that word "mouse" in my presence.'
'I do think you might try again. Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth
of tar. I'll help you this time.'
'Ha!'
'Haven't I heard that word before somewhere?'
'You may confidently expect to hear it again.'
'No, but listen, Bertie. Nothing can possibly go wrong if we work
together. Mrs Cream won't show up this time. Lightning never strikes
twice in the same place.'
'Who made that rule?'
'And if she does ... Here's what I thought we'd do. You go in and
start searching, and I'll stand outside the door.'
'You feel that will be a lot of help?'
'Of course it will. If I see her coming, I'll sing.'
'Always glad to hear you singing, of course, but in what way will
that ease the strain?'
'Oh, Bertie, you really are an abysmal chump. Don't you get it? When
you hear me burst into song, you'll know there's peril afoot and you'll
have plenty of time to nip out of the window.'
'And break my bally neck?'
'How can you break your neck? There's a balcony outside the Blue
Room. I've seen Wilbert Cream standing on it, doing his Daily Dozen. He
breathes deeply and ties himself into a lovers' knot and -'
'Never mind Wilbert Cream's excesses.'
'I only put that in to make it more interesting. The point is that
there is a balcony and once on it you're home. There's a water pipe at
the end of it. You just slide down that and go on your way, singing a
gypsy song. You aren't going to tell me that you have any objection to
sliding down water pipes. Jeeves says you're always doing it.'
I mused. It was true that I had slid down quite a number of water
pipes in my time. Circumstances had often so moulded themselves as to
make such an action imperative. It was by that route that I had left
Skeldings Hall at three in the morning after the hot-water-bottle
incident. So while it would be too much, perhaps, to say that I am
never happier than when sliding down water pipes, the prospect of doing
so caused me little or no concern. I began to see that there was
something in this plan she was mooting, if mooting is the word I want.
What tipped the scale was the thought of Uncle Tom. His love for the
cow-creamer might be misguided, but you couldn't get away from the fact
that he was deeply attached to the beastly thing, and one didn't like
the idea of him coming back from Harrogate and saying to himself 'And
now for a refreshing look at the old cow-creamer' and finding it was
not in residence. It would blot the sunshine from his life, and
affectionate nephews hate like the dickens to blot the sunshine from
the lives of uncles. It was true that I had said 'Let Uncle Tom eat
cake,' but I hadn't really meant it. I could not forget that when I was
at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, this relative by marriage had often
sent me postal orders sometimes for as much as ten bob. He, in short,
had done the square thing by me, and it was up to me to do the s.t. by
him.
And so it came about that some five minutes later I stood once more
outside the Blue Room with Bobbie beside me, not actually at the moment
singing in the wilderness but prepared so to sing if Ma Cream,
modelling her strategy on that of the Assyrian, came down like a wolf
on the fold. The nervous system was a bit below par, of course, but not
nearly so much so as it might have been. Knowing that Bobbie would be
on sentry-go made all the difference. Any gangster will tell you that
the strain and anxiety of busting a safe are greatly diminished if
you've a look-out man ready at any moment to say 'Cheese it, the cops!'
Just to make sure that Wilbert hadn't returned from his hike, I
knocked on the door. Nothing stirred. The coast seemed c. I mentioned
this to Bobbie, and she agreed that it was as c. as a whistle.
'Now a quick run-through, to see that you have got it straight. If I
sing, what do you do?'
'Nip out of the window.'
'And - ?'
'Slide down the water pipe.'
'And - ?'
'Leg it over the horizon.'
'Right. In you go and get cracking,' she said, and I went in.
The dear old room was just as I'd left it, nothing changed, and my
first move, of course, was to procure another chair and give the top of
the armoire the once-over. It was a set-back to find that the cow-
creamer wasn't there. I suppose these kleptomaniacs know a thing or two
and don't hide the loot in the obvious place. There was nothing to be
done but start the exhaustive search elsewhere, and I proceeded to do
so, keeping an ear cocked for any snatch of song. None coming, it was
with something of the old debonair Wooster spirit that I looked under
this and peered behind that, and I had just crawled beneath the
dressing-table in pursuance of my researches, when one of those
disembodied voices which were so frequent in the Blue Room spoke,
causing me to give my head a nasty bump.
'For goodness' sake!' it said, and I came out like a pickled onion
on the end of a fork, to find that Ma Cream was once more a pleasant
visitor. She was standing there, looking down at me with a what-the-
hell expression on her finely chiselled face, and I didn't blame her.
Gives a woman a start, naturally, to come into her son's bedroom and
observe an alien trouser-seat sticking out from under the dressing-
table.
We went into our routine.
'Mr Wooster!'
'Oh, hullo.'
'It's you again?'
'Why, yes,' I said, for this of course was perfectly correct, and an
odd sound proceeded from her, not exactly a hiccup and yet not quite
not a hiccup.
'Are you still looking for that mouse?'
'That's right. I thought I saw it run under there, and I was about
to deal with it regardless of its age or sex.'
'What makes you think there is a mouse here?'
'Oh, one gets these ideas.'
'Do you often hunt for mice?'
'Fairly frequently.'
An idea seemed to strike her.
'You don't think you're a cat?'
'No, I'm pretty straight on that.'
'But you pursue mice?'
'Yes.'
'Well, this is very interesting. I must consult my psychiatrist when
I get back to New York. I'm sure he will tell me that this mouse-
fixation is a symbol of something. Your head feels funny, doesn't it?'
'It does rather,' I said, the bump I had given it had been a juicy
one, and the temples were throbbing.
'I thought as much. A sort of burning sensation, I imagine. Now you
do just as I tell you. Go to your room and lie down. Relax. Try to get
a little sleep. Perhaps a cup of strong tea would help. And ... I'm
trying to think of the name of that alienist I've heard people over
here speak so highly of. Miss Wickham mentioned him yesterday. Bossom?
Blossom? Glossop, that's it, Sir Roderick Glossop. I think you ought to
consult him. A friend of mine is at his clinic now, and she says he's
wonderful. Cures the most stubborn cases. Meanwhile, rest is the thing.
Go and have a good rest.'
At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the
door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some
sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade. But
I didn't go to my room and relax, I went in search of Bobbie, breathing
fire. I wanted to take up with her the matter of that absence of the
burst of melody. I mean, considering that a mere couple of bars of some
popular song hit would have saved me from an experience that had turned
the bones to water and whitened the hair from the neck up, I felt
entitled to demand an explanation of why those bars had not emerged.
