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time in America, when the howling gale, having shaken you to the
back teeth, passes on to tickle up residents in spots further west.
Kind of a dazed feeling it gives you. I turned to Jeeves, and found
him, of course, as serene and unmoved as an oyster on the half
shell. He might have been watching yowling aunts shoot out of rooms
like bullets from early boyhood.
'What was that she said, Jeeves?'
'Yoicks, sir, if I am not mistaken. It seemed to me that Madam
also added Tally-ho, Gone away and Hark forrard.'
'I suppose members of the Quorn and the Pytchley are saying
that sort of thing all the time.'
'So I understand, sir. It encourages the hounds to renewed
efforts. It must, of course, be trying for the fox.'
'I'd hate to be a fox, wouldn't you, Jeeves?'
'Certainly I can imagine more agreeable existences, sir.'
'Not only being chivvied for miles across difficult country but
having to listen to men in top hats uttering those uncouth cries.'
'Precisely, sir. A very wearing life.'
I produced my cambric handkerchief and gave the brow a mop.
Recent events had caused me to perspire in the manner popularized
by the fountains at Versailles.
'Warm work, Jeeves.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Opens the pores a bit.'
'Yes, sir.'
'How quiet everything seems now.'
'Yes, sir. Silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of
sound.'
'Shakespeare?'
'No, sir. The American author Oliver Wendell Holmes. His poem,
"The Organ Grinders". An aunt of mine used to read it to me as a
child.'
'I didn't know you had any aunts.'
'Three,sir.'
'Are they as jumpy as the one who has just left us?'
'No, sir. Their outlook on life is uniformly placid.'
I had begun to feel a bit more placid myself. Calmer, if you
know what I mean. And with the calm had come more charitable
thoughts.
'Well, I don't blame the aged relative for being jumpy,' I
said. 'She's all tied up with an enterprise of pith and something.'
'Of great pith and moment, sir?'
'That's right.'
'Let us hope that its current will not turn awry and lose the
name of action.'
'Yes, let's. Turn what?'
'Awry, sir.'
'Don't you mean agley?'
'No, sir.'
'Then it isn't the poet Burns?'
'No, sir. The words occur in Shakespeare's drama Hamlet.'
'Oh, I know Hamlet. Aunt Agatha once made me take her son Thos
to it at the Old Vic. Not a bad show, I thought, though a bit
highbrow. You're sure the poet Burns didn't write it?'
'Yes, sir. The fact, I understand, is well established.'
'Then that settles that. But we have wandered from the point,
which is that Aunt Dahlia is up to her neck in this enterprise of
great pith and moment. It's about Tuppy Glossop.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'It ought to interest you, because I know you've always liked
Tuppy.'
'A very pleasant young gentleman, sir.'
'When he isn't looping back the last ring over the Drones
swimming-pool, yes. Well, it's too long a story to tell you at the
moment, but the gist of it is this. L. P. Runkle, taking advantage
of a legal quibble ... is it quibble?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did down Tuppy's father over a business deal... no, not
exactly a business deal, Tuppy's father was working for him, and he
took advantage of the small print in their contract to rob him of
the proceeds of something he had invented.'
'It is often the way, sir. The financier is apt to prosper at
the expense of the inventor.'
'And Aunt Dahlia is hoping to get him to cough up a bit of cash
and slip it to Tuppy.'
'Actuated by remorse, sir?'
'Not just by remorse. She's relying more on the fact that for
quite a time he has been under the spell of Anatole's cooking, and
she feels that this will have made him a softer and kindlier
financier, readier to oblige and do the square thing. You look
dubious, Jeeves. Don't you think it will work? She's sure it will.'
'I wish I could share Madam's confidence, but -'
'But, like me, you look on her chance of playing on L. P.
Runkle as on a stringed instrument as ... what? A hundred to eight
shot?'
'A somewhat longer price than that, sir. We have to take into
consideration the fact that Mr Runkle is ...'
'Yes? You hesitate, Jeeves, Mr Runkle is what?'
'The expression I am trying to find eludes me, sir. It is one I
have sometimes heard you use to indicate a deficiency of sweetness
and light in some gentleman of your acquaintance. You have employed
it of Mr Spode or, as I should say, Lord Sidcup and, in the days
before your association with him took on its present cordiality, of
Mr Glossop's uncle, Sir Roderick. It is on the tip of my tongue.'
'A stinker?'
No, he said, it wasn't a stinker.
'A tough baby?'
'No.'
'A twenty-minute egg?'
'That was it, sir. Mr Runkle is a twenty-minute egg.'
'But have you seen enough of him to judge? After all, you've
only just met him.'
'Yes, sir, that is true, but Bingley, on learning that he was a
guest of Madam's, told me a number of stories illustrative of his
hardhearted and implacable character. Bingley was at one time in
his employment.'
'Good lord, he seems to have been employed by everyone.'
'Yes, sir, he was inclined to flit. He never remained in one
post for long.'
'I don't wonder.'
'But his relationship with Mr Runkle was of more extended
duration. He accompanied him to the United States of America some
years ago and remained with him for several months.'
'During which period he found him a twenty-minute egg?'
'Precisely, sir. So I very much fear that Madam's efforts will
produce no satisfactory results. Would it be a large sum of money
that she is hoping to persuade Mr Runkle to part with?'
'Pretty substantial, I gather. You see, what Tuppy's father
invented were those Magic Midget things, and Runkle must have made
a packet out of them. I suppose she aims at a fifty-fifty split.'
'Then I am forced to the opinion that a hundred to one against
is more the figure a level-headed turf accountant would place upon
the likelihood of her achieving her objective.'
Not encouraging, you'll agree. In fact, you might describe it
as definitely damping. I would have called him a pessimist, only I
couldn't think of the word, and while I was trying to hit on
something other than 'Gloomy Gus', which would scarcely have been a
fitting way to address one of his dignity, Florence came in through
the French window and he of course shimmered off. When our
conversations are interrupted by the arrival of what you might call
the quality, he always disappears like a family spectre vanishing
at dawn.
Except at meals I hadn't seen anything of Florence till now,
she, so to speak, having taken the high road while I took the low
road. What I mean to say is that she was always in Market
Snodsbury, bustling about on behalf of the Conservative candidate
to whom she was betrothed, while I, after that nerve-racking
encounter with the widow of the late McCorkadale, had given up
canvassing in favour of curling up with a good book. I had
apologized to Ginger for this ... is pusillanimity the word? ...
and he had taken it extraordinarily well, telling me it was
perfectly all right and he wished he could do the same.
She was looking as beautiful as ever, if not more so, and at
least ninety-six per cent of the members of the Drones Club would
have asked nothing better than to be closeted with her like this.
I, however, would willingly have avoided the tete-a-tete, for my
trained senses told me that she was in one of her tempers, and when
this happens the instinct of all but the hardiest is to climb a
tree and pull it up after them. The overbearing dishpotness to
which I alluded earlier and which is so marked a feature of her
make-up was plainly to the fore. She said, speaking abruptly:
'What are you doing in here on a lovely day like this, Bertie?'
I explained that I had been in conference with Aunt Dahlia, and
she riposted that the conference was presumably over by now, Aunt
D. being conspicuous by her absence, so why wasn't I out getting
fresh air and sunshine.
'You're much too fond of frowsting indoors. That's why you have
that sallow look.'
'I didn't know I had a sallow look.'
'Of course you have a sallow look. What else did you expect?
You look like the underside of a dead fish.'
My worst fears seemed to be confirmed. I had anticipated that
she would work off her choler on the first innocent bystander she
met, and it was just my luck that this happened to be me. With
bowed head I prepared to face the storm, and then to my surprise
she changed the subject.
'I'm looking for Harold,' she said.
'Oh, yes?'
'Have you seen him.'
'I don't think I know him.'
'Don't be a fool. Harold Winship.'
'Oh, Ginger,' I said, enlightened. 'No, he hasn't swum into my
ken. What do you want to see him about? Something important?'
'It is important to me, and it ought to be to him. Unless he
takes himself in hand, he is going to lose this election.'
'What makes you think that?'
'His behaviour at lunch today.'
'Oh, did he take you to lunch? Where did you go? I had mine at
a pub, and the garbage there had to be chewed to be believed. But
perhaps you went to a decent hotel?'
'It was the Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Town Hall. A
vitally important occasion, and he made the feeblest speech I have
ever heard. A child with water on the brain could have done better.
Even you could have done better.'
Well, I suppose placing me on a level of efficiency with a
water-on-the-brained child was quite a stately compliment coming
from Florence, so I didn't go further into the matter, and she
carried on, puffs of flame emerging from both nostrils.
'Er, er, er!'
'I beg your pardon?'
'He kept saying Er. Er, er, er. I could have thrown a coffee
spoon at him.'
Here, of course, was my chance to work in the old gag about to
err being human, but it didn't seem to me the moment. Instead, I
said:
'He was probably nervous.'
'That was his excuse. I told him he had no right to be
nervous.'
'Then you've seen him?'
'I saw him.'
'After the lunch?'
'Immediately after the lunch.'
'But you want to see him again?'
'I do.'
'I'll go and look for him, shall I?'
'Yes, and tell him to meet me in Mr Travers's study. We shall
not be interrupted there.'
'He's probably sitting in the summerhouse by the lake.'
Well, tell him to stop sitting and come to the study,' she
said, for all the world as if she had been Arnold Abney MA
announcing that he would like to see Wooster after morning prayers.
Quite took me back to the old days.
