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turned into a pillar of salt again for some considerable time, but
this had done it. I don't know how many of my public have ever been
slapped between the eyes with a wet fish, but those who have will
appreciate my emotions as the seventh Earl of Sidcup delivered this
devastating bulletin. Everything started to go all wobbly, and
through what is known as a murky mist I seemed to be watching a
quivering-at-the-edges seventh Earl performing the sort of
gyrations travelled friends have told me the Ouled Nail dancers do
in Cairo.
I was stunned. It seemed to me incredible that Madeline Bassett
should have blown the whistle on their engagement. Then I
remembered that at the time when she had plighted her troth Spode
was dangling a countess's coronet before her eyes, and the thing
became more understandable. I mean, take away the coronet and what
had you got? Just Spode. Not good enough, a girl would naturally
feel.
He, meanwhile, was going on to explain why he found it so
bizarre that Madeline should be contemplating marrying me, and
almost immediately I saw that I had been mistaken in supposing that
he was not hostile. He spoke from between clenched teeth, and that
always tells the story.
'As far as I can see, Wooster, you are without attraction of
any kind. Intelligence? No. Looks? No. Efficiency? No. You can't
even steal an umbrella without getting caught. All that can be said
for you is that you don't wear a moustache. They tell me you did
grow one once, but mercifully shaved it off. That is to your
credit, but it is a small thing to weigh in the balance against all
your other defects. When one considers how numerous these are, one
can only suppose that it is your shady record of stealing anything
you can lay your hands on that appeals to Madeline's romantic soul.
She is marrying you in the hope of reforming you, and let me tell
you, Wooster, that if you disappoint that hope, you will be sorry.
She may have rejected me, but I shall always love her as I have
done since she was so high, and I shall do my utmost to see that
her gentle heart is not broken by any sneaking son of a what not
who looks like a chorus boy in a touring revue playing the small
towns and cannot see anything of value without pocketing it. You
will probably think you are safe from me when you are doing your
stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for larceny, but I shall be waiting for
you when you come out and I shall tear you limb from limb. And,' he
added, for his was a one-track mind, 'dance on the fragments in
hobnailed boots.'
He paused, produced his cigarette case, asked me if I had a
match, thanked me when I gave him one, and withdrew.
He left behind him a Bertram Wooster whom the dullest eye could
have spotted as not being at the peak of his form. The prospect of
being linked for life to a girl who would come down to breakfast
and put her hands over my eyes and say 'Guess who' had given my
morale a sickening wallop, reducing me to the level of one of those
wee sleekit timorous cowering beasties Jeeves tells me the poet
Burns used to write about. It is always my policy in times of
crisis to try to look on the bright side, but I make one proviso -
viz. that there has to be a bright side to look on, and in the
present case there wasn't even the sniff of one.
As I sat there draining the bitter cup, there were noises off
stage and my meditations were interrupted by the return of the old
ancestor. Well, when I say return, she came whizzing in but didn't
stop, just whizzed through, and I saw, for I am pretty quick at
noticing things, that she was upset about something. Reasoning
closely, I deduced that her interview with L. P. Runkle must have
gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley.
And so it proved when she bobbed up again some little time
later. Her first observation was that L. P. Runkle was an
illegitimate offspring to end all illegitimate offsprings, and I
hastened to commiserate with her. I could have done with a bit of
commiseration myself, but Women and Children First is always the
Wooster slogan.
'No luck?' I said.
'None.'
'Wouldn't part?'
'Not a penny.'
'You mentioned that without his co-operation Tuppy and Angela's
wedding bells would not ring out?'
'Of course I did. And he said it was a great mistake for young
people to marry before they knew their own minds.'
'You could have pointed out that Tuppy and Angela have been
engaged for two years.'
'I did.'
'What did he say to that?'
'He said "Not nearly long enough".'
'So what are you going to do?'
'I've done it,' said the old ancestor. 'I pinched his
porringer.'
I goggled at her, one hundred per cent non-plussed. She had
spoken with the exuberance of an aunt busily engaged in patting
herself between the shoulder-blades for having done something
particularly clever, but I could make nothing of her statement.
This habit of speaking in riddles seemed to be growing on her.
'You what?' I said. 'You pinched his what?'
'His porringer. I told you about it the day you got here. Don't
you remember? That silver thing he came to try to sell to Tom.'
She had refreshed my memory. I recalled the conversation to
which she referred. I had asked her why she was entertaining in her
home a waste product like L. P. Runkle, and she had said that he
had come hoping to sell Uncle Tom a silver something for his
collection and she had got him to stay on in order to soften him up
with Anatole's cooking and put to him, when softened up, her
request for cash for Tuppy.