I found her outside the front door at the wheel of her car.
'Oh, hullo, Bertie,' she said, and a fish on ice couldn't have
spoken more calmly. 'Have you got it?'
I ground a tooth or two and waved the arms in a passionate gesture.
'No,' I said, ignoring her query as to why I had chosen this moment
to do my Swedish exercises. 'I haven't. But Ma Cream got me.'
Her eyes widened. She squeaked a bit.
'Don't tell me she caught you bending again?'
'Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing-table. You and
your singing,' I said, and I'm not sure I didn't add the word
'Forsooth!'
Her eyes widened a bit further, and she squeaked another squeak.
'Oh, Bertie, I'm sorry about that.'
'Me, too.'
'You see, I was called away to the telephone. Mother rang up. She
wanted to tell me you were a nincompoop.'
'One wonders where she picks up such expressions.'
'From her literary friends, I suppose. She knows a lot of literary
people.'
'Great help to the vocabulary.'
'Yes. She was delighted when I told her I was coming home. She wants
to have a long talk.'
'About me, no doubt?'
'Yes, I expect your name will crop up. But I mustn't stay here
chatting with you, Bertie. If I don't get started, I shan't hit the old
nest till daybreak. It's a pity you made such a mess of things. Poor Mr
Travers, he'll be broken-hearted. Still, into each life some rain must
fall,' she said, and drove off, spraying gravel in all directions.
If Jeeves had been there, I would have turned to him and said
'Women, Jeeves!', and he would have said 'Yes, sir' or possibly
'Precisely, sir', and this would have healed the bruised spirit to a
certain extent, but as he wasn't I merely laughed a bitter laugh and
made for the lawn. A go at Ma Cream's goose-flesher might, I thought,
do something to soothe the vibrating ganglions.
And it did. I hadn't been reading long when drowsiness stole over
me, the tired eyelids closed, and in another couple of ticks I was off
to dreamland, slumbering as soundly as if I had been the cat Augustus.
I awoke to find that some two hours had passed, and it was while
stretching the limbs that I remembered I hadn't sent that wire to
Kipper Herring, inviting him to come and join the gang. I went to Aunt
Dahlia's boudoir and repaired this omission, telephoning the
communication to someone at the post office who would have been well
advised to consult a good aurist. This done, I headed for the open
spaces again, and was approaching the lawn with a view to getting on
with my reading when, hearing engine noises in the background and
turning to cast an eye in their direction, blow me tight if I didn't
behold Kipper alighting from his car at the front door.
The distance from London to Brinkley Court being a hundred miles or
so and not much more than two minutes having elapsed since I had sent
off that telegram, the fact that he was now outside the Brinkley front
door struck me as quick service. It lowered the record of the chap in
the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at
the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow
he's going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says 'How far is
that?' and the fellow says 'Three hundred miles' and the other fellow
says 'How long will it take you to get there?' and the fellow says 'Oh,
about half an hour, about half an hour.' The What-ho with which I
greeted the back of his head as I approached was tinged, accordingly,
with a certain bewilderment.
At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something
of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually
cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad
oyster. Guessing now what was biting him, I smiled one of my subtle
smiles. I would soon, I told myself, be bringing the roses back to his
cheeks.
He gulped a bit, then spoke in a hollow voice, like a spirit at a
seance.
'Hullo, Bertie.'
'Hullo.'
'So there you are.'
'Yes, here I am.'
'I was hoping I might run into you.'
'And now the dream's come true.'
'You see, you told me you were staying here.'
'Yes.'
'How's everything?'
'Pretty fruity.'
'Your aunt well?'
'Fine.'
'You all right?'
'More or less.'
'Capital. Long time since I was at Brinkley.'
'Yes.'
'Nothing much changed, I mean.'
'No.'
'Well, that's how it goes.'
He paused and did another splash of gulping, and I could see that we
were about to come to the nub, all that had gone before having been
merely what they call pour-parlers. I mean the sort of banana oil that
passes between statesmen at conferences conducted in an atmosphere of
the utmost cordiality before they tear their whiskers off and get down
to cases.
I was right. His face working as if the first bad oyster had been
followed by a second with even more spin on the ball, he said:
'I saw that thing in The Times, Bertie.'
I dissembled. I ought, I suppose, to have started bringing those
roses back right away, but I felt it would be amusing to kid the poor
fish along for a while, so I wore the mask.
'Ah, yes. In The Times. That thing. Quite. You saw it, did you?'
'At the club, after lunch. I couldn't believe my eyes.'
Well, I hadn't been able to believe mine, either, but I didn't
mention this. I was thinking how like Bobbie it was, when planning this
scheme of hers, not to have let him in on the ground floor. Slipped her
mind, I suppose, or she may have kept it under her hat for some strange
reason of her own. She had always been a girl who moved in a mysterious
way her wonders to perform.
'And I'll tell you why I couldn't. You'll scarcely credit this, but
only a couple of days ago she was engaged to me.'
'You don't say?'
'Yes, I jolly well do.'
'Engaged to you, eh?'
'Up to the hilt. And all the while she must have been contemplating
this ghastly bit of treachery.'
'A bit thick.'
'If you can tell me anything that's thicker, I shall be glad to hear
it. It just shows you what women are like. A frightful sex, Bertie.
There ought to be a law. I hope to live to see the day when women are
no longer allowed.'
'That would rather put a stopper on keeping the human race going,
wouldn't it?'
'Well, who wants to keep the human race going?'
'I see what you mean. Yes, something in that, of course.'
He kicked petulantly at a passing beetle, frowned awhile and
resumed.
'It's the cold, callous heartlessness of the thing that shocks me.
Not a hint that she was proposing to return me to store. As short a
while ago as last week, when we had a bite of lunch together, she was
sketching out plans for the honeymoon with the greatest animation. And
now this! Without a word of warning. You'd have thought that a girl who
was smashing a fellow's life into hash would have dropped him a line,
if only a postcard. Apparently that never occurred to her. She just let
me get the news from the morning paper. I was stunned.'
'I bet you were. Did everything go black?'
'Pretty black. I took the rest of the day thinking it over, and this
morning wangled leave from the office and got the car out and came down
here to tell you...'
He paused, seeming overcome with emotion.
'Yes?'
'To tell you that, whatever we do, we mustn't let this thing break
had told him when we were in New York. That might be significant.'