To get to the summerhouse you have to go across the lawn, the
one Spode was toying with the idea of buttering me over, and the
first thing I saw as I did so, apart from the birds, bees,
butterflies, and what not which put in their leisure hours there,
was L. P. Runkle lying in the hammock wrapped in slumber, with Aunt
Dahlia in a chair at his side. When she sighted me, she rose,
headed in my direction and drew me away a yard or two, at the same
time putting a finger to her lips.
'He's asleep,' she said.
A snore from the hammock bore out the truth of this, and I said
I could see he was and what a revolting spectacle he presented, and
she told me for heaven's sake not to bellow like that. Somewhat
piqued at being accused of bellowing by a woman whose lightest
whisper was like someone calling the cattle home across the sands
of Dee, I said I wasn't bellowing, and she said 'Well, don't.'
'He may be in a nasty mood if he's woken suddenly.'
It was an astute piece of reasoning, speaking well for her
grasp of strategy and tactics, but with my quick intelligence I
spotted a flaw in it to which I proceeded to call her attention.
'On the other hand, if you don't wake him, how can you plead
Tuppy's cause?'
'I said suddenly, ass. It'll be all right if I let Nature take
its course.'
'Yes, you may have a point there. Will Nature be long about it,
do you think?'
'How do I know?'
'I was only wondering. You can't sit there the rest of the
afternoon.'
'I can if necessary.'
'Then I'll leave you to it. I've got to go and look for Ginger.
Have you seen him?'
'He came by just now with his secretary on his way to the
summerhouse. He told me he had some dictation to do. Why do you
want him?'
'I don't particularly, though always glad of his company.
Florence told me to find him. She has been giving him hell and is
anxious to give him some more. Apparently -'
Here she interrupted me with a sharp 'Hist!', for L. P. Runkle
had stirred in his sleep and it looked as if life was returning to
the inert frame. But it proved to be a false alarm, and I resumed
my remarks.
'Apparently he failed to wow the customers at the Chamber of
Commerce lunch, where she had been counting on him being a regular
... who was the Greek chap?'
'Bertie, if I wasn't afraid of waking Runkle, I'd strike you
with a blunt instrument, if I had a blunt instrument. What Greek
chap?'
'That's what I'm asking you. He chewed pebbles.'
'Do you mean Demosthenes?'
'You may be right. I'll take it up later with Jeeves. Florence
was expecting Ginger to be a regular Demosthenes, if that was the
name, which seems unlikely, though I was at school with a fellow
called Gianbattista, and he let her down, and this has annoyed her.
You know how she speaks her mind, when annoyed.'
'She speaks her mind much too much,' said the relative
severely. 'I wonder Ginger stands it.'
It so happened that I was in a position to solve the problem
that was perplexing her. The facts governing the relationship of
guys and dolls had long been an open book to me. I had given deep
thought to the matter, and when I give deep thought to a matter
perplexities are speedily ironed out.
'He stands it, aged relative, because he loves her, and you
wouldn't be far wrong in saying that love conquers all. I know what
you mean, of course. It surprises you that a fellow of his thews
and sinews should curl up in a ball when she looks squiggle-eyed at
him and receive her strictures, if that's the word I want, with the
meekness of a spaniel rebuked for bringing a decaying bone into the
drawing-room. What you overlook is the fact that in the matter of
finely chiselled profile, willowy figure and platinum-blonde hair
she is well up among the top ten, and these things weigh with a man
like Ginger. You and I, regarding Florence coolly, pencil her in as
too bossy for human consumption, but he gets a different slant.
It's the old business of what Jeeves calls the psychology of the
individual. Very possibly the seeds of rebellion start to seethe
within him when she speaks her mind, but he catches sight of her
sideways or gets a glimpse of her hair, assuming for purposes of
argument that she isn't wearing a hat, or notices once again that
she has as many curves as a scenic railway, and he feels that it's
worth putting up with a spot of mind-speaking in order to make her
his own. His love, you see, is not wholly spiritual. There's a bit
of the carnal mixed up in it.'
I would have spoken further, for the subject was one that
always calls out the best in me, but at this point the old
ancestor, who had been fidgeting for some time, asked me to go and
drown myself in the lake. I buzzed off, accordingly, and she
returned to her chair beside the hammock, brooding over L. P.
Runkle like a mother over her sleeping child.
I don't suppose she had observed it, for aunts seldom give much
attention to the play of expression on the faces of their nephews,
but all through these exchanges I had been looking grave, making it
pretty obvious that there was something on my mind. I was thinking
of what Jeeves had said about the hundred to one which a level-
headed bookie would wager against her chance of extracting money
from a man so liberally equipped with one-way pockets as L. P.
Runkle, and it pained me deeply to picture her dismay and
disappointment when, waking from his slumbers, he refused to
disgorge. It would be a blow calculated to take all the stuffing
out of her, she having been so convinced that she was on a sure
thing.
I was also, of course, greatly concerned about Ginger. Having
been engaged to Florence myself, I knew what she could do in the
way of ticking off the errant male, and the symptoms seemed to
point to the probability that on the present occasion she would
eclipse all previous performances. I had not failed to interpret
the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those
flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered,
indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as
a sunburned neck. I marvelled at the depths to which my old friend
must have sunk as an orator in order to get such stark emotions
under way, and I intended - delicately, of course - to question him
about this.
I had, however, no opportunity to do so, for on entering the
summerhouse the first thing I saw was him and Magnolia Glendennon
locked in an embrace so close that it seemed to me that only
powerful machinery could unglue them.
In taking this view, however, I was in error, for scarcely had
I uttered the first yip of astonishment when the Glendennon popsy,
echoing it with a yip of her own such as might have proceeded from
a nymph surprised while bathing, disentangled herself and came
whizzing past me, disappearing into the great world outside at a
speed which put her in the old ancestor's class as a sprinter on
the flat. It was as though she had said 'Oh for the wings of a
dove' and had got them.
I, meanwhile, stood rooted to the s., the mouth slightly ajar
and the eyes bulging to their fullest extent. What's that word
beginning with dis? Disembodied? No, not disembodied. Distemper?
No, not distemper. Disconcerted, that's the one. I was
disconcerted. I should imagine that if you happened to wander by
accident into the steam room of a Turkish bath on Ladies' Night,
you would have emotions very similar to those I was experiencing
now.
Ginger, too, seemed not altogether at his ease. Indeed, I would
describe him as definitely taken aback. He breathed heavily, as if
suffering from asthma; the eye with which he regarded me contained
practically none of the chumminess you would expect to see in the
eye of an old friend; and his voice, when he spoke, resembled that
of an annoyed cinnamon bear. Throaty, if you know what I mean, and
on the peevish side. His opening words consisted of a well-phrased
critique of my tactlessness in selecting that particular moment for
entering the summerhouse. He wished, he said, that I wouldn't creep
about like a ruddy detective. Had I, he asked, got my magnifying
glass with me and did I propose to go around on all fours, picking
up small objects and putting them away carefully in an envelope?
What, he enquired, was I doing here, anyway?
To this I might have replied that I was perfectly entitled at
all times to enter a summerhouse which was the property of my Aunt
Dahlia and so related to me by ties of blood, but something told me
that suavity would be the better policy. In rebuttal, therefore, I
merely said that I wasn't creeping about like a ruddy detective,
but navigating with a firm and manly stride, and had simply been
looking for him because Florence had ordered me to and I had
learned from a usually well-informed source that this was where he
was.
My reasoning had the soothing effect I had hoped for. His
manner changed, losing its cinnamon bear quality and taking on a
welcome all-pals-together-ness. It bore out what I have always
said, that there's nothing like suavity for pouring oil on the
troubled w.'s. When he spoke again, it was plain that he regarded
me as a friend and an ally.
'I suppose all this seems a bit odd to you, Bertie.'
'Not at all, old man, not at all.'
'But there is a simple explanation. I love Magnolia.'
'I thought you loved Florence.'
'So did I. But you know how apt one is to make mistakes.'
'Of course.'
'When you're looking for the ideal girl, I mean.'
'Quite.'
'I dare say you've had the same experience yourself.'
'From time to time.'
'Happens to everybody, I expect.'
'I shouldn't wonder.'
'Where one goes wrong when looking for the ideal girl is in
making one's selection before walking the full length of the
counter. You meet someone with a perfect profile, platinum-blonde
hair and a willowy figure, and you think your search is over.
"Bingo!" you say to yourself. "This is the one. Accept no
substitutes." Little knowing that you are linking your lot with
that of a female sergeant-major with strong views on the subject of
discipline, and that if you'd only gone on a bit further you would
have found the sweetest, kindest, gentlest girl that ever took down
outgoing mail in shorthand, who would love you and cherish you and
would never dream of giving you hell, no matter what the
circumstances. I allude to Magnolia Glendennon.'
'I thought you did.'
'I can't tell you how I feel about her, Bertie.'
'Don't try.'
'Ever since we came down here I've had a lurking suspicion that
she was the mate for me and that in signing on the dotted line with
Florence I had made the boner of a lifetime. Just now my last
doubts were dispelled.'
'What happened just now?'
'She rubbed the back of my neck. My interview with Florence,
coming on top of that ghastly Chamber of Commerce lunch, had given
me a splitting headache, and she rubbed the back of my neck. Then I
knew. As those soft fingers touched my skin like dainty butterflies
hovering over a flower -'
'Right-ho.'
'It was a revelation, Bertie. I knew that I had come to
journey's end. I said to myself, "This is a good thing. Push it
along." I turned. I grasped her hand. I gazed into her eyes. She
gazed into mine. I told her I loved her. She said so she did me.