'When he turned me down just now, it suddenly occurred to me
that if I got hold of the thing and told him he wouldn't get it
back unless he made a satisfactory settlement, I would have a
valuable bargaining point and we could discuss the matter further
at any time that suited him.'
I was ap-what-is-it. Forget my own name next. Appalled, that's
the word, though shocked to the core would be about as good;
nothing much in it, really. I hadn't read any of those etiquette
books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that
the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two
at carrying-ons of this description. The chapter on Hints To
Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning
them that it wasn't the done thing to invite people to the home and
having got them settled in to pinch their porringers.
'But good Lord!' I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it,
shocked to the core.
'Now what?'
'The man is under your roof.'
'Did you expect him to be on it?'
'He has eaten your salt.'
'Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor
probably forbids it.'
'You can't do this.'
'I know I can't, but I have,' she said, just like the chap in
the story, and I saw it would be fruitless or bootless to go on
arguing. It rarely is with aunts - if you're their nephew, I mean,
because they were at your side all through your formative years and
know what an ass you were then and can't believe that anything that
you may say later is worth listening to. I shouldn't be at all
surprised if Jeeves's three aunts don't shut him up when he starts
talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn't
know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the
ground.
Ceasing to expostulate, therefore, if expostulate is the word I
want, I went to the bell and pressed it, and when she asked for
footnotes throwing a light on why I did this, I told her I proposed
to place the matter in the hands of a higher power.
'I'm ringing for Jeeves.'
'You'll only get Seppings.'
'Seppings will provide Jeeves.'
'And what do you think Jeeves can do?'
'Make you see reason.'
'I doubt it.'
'Well, it's worth a try.'
Further chit-chat was suspended till Jeeves arrived and silence
fell except for the ancestor snorting from time to time and self
breathing more heavily than usual, for I was much stirred. It
always stirs a nephew to discover that a loved aunt does not know
the difference between right and wrong. There is a difference ...
at my private school Arnold Abney MA used to rub it into the
student body both Sundays and weekdays ... but apparently nobody
had told the aged relative about it, with the result that she could
purloin people's porringers without a yip from her conscience.
Shook me a bit, I confess.
When Jeeves blew in, it cheered me to see the way his head
stuck out at the back, for that's where the brain is, and what was
needed here was a man with plenty of the old grey matter who would
put his points so that even a fermenting aunt would have to be
guided by him.
'Well, here's Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Tell him the facts
and I'll bet he says I've done the only possible thing and can
carry on along the lines I sketched out.'
I might have risked a fiver on this at say twelve to eight, but
it didn't seem fitting. But telling Jeeves the facts was a good
idea, and I did so without delay, being careful to lay a proper
foundation.
'Jeeves,' I said.
'Sir?' he responded.
'Sorry to interrupt you again. Were you reading Spinoza?'
'No, sir, I was writing a letter to my Uncle Charlie.'
'Charlie Silversmith,' I explained in an aside to the ancestor.
'Butler at Deverill Hall. One of the best.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'I know few men whom I esteem more highly than your Uncle
Charlie. Well, we won't keep you long. It's just that another
problem presenting certain points of interest has come up. In a
recent conversation I revealed to you the situation relating to
Tuppy Glossop and L. P. Runkle. You recall?'
'Yes, sir. Madam was hoping to extract a certain sum of money
from Mr Runkle on Mr Glossop's behalf.'
'Exactly. Well, it didn't come off.'
'I am sorry to hear that, sir.'
'But not, I imagine, surprised. If I remember, you considered
it a hundred to one shot.'
'Approximately that, sir.'
'Runkle being short of bowels of compassion.'
'Precisely, sir. A twenty-minute egg.'
Here the ancestor repeated her doubts with regard to L. P.
Runkle's legitimacy, and would, I think, have developed the theme
had I not shushed her down with a raised hand.
'She pleaded in vain,' I said. 'He sent her away with a flea in
her ear. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he laughed her to
scorn.'
'The superfatted old son of a bachelor,' the ancestor
interposed, and once more I shushed her down.
'Well, you know what happens when you do that sort of thing to
a woman of spirit. Thoughts of reprisals fill her mind. And so,
coming to the nub, she decided to purloin Runkle's porringer. But I
mustn't mislead you. She did this not as an act of vengeance, if
you know what I mean, but in order to have a bargaining point when
she renewed her application. "Brass up," she would have said when
once more urging him to scare the moths out of his pocketbook, "or
you won't get back your porringer". Do I make myself clear?'