'Quite possibly. What was it?'
'He couldn't remember.'
'Too bad. Well, to return to what I was saying, the young man's
record appears to indicate some deep-seated neurosis, if not actual
schizophrenia, but against this must be set the fact that he gives no
sign of this in his conversation. I was having quite a long talk with
him yesterday morning, and found him most intelligent. He is interested
in old silver, and spoke with a great deal of enthusiasm of an
eighteenth-century cow-creamer in your uncle's collection.'
'He didn't say he was an eighteenth-century cow-creamer?'
'Certainly not.'
'Probably just wearing the mask.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I mean crouching for the spring, as it were. Lulling you into
security. Bound to break out sooner or later in some direction or
other. Very cunning, these fellows with deep-seated neuroses.'
He shook his head reprovingly.
'We must not judge hastily, Mr Wooster. We must keep an open mind.
Nothing is ever gained by not pausing to weigh the evidence. You may
remember that at one time I reached a hasty judgment regarding your
sanity. Those twenty-three cats in your bedroom.'
I flushed hotly. The incident had taken place several years
previously, and it would have been in better taste, I considered, to
have let the dead past bury its dead.
'That was explained fully.'
'Exactly. I was shown to be in error. And that is why I say I must
not form an opinion prematurely in the case of Wilbert Cream. I must
wait for further evidence.'
'And weigh it?'
'And, as you say, weigh it. But you rang, Mr Wooster. Is there
anything I can do for you?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, I wanted a whisky-and-soda, but I hate
to trouble you.'
'My dear Mr Wooster, you forget that I am, if only temporarily, a
butler and, I hope, a conscientious one. I will bring it immediately.'
I was wondering, as he melted away, if I ought to tell him that Mrs
Cream, too, was doing a bit of evidence-weighing, and about him, but
decided on the whole better not. No sense in disturbing his peace of
mind. It seemed to me that having to answer to the name of Swordfish
was enough for him to have to cope with for the time being. Given too
much to think about, he would fret and get pale.
When he returned, he brought with him not only the beaker full of
the warm south, on which I flung myself gratefully, but a letter which
he said had just come for me by the afternoon post. Having slaked the
thirst, I glanced at the envelope and saw that it was from Jeeves. I
opened it without much of a thrill, expecting that he would merely be
informing me that he had reached his destination safely and expressing
a hope that this would find me in the pink as it left him at present.
In short, the usual guff.
It wasn't the usual guff by a mile and a quarter. One glance at its
contents and I was Gosh-ing sharply, causing Pop Glossop to regard me
with a concerned eye.
'No bad news, I trust, Mr Wooster?'
'It depends what you call bad news. It's front-page stuff, all
right. This is from Jeeves, my man, now shrimping at Herne Bay, and it
casts a blinding light on the private life of Wilbert Cream.'
'Indeed? This is most interesting.'
'I must begin by saying that when Jeeves was leaving for his annual
vacation, the subject of W. Cream came up in the home, Aunt Dahlia
having told me he was one of the inmates here, and we discussed him at
some length. I said this, if you see what I mean, and Jeeves said that,
if you follow me. Well, just before Jeeves pushed off, he let fall that
significant remark I mentioned just now, the one about having heard
something about Wilbert and having forgotten it. If it came back to
him, he said, he would communicate with me. And he has, by Jove! Do you
know what he says in this missive? Give you three guesses.'
'Surely this is hardly the time for guessing games?'
'Perhaps you're right, though they're great fun, don't you think?
Well, he says that Wilbert Cream is a ... what's the word?' I referred
to the letter. 'A kleptomaniac,' I said. 'Which means, if the term is
not familiar to you, a chap who flits hither and thither pinching
everything he can lay his hands on.'
'Good gracious!'
'You might even go so far as "Lor' lumme!"'
'I never suspected this.'
'I told you he was wearing a mask. I suppose they took him abroad to
get him away from it all.'
'No doubt.'
'Overlooking the fact that there are just as many things to pinch in
England as in America. Does any thought occur to you?'
'It most certainly does. I am thinking of your uncle's collection of
old silver.'
'Me, too.'
'It presents a grave temptation to the unhappy young man.'
'I don't know that I'd call him unhappy. He probably thoroughly
enjoys lifting the stuff.'
'We must go to the collection room immediately. There may be
something missing.'
'Everything except the floor and ceiling, I expect. He would have
had difficulty in getting away with those.'
To reach the collection room was not the work of an instant with us,
for Pop Glossop was built for stability rather than speed, but we
fetched up there in due course and my first emotion on giving it the
once-over was one of relief, all the junk appearing to be in statu quo.
It was only after Pop Glossop had said 'Woof!' and was starting to dry
off the brow, for the going had been fast, that I spotted the hiatus.
The cow-creamer was not among those present.
This cow-creamer, in case you're interested, was a silver jug or
pitcher or whatever you call it shaped, of all silly things, like a cow
with an arching tail and a juvenile-delinquent expression on its face,
a cow that looked as if it were planning, next time it was milked, to
haul off and let the milkmaid have it in the lower ribs. Its back
opened on a hinge and the tip of the tail touched the spine, thus
giving the householder something to catch hold of when pouring. Why
anyone should want such a revolting object had always been a mystery to
me, it ranking high up on the list of things I would have been
reluctant to be found dead in a ditch with, but apparently they liked
that sort of jug in the eighteenth century and, coming down to more
modern times, Uncle Tom was all for it and so, according to the
evidence of the witness Glossop, was Wilbert. No accounting for tastes
is the way one has to look at these things, one man's caviar being
another man's major-general, as the old saw says.
However, be that as it may and whether you liked the bally thing or
didn't, the point was that it had vanished, leaving not a wrack behind,
and I was about to apprise Pop Glossop of this and canvass his views,
when we were joined by Bobbie Wickham. She had doffed the shirt and
Bermuda-shorts which she had been wearing and was now dressed for her
journey home.
'Hullo, souls,' she said. 'How goes it? You look a bit hot and
bothered, Bertie. What's up?'
I made no attempt to break the n. gently.
'I'll tell you what's up. You know that cow-creamer of Uncle Tom's?'
'No, I don't. What is it?'
'Sort of cream jug kind of thing, ghastly but very valuable. One
would not be far out in describing it as Uncle Tom's ewe lamb. He loves
it dearly.'
'Bless his heart.'
'It's all right blessing his heart, but the damn thing's gone.'