She fell into my arms. I grabbed her. We stood murmuring
endearments, and for a while everything was fine. Couldn't have
been better. Then a thought struck me. There was a snag. You've
probably spotted it.'
'Florence?'
'Exactly. Bossy though she is, plain-spoken though she may be
when anything displeases her, and I wish you could have heard her
after that Chamber of Commerce lunch, I am still engaged to her.
And while girls can break engagements till the cows come home, men
can't.'
I followed his train of thought. It was evident that he, like
me, aimed at being a preux chevalier, and you simply can't be preux
or anything like it if you go about the place getting betrothed and
then telling the party of the second part it's all off. It seemed
to me that the snag which had raised its ugly head was one of
formidable -you might say king-size - dimensions, well calculated
to make the current of whatever he proposed to do about it turn
awry and lose the name of action. But when I put this to him with a
sympathetic tremor in my voice, and I'm not sure I didn't clasp his
hand, he surprised me by chuckling like a leaky radiator.
'That's all right,' he said. 'It would, I admit, appear to be a
tricky situation, but I can handle it. I'm going to get Florence to
break the engagement.'
He spoke with such a gay, confident ring in his voice, so like
the old ancestor predicting what she was going to do to L.P. Runkle
in the playing-on-a-stringed-instrument line, that I was loath, if
that's the word I want, to say anything to depress him, but the
question had to be asked.
'How?' I said, asking it.
'Quite simple. We agreed, I think, that she has no use for a
loser. I propose to lose this election.'
Well, it was a thought of course, and I was in complete
agreement with his supposition that if the McCorkadale nosed ahead
of him in the voting, Florence would in all probability hand him
the pink slip, but where it seemed to me that the current went awry
was that he had no means of knowing that the electorate would put
him in second place. Of course voters are like aunts, you never
know what they will be up to from one day to the next, but it was a
thing you couldn't count on.
I mentioned this to him, and he repeated his impersonation of a
leaky radiator.
'Don't you worry, Bertie. I have the situation well in hand.
Something happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch
which justifies my confidence.'
'What happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch?'
'Well, the first thing that happened after lunch was that
Florence got hold of me and became extremely personal. It was then
that I realized that it would be the act of a fathead to marry
her.'
I nodded adhesion to this sentiment. That time when she had
broken her engagement with me my spirits had soared and I had gone
about singing like a relieved nightingale.
One thing rather puzzled me and seemed to call for explanatory
notes.
'Why did Florence draw you into a dark corner when planning to
become personal?' I asked. 'I wouldn't have credited her with so
much tact and consideration. As a rule, when she's telling people
what she thinks of them, an audience seems to stimulate her. I
recall one occasion when she ticked me off in the presence of
seventeen Girl Guides, all listening with their ears flapping, and
she had never spoken more fluently.'
He put me straight on the point I had raised. He said he had
misled me.
'It wasn't Florence who drew me into the dark comer, it was
Bingley.'
'Bingley?'
'A fellow who worked for me once.'
'He worked for me once.'
'Really? It's a small world, isn't it.'
'Pretty small. Did you know he'd come into money?'
'He'll soon be coming into some more.'
'But you were saying he drew you into the dark corner. Why did
he do that?'
'Because he had a proposition to make to me which demanded
privacy. He ... but before going on I must lay a proper foundation.
You know in those Perry Mason stories how whenever Perry says
anything while cross-examining a witness, the District Attorney
jumps up and yells "Objection, your honour. The SOB has laid no
proper foundation". Well, then, you must know that this man Bingley
belongs to a butlers and valets club in London called the Junior
Ganymede, and one of the rules there is that members have to record
the doings of their employers in the club book.'
I would have told him I knew all too well about that, but he
carried on before I could speak.
'Such a book, as you can imagine, contains a lot of damaging
stuff, and he told me he had been obliged to contribute several
pages about me which, if revealed, would lose me so many votes that
the election would be a gift to my opponent. He added that some men
in his place would have sold it to the opposition and made a lot of
money, but he wouldn't do a thing like that because it would be low
and in the short time we were together he had come to have a great
affection for me. I had never realized before what an
extraordinarily good chap he was. I had always thought him a bit of
a squirt. Shows how wrong you can be about people.'
Again I would have spoken, but he rolled over me like a tidal
wave.
'I should have explained that the committee of the Junior
Ganymede, recognizing the importance of this book, had entrusted it
to him with instructions to guard it with his life, and his
constant fear was that bad men would get wind of this and try to
steal it. So what would remove a great burden from his mind, he
said, would be if I took it into my possession. Then I could be
sure that its contents wouldn't be used against me. I could return
it to him after the election and slip him a few quid, if I wished,
as a token of my gratitude. You can picture me smiling my subtle
smile as he said this. He little knew that my first act would be to
send the thing by messenger to the offices of the Market Snodsbury
Argus-Reminder, thereby handing the election on a plate to the
McCorkadale and enabling me to free myself from my honourable
obligations to Florence, who would of course, on reading the stuff,
recoil from me in horror. Do you know the Argus-Reminder? Very far
to the left. Can't stand Conservatives. It had a cartoon of me last
week showing me with my hands dripping with the blood of the
martyred proletariat. I don't know where they get these ideas. I've
never spilled a drop of anybody's blood except when boxing, and
then the other chap was spilling mine - wholesome give and take. So
it wasn't long before Bingley and I had everything all fixed up. He
couldn't give me the book then, as he had left it at home, and he
wouldn't come and have a drink with me because he had to hurry back
because he thought Jeeves might be calling and he didn't want to
miss him. Apparently Jeeves is a pal of his - old club crony, that
sort of thing. We're meeting tomorrow. I shall reward him with a
purse of gold, he will give me the book, and five minutes later, if
I can find some brown paper and string, it will be on its way to
the Argus-Reminder. The material should be in print the day after
tomorrow. Allow an hour or so for Florence to get hold of a copy
and say twenty minutes for a chat with her after she's read it, and
I ought to be a free man well before lunch. About how much gold do
you think I should reward Bingley with? Figures were not named, but
I thought at least a hundred quid, because he certainly deserves
something substantial for his scrupulous high-mindedness. As he
said, some men in his place would have sold the book to the
opposition and cleaned up big.'
By what I have always thought an odd coincidence he paused at
this point and asked me why I was looking like something the cat
brought in, precisely as the aged relative had asked me after my
interview with Ma McCorkadale. I don't know what cats bring into
houses, but one assumes that it is something not very jaunty, and
apparently, when in the grip of any strong emotion, I resemble
their treasure trove. I could well understand that I was looking
like that now. I find it distasteful to have to shatter a long-time
buddy's hopes and dreams, and no doubt this shows on the surface.
There was no sense in beating about bushes. It was another of
those cases of if it were done, then 'twere well 'twere done
quickly.
'Ginger,' I said, 'I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news for you.
That book is no longer among those present. Jeeves called on
Bingley, gave him a Mickey Finn and got it away from him. He now
has it among his archives.'
He didn't get it at first, and I had to explain.
'Bingley is not the man of integrity you think him. He is on
the contrary a louse of the first water. You might describe him as
a slimy slinking slug. He pinched that book from the Junior
Ganymede and tried to sell it to the McCorkadale. She sent him away
with a flea in his ear because she was a fair fighter, and he tried
to sell it to you. But meanwhile Jeeves nipped in and obtained it.'
It took him perhaps a minute to absorb this, but to my surprise
he wasn't a bit upset.
'Well, that's all right. Jeeves can take it to the Argus-
Reminder.'
I shook the loaf sadly, for I knew that this time those hopes
and dreams of his were really due for a sock in the eye.
'He wouldn't do it, Ginger. To Jeeves that club book is sacred.
I've gone after him a dozen times, urging him to destroy the pages
concerning me, but he always remains as unco-operative as Balaam's
ass, who, you may remember, dug his feet in and firmly refused to
play ball. He'll never let it out of his hands.'
He took it, as I had foreseen, big. He spluttered a good deal.
He also kicked the table and would have splintered it if it hadn't
been made of marble. It must have hurt like sin, but what disturbed
him, I deduced, was not so much the pain of a bruised toe as
spiritual anguish. His eyes glittered, his nose wiggled, and if he
was not gnashing his teeth I don't know a gnashed tooth when I hear
one.
'Oh, won't he?' he said, going back into the old cinnamon bear
routine. 'He won't, won't he? We'll see about that. Pop off,
Bertie. I want to think.'
I popped off, glad to do so. These displays of naked emotion
take it out of one.
The shortest way to the house was across the lawn, but I didn't
take it. Instead, I made for the back door. It was imperative, I
felt, that I should see Jeeves without delay and tell him of the
passions he had unchained and warn him, until the hot blood had had
time to cool, to keep out of Ginger's way. I hadn't at all liked
the sound of the latter's 'We'll see about that', nor the clashing
of those gnashed teeth. I didn't of course suppose that, however
much on the boil, he would inflict personal violence on Jeeves -
sock him, if you prefer the expression - but he would certainly say
things to him which would wound his feelings and cause their
relations, so pleasant up to now, to deteriorate. And naturally I
didn't want that to happen.
Jeeves was in a deck-chair outside the back door, reading
Spinoza with the cat Augustus on his lap. I had given him the
Spinoza at Christmas and he was constantly immersed in it. I hadn't
dipped into it myself, but he tells me it is good ripe stuff, well
worth perusal.