'Perfectly clear, sir. I find you very lucid.'
'Now first it will have to be explained to you what a porringer
is, and here I am handicapped by not having the foggiest notion
myself, except that it's silver and old and the sort of thing Uncle
Tom has in his collection. Runkle was hoping to sell it to him.
Could you supply any details?' I asked the aged relative.
She knitted the brows a bit, and said she couldn't do much in
that direction.
'All I know is that it was made in the time of Charles the
Second by some Dutchman or other.'
'Then I think I know the porringer to which you allude, sir,'
said Jeeves, his face lighting up as much as it ever lights up, he
for reasons of his own preferring at all times to preserve the
impassivity of a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's. 'It was featured in a
Sotheby's catalogue at which I happened to be glancing not long
ago. Would it,' he asked the ancestor, 'be a silver-gilt porringer
on a circular moulded foot, the lower part chased with acanthus
foliage, with beaded scroll handles, the cover surmounted by a
foliage on a rosette of swirling acanthus leaves, the stand of
tazza form on circular detachable feet with acanthus border joined
to a multifoil plate, the palin top with upcurved rim?'
He paused for a reply, but the ancestor did not speak
immediately, her aspect that of one who has been run over by a
municipal tram. Odd, really, because she must have been listening
to that sort of thing from Uncle Tom for years. Finally she mumbled
that she wouldn't be surprised or she wouldn't wonder or something
like that.
'Your guess is as good as mine,' she said.
'I fancy it must be the same, madam. You mentioned a workman of
Dutch origin. Would the name be Hans Conrael Brechtel of the
Hague?'
'I couldn't tell you. I know it wasn't Smith or Jones or
Robinson, and that's as far as I go. But what's all this in aid of
? What does it matter if the stand is of tazza form or if the palin
top has an upcurved rim?'
'Exactly,' I said, thoroughly concurring. 'Or if the credit for
these tazza forms and palin tops has to be chalked up to Hans
Conrael Brechtel of the Hague. The point, Jeeves, is not what
particular porringer the ancestor has pinched, but how far she was
justified in pinching any porringer at all when its owner was a
guest of hers. I hold that it was a breach of hospitality and the
thing must be returned. Am I right?'
'Well, sir ...'
'Go on, Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Say I'm a crook who ought
to be drummed out of the Market Snodsbury Ladies Social and
Cultural Garden Club.'
'Not at all, madam.'
'Then what were you going to say when you hesitated?'
'Merely that in my opinion no useful end will be served by
retaining the object.'
'I don't follow you. How about that bargaining point?'
'It will, I fear, avail you little, madam. As I understand Mr
Wooster, the sum you are hoping to obtain from Mr Runkle amounts to
a good many thousand pounds.'
'Fifty at least, if not a hundred.'
'Then I cannot envisage him complying with your demands. Mr
Runkle is a shrewd financier -'
'Born out of wedlock.'
'Very possibly you are right, madam, nevertheless he is a man
well versed in weighing profit and loss. According to Sotheby's
catalogue the price at which the object was sold at the auction
sale was nine thousand pounds. He will scarcely disburse a hundred
or even fifty thousand in order to recover it.'
'Of course he won't,' I said, as enchanted with his lucidity as
he had been with mine. It was the sort of thing you have to pay
topnotchers at the Bar a king's ransom for. 'He'll simply say "Easy
come, easy go" and write it off as a business loss, possibly
consulting his legal adviser as to whether he can deduct it from
his income tax. Thank you, Jeeves. You've straightened everything
out in your customary masterly manner. You're a ... what were you
saying the other day about Daniel somebody?'
'A Daniel come to judgment, sir?'
'That was it. You're a Daniel come to judgment.'
'It is very kind of you to say so, sir.'
'Not at all. Well-deserved tribute.'
I shot a glance at the aged relative. It is notoriously
difficult to change the trend of an aunt's mind when that mind is
made up about this or that, but I could see at a g. that Jeeves had
done it. I hadn't expected her to look pleased, and she didn't, but
it was evident that she had accepted what is sometimes called the
inevitable. I would describe her as not having a word to say, had
she not at this moment said one, suitable enough for the hunting
field but on the strong side for mixed company. I registered it in
my memory as something to say to Spode some time, always provided
it was on the telephone.