The still summer air was disturbed by a sound like beer coming out
of a bottle. It was Pop Glossop gurgling. His eyes were round, his nose
wiggled, and one could readily discern that this news item had come to
him not as rare and refreshing fruit but more like a buffet on the base
of the skull with a sock full of wet sand.
'Gone?'
'Gone.'
'Are you sure?'
I said that sure was just what I wasn't anything but.
'It is not possible that you may have overlooked it?'
'You can't overlook a thing like that.'
He re-gurgled.
'But this is terrible.'
'Might be considerably better, I agree.'
'Your uncle will be most upset.'
'He'll have kittens.'
'Kittens?'
'That's right.'
'Why kittens?'
'Why not?'
From the look on Bobbie's face, as she stood listening to our cross-
talk act, I could see that the inner gist was passing over her head.
Cryptic, she seemed to be registering it as.
'I don't get this,' she said. 'How do you mean it's gone?'
'It's been pinched.'
'Things don't get pinched in country-houses.'
'They do if there's a Wilbert Cream on the premises. He's a klep-
whatever-it-is,' I said, and thrust Jeeves's letter on her. She perused
it with an interested eye and having mastered its contents said, 'Cor
chase my Aunt Fanny up a gum tree,' adding that you never knew what was
going to happen next these days. There was, however, she said, a bright
side.
'You'll be able now to give it as your considered opinion that the
man is as loony as a coot, Sir Roderick.'
A pause ensued during which Pop Glossop appeared to be weighing
this, possibly thinking back to coots he had met in the course of his
professional career and trying to estimate their dippiness as compared
with that of W. Cream.
'Unquestionably his metabolism is unduly susceptible to stresses
resulting from the interaction of external excitations,' he said, and
Bobbie patted him on the shoulder in a maternal sort of way, a thing I
wouldn't have cared to do myself though our relations were, as I have
indicated, more cordial than they had been at one time, and told him he
had said a mouthful.
'That's how I like to hear you talk. You must tell Mrs Travers that
when she gets back. It'll put her in a strong position to cope with
Upjohn in this matter of Wilbert and Phyllis. With this under her belt,
she'll be able to forbid the banns in no uncertain manner. "What price
his metabolism?" she'll say, and Upjohn won't know which way to look.
So everything's fine.'
'Everything,' I pointed out, 'except that Uncle Tom is short one ewe
lamb.'
She chewed the lower lip.
'Yes, that's true. You have a point there. What steps do we take
about that?'
She looked at me, and I said I didn't know, and then she looked at
Pop Glossop, and he said he didn't know.
'The situation is an extremely delicate one. You concur, Mr
Wooster?'
'Like billy-o.'
'Placed as he is, your uncle can hardly go to the young man and
demand restitution. Mrs Travers impressed it upon me with all the
emphasis at her disposal that the greatest care must be exercised to
prevent Mr and Mrs Cream taking -'
'Umbrage?'
'I was about to say offence.'
'Just as good, probably. Not much in it either way.'
'And they would certainly take offence, were their son to be accused
of theft.'
'It would stir them up like an egg whisk. I mean, however well they
know that Wilbert is a pincher, they don't want to have it rubbed in.'
'Exactly.'
'It's one of the things the man of tact does not mention in their
presence.'
'Precisely. So really I cannot see what is to be done. I am
baffled.'
'So am I.'
'I'm not,' said Bobbie.
I quivered like a startled what-d'you-call-it. She had spoken with a
cheery ring in her voice that told an experienced ear like mine that
she was about to start something. In a matter of seconds by Shrewsbury
clock, as Aunt Dahlia would have said, I could see that she was going
to come out with one of those schemes or plans of hers that not only
stagger humanity and turn the moon to blood but lead to some
unfortunate male - who on the present occasion would, I strongly
suspected, be me -getting immersed in what Shakespeare calls a sea of
troubles, if it was Shakespeare. I had heard that ring in her voice
before, to name but one time, at the moment when she was pressing the
darning needle into my hand and telling me where I would find Sir
Roderick Glossop's hot-water bottle. Many people are of the opinion
that Roberta, daughter of the late Sir Cuthbert and Lady Wickham of
Skeldings Hall, Herts, ought not to be allowed at large. I string along
with that school of thought.
Pop Glossop, having only a sketchy acquaintance with this female of
the species and so not knowing that from childhood up her motto had
been 'Anything goes', was all animation and tell-me-more.
'You have thought of some course of action that it will be feasible
for us to pursue, Miss Wickham?'
'Certainly. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Do you know which
Wilbert's room is?'
He said he did.
'And do you agree that if you snitch things when you're staying at a
country-house, the only place you can park them in is your room?'
He said that this was no doubt so.
'Very well, then.'
He looked at her with what I have heard Jeeves call a wild surmise.
'Can you be ... Is it possible that you are suggesting... ?'
'That somebody nips into Wilbert's room and hunts around? That's
right. And it's obvious who the people's choice is. You're elected,
Bertie.'
Well, I wasn't surprised. As I say, I had seen it coming. I don't
know why it is, but whenever there's dirty work to be undertaken at the
crossroads, the cry that goes round my little circle is always 'Let
Wooster do it.' It never fails. But though I hadn't much hope that any
words of mine would accomplish anything in the way of averting the
doom, I put in a rebuttal.
'Why me?'
'It's young man's work.'
Though with a growing feeling that I was fighting in the last ditch,
I continued rebutting.
'I don't see that,' I said. 'I should have thought a mature,
experienced man of the world would have been far more likely to bring
home the bacon than a novice like myself, who as a child was never any
good at hunt-the-slipper. Stands to reason.'
'Now don't be difficult, Bertie. You'll enjoy it,' said Bobbie,
though where she got that idea I was at a loss to understand. 'Try to
imagine you're someone in the Secret Service on the track of the naval
treaty which was stolen by a mysterious veiled woman diffusing a
strange exotic scent. You'll have the time of your life. What did you
say?'
'I said "Ha!" Suppose someone pops in?'
'Don't be silly. Mrs Cream is working on her book. Phyllis is in her
room, typing Upjohn's speech. Wilbert's gone for a walk. Upjohn isn't
here. The only character who could pop in would be the Brinkley Court
ghost. If it does, give it a cold look and walk through it. That'll
teach it not to come butting in where it isn't wanted, ha ha.'
'Ha ha,' trilled Pop Glossop.