He would have risen at my approach, but I begged him to remain
seated, for I knew that Augustus, like L. P. Runkle, resented being
woken suddenly, and one always wants to consider a cat's feelings.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'a somewhat peculiar situation has popped up
out of a trap, and I would be happy to have your comments on it. I
am sorry to butt in when you are absorbed in your Spinoza and have
probably just got to the part where the second corpse is
discovered, but what I have to say is of great pith and moment, so
listen attentively.'
'Very good, sir.'
'The facts are these,' I said, and without further preamble or
whatever they call it I embarked on my narrative. 'Such,' I
concluded some minutes later, 'is the position of affairs, and I
think you will agree that the problem confronting us presents
certain points of interest.'
'Undeniably, sir.'
'Somehow Ginger has got to lose the election.'
'Precisely, sir.'
'But how?'
'It is difficult to say on the spur of the moment, sir. The
tide of popular opinion appears to be swaying in Mr Winship's
direction. Lord Sidcup's eloquence is having a marked effect on the
electorate and may well prove the deciding factor. Mr Seppings, who
obliged as an extra waiter at the luncheon, reports that his
lordship's address to the members of the Market Snodsbury Chamber
of Commerce was sensational in its brilliance. He tells me that,
owing entirely to his lordship, the odds to be obtained in the
various public houses, which at one time favoured Mrs McCorkadale
at ten to six, have now sunk to evens.'
'I don't like that, Jeeves.'
'No, sir, it is ominous.'
'Of course, if you were to release the club book ...'
'I fear I cannot do that, sir.'
'No, I told Ginger you regarded it as a sacred trust. Then
nothing can be done except to urge you to get the old brain
working.'
'I will certainly do my utmost, sir.'
'No doubt something will eventually emerge. Keep eating lots of
fish. And meanwhile stay away from Ginger as much as possible, for
he is in ugly mood.'
'I quite understand, sir. Stockish, hard and full of rage.'
'Shakespeare?'
'Yes, sir. His merchant of Venice.'
I left him then, pleased at having got one right for a change,
and headed for the drawing-room, hoping for another quiet go at the
Rex Stout which the swirling rush of events had forced me to
abandon. I was, however, too late. The old ancestor was on the
chaise longue with it in her grasp, and I knew that I had small
chance of wresting it from her. No one who has got his or her hooks
on a Rex Stout lightly lets it go.
Her presence there surprised me. I had supposed that she was
still brooding over the hammock and its contents.
'Hullo,' I said, 'have you finished with Runkle?'
She looked up, and I noted a trace of annoyance in her
demeanour. I assumed that Nero Wolfe had come down from the orchid
room and told Archie Goodwin to phone Saul Panzar and Orrie what's
his name and things were starting to warm up. In which event she
would naturally resent the intrusion of even a loved nephew whom
she had often dandled on her knee - not recently, I don't mean, but
when I was a bit younger.
'Oh, it's you,' she said, which it was of course. 'No, I
haven't finished with Runkle. I haven't even begun. He's still
asleep.'
She gave me the impression of being not much in the mood for
chit-chat, but one has to say something on these occasions. I
brought up a subject which I felt presented certain points of
interest.
'Have you ever noticed the remarkable resemblance between L. P.
Runkle's daily habits and those of the cat Augustus? They seem to
spend all their time sleeping. Do you think they've got traumatic
symplegia?'
'What on earth's that?'
'I happened to come on it in a medical book I was reading. It's
a disease that makes you sleep all the time. Has Runkle shown no
signs of waking?'
'Yes, he did, and just as he was beginning to stir Madeline
Bassett came along. She said could she speak to me, so I had to let
her. It wasn't easy to follow what she was saying, because she was
sobbing all the time, but I got it at last. It was all about the
rift with Spode. I told you they had had a tiff. It turns out to be
more serious than that. You remember me telling you he couldn't be
a Member of Parliament because he was a peer. Well, he wants to
give up his title so that he will be eligible.'
'Can a fellow with a title give it up? I thought he was stuck
with it.'
'He couldn't at one time, at least only by being guilty of
treason, but they've changed the rules and apparently it's quite
the posh thing to do nowadays.'
'Sounds silly.'
'That's the view Madeline takes.'
'Did she say what put the idea into Spode's fat head?'
'No, but I can see what did. He has made such a smash hit with
his speeches down here that he's saying to himself "Why am I
sweating like this on behalf of somebody else? Why not go into
business for myself ?" Who was it said someone was intoxicated with
the exuberance of his own verbosity?'
'I don't know.'
'Jeeves would. It was Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain or Jack
Dempsey or somebody. Anyway, that's Spode. He's all puffed up and
feels he needs a wider scope. He sees himself holding the House of
Commons spellbound.'
'Why can't he hold the House of Lords spellbound?'
'It wouldn't be the same thing. It would be like playing in the
Market Snodsbury tennis tournament instead of electrifying one and
all on the centre court at Wimbledon. I can see his point.'
'I can't.'
'Nor can Madeline. She's all worked up about it, and I can
understand how she feels. No joke for a girl who thinks she's going
to be the Countess of Sidcup to have the fellow say "April fool, my
little chickadee. What you're going to be is Mrs Spode." If I had
been told at Madeline's age that Tom had been made a peer and I
then learned that he was going to back out of it and I wouldn't be
able to call myself Lady Market Snodsbury after all, I'd have
kicked like a mule. Titles to a girl are like catnip to a cat.'
'Can nothing be done?'
'The best plan would be for you to go to him and tell him how
much we all admire him for being Lord Sidcup and what a pity it
would be for him to go back to a ghastly name like Spode.'
'What's the next best plan?'
'Ah, that wants thinking out.'
We fell into a thoughtful silence, on my part an uneasy one. I
didn't at this juncture fully appreciate the peril that lurked, but
anything in the nature of a rift within the lute between Spode and
Madeline was always calculated to make me purse the lips to some
extent. I was still trying to hit on some plan which would be more
to my taste than telling Spode what a pity it would be for him to
stop being the Earl of Sidcup and go back to a ghastly name like
his, when my reverie was broken by the entry through the French
window of the cat Augustus, for once awake and in full possession
of his faculties, such as they were. No doubt in a misty dreamlike
sort of way he had seen me when I was talking to Jeeves and had
followed me on my departure, feeling, after those breakfasts of
ours together, that association with me was pretty well bound to
culminate in kippers. A vain hope, of course. The well-dressed man
does not go around with kippered herrings in his pocket. But one of
the lessons life teaches us is that cats will be cats.
As is my unvarying policy when closeted with one of these
fauna, I made chirruping noises and bent down to tickle the back of
the dumb chum's left ear, but my heart was not in the tickling. The
more I mused on the recent conversation, the less I liked what the
aged relative had revealed. Telling Augustus that I would be back
with him in a moment, I straightened myself and was about to ask
her for further details, when I discovered that she was no longer
in my midst. She must suddenly have decided to have another pop at
L. P. Runkle and was presumably even now putting Tuppy's case
before him. Well, best of luck to her, of course, and nice to think
she had a fine day for it, but I regretted her absence. When your
mind is weighed down with matters of great pith and moment, it
gives you a sort of sinking feeling to be alone. No doubt the boy
who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled had this
experience.
However, I wasn't alone for long. Scarcely had Augustus sprung
on to my lap and started catching up with his sleep when the door
opened and Spode came in.
I leaped to my feet, causing Augustus to fall to earth I knew
not where, as the fellow said. I was a prey to the liveliest
apprehensions. My relations with Spode had been for long so
consistently strained that I never saw him nowadays without a
lurking fear that he was going to sock me in the eye. Obviously I
wasn't to be blamed if he and Madeline had been having trouble, but
that wouldn't stop him blaming me. It was like the story of the
chap who was in prison and a friend calls and asks him why and the
chap tells him and the friend says But they can't put you in prison
for that and the chap says I know they can't, but they have. Spode
didn't have to have logical reasons for setting about people he
wasn't fond of, and it might be that he was like Florence and would
work off his grouch on the first available innocent bystander.
Putting it in a nutshell, my frame of mind was approximately that
of the fellows in the hymn who got such a start when they looked
over their shoulders and saw the troops of Midian prowling and
prowling around.
It was with profound relief, therefore, that I suddenly got on
to it that his demeanour was free from hostility. He was looking
like somebody who has just seen the horse on which he had put all
his savings, plus whatever he had been able to lift from his
employer's till, beaten by a short head. His face, nothing to write
home about at the best of times, was drawn and contorted, but with
pain rather than the urge to commit mayhem. And while one would
always prefer him not to be present, a drawn-and-contorted-with-
pain Spode was certainly the next best thing. My greeting, in
consequence, had the real ring of cordiality in it.
'Oh, hullo, Spode, hullo. There you are, what? Splendid.'
'Can I have a word with you, Wooster?'
'Of course, of course. Have several.'
He did not speak for a minute or so, filling in the time by
subjecting me to a close scrutiny. Then he gave a sigh and shook
his head.
'I can't understand it,' he said.
'What can't you understand, Spode old man or rather Lord Sidcup
old man?' I asked in a kind voice, for I was only too willing to
help this new and improved Spode solve any little problem that was
puzzling him.
'How Madeline can contemplate marrying a man like you. She has
broken our engagement and says that's what she's going to do. She
was quite definite about it. "All is over," she said. "Here is your
ring," she said. "I shall marry Bertie Wooster and make him happy,"
she said. You can't want it plainer than that.'