'I suppose you're right, Jeeves,' she said, heavy-hearted,
though bearing up stoutly. 'It seemed a good idea at the time, but
I agree with you that it isn't as watertight as I thought it. It's
so often that way with one's golden dreams. The -'
' - best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,' I said
helping her out. 'See the poet Burns. I've often wondered why
Scotsmen say "gang". I asked you once, Jeeves, if you recall, and
you said they had not confided in you. You were saying, ancestor?'
'I was about to say -'
'Or, for that matter, "agley".'
'I was about to say -'
'Or "aft" for "often".'
'I was about to say,' said the relative, having thrown her Rex
Stout at me, fortunately with a less accurate aim than the other
time, 'that there's nothing to be done but for me to put the thing
back in Runkle's room where I took it from.'
'Whence I took it' would have been better, but it was not to
comment on her prose style that I interposed. I was thinking that
if she was allowed to do the putting back, she might quite possibly
change her mind on the way to Runkle's room and decide to stick to
the loot after all. Jeeves's arguments had been convincing to the
last drop, but you can never be sure that the effect of convincing
arguments won't wear off, especially with aunts who don't know the
difference between right and wrong, and it might be that she would
take the view that if she pocketed the porringer and kept it among
her souvenirs, she would at least be saving something from the
wreck. 'Always difficult to know what to give Tom for his
birthday,' she might say to herself. 'This will be just the thing.'
'I'll do it,' I said. 'Unless you'd rather, Jeeves.'
'No, thank you, sir.'
'Only take a minute of your time.'
'No, thank you, sir.'
'Then you may leave us, Jeeves. Much obliged for your Daniel
come to judgmenting.'
'A pleasure, sir.'
'Give Uncle Charlie my love.'
'I will indeed, sir.'
As the door closed behind him, I started to make my plans and
dispositions, as I believe the word is, and I found the blood
relation docile and helpful. Runkle's room, she told me, was the
one known as the Blue Room, and the porringer should be inserted in
the left top drawer of the chest of drawers, whence she had removed
it. I asked if she was sure he was still in the hammock, and she
said he must be, because on her departure he was bound to have gone
to sleep again. Taking a line through the cat Augustus, I found
this plausible. With these traumatic symplegia cases waking is
never more than a temporary thing. I have known Augustus to resume
his slumbers within fifteen seconds of having had a shopping bag
containing tins of cat food fall on him. A stifled oath, and he was
off to dreamland once more.
As I climbed the stairs, I was impressed by the fact that L. P.
Runkle had been given the Blue Room, for in this house it amounted
to getting star billing. It was the biggest and most luxurious of
the rooms allotted to bachelors. I once suggested to the aged
relative that I be put there, but all she said was 'You?' and the
conversation turned to other topics. Runkle having got it in spite
of the presence on the premises of a seventh Earl showed how
determined the a. r. had been that no stone should be left unturned
and no avenue unexplored in her efforts to soften him up; and it
seemed ironical that all her carefully thought-out plans should
have gone agley. Just shows Burns knew what he was talking about.
You can generally rely on these poets to hit the mark and entitle
themselves to a cigar or coconut according to choice.
The old sweats will remember, though later arrivals will have
to be told, that this was not the first time I had gone on a secret
mission to the Blue Room. That other visit, the old sweats will
recall, had ended in disaster and not knowing which way to look,
for Mrs Homer Cream, the well-known writer of suspense novels, had
found me on the floor with a chair round my neck, and it had not
been easy to explain. This was no doubt why on the present occasion
I approached the door with emotions somewhat similar to those I had
had in the old days when approaching that of Arnold Abney MA at the
conclusion of morning prayers. A voice seemed to whisper in my ear
that beyond that door there lurked something that wasn't going to
do me a bit of good.
The voice was perfectly right. It had got its facts correct
first shot. What met my eyes as I entered was L. P. Runkle asleep
on the bed, and with my customary quickness I divined what must
have happened. After being cornered there by the old ancestor he
must have come to the conclusion that a hammock out in the middle
of a lawn, with access to it from all directions, was no place for
a man who wanted peace and seclusion, and that these were to be
obtained only in his bedroom. Thither, accordingly, he had gone,
and there he was.
Voila tout, as one might say if one had made a study of the
French language.