I thought their mirth ill-timed and in dubious taste, and I let them
see it by my manner as I strode off. For of course I did stride off.
These clashings of will with the opposite sex always end with Bertram
Wooster bowing to the inev. But I was not in jocund mood, and when
Bobbie, speeding me on my way, called me her brave little man and said
she had known all along I had it in me, I ignored the remark with a
coldness which must have made itself felt.
It was a lovely afternoon, replete with blue sky, beaming sun,
buzzing insects and what not, an afternoon that seemed to call to one
to be out in the open with God's air playing on one's face and
something cool in a glass at one's side, and here was I, just to oblige
Bobbie Wickham, tooling along a corridor indoors on my way to search a
comparative stranger's bedroom, this involving crawling on floors and
routing under beds and probably getting covered with dust and fluff.
The thought was a bitter one, and I don't suppose I have ever come
closer to saying 'Faugh!' It amazed me that I could have allowed myself
to be let in for a binge of this description simply because a woman
wished it. Too bally chivalrous for our own good, we Woosters, and
always have been.
As I reached Wilbert's door and paused outside doing a bit of
screwing the courage to the sticking point, as I have heard Jeeves call
it, I found the proceedings reminding me of something, and I suddenly
remembered what. I was feeling just as I had felt in the old Malvem
House epoch when I used to sneak down to Aubrey Upjohn's study at dead
of night in quest of the biscuits he kept there in a tin on his desk,
and there came back to me the memory of the occasion when, not letting
a twig snap beneath my feet, I had entered his sanctum in pyjamas and a
dressing-gown, to find him seated in his chair, tucking into the
biscuits himself. A moment fraught with embarrassment. The What-does-
this-mean-Wooster-ing that ensued and the aftermath next morning - six
of the best on the old spot - had always remained on the tablets of my
mind, if that's the expression I want.
Except for the tapping of a typewriter in a room along the corridor,
showing that Ma Cream was hard at her self-appointed task of curdling
the blood of the reading public, all was still. I stood outside the
door for a space, letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would', as Jeeves
tells me cats do in adages, then turned the handle softly, pushed -
also softly - and, carrying on into the interior, found myself
confronted by a girl in housemaid's costume who put a hand to her
throat like somebody in a play and leaped several inches in the
direction of the ceiling.
'Coo!' she said, having returned to terra firma and taken aboard a
spot of breath. 'You gave me a start, sir!'
'Frightfully sorry, my dear old housemaid,' I responded cordially.
'As a matter of fact, you gave me a start, making two starts in all.
I'm looking for Mr Cream.'
'I'm looking for a mouse.'
This opened up an interesting line of thought.
'You feel there are mice in these parts?'
'I saw one this morning, when I was doing the room. So I brought
Augustus,' she said, and indicated a large black cat who until then had
escaped my notice. I recognized him as an old crony with whom I had
often breakfasted, I wading into the scrambled eggs, he into the saucer
of milk.
'Augustus will teach him,' she said.
Now, right from the start, as may readily be imagined, I had been
wondering how this housemaid was to be removed, for of course her
continued presence would render my enterprise null and void. You can't
search rooms with the domestic staff standing on the sidelines, but on
the other hand it was impossible for anyone with any claim to be a
preux chevalier to take her by the slack of her garment and heave her
out. For a while the thing had seemed an impasse, but this statement of
hers that Augustus would teach the mouse gave me an idea.
'I doubt it,' I said. 'You're new here, aren't you?'
She conceded this, saying that she had taken office only in the
previous month.
'I thought as much, or you would be aware that Augustus is a broken
reed to lean on in the matter of catching mice. My own acquaintance
with him is a longstanding one, and I have come to know his psychology
from soup to nuts. He hasn't caught a mouse since he was a slip of a
kitten. Except when eating, he does nothing but sleep. Lethargic is the
word that springs to the lips. If you cast an eye on him, you will see
that he's asleep now.'
'Coo! So he is.'
'It's a sort of disease. There's a scientific name for it. Trau-
something. Traumatic symplegia, that's it. This cat has traumatic
symplegia. In other words, putting it in simple language adapted to the
lay mind, where other cats are content to get their eight hours,
Augustus wants his twenty-four. If you will be ruled by me, you will
abandon the whole project and take him back to the kitchen. You're
simply wasting your time here.'
My eloquence was not without its effect. She said 'Coo!' again,
picked up the cat, who muttered something drowsily which I couldn't
follow, and went out, leaving me to carry on.
The first thing I noticed when at leisure to survey my surroundings
was that the woman up top, carrying out her policy of leaving no stone
unturned in the way of sucking up to the Cream family, had done Wilbert
well where sleeping accommodation was concerned. What he had drawn when
clocking in at Brinkley Court was the room known as the Blue Room, a
signal honour to be accorded to a bachelor guest, amounting to being
given star billing, for at Brinkley, as at most country-houses, any old
nook or cranny is considered good enough for the celibate contingent.
My own apartment, to take a case in point, was a sort of hermit's cell
in which one would have been hard put to it to swing a cat, even a
smaller one than Augustus, not of course that one often wants to do
much cat-swinging. What I'm driving at is that when I blow in on Aunt
Dahlia, you don't catch her saying 'Welcome to Meadowsweet Hall, my
dear boy. I've put you in the Blue Room, where I am sure you will be
comfortable.' I once suggested to her that I be put there, and all she
said was 'You?' and the conversation turned to other topics.
The furnishing of this Blue Room was solid and Victorian, it having
been the GHQ of my Uncle Tom's late father, who liked things
substantial. There was a four-poster bed, a chunky dressing-table, a
massive writing table, divers chairs, pictures on the walls of fellows
in cocked hats bending over females in muslin and ringlets and over at
the far side a cupboard or armoire in which you could have hidden a
dozen corpses. In short, there was so much space and so many things to
shove things behind that most people, called on to find a silver cow-
creamer there, would have said 'Oh, what's the use?' and thrown in the
towel.
But where I had the bulge on the ordinary searcher was that I am a
man of wide reading. Starting in early boyhood, long before they were
called novels of suspense, I've read more mystery stories than you
could shake a stick at, and they have taught me something -viz. that
anybody with anything to hide invariably puts it on top of the cupboard
or, if you prefer it, the armoire. This is what happened in Murder at
Mistleigh Manor, Three Dead on Tuesday, Excuse my Gat, Guess Who and a
dozen more standard works, and I saw no reason to suppose that Wilbert
Cream would have deviated from routine. My first move, accordingly, was
to take a chair and prop it against the armoire, and I had climbed on
this and was preparing to subject the top to a close scrutiny, when
Bobbie Wickham, entering on noiseless feet and speaking from about
eighteen inches behind me, said:
'How are you getting on?'