I stiffened from head to f. Even with conditions what they were
in this disturbed post-war world I hadn't been expecting to be
back teeth, passes on to tickle up residents in spots further west.
Kind of a dazed feeling it gives you. I turned to Jeeves, and found
him, of course, as serene and unmoved as an oyster on the half
shell. He might have been watching yowling aunts shoot out of rooms
like bullets from early boyhood.
'What was that she said, Jeeves?'
'Yoicks, sir, if I am not mistaken. It seemed to me that Madam
also added Tally-ho, Gone away and Hark forrard.'
'I suppose members of the Quorn and the Pytchley are saying
that sort of thing all the time.'
'So I understand, sir. It encourages the hounds to renewed
efforts. It must, of course, be trying for the fox.'
'I'd hate to be a fox, wouldn't you, Jeeves?'
'Certainly I can imagine more agreeable existences, sir.'
'Not only being chivvied for miles across difficult country but
having to listen to men in top hats uttering those uncouth cries.'
'Precisely, sir. A very wearing life.'
I produced my cambric handkerchief and gave the brow a mop.
Recent events had caused me to perspire in the manner popularized
by the fountains at Versailles.
'Warm work, Jeeves.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Opens the pores a bit.'
'Yes, sir.'
'How quiet everything seems now.'
'Yes, sir. Silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of
sound.'
'Shakespeare?'
'No, sir. The American author Oliver Wendell Holmes. His poem,
"The Organ Grinders". An aunt of mine used to read it to me as a
child.'
'I didn't know you had any aunts.'
'Three,sir.'
'Are they as jumpy as the one who has just left us?'
'No, sir. Their outlook on life is uniformly placid.'
I had begun to feel a bit more placid myself. Calmer, if you
know what I mean. And with the calm had come more charitable
thoughts.
'Well, I don't blame the aged relative for being jumpy,' I
said. 'She's all tied up with an enterprise of pith and something.'
'Of great pith and moment, sir?'
'That's right.'
'Let us hope that its current will not turn awry and lose the
name of action.'
'Yes, let's. Turn what?'
'Awry, sir.'
'Don't you mean agley?'
'No, sir.'
'Then it isn't the poet Burns?'
'No, sir. The words occur in Shakespeare's drama Hamlet.'
'Oh, I know Hamlet. Aunt Agatha once made me take her son Thos
to it at the Old Vic. Not a bad show, I thought, though a bit
highbrow. You're sure the poet Burns didn't write it?'
'Yes, sir. The fact, I understand, is well established.'
'Then that settles that. But we have wandered from the point,
which is that Aunt Dahlia is up to her neck in this enterprise of
great pith and moment. It's about Tuppy Glossop.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'It ought to interest you, because I know you've always liked
Tuppy.'
'A very pleasant young gentleman, sir.'
'When he isn't looping back the last ring over the Drones
swimming-pool, yes. Well, it's too long a story to tell you at the
moment, but the gist of it is this. L. P. Runkle, taking advantage
of a legal quibble ... is it quibble?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Did down Tuppy's father over a business deal... no, not
exactly a business deal, Tuppy's father was working for him, and he
took advantage of the small print in their contract to rob him of
the proceeds of something he had invented.'
'It is often the way, sir. The financier is apt to prosper at
the expense of the inventor.'
'And Aunt Dahlia is hoping to get him to cough up a bit of cash
and slip it to Tuppy.'
'Actuated by remorse, sir?'
'Not just by remorse. She's relying more on the fact that for
quite a time he has been under the spell of Anatole's cooking, and
she feels that this will have made him a softer and kindlier
financier, readier to oblige and do the square thing. You look
dubious, Jeeves. Don't you think it will work? She's sure it will.'
'I wish I could share Madam's confidence, but -'
'But, like me, you look on her chance of playing on L. P.
Runkle as on a stringed instrument as ... what? A hundred to eight
shot?'
'A somewhat longer price than that, sir. We have to take into
consideration the fact that Mr Runkle is ...'
'Yes? You hesitate, Jeeves, Mr Runkle is what?'
'The expression I am trying to find eludes me, sir. It is one I
have sometimes heard you use to indicate a deficiency of sweetness
and light in some gentleman of your acquaintance. You have employed
it of Mr Spode or, as I should say, Lord Sidcup and, in the days
before your association with him took on its present cordiality, of
Mr Glossop's uncle, Sir Roderick. It is on the tip of my tongue.'
'A stinker?'
No, he said, it wasn't a stinker.
'A tough baby?'
'No.'
'A twenty-minute egg?'
'That was it, sir. Mr Runkle is a twenty-minute egg.'
'But have you seen enough of him to judge? After all, you've
only just met him.'
'Yes, sir, that is true, but Bingley, on learning that he was a
guest of Madam's, told me a number of stories illustrative of his
hardhearted and implacable character. Bingley was at one time in
his employment.'
'Good lord, he seems to have been employed by everyone.'
'Yes, sir, he was inclined to flit. He never remained in one
post for long.'
'I don't wonder.'
'But his relationship with Mr Runkle was of more extended
duration. He accompanied him to the United States of America some
years ago and remained with him for several months.'
'During which period he found him a twenty-minute egg?'
'Precisely, sir. So I very much fear that Madam's efforts will
produce no satisfactory results. Would it be a large sum of money
that she is hoping to persuade Mr Runkle to part with?'
'Pretty substantial, I gather. You see, what Tuppy's father
invented were those Magic Midget things, and Runkle must have made
a packet out of them. I suppose she aims at a fifty-fifty split.'
'Then I am forced to the opinion that a hundred to one against
is more the figure a level-headed turf accountant would place upon
the likelihood of her achieving her objective.'
Not encouraging, you'll agree. In fact, you might describe it
as definitely damping. I would have called him a pessimist, only I
couldn't think of the word, and while I was trying to hit on
something other than 'Gloomy Gus', which would scarcely have been a
fitting way to address one of his dignity, Florence came in through
the French window and he of course shimmered off. When our
conversations are interrupted by the arrival of what you might call
the quality, he always disappears like a family spectre vanishing
at dawn.
Except at meals I hadn't seen anything of Florence till now,
she, so to speak, having taken the high road while I took the low
road. What I mean to say is that she was always in Market
Snodsbury, bustling about on behalf of the Conservative candidate
to whom she was betrothed, while I, after that nerve-racking
encounter with the widow of the late McCorkadale, had given up
canvassing in favour of curling up with a good book. I had
apologized to Ginger for this ... is pusillanimity the word? ...
and he had taken it extraordinarily well, telling me it was
perfectly all right and he wished he could do the same.
She was looking as beautiful as ever, if not more so, and at
least ninety-six per cent of the members of the Drones Club would
have asked nothing better than to be closeted with her like this.
I, however, would willingly have avoided the tete-a-tete, for my
trained senses told me that she was in one of her tempers, and when
this happens the instinct of all but the hardiest is to climb a
tree and pull it up after them. The overbearing dishpotness to
which I alluded earlier and which is so marked a feature of her
make-up was plainly to the fore. She said, speaking abruptly:
'What are you doing in here on a lovely day like this, Bertie?'
I explained that I had been in conference with Aunt Dahlia, and
she riposted that the conference was presumably over by now, Aunt
D. being conspicuous by her absence, so why wasn't I out getting
fresh air and sunshine.
'You're much too fond of frowsting indoors. That's why you have
that sallow look.'
'I didn't know I had a sallow look.'
'Of course you have a sallow look. What else did you expect?
You look like the underside of a dead fish.'
My worst fears seemed to be confirmed. I had anticipated that
she would work off her choler on the first innocent bystander she
met, and it was just my luck that this happened to be me. With
bowed head I prepared to face the storm, and then to my surprise
she changed the subject.
'I'm looking for Harold,' she said.
'Oh, yes?'
'Have you seen him.'
'I don't think I know him.'
'Don't be a fool. Harold Winship.'
'Oh, Ginger,' I said, enlightened. 'No, he hasn't swum into my
ken. What do you want to see him about? Something important?'
'It is important to me, and it ought to be to him. Unless he
takes himself in hand, he is going to lose this election.'
'What makes you think that?'
'His behaviour at lunch today.'
'Oh, did he take you to lunch? Where did you go? I had mine at
a pub, and the garbage there had to be chewed to be believed. But
perhaps you went to a decent hotel?'
'It was the Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Town Hall. A
vitally important occasion, and he made the feeblest speech I have
ever heard. A child with water on the brain could have done better.
Even you could have done better.'
Well, I suppose placing me on a level of efficiency with a
water-on-the-brained child was quite a stately compliment coming
from Florence, so I didn't go further into the matter, and she
carried on, puffs of flame emerging from both nostrils.
'Er, er, er!'
'I beg your pardon?'
'He kept saying Er. Er, er, er. I could have thrown a coffee
spoon at him.'
Here, of course, was my chance to work in the old gag about to
err being human, but it didn't seem to me the moment. Instead, I
said:
'He was probably nervous.'
'That was his excuse. I told him he had no right to be
nervous.'
'Then you've seen him?'
'I saw him.'
'After the lunch?'
'Immediately after the lunch.'
'But you want to see him again?'
'I do.'
'I'll go and look for him, shall I?'
'Yes, and tell him to meet me in Mr Travers's study. We shall
not be interrupted there.'
'He's probably sitting in the summerhouse by the lake.'
Well, tell him to stop sitting and come to the study,' she
said, for all the world as if she had been Arnold Abney MA
announcing that he would like to see Wooster after morning prayers.
Quite took me back to the old days.