The sight of this sleeping beauty had, of course, given me a
nasty start, causing my heart to collide rather violently with my
front teeth, but it was only for a moment that I was unequal to
what I have heard Jeeves call the intellectual pressure of the
situation. It is pretty generally recognized in the circles in
which I move that Bertram Wooster, though he may be down, is never
out, the betting being odds on that, given time to collect his
thoughts and stop his head spinning, he will rise on stepping
stones of his dead self to higher things, as the fellow said, and
it was so now. I would have preferred, of course, to operate in a
room wholly free from the presence of L. P. Runkle, but I realized
that as long as he remained asleep there was nothing to keep me
from carrying on. All that was required was that my activities
should be conducted in absolute silence. And it was thus that I was
conducting them, more like a spectre or wraith than a chartered
member of the Drones Club, when the air was rent, as the expression
is, by a sharp yowl such as you hear when a cougar or a snow
leopard stubs its toe on a rock, and I became aware that I had
trodden on the cat Augustus, who had continued to follow me, still,
I suppose, under the mistaken impression that I had kippered
herrings on my person and might at any moment start loosening up.
In normal circumstances I would have hastened to make my
apologies and to endeavour by tickling him behind the ear to apply
balm to his wounded feelings, but at this moment L. P. Runkle sat
up, said 'Wah-wah-wah', rubbed his eyes, gave me an unpleasant look
with them and asked me what the devil I was doing in his room.
It was not an easy question to answer. There had been nothing
in our relations since we first swam into each other's ken to make
it seem likely that I had come to smooth his pillow or ask him if
he would like a cooling drink, and I did not put forward these
explanations. I was thinking how right the ancestor had been in
predicting that, if aroused suddenly, he would wake up cross. His
whole demeanour was that of a man who didn't much like the human
race as a whole but was particularly allergic to Woosters. Not even
Spode could have made his distaste for them plainer.
I decided to see what could be done with suavity. It had
answered well in the case of Ginger, and there was no saying that
it might not help to ease the current situation.
'I'm sorry,' I said with an enchanting smile, 'I'm afraid I
woke you.'
'Yes, you did. And stop grinning at me like a half-witted ape.'
'Right-ho,' I said. I removed the enchanting smile. It came off
quite easily. 'I don't wonder you're annoyed. But I'm more to be
pitied than censured. I inadvertently trod on the cat.'
A look of alarm spread over his face. It had a long way to go,
but it spread all right.
'Hat?' he quavered, and I could see that he feared for the well-
being of his Panama with the pink ribbon.
I lost no time in reassuring him.
'Not hat. Cat.'
'What cat?'
'Oh, haven't you met? Augustus his name is, though for purposes
of conversation this is usually shortened to Gus. He and I have
been buddies since he was a kitten. He must have been following me
when I came in here.'
It was an unfortunate way of putting it, for it brought him
back to his original theme.
'Why the devil did you come in here?'
A lesser man than Bertram Wooster would have been non-plussed,
and I don't mind admitting that I was, too, for about a couple of
ticks. But as I stood shuffling the feet and twiddling the fingers
I caught sight of that camera of his standing on an adjacent table,
and I got one of those inspirations you get occasionally.
Shakespeare and Bums and even Oliver Wendell Holmes probably used
to have them all the time, but self not so often. In fact, this was
the first that had come my way for some weeks.
'Aunt Dahlia sent me to ask you if you would come and take a
few photographs of her and the house and all that sort of thing, so
that she'll have them to look at in the long winter evenings. You
know how long the winter evenings get nowadays.'
The moment I had said it I found myself speculating as to
whether the inspiration had been as hot as I had supposed. I mean,
this man had just had a conference with the old ancestor which,
unlike those between ministers of state, had not been conducted in
an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, and he might be thinking it
odd that so soon after its conclusion she should be wanting him to
take photographs of her. But all was well. No doubt he looked on
her request as what is known as an olive branch. Anyway, he was all
animation and eagerness to co-operate.
'I'll be right down,' he said. 'Tell her I'll be right down.'
Having hidden the porringer in my room and locked the door, I
went back to the aged relative and found her with Jeeves. She
expressed relief at seeing me.
'Oh, there you are, my beautiful bounding Bertie. Thank
goodness you didn't go to Runkle's room. Jeeves tells me Seppings
met Runkle on the stairs and he asked him to bring him a cup of tea
in half an hour. He said he was going to lie down. You might have
run right into him.'
I laughed one of those hollow, mirthless ones.
'Jeeves speaks too late, old ancestor. I did run into him.'
'You mean he was there?'
'With his hair in a braid.'
'What did you do?'
'I told him you had asked me to ask him to come and take some
photographs.'
'Quick thinking.'
'I always think like lightning.'
'And did he swallow it?'
'He appeared to. He said he would be right down.'
'Well, I'm damned if I'm going to smile.'