Really, one sometimes despairs of the modern girl. You'd have
thought that this Wickham would have learned at her mother's knee that
the last thing a fellow in a highly nervous condition wants, when he's
searching someone's room, is a disembodied voice in his immediate ear
asking him how he's getting on. The upshot, I need scarcely say, was
that I came down like a sack of coals. The pulse was rapid, the blood
pressure high, and for awhile the Blue Room pirouetted about me like an
adagio dancer.
When Reason returned to its throne, I found that Bobbie, no doubt
feeling after that resounding crash that she was better elsewhere, had
left me and that I was closely entangled in the chair, my position
being in some respects similar to that of Kipper Herring when he got
both legs wrapped round his neck in Switzerland. It seemed improbable
that I would ever get loose without the aid of powerful machinery.
However, by pulling this way and pushing that, I made progress, and
I'd just contrived to de-chair myself and was about to rise, when
another voice spoke.
'For Pete's sake!' it said, and, looking up, I found that it was
not, as I had for a moment supposed, from the lips of the Brinkley
Court ghost that the words had proceeded, but from those of Mrs Homer
Cream. She was looking at me, as Sir Roderick Glossop had recently
looked at Bobbie, with a wild surmise, her whole air that of a woman
who is not abreast. This time, I noticed, she had an ink spot on her
chin.
'Mr Wooster!' she yipped.
Well, there's nothing much you can say in reply to 'Mr Wooster!'
except 'Oh, hullo,' so I said it.
'You are doubtless surprised,' I was continuing, when she hogged the
conversation again, asking me (a) what I was doing in her son's room
and (b) what in the name of goodness I thought I was up to.
'For the love of Mike,' she added, driving her point home.
It is frequently said of Bertram Wooster that he is a man who can
think on his feet, and if the necessity arises he can also use his loaf
when on all fours. On the present occasion I was fortunate in having
had that get-together with the housemaid and the cat Augustus, for it
gave me what they call in France a point d'appui. Removing a portion of
chair which had got entangled in my back hair, I said with a candour
that became me well:
'I was looking for a mouse.'
If she had replied, 'Ah, yes, indeed. I understand now. A mouse, to
be sure. Quite,' everything would have been nice and smooth, but she
didn't.
'A mouse?' she said. 'What do you mean?'
Well, of course, if she didn't know what a mouse was, there was
evidently a good deal of tedious spadework before us, and one would
scarcely have known where to start. It was a relief when her next words
showed that that 'What do you mean?' had not been a query but more in
the nature of a sort of heart-cry.
'What makes you think there is a mouse in this room?'
'The evidence points that way.'
'Have you seen it?'
'Actually, no. It's been lying what the French call perdu.'
'What made you come and look for it?'
'Oh, I thought I would.'
'And why were you standing on a chair?'
'Sort of just trying to get a bird's-eye view, as it were.'
'Do you often go looking for mice in other people's rooms?'
'I wouldn't say often. Just when the spirit moves me, don't you
know?'
'I see. Well...'
When people say 'Well' to you like that, it usually means that they
think you are outstaying your welcome and that the time has come to
call it a day. She felt, I could see, that Woosters were not required
in her son's sleeping apartment, and realizing that there might be
something in this, I rose, dusted the knees of the trousers, and after
a courteous word to the effect that I hoped the spine-freezer on which
she was engaged was coming out well, left the presence. Happening to
glance back as I reached the door, I saw her looking after me, that
wild surmise still functioning on all twelve cylinders. It was plain
that she considered my behaviour odd, and I'm not saying it wasn't. The
behaviour of those who allow their actions to be guided by Roberta
Wickham is nearly always odd.
The thing I wanted most at this juncture was to have a heart-to-
heart talk with that young femme fatale, and after roaming hither and
thither for a while I found her in my chair on the lawn, reading the Ma
Cream book in which I had been engrossed when these doings had started.
She greeted me with a bright smile, and said:
'Back already? Did you find it?'
With a strong effort I mastered my emotion and replied curtly but
civilly that the answer was in the negative.
'No,' I said, 'I did not find it.'
'You can't have looked properly.'
Again I was compelled to pause and remind myself that an English
gentleman does not slosh a sitting redhead, no matter what the
provocation.
'I hadn't time to look properly. I was impeded in my movements by
half-witted females sneaking up behind me and asking how I was getting
on.'
'Well, I wanted to know.' A giggle escaped her. 'You did come down a
wallop, didn't you? How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer, son of
the morning, I said to myself. You're so terribly neurotic, Bertie. You
must try to be less jumpy. What you need is a good nerve tonic. I'm
sure Sir Roderick would shake you up one, if you asked him. And
meanwhile?'
'How do you mean, "And meanwhile"?'
'What are your plans now?'
'I propose to hoik you out of that chair and seat myself in it and
take that book, the early chapters of which I found most gripping, and
start catching up with my reading and try to forget.'
'You mean you aren't going to have another bash?'
'I am not. Bertram is through. You may give this to the press, if
you wish.'
'But the cow-creamer. How about your Uncle Tom's grief and agony
when he learns of his bereavement?'
'Let Uncle Tom eat cake.'
'Bertie! Your manner is strange.'
'Your manner would be strange if you'd been sitting on the floor of
Wilbert Cream's sleeping apartment with a chair round your neck, and Ma
Cream had come in.'
'Golly! Did she?'
'In person.'
'What did you say?'
'I said I was looking for a mouse.'
'Couldn't you think of anything better than that?'
'No.'
'And how did it all come out in the end?'
'I melted away, leaving her plainly convinced that I was off my
rocker. And so, young Bobbie, when you speak of having another bash, I
merely laugh bitterly,' I said, doing so. 'Catch me going into that
sinister room again! Not for a million pounds sterling, cash down in
small notes.'
She made what I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it, is called a
moue. Putting the lips together and shoving them out, if you know what
I mean. The impression I got was that she was disappointed in Bertram,
having expected better things, and this was borne out by her next
words.
'Is this the daredevil spirit of the Woosters?'
'As of even date, yes.'
'Are you man or mouse?'