To get to the summerhouse you have to go across the lawn, the
one Spode was toying with the idea of buttering me over, and the
first thing I saw as I did so, apart from the birds, bees,
butterflies, and what not which put in their leisure hours there,
was L. P. Runkle lying in the hammock wrapped in slumber, with Aunt
Dahlia in a chair at his side. When she sighted me, she rose,
headed in my direction and drew me away a yard or two, at the same
time putting a finger to her lips.
'He's asleep,' she said.
A snore from the hammock bore out the truth of this, and I said
I could see he was and what a revolting spectacle he presented, and
she told me for heaven's sake not to bellow like that. Somewhat
piqued at being accused of bellowing by a woman whose lightest
whisper was like someone calling the cattle home across the sands
of Dee, I said I wasn't bellowing, and she said 'Well, don't.'
'He may be in a nasty mood if he's woken suddenly.'
It was an astute piece of reasoning, speaking well for her
grasp of strategy and tactics, but with my quick intelligence I
spotted a flaw in it to which I proceeded to call her attention.
'On the other hand, if you don't wake him, how can you plead
Tuppy's cause?'
'I said suddenly, ass. It'll be all right if I let Nature take
its course.'
'Yes, you may have a point there. Will Nature be long about it,
do you think?'
'How do I know?'
'I was only wondering. You can't sit there the rest of the
afternoon.'
'I can if necessary.'
'Then I'll leave you to it. I've got to go and look for Ginger.
Have you seen him?'
'He came by just now with his secretary on his way to the
summerhouse. He told me he had some dictation to do. Why do you
want him?'
'I don't particularly, though always glad of his company.
Florence told me to find him. She has been giving him hell and is
anxious to give him some more. Apparently -'
Here she interrupted me with a sharp 'Hist!', for L. P. Runkle
had stirred in his sleep and it looked as if life was returning to
the inert frame. But it proved to be a false alarm, and I resumed
my remarks.
'Apparently he failed to wow the customers at the Chamber of
Commerce lunch, where she had been counting on him being a regular
... who was the Greek chap?'
'Bertie, if I wasn't afraid of waking Runkle, I'd strike you
with a blunt instrument, if I had a blunt instrument. What Greek
chap?'
'That's what I'm asking you. He chewed pebbles.'
'Do you mean Demosthenes?'
'You may be right. I'll take it up later with Jeeves. Florence
was expecting Ginger to be a regular Demosthenes, if that was the
name, which seems unlikely, though I was at school with a fellow
called Gianbattista, and he let her down, and this has annoyed her.
You know how she speaks her mind, when annoyed.'
'She speaks her mind much too much,' said the relative
severely. 'I wonder Ginger stands it.'
It so happened that I was in a position to solve the problem
that was perplexing her. The facts governing the relationship of
guys and dolls had long been an open book to me. I had given deep
thought to the matter, and when I give deep thought to a matter
perplexities are speedily ironed out.
'He stands it, aged relative, because he loves her, and you
wouldn't be far wrong in saying that love conquers all. I know what
you mean, of course. It surprises you that a fellow of his thews
and sinews should curl up in a ball when she looks squiggle-eyed at
him and receive her strictures, if that's the word I want, with the
meekness of a spaniel rebuked for bringing a decaying bone into the
drawing-room. What you overlook is the fact that in the matter of
finely chiselled profile, willowy figure and platinum-blonde hair
she is well up among the top ten, and these things weigh with a man
like Ginger. You and I, regarding Florence coolly, pencil her in as
too bossy for human consumption, but he gets a different slant.
It's the old business of what Jeeves calls the psychology of the
individual. Very possibly the seeds of rebellion start to seethe
within him when she speaks her mind, but he catches sight of her
sideways or gets a glimpse of her hair, assuming for purposes of
argument that she isn't wearing a hat, or notices once again that
she has as many curves as a scenic railway, and he feels that it's
worth putting up with a spot of mind-speaking in order to make her
his own. His love, you see, is not wholly spiritual. There's a bit
of the carnal mixed up in it.'
I would have spoken further, for the subject was one that
always calls out the best in me, but at this point the old
ancestor, who had been fidgeting for some time, asked me to go and
drown myself in the lake. I buzzed off, accordingly, and she
returned to her chair beside the hammock, brooding over L. P.
Runkle like a mother over her sleeping child.
I don't suppose she had observed it, for aunts seldom give much
attention to the play of expression on the faces of their nephews,
but all through these exchanges I had been looking grave, making it
pretty obvious that there was something on my mind. I was thinking
of what Jeeves had said about the hundred to one which a level-
headed bookie would wager against her chance of extracting money
from a man so liberally equipped with one-way pockets as L. P.
Runkle, and it pained me deeply to picture her dismay and
disappointment when, waking from his slumbers, he refused to
disgorge. It would be a blow calculated to take all the stuffing
out of her, she having been so convinced that she was on a sure
thing.
I was also, of course, greatly concerned about Ginger. Having
been engaged to Florence myself, I knew what she could do in the
way of ticking off the errant male, and the symptoms seemed to
point to the probability that on the present occasion she would
eclipse all previous performances. I had not failed to interpret
the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those
flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered,
indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as
a sunburned neck. I marvelled at the depths to which my old friend
must have sunk as an orator in order to get such stark emotions
under way, and I intended - delicately, of course - to question him
about this.
I had, however, no opportunity to do so, for on entering the
summerhouse the first thing I saw was him and Magnolia Glendennon
locked in an embrace so close that it seemed to me that only
powerful machinery could unglue them.
In taking this view, however, I was in error, for scarcely had
I uttered the first yip of astonishment when the Glendennon popsy,
echoing it with a yip of her own such as might have proceeded from
a nymph surprised while bathing, disentangled herself and came
whizzing past me, disappearing into the great world outside at a
speed which put her in the old ancestor's class as a sprinter on
the flat. It was as though she had said 'Oh for the wings of a
dove' and had got them.
I, meanwhile, stood rooted to the s., the mouth slightly ajar
and the eyes bulging to their fullest extent. What's that word
beginning with dis? Disembodied? No, not disembodied. Distemper?
No, not distemper. Disconcerted, that's the one. I was
disconcerted. I should imagine that if you happened to wander by
accident into the steam room of a Turkish bath on Ladies' Night,
you would have emotions very similar to those I was experiencing
now.
Ginger, too, seemed not altogether at his ease. Indeed, I would
describe him as definitely taken aback. He breathed heavily, as if
suffering from asthma; the eye with which he regarded me contained
practically none of the chumminess you would expect to see in the
eye of an old friend; and his voice, when he spoke, resembled that
of an annoyed cinnamon bear. Throaty, if you know what I mean, and
on the peevish side. His opening words consisted of a well-phrased
critique of my tactlessness in selecting that particular moment for
entering the summerhouse. He wished, he said, that I wouldn't creep
about like a ruddy detective. Had I, he asked, got my magnifying
glass with me and did I propose to go around on all fours, picking
up small objects and putting them away carefully in an envelope?
What, he enquired, was I doing here, anyway?
To this I might have replied that I was perfectly entitled at
all times to enter a summerhouse which was the property of my Aunt
Dahlia and so related to me by ties of blood, but something told me
that suavity would be the better policy. In rebuttal, therefore, I
merely said that I wasn't creeping about like a ruddy detective,
but navigating with a firm and manly stride, and had simply been
looking for him because Florence had ordered me to and I had
learned from a usually well-informed source that this was where he
was.
My reasoning had the soothing effect I had hoped for. His
manner changed, losing its cinnamon bear quality and taking on a
welcome all-pals-together-ness. It bore out what I have always
said, that there's nothing like suavity for pouring oil on the
troubled w.'s. When he spoke again, it was plain that he regarded
me as a friend and an ally.
'I suppose all this seems a bit odd to you, Bertie.'
'Not at all, old man, not at all.'
'But there is a simple explanation. I love Magnolia.'
'I thought you loved Florence.'
'So did I. But you know how apt one is to make mistakes.'
'Of course.'
'When you're looking for the ideal girl, I mean.'
'Quite.'
'I dare say you've had the same experience yourself.'
'From time to time.'
'Happens to everybody, I expect.'
'I shouldn't wonder.'
'Where one goes wrong when looking for the ideal girl is in
making one's selection before walking the full length of the
counter. You meet someone with a perfect profile, platinum-blonde
hair and a willowy figure, and you think your search is over.
"Bingo!" you say to yourself. "This is the one. Accept no
substitutes." Little knowing that you are linking your lot with
that of a female sergeant-major with strong views on the subject of
discipline, and that if you'd only gone on a bit further you would
have found the sweetest, kindest, gentlest girl that ever took down
outgoing mail in shorthand, who would love you and cherish you and
would never dream of giving you hell, no matter what the
circumstances. I allude to Magnolia Glendennon.'
'I thought you did.'
'I can't tell you how I feel about her, Bertie.'
'Don't try.'
'Ever since we came down here I've had a lurking suspicion that
she was the mate for me and that in signing on the dotted line with
Florence I had made the boner of a lifetime. Just now my last
doubts were dispelled.'
'What happened just now?'
'She rubbed the back of my neck. My interview with Florence,
coming on top of that ghastly Chamber of Commerce lunch, had given
me a splitting headache, and she rubbed the back of my neck. Then I
knew. As those soft fingers touched my skin like dainty butterflies
hovering over a flower -'
'Right-ho.'
'It was a revelation, Bertie. I knew that I had come to
journey's end. I said to myself, "This is a good thing. Push it
along." I turned. I grasped her hand. I gazed into her eyes. She
gazed into mine. I told her I loved her. She said so she did me.