Whether I would have pleaded with her to modify this stern
resolve and at least show a portion of her front teeth when Runkle
pressed the button, I cannot say, for as she spoke my thoughts were
diverted. A sudden query presented itself. What, I asked myself,
was keeping L. P. Runkle? He had said he would be right down, but
quite a time had elapsed and no sign of him. I was toying with the
idea that on a warm afternoon like this a man of his build might
have had a fit of some kind, when there came from the stairs the
sound of clumping feet, and he was with us.
But a very different L. P. Runkle from the man who had told me
he would be right down. Then he had been all sunny and beaming, the
amateur photographer who was not only going to make a pest of
himself by taking photographs but had actually been asked to make a
pest of himself in this manner, which seldom happens to amateur
photographers. Now he was cold and hard like a picnic egg, and he
couldn't have looked at me with more loathing if I really had
trodden on his Panama hat.
'Mrs Travers!'
His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger
seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood
oranges and Brussels sprouts. I saw the ancestor stiffen, and I
knew she was about to go into her grande dame act. This relative,
though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn
in a flash into a carbon copy of a Duchess of the old school
reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so
remarkable is that she doesn't have to use a lorgnette, just does
it all with the power of the human eye. I think girls in her day
used to learn the trick at their finishing schools.
'Will you kindly not bellow at me, Mr Runkle. I am not deaf.
What is it?'
The aristocratic ice in her tone sent a cold shiver down my
spine, but in L. P. Runkle she had picked a tough customer to try
to freeze. He apologized for having bellowed, but briefly and with
no real contrition. He then proceeded to deal with her query as to
what it was, and with a powerful effort forced himself to speak
quite quietly. Not exactly like a cooing pigeon, but quietly.
'I wonder if you remember, Mrs Travers, a silver porringer I
showed you on my arrival here.'
'I do.'
'Very valuable.'
'So you told me.'
'I kept it in the top left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers
in my bedroom. It did not occur to me that there was any necessity
to hide it. I took the honesty of everybody under your roof for
granted.'
'Naturally.'
'Even when I found that Mr Wooster was one of my fellow guests
I took no precautions. It was a fatal blunder. He has just stolen
it.'
I suppose it's pretty much of a strain to keep up that grande
dame stuff for any length of time, involving as it does rigidity of
the facial muscles and the spinal column, for at these words the
ancestor called it a day and reverted to the Quorn-and-Pytchleyness
of her youth.
'Don't be a damned fool, Runkle. You're talking rot. Bertie
would never dream of doing such a thing, would you, Bertie?'
'Not in a million years.'
'The man's an ass.'
'One might almost say a silly ass.'
'Comes of sleeping all the time.'
'I believe that's the trouble.'
'Addles the brain.'
'Must, I imagine. It's the same thing with Gus the cat. I love
Gus like a brother, but after years of non-stop sleep he's got
about as much genuine intelligence as a Cabinet minister.'
'I hope Runkle hasn't annoyed you with his preposterous
allegations?'
'No, no, old ancestor, I'm not angry, just terribly terribly
hurt.'
You'd have thought all this would have rendered Runkle a spent
force and a mere shell of his former self, but his eye was not
dimmed nor his natural force abated. Turning to the door, he paused
there to add a few words.
'I disagree with you, Mrs Travers, in the view you take of your
nephew's honesty. I prefer to be guided by Lord Sidcup, who assures
me that Mr Wooster invariably steals anything that is not firmly
fastened to the floor. It was only by the merest chance, Lord
Sidcup tells me, that at their first meeting he did not make away
with an umbrella belonging to Sir Watkyn Bassett, and from there he
has, as one might put it, gone from strength to strength.
Umbrellas, cow-creamers, amber statuettes, cameras, all are grist
to his mill. I was unfortunately asleep when he crept into my room,
and he had plenty of time before I woke to do what he had come for.
It was only some minutes after he had slunk out that it occurred to
me to look in the top left-hand drawer of my chest of drawers. My
suspicions were confirmed. The drawer was empty. He had got away
with the swag. But I am a man of action. I have sent your butler to
the police station to bring a constable to search Wooster's room.
I, until he arrives, propose to stand outside it, making sure that
he does not go in and tamper with the evidence.'
Having said which in the most unpleasant of vocal deliveries,
L. P. Runkle became conspic. by his a., and the ancestor spoke with
considerable eloquence on the subject of fat slobs of dubious
parentage who had the immortal crust to send her butler on errands.
I, too, was exercised by the concluding portion of his remarks.
'I don't like that,' I said, addressing Jeeves, who during the
recent proceedings had been standing in the background giving a
lifelike impersonation of somebody who wasn't there.
'Sir?'
'If the fuzz search my room, I'm sunk.'