'Kindly do not mention that word "mouse" in my presence.'
'I do think you might try again. Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth
of tar. I'll help you this time.'
'Ha!'
'Haven't I heard that word before somewhere?'
'You may confidently expect to hear it again.'
'No, but listen, Bertie. Nothing can possibly go wrong if we work
together. Mrs Cream won't show up this time. Lightning never strikes
twice in the same place.'
'Who made that rule?'
'And if she does ... Here's what I thought we'd do. You go in and
start searching, and I'll stand outside the door.'
'You feel that will be a lot of help?'
'Of course it will. If I see her coming, I'll sing.'
'Always glad to hear you singing, of course, but in what way will
that ease the strain?'
'Oh, Bertie, you really are an abysmal chump. Don't you get it? When
you hear me burst into song, you'll know there's peril afoot and you'll
have plenty of time to nip out of the window.'
'And break my bally neck?'
'How can you break your neck? There's a balcony outside the Blue
Room. I've seen Wilbert Cream standing on it, doing his Daily Dozen. He
breathes deeply and ties himself into a lovers' knot and -'
'Never mind Wilbert Cream's excesses.'
'I only put that in to make it more interesting. The point is that
there is a balcony and once on it you're home. There's a water pipe at
the end of it. You just slide down that and go on your way, singing a
gypsy song. You aren't going to tell me that you have any objection to
sliding down water pipes. Jeeves says you're always doing it.'
I mused. It was true that I had slid down quite a number of water
pipes in my time. Circumstances had often so moulded themselves as to
make such an action imperative. It was by that route that I had left
Skeldings Hall at three in the morning after the hot-water-bottle
incident. So while it would be too much, perhaps, to say that I am
never happier than when sliding down water pipes, the prospect of doing
so caused me little or no concern. I began to see that there was
something in this plan she was mooting, if mooting is the word I want.
What tipped the scale was the thought of Uncle Tom. His love for the
cow-creamer might be misguided, but you couldn't get away from the fact
that he was deeply attached to the beastly thing, and one didn't like
the idea of him coming back from Harrogate and saying to himself 'And
now for a refreshing look at the old cow-creamer' and finding it was
not in residence. It would blot the sunshine from his life, and
affectionate nephews hate like the dickens to blot the sunshine from
the lives of uncles. It was true that I had said 'Let Uncle Tom eat
cake,' but I hadn't really meant it. I could not forget that when I was
at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, this relative by marriage had often
sent me postal orders sometimes for as much as ten bob. He, in short,
had done the square thing by me, and it was up to me to do the s.t. by
him.
And so it came about that some five minutes later I stood once more
outside the Blue Room with Bobbie beside me, not actually at the moment
singing in the wilderness but prepared so to sing if Ma Cream,
modelling her strategy on that of the Assyrian, came down like a wolf
on the fold. The nervous system was a bit below par, of course, but not
nearly so much so as it might have been. Knowing that Bobbie would be
on sentry-go made all the difference. Any gangster will tell you that
the strain and anxiety of busting a safe are greatly diminished if
you've a look-out man ready at any moment to say 'Cheese it, the cops!'
Just to make sure that Wilbert hadn't returned from his hike, I
knocked on the door. Nothing stirred. The coast seemed c. I mentioned
this to Bobbie, and she agreed that it was as c. as a whistle.
'Now a quick run-through, to see that you have got it straight. If I
sing, what do you do?'
'Nip out of the window.'
'And - ?'
'Slide down the water pipe.'
'And - ?'
'Leg it over the horizon.'
'Right. In you go and get cracking,' she said, and I went in.
The dear old room was just as I'd left it, nothing changed, and my
first move, of course, was to procure another chair and give the top of
the armoire the once-over. It was a set-back to find that the cow-
creamer wasn't there. I suppose these kleptomaniacs know a thing or two
and don't hide the loot in the obvious place. There was nothing to be
done but start the exhaustive search elsewhere, and I proceeded to do
so, keeping an ear cocked for any snatch of song. None coming, it was
with something of the old debonair Wooster spirit that I looked under
this and peered behind that, and I had just crawled beneath the
dressing-table in pursuance of my researches, when one of those
disembodied voices which were so frequent in the Blue Room spoke,
causing me to give my head a nasty bump.
'For goodness' sake!' it said, and I came out like a pickled onion
on the end of a fork, to find that Ma Cream was once more a pleasant
visitor. She was standing there, looking down at me with a what-the-
hell expression on her finely chiselled face, and I didn't blame her.
Gives a woman a start, naturally, to come into her son's bedroom and
observe an alien trouser-seat sticking out from under the dressing-
table.
We went into our routine.
'Mr Wooster!'
'Oh, hullo.'
'It's you again?'
'Why, yes,' I said, for this of course was perfectly correct, and an
odd sound proceeded from her, not exactly a hiccup and yet not quite
not a hiccup.
'Are you still looking for that mouse?'
'That's right. I thought I saw it run under there, and I was about
to deal with it regardless of its age or sex.'
'What makes you think there is a mouse here?'
'Oh, one gets these ideas.'
'Do you often hunt for mice?'
'Fairly frequently.'
An idea seemed to strike her.
'You don't think you're a cat?'
'No, I'm pretty straight on that.'
'But you pursue mice?'
'Yes.'
'Well, this is very interesting. I must consult my psychiatrist when
I get back to New York. I'm sure he will tell me that this mouse-
fixation is a symbol of something. Your head feels funny, doesn't it?'
'It does rather,' I said, the bump I had given it had been a juicy
one, and the temples were throbbing.
'I thought as much. A sort of burning sensation, I imagine. Now you
do just as I tell you. Go to your room and lie down. Relax. Try to get
a little sleep. Perhaps a cup of strong tea would help. And ... I'm
trying to think of the name of that alienist I've heard people over
here speak so highly of. Miss Wickham mentioned him yesterday. Bossom?
Blossom? Glossop, that's it, Sir Roderick Glossop. I think you ought to
consult him. A friend of mine is at his clinic now, and she says he's
wonderful. Cures the most stubborn cases. Meanwhile, rest is the thing.
Go and have a good rest.'
At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the
door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some
sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade. But
I didn't go to my room and relax, I went in search of Bobbie, breathing
fire. I wanted to take up with her the matter of that absence of the
burst of melody. I mean, considering that a mere couple of bars of some
popular song hit would have saved me from an experience that had turned
the bones to water and whitened the hair from the neck up, I felt
entitled to demand an explanation of why those bars had not emerged.