She fell into my arms. I grabbed her. We stood murmuring
endearments, and for a while everything was fine. Couldn't have
been better. Then a thought struck me. There was a snag. You've
probably spotted it.'
'Florence?'
'Exactly. Bossy though she is, plain-spoken though she may be
when anything displeases her, and I wish you could have heard her
after that Chamber of Commerce lunch, I am still engaged to her.
And while girls can break engagements till the cows come home, men
can't.'
I followed his train of thought. It was evident that he, like
me, aimed at being a preux chevalier, and you simply can't be preux
or anything like it if you go about the place getting betrothed and
then telling the party of the second part it's all off. It seemed
to me that the snag which had raised its ugly head was one of
formidable -you might say king-size - dimensions, well calculated
to make the current of whatever he proposed to do about it turn
awry and lose the name of action. But when I put this to him with a
sympathetic tremor in my voice, and I'm not sure I didn't clasp his
hand, he surprised me by chuckling like a leaky radiator.
'That's all right,' he said. 'It would, I admit, appear to be a
tricky situation, but I can handle it. I'm going to get Florence to
break the engagement.'
He spoke with such a gay, confident ring in his voice, so like
the old ancestor predicting what she was going to do to L.P. Runkle
in the playing-on-a-stringed-instrument line, that I was loath, if
that's the word I want, to say anything to depress him, but the
question had to be asked.
'How?' I said, asking it.
'Quite simple. We agreed, I think, that she has no use for a
loser. I propose to lose this election.'
Well, it was a thought of course, and I was in complete
agreement with his supposition that if the McCorkadale nosed ahead
of him in the voting, Florence would in all probability hand him
the pink slip, but where it seemed to me that the current went awry
was that he had no means of knowing that the electorate would put
him in second place. Of course voters are like aunts, you never
know what they will be up to from one day to the next, but it was a
thing you couldn't count on.
I mentioned this to him, and he repeated his impersonation of a
leaky radiator.
'Don't you worry, Bertie. I have the situation well in hand.
Something happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch
which justifies my confidence.'
'What happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch?'
'Well, the first thing that happened after lunch was that
Florence got hold of me and became extremely personal. It was then
that I realized that it would be the act of a fathead to marry
her.'
I nodded adhesion to this sentiment. That time when she had
broken her engagement with me my spirits had soared and I had gone
about singing like a relieved nightingale.
One thing rather puzzled me and seemed to call for explanatory
notes.
'Why did Florence draw you into a dark corner when planning to
become personal?' I asked. 'I wouldn't have credited her with so
much tact and consideration. As a rule, when she's telling people
what she thinks of them, an audience seems to stimulate her. I
recall one occasion when she ticked me off in the presence of
seventeen Girl Guides, all listening with their ears flapping, and
she had never spoken more fluently.'
He put me straight on the point I had raised. He said he had
misled me.
'It wasn't Florence who drew me into the dark comer, it was
Bingley.'
'Bingley?'
'A fellow who worked for me once.'
'He worked for me once.'
'Really? It's a small world, isn't it.'
'Pretty small. Did you know he'd come into money?'
'He'll soon be coming into some more.'
'But you were saying he drew you into the dark corner. Why did
he do that?'
'Because he had a proposition to make to me which demanded
privacy. He ... but before going on I must lay a proper foundation.
You know in those Perry Mason stories how whenever Perry says
anything while cross-examining a witness, the District Attorney
jumps up and yells "Objection, your honour. The SOB has laid no
proper foundation". Well, then, you must know that this man Bingley
belongs to a butlers and valets club in London called the Junior
Ganymede, and one of the rules there is that members have to record
the doings of their employers in the club book.'
I would have told him I knew all too well about that, but he
carried on before I could speak.
'Such a book, as you can imagine, contains a lot of damaging
stuff, and he told me he had been obliged to contribute several
pages about me which, if revealed, would lose me so many votes that
the election would be a gift to my opponent. He added that some men
in his place would have sold it to the opposition and made a lot of
money, but he wouldn't do a thing like that because it would be low
and in the short time we were together he had come to have a great
affection for me. I had never realized before what an
extraordinarily good chap he was. I had always thought him a bit of
a squirt. Shows how wrong you can be about people.'
Again I would have spoken, but he rolled over me like a tidal
wave.
'I should have explained that the committee of the Junior
Ganymede, recognizing the importance of this book, had entrusted it
to him with instructions to guard it with his life, and his
constant fear was that bad men would get wind of this and try to
steal it. So what would remove a great burden from his mind, he
said, would be if I took it into my possession. Then I could be
sure that its contents wouldn't be used against me. I could return
it to him after the election and slip him a few quid, if I wished,
as a token of my gratitude. You can picture me smiling my subtle
smile as he said this. He little knew that my first act would be to
send the thing by messenger to the offices of the Market Snodsbury
Argus-Reminder, thereby handing the election on a plate to the
McCorkadale and enabling me to free myself from my honourable
obligations to Florence, who would of course, on reading the stuff,
recoil from me in horror. Do you know the Argus-Reminder? Very far
to the left. Can't stand Conservatives. It had a cartoon of me last
week showing me with my hands dripping with the blood of the
martyred proletariat. I don't know where they get these ideas. I've
never spilled a drop of anybody's blood except when boxing, and
then the other chap was spilling mine - wholesome give and take. So
it wasn't long before Bingley and I had everything all fixed up. He
couldn't give me the book then, as he had left it at home, and he
wouldn't come and have a drink with me because he had to hurry back
because he thought Jeeves might be calling and he didn't want to
miss him. Apparently Jeeves is a pal of his - old club crony, that
sort of thing. We're meeting tomorrow. I shall reward him with a
purse of gold, he will give me the book, and five minutes later, if
I can find some brown paper and string, it will be on its way to
the Argus-Reminder. The material should be in print the day after
tomorrow. Allow an hour or so for Florence to get hold of a copy
and say twenty minutes for a chat with her after she's read it, and
I ought to be a free man well before lunch. About how much gold do
you think I should reward Bingley with? Figures were not named, but
I thought at least a hundred quid, because he certainly deserves
something substantial for his scrupulous high-mindedness. As he
said, some men in his place would have sold the book to the
opposition and cleaned up big.'
By what I have always thought an odd coincidence he paused at
this point and asked me why I was looking like something the cat
brought in, precisely as the aged relative had asked me after my
interview with Ma McCorkadale. I don't know what cats bring into
houses, but one assumes that it is something not very jaunty, and
apparently, when in the grip of any strong emotion, I resemble
their treasure trove. I could well understand that I was looking
like that now. I find it distasteful to have to shatter a long-time
buddy's hopes and dreams, and no doubt this shows on the surface.
There was no sense in beating about bushes. It was another of
those cases of if it were done, then 'twere well 'twere done
quickly.
'Ginger,' I said, 'I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news for you.
That book is no longer among those present. Jeeves called on
Bingley, gave him a Mickey Finn and got it away from him. He now
has it among his archives.'
He didn't get it at first, and I had to explain.
'Bingley is not the man of integrity you think him. He is on
the contrary a louse of the first water. You might describe him as
a slimy slinking slug. He pinched that book from the Junior
Ganymede and tried to sell it to the McCorkadale. She sent him away
with a flea in his ear because she was a fair fighter, and he tried
to sell it to you. But meanwhile Jeeves nipped in and obtained it.'
It took him perhaps a minute to absorb this, but to my surprise
he wasn't a bit upset.
'Well, that's all right. Jeeves can take it to the Argus-
Reminder.'
I shook the loaf sadly, for I knew that this time those hopes
and dreams of his were really due for a sock in the eye.
'He wouldn't do it, Ginger. To Jeeves that club book is sacred.
I've gone after him a dozen times, urging him to destroy the pages
concerning me, but he always remains as unco-operative as Balaam's
ass, who, you may remember, dug his feet in and firmly refused to
play ball. He'll never let it out of his hands.'
He took it, as I had foreseen, big. He spluttered a good deal.
He also kicked the table and would have splintered it if it hadn't
been made of marble. It must have hurt like sin, but what disturbed
him, I deduced, was not so much the pain of a bruised toe as
spiritual anguish. His eyes glittered, his nose wiggled, and if he
was not gnashing his teeth I don't know a gnashed tooth when I hear
one.
'Oh, won't he?' he said, going back into the old cinnamon bear
routine. 'He won't, won't he? We'll see about that. Pop off,
Bertie. I want to think.'
I popped off, glad to do so. These displays of naked emotion
take it out of one.
The shortest way to the house was across the lawn, but I didn't
take it. Instead, I made for the back door. It was imperative, I
felt, that I should see Jeeves without delay and tell him of the
passions he had unchained and warn him, until the hot blood had had
time to cool, to keep out of Ginger's way. I hadn't at all liked
the sound of the latter's 'We'll see about that', nor the clashing
of those gnashed teeth. I didn't of course suppose that, however
much on the boil, he would inflict personal violence on Jeeves -
sock him, if you prefer the expression - but he would certainly say
things to him which would wound his feelings and cause their
relations, so pleasant up to now, to deteriorate. And naturally I
didn't want that to happen.
Jeeves was in a deck-chair outside the back door, reading
Spinoza with the cat Augustus on his lap. I had given him the
Spinoza at Christmas and he was constantly immersed in it. I hadn't
dipped into it myself, but he tells me it is good ripe stuff, well
worth perusal.