'Have no anxiety, sir. A police officer is not permitted to
enter private property without authority, nor do the regulations
allow him to ask the owner of such property for permission to
enter.'
'You're sure of that?'
'Yes, sir.'
Well, that was a crumb of comfort, but it would be deceiving my
public if I said that Bertram Wooster was his usual nonchalant
self. Too many things had been happening one on top of the other
for him to be the carefree boulevardler one likes to see. If I
hoped to clarify the various situations which were giving me the
pip and erase the dark circles already beginning to form beneath
the eyes, it would, I saw, be necessary for me to marshal my
thoughts.
'Jeeves,' I said, leading him from the room, 'I must marshal my
thoughts.'
'Certainly, sir, if you wish.'
'And I can't possibly do it here with crises turning
handsprings on every side. Can you think of a good excuse for me to
pop up to London for the night? A few hours alone in the peaceful
surroundings of the flat are what I need. I must concentrate,
concentrate.'
'But do you require an excuse, sir?'
'It's better to have one. Aunt Dahlia is on a sticky wicket and
would be hurt if I deserted her now unless I had some good reason.
I can't let her down.'
'The sentiment does you credit, sir.'
'Thank you, Jeeves. Can you think of anything?'
'You have been summoned for jury duty, sir.'
'Don't they let you have a longish notice for that?'
'Yes, sir, but when the post arrived containing the letter from
the authorities, I forgot to give it to you, and only delivered it
a moment ago. Fortunately it was not too late. Would you be
intending to leave immediately?'
'If not sooner. I'll borrow Ginger's car.'
'You will miss the debate, sir.'
'The what?'
'The debate between Mr Winship and his opponent. It takes place
tomorrow night.'
'What time?'
'It is scheduled for a quarter to seven.'
'Taking how long?'
'Perhaps an hour.'
'Then expect me back at about seven-thirty. The great thing in
life, Jeeves, if we wish to be happy and prosperous, is to miss as
many political debates as possible. You wouldn't care to come with
me, would you?'
'No, thank you, sir. I am particularly anxious to hear Mr
Winship's speech.'
'He'll probably only say "Er",' I riposted rather cleverly.
It was with a heart-definitely-bowed-down mood and the circles
beneath my eyes darker than ever that I drove back next day in what
is known as the quiet evenfall. I remember Jeeves saying something
to me once about the heavy and the weary weight of this
unintelligible world ... not his own, I gathered, but from the
works of somebody called Wordsworth, if I caught the name correctly
... and it seemed to me rather a good way of describing the
depressing feeling you get when the soup is about to close over you
and no life-belt is in sight. I was conscious of this heavy and
weary weight some years ago, that time when my cousins Eustace and
Claude without notifying me inserted twenty-three cats in my
bedroom, and I had it again, in spades, at the present juncture.
Consider the facts. I had gone up to London to wrestle in
solitude with the following problems:
(a) How am I to get out of marrying Madeline Bassett?
(b) How am I to restore the porringer to L. P. Runkle before
the constabulary come piling on the back of my neck?
(c) How is the ancestor to extract that money from Runkle?
(d) How is Ginger to marry Magnolia Glendennon while betrothed
to Florence?
and I was returning with all four still in status quo. For a
night and day I had been giving them the cream of the Wooster
brain, and for all I had accomplished I might have been the aged
relative trying to solve the Observer crossword puzzle.
Arriving at journey's end, I steered the car into the drive.
About half-way along it there was a tricky right-hand turn, and I
had slowed down to negotiate this, when a dim figure appeared
before me, a voice said, 'Hoy!', and I saw that it was Ginger.
He seemed annoyed about something. His 'Hoy!' had had a note of
reproach in it, as far as it is possible to get the note of
reproach into a 'Hoy!', and as he drew near and shoved his torso
through the window I received the distinct impression that he was
displeased.
His opening words confirmed this.
'Bertie, you abysmal louse, what's kept you all this time? When
I lent you my car, I didn't expect you'd come back at two o'clock
in the morning.'
'It's only half-past seven.'
He seemed amazed.
'Is that all? I thought it was later. So much has been
happening.'
'What has been happening?'
'No time to tell you now. I'm in a hurry.'
It was at this point that I noticed something in his appearance
which I had overlooked. A trifle, but I'm rather observant.
'You've got egg in your hair,' I said.
'Of course I've got egg in my hair,' he said, his manner
betraying impatience. 'What did you expect me to have in my hair,
Chanel Number Five?'
'Did somebody throw an egg at you?'
'Everybody threw eggs at everybody. Correction. Some of them
threw turnips and potatoes.'