I found her outside the front door at the wheel of her car.
'Oh, hullo, Bertie,' she said, and a fish on ice couldn't have
spoken more calmly. 'Have you got it?'
I ground a tooth or two and waved the arms in a passionate gesture.
'No,' I said, ignoring her query as to why I had chosen this moment
to do my Swedish exercises. 'I haven't. But Ma Cream got me.'
Her eyes widened. She squeaked a bit.
'Don't tell me she caught you bending again?'
'Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing-table. You and
your singing,' I said, and I'm not sure I didn't add the word
'Forsooth!'
Her eyes widened a bit further, and she squeaked another squeak.
'Oh, Bertie, I'm sorry about that.'
'Me, too.'
'You see, I was called away to the telephone. Mother rang up. She
wanted to tell me you were a nincompoop.'
'One wonders where she picks up such expressions.'
'From her literary friends, I suppose. She knows a lot of literary
people.'
'Great help to the vocabulary.'
'Yes. She was delighted when I told her I was coming home. She wants
to have a long talk.'
'About me, no doubt?'
'Yes, I expect your name will crop up. But I mustn't stay here
chatting with you, Bertie. If I don't get started, I shan't hit the old
nest till daybreak. It's a pity you made such a mess of things. Poor Mr
Travers, he'll be broken-hearted. Still, into each life some rain must
fall,' she said, and drove off, spraying gravel in all directions.
If Jeeves had been there, I would have turned to him and said
'Women, Jeeves!', and he would have said 'Yes, sir' or possibly
'Precisely, sir', and this would have healed the bruised spirit to a
certain extent, but as he wasn't I merely laughed a bitter laugh and
made for the lawn. A go at Ma Cream's goose-flesher might, I thought,
do something to soothe the vibrating ganglions.
And it did. I hadn't been reading long when drowsiness stole over
me, the tired eyelids closed, and in another couple of ticks I was off
to dreamland, slumbering as soundly as if I had been the cat Augustus.
I awoke to find that some two hours had passed, and it was while
stretching the limbs that I remembered I hadn't sent that wire to
Kipper Herring, inviting him to come and join the gang. I went to Aunt
Dahlia's boudoir and repaired this omission, telephoning the
communication to someone at the post office who would have been well
advised to consult a good aurist. This done, I headed for the open
spaces again, and was approaching the lawn with a view to getting on
with my reading when, hearing engine noises in the background and
turning to cast an eye in their direction, blow me tight if I didn't
behold Kipper alighting from his car at the front door.
The distance from London to Brinkley Court being a hundred miles or
so and not much more than two minutes having elapsed since I had sent
off that telegram, the fact that he was now outside the Brinkley front
door struck me as quick service. It lowered the record of the chap in
the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at
the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow
he's going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says 'How far is
that?' and the fellow says 'Three hundred miles' and the other fellow
says 'How long will it take you to get there?' and the fellow says 'Oh,
about half an hour, about half an hour.' The What-ho with which I
greeted the back of his head as I approached was tinged, accordingly,
with a certain bewilderment.
At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something
of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually
cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad
oyster. Guessing now what was biting him, I smiled one of my subtle
smiles. I would soon, I told myself, be bringing the roses back to his
cheeks.
He gulped a bit, then spoke in a hollow voice, like a spirit at a
seance.
'Hullo, Bertie.'
'Hullo.'
'So there you are.'
'Yes, here I am.'
'I was hoping I might run into you.'
'And now the dream's come true.'
'You see, you told me you were staying here.'
'Yes.'
'How's everything?'
'Pretty fruity.'
'Your aunt well?'
'Fine.'
'You all right?'
'More or less.'
'Capital. Long time since I was at Brinkley.'
'Yes.'
'Nothing much changed, I mean.'
'No.'
'Well, that's how it goes.'
He paused and did another splash of gulping, and I could see that we
were about to come to the nub, all that had gone before having been
merely what they call pour-parlers. I mean the sort of banana oil that
passes between statesmen at conferences conducted in an atmosphere of
the utmost cordiality before they tear their whiskers off and get down
to cases.
I was right. His face working as if the first bad oyster had been
followed by a second with even more spin on the ball, he said:
'I saw that thing in The Times, Bertie.'
I dissembled. I ought, I suppose, to have started bringing those
roses back right away, but I felt it would be amusing to kid the poor
fish along for a while, so I wore the mask.
'Ah, yes. In The Times. That thing. Quite. You saw it, did you?'
'At the club, after lunch. I couldn't believe my eyes.'
Well, I hadn't been able to believe mine, either, but I didn't
mention this. I was thinking how like Bobbie it was, when planning this
scheme of hers, not to have let him in on the ground floor. Slipped her
mind, I suppose, or she may have kept it under her hat for some strange
reason of her own. She had always been a girl who moved in a mysterious
way her wonders to perform.
'And I'll tell you why I couldn't. You'll scarcely credit this, but
only a couple of days ago she was engaged to me.'
'You don't say?'
'Yes, I jolly well do.'
'Engaged to you, eh?'
'Up to the hilt. And all the while she must have been contemplating
this ghastly bit of treachery.'
'A bit thick.'
'If you can tell me anything that's thicker, I shall be glad to hear
it. It just shows you what women are like. A frightful sex, Bertie.
There ought to be a law. I hope to live to see the day when women are
no longer allowed.'
'That would rather put a stopper on keeping the human race going,
wouldn't it?'
'Well, who wants to keep the human race going?'
'I see what you mean. Yes, something in that, of course.'
He kicked petulantly at a passing beetle, frowned awhile and
resumed.
'It's the cold, callous heartlessness of the thing that shocks me.
Not a hint that she was proposing to return me to store. As short a
while ago as last week, when we had a bite of lunch together, she was
sketching out plans for the honeymoon with the greatest animation. And
now this! Without a word of warning. You'd have thought that a girl who
was smashing a fellow's life into hash would have dropped him a line,
if only a postcard. Apparently that never occurred to her. She just let
me get the news from the morning paper. I was stunned.'
'I bet you were. Did everything go black?'
'Pretty black. I took the rest of the day thinking it over, and this
morning wangled leave from the office and got the car out and came down
here to tell you...'
He paused, seeming overcome with emotion.
'Yes?'
'To tell you that, whatever we do, we mustn't let this thing break