He would have risen at my approach, but I begged him to remain
seated, for I knew that Augustus, like L. P. Runkle, resented being
woken suddenly, and one always wants to consider a cat's feelings.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'a somewhat peculiar situation has popped up
out of a trap, and I would be happy to have your comments on it. I
am sorry to butt in when you are absorbed in your Spinoza and have
probably just got to the part where the second corpse is
discovered, but what I have to say is of great pith and moment, so
listen attentively.'
'Very good, sir.'
'The facts are these,' I said, and without further preamble or
whatever they call it I embarked on my narrative. 'Such,' I
concluded some minutes later, 'is the position of affairs, and I
think you will agree that the problem confronting us presents
certain points of interest.'
'Undeniably, sir.'
'Somehow Ginger has got to lose the election.'
'Precisely, sir.'
'But how?'
'It is difficult to say on the spur of the moment, sir. The
tide of popular opinion appears to be swaying in Mr Winship's
direction. Lord Sidcup's eloquence is having a marked effect on the
electorate and may well prove the deciding factor. Mr Seppings, who
obliged as an extra waiter at the luncheon, reports that his
lordship's address to the members of the Market Snodsbury Chamber
of Commerce was sensational in its brilliance. He tells me that,
owing entirely to his lordship, the odds to be obtained in the
various public houses, which at one time favoured Mrs McCorkadale
at ten to six, have now sunk to evens.'
'I don't like that, Jeeves.'
'No, sir, it is ominous.'
'Of course, if you were to release the club book ...'
'I fear I cannot do that, sir.'
'No, I told Ginger you regarded it as a sacred trust. Then
nothing can be done except to urge you to get the old brain
working.'
'I will certainly do my utmost, sir.'
'No doubt something will eventually emerge. Keep eating lots of
fish. And meanwhile stay away from Ginger as much as possible, for
he is in ugly mood.'
'I quite understand, sir. Stockish, hard and full of rage.'
'Shakespeare?'
'Yes, sir. His merchant of Venice.'
I left him then, pleased at having got one right for a change,
and headed for the drawing-room, hoping for another quiet go at the
Rex Stout which the swirling rush of events had forced me to
abandon. I was, however, too late. The old ancestor was on the
chaise longue with it in her grasp, and I knew that I had small
chance of wresting it from her. No one who has got his or her hooks
on a Rex Stout lightly lets it go.
Her presence there surprised me. I had supposed that she was
still brooding over the hammock and its contents.
'Hullo,' I said, 'have you finished with Runkle?'
She looked up, and I noted a trace of annoyance in her
demeanour. I assumed that Nero Wolfe had come down from the orchid
room and told Archie Goodwin to phone Saul Panzar and Orrie what's
his name and things were starting to warm up. In which event she
would naturally resent the intrusion of even a loved nephew whom
she had often dandled on her knee - not recently, I don't mean, but
when I was a bit younger.
'Oh, it's you,' she said, which it was of course. 'No, I
haven't finished with Runkle. I haven't even begun. He's still
asleep.'
She gave me the impression of being not much in the mood for
chit-chat, but one has to say something on these occasions. I
brought up a subject which I felt presented certain points of
interest.
'Have you ever noticed the remarkable resemblance between L. P.
Runkle's daily habits and those of the cat Augustus? They seem to
spend all their time sleeping. Do you think they've got traumatic
symplegia?'
'What on earth's that?'
'I happened to come on it in a medical book I was reading. It's
a disease that makes you sleep all the time. Has Runkle shown no
signs of waking?'
'Yes, he did, and just as he was beginning to stir Madeline
Bassett came along. She said could she speak to me, so I had to let
her. It wasn't easy to follow what she was saying, because she was
sobbing all the time, but I got it at last. It was all about the
rift with Spode. I told you they had had a tiff. It turns out to be
more serious than that. You remember me telling you he couldn't be
a Member of Parliament because he was a peer. Well, he wants to
give up his title so that he will be eligible.'
'Can a fellow with a title give it up? I thought he was stuck
with it.'
'He couldn't at one time, at least only by being guilty of
treason, but they've changed the rules and apparently it's quite
the posh thing to do nowadays.'
'Sounds silly.'
'That's the view Madeline takes.'
'Did she say what put the idea into Spode's fat head?'
'No, but I can see what did. He has made such a smash hit with
his speeches down here that he's saying to himself "Why am I
sweating like this on behalf of somebody else? Why not go into
business for myself ?" Who was it said someone was intoxicated with
the exuberance of his own verbosity?'
'I don't know.'
'Jeeves would. It was Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain or Jack
Dempsey or somebody. Anyway, that's Spode. He's all puffed up and
feels he needs a wider scope. He sees himself holding the House of
Commons spellbound.'
'Why can't he hold the House of Lords spellbound?'
'It wouldn't be the same thing. It would be like playing in the
Market Snodsbury tennis tournament instead of electrifying one and
all on the centre court at Wimbledon. I can see his point.'
'I can't.'
'Nor can Madeline. She's all worked up about it, and I can
understand how she feels. No joke for a girl who thinks she's going
to be the Countess of Sidcup to have the fellow say "April fool, my
little chickadee. What you're going to be is Mrs Spode." If I had
been told at Madeline's age that Tom had been made a peer and I
then learned that he was going to back out of it and I wouldn't be
able to call myself Lady Market Snodsbury after all, I'd have
kicked like a mule. Titles to a girl are like catnip to a cat.'
'Can nothing be done?'
'The best plan would be for you to go to him and tell him how
much we all admire him for being Lord Sidcup and what a pity it
would be for him to go back to a ghastly name like Spode.'
'What's the next best plan?'
'Ah, that wants thinking out.'
We fell into a thoughtful silence, on my part an uneasy one. I
didn't at this juncture fully appreciate the peril that lurked, but
anything in the nature of a rift within the lute between Spode and
Madeline was always calculated to make me purse the lips to some
extent. I was still trying to hit on some plan which would be more
to my taste than telling Spode what a pity it would be for him to
stop being the Earl of Sidcup and go back to a ghastly name like
his, when my reverie was broken by the entry through the French
window of the cat Augustus, for once awake and in full possession
of his faculties, such as they were. No doubt in a misty dreamlike
sort of way he had seen me when I was talking to Jeeves and had
followed me on my departure, feeling, after those breakfasts of
ours together, that association with me was pretty well bound to
culminate in kippers. A vain hope, of course. The well-dressed man
does not go around with kippered herrings in his pocket. But one of
the lessons life teaches us is that cats will be cats.
As is my unvarying policy when closeted with one of these
fauna, I made chirruping noises and bent down to tickle the back of
the dumb chum's left ear, but my heart was not in the tickling. The
more I mused on the recent conversation, the less I liked what the
aged relative had revealed. Telling Augustus that I would be back
with him in a moment, I straightened myself and was about to ask
her for further details, when I discovered that she was no longer
in my midst. She must suddenly have decided to have another pop at
L. P. Runkle and was presumably even now putting Tuppy's case
before him. Well, best of luck to her, of course, and nice to think
she had a fine day for it, but I regretted her absence. When your
mind is weighed down with matters of great pith and moment, it
gives you a sort of sinking feeling to be alone. No doubt the boy
who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled had this
experience.
However, I wasn't alone for long. Scarcely had Augustus sprung
on to my lap and started catching up with his sleep when the door
opened and Spode came in.
I leaped to my feet, causing Augustus to fall to earth I knew
not where, as the fellow said. I was a prey to the liveliest
apprehensions. My relations with Spode had been for long so
consistently strained that I never saw him nowadays without a
lurking fear that he was going to sock me in the eye. Obviously I
wasn't to be blamed if he and Madeline had been having trouble, but
that wouldn't stop him blaming me. It was like the story of the
chap who was in prison and a friend calls and asks him why and the
chap tells him and the friend says But they can't put you in prison
for that and the chap says I know they can't, but they have. Spode
didn't have to have logical reasons for setting about people he
wasn't fond of, and it might be that he was like Florence and would
work off his grouch on the first available innocent bystander.
Putting it in a nutshell, my frame of mind was approximately that
of the fellows in the hymn who got such a start when they looked
over their shoulders and saw the troops of Midian prowling and
prowling around.
It was with profound relief, therefore, that I suddenly got on
to it that his demeanour was free from hostility. He was looking
like somebody who has just seen the horse on which he had put all
his savings, plus whatever he had been able to lift from his
employer's till, beaten by a short head. His face, nothing to write
home about at the best of times, was drawn and contorted, but with
pain rather than the urge to commit mayhem. And while one would
always prefer him not to be present, a drawn-and-contorted-with-
pain Spode was certainly the next best thing. My greeting, in
consequence, had the real ring of cordiality in it.
'Oh, hullo, Spode, hullo. There you are, what? Splendid.'
'Can I have a word with you, Wooster?'
'Of course, of course. Have several.'
He did not speak for a minute or so, filling in the time by
subjecting me to a close scrutiny. Then he gave a sigh and shook
his head.
'I can't understand it,' he said.
'What can't you understand, Spode old man or rather Lord Sidcup
old man?' I asked in a kind voice, for I was only too willing to
help this new and improved Spode solve any little problem that was
puzzling him.
'How Madeline can contemplate marrying a man like you. She has
broken our engagement and says that's what she's going to do. She
was quite definite about it. "All is over," she said. "Here is your
ring," she said. "I shall marry Bertie Wooster and make him happy,"
she said. You can't want it plainer than that.'
I stiffened from head to f. Even with conditions what they were
in this disturbed post-war world I hadn't been expecting to be