'You mean the meeting broke up in disorder, as the expression
is?'
'I don't suppose any meeting in the history of English politics
has ever broken up in more disorder. Eggs flew hither and thither.
The air was dark with vegetables of every description. Sidcup got a
black eye. Somebody plugged him with a potato.'
I found myself in two minds. On the one hand I felt a pang of
regret for having missed what had all the earmarks of having been a
political meeting of the most rewarding kind: on the other, it was
like rare and refreshing fruit to hear that Spode had got hit in
the eye with a potato. I was conscious of an awed respect for the
marksman who had accomplished this feat. A potato, being so nobbly
in shape, can be aimed accurately only by a master hand.
'Tell me more,' I said, well pleased.
'Tell you more be blowed. I've got to get up to London. We want
to be there bright and early tomorrow in order to inspect
registrars and choose the best one.'
This didn't sound like Florence, who, if she ever gets through
an engagement without breaking it, is sure to insist on a wedding
with bishops, bridesmaids, full choral effects, and a reception
afterwards. A sudden thought struck me, and I think I may have
gasped. Somebody made a noise like a dying soda-water syphon and it
was presumably me.
'When you say "we", do you mean you and M. Glendennon?'
'Who else?'
'But how?'
'Never mind how.'
'But I do mind how. You were Problem (d) on my list, and I want
to know how you have been solved. I gather that Florence has
remitted your sentence -'
'She has, in words of unmistakable clarity. Get out of that
car.'
'But why?'
'Because if you aren't out of it in two seconds, I'm going to
pull you out.'
'I mean why did she r. your s.?'
'Ask Jeeves,' he said, and attaching himself to the collar of
my coat he removed me from the automobile like a stevedore hoisting
a sack of grain. He took my place at the wheel, and disappeared
down the drive to keep his tryst with the little woman, who
presumably awaited him at some prearranged spot with the bags and
baggage.
He left me in a condition which can best be described as
befogged, bewildered, mystified, confused and perplexed. All I had
got out of him was (a) that the debate had not been conducted in an
atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, (b) that at its conclusion
Florence had forbidden the banns and (c) that if I wanted further
information Jeeves would supply it. A little more than the charmers
got out of the deaf adder, but not much. I felt like a barrister,
as it might be Ma McCorkadale, who has been baffled by an
unsatisfactory witness.
However, he had spoken of Jeeves as a fount of information, so
my first move on reaching the drawing-room and finding no one there
was to put forefinger to bell button and push.
Seppings answered the summons. He and I have been buddies from
boyhood - mine, of course, not his - and as a rule when we meet
conversation flows like water, mainly on the subject of the weather
and the state of his lumbago, but this was no time for idle
chatter.
'Seppings,' I said, 'I want Jeeves. Where is he?'
'In the Servants' Hall, sir, comforting the parlourmaid.'
I took him to allude to the employee whose gong-work I had
admired on my first evening, and, pressing though my business was,
it seemed only humane to offer a word of sympathy for whatever her
misfortunes might be.
'Had bad news, has she?'
'No, sir, she was struck by a turnip.'
'Where?'
'In the lower ribs, sir.'
'I mean where did this happen?'
'At the Town Hall, sir, in the later stages of the debate.'
I drew in the breath sharply. More and more I was beginning to
realize that the meeting I had missed had been marked by passions
which recalled the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
'I myself, sir, narrowly escaped being hit by a tomato. It
whizzed past my ear.'
'You shock me profoundly, Seppings. I don't wonder you're pale
and trembling.' And indeed he was, like a badly set blancmange.
'What caused all this turmoil?'
'Mr Winship's speech, sir.'
This surprised me. I could readily believe that any speech of
Ginger's would be well below the mark set by Demosthenes, if that
really was the fellow's name, but surely not so supremely lousy as
to start his audience throwing eggs and vegetables; and I was about
to institute further enquiries, when Seppings sidled to the door,
saying that he would inform Mr Jeeves of my desire to confer with
him. And in due season the hour produced the man, as the expression
is.
'You wished to see me, sir?' he said.
'You can put it even stronger, Jeeves. I yearned to see you.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'Just now I met Ginger in the drive.'
'Yes, sir, he informed me that he was going there to await your
return.'
'He tells me he is no longer betrothed to Miss Craye, being now
affianced to Miss Glendennon. And when I asked him how this switch
had come about, he said that you would explain.'
'I shall be glad to do so, sir. You wish a complete report?'
'That's right. Omit no detail, however slight.'
He was silent for a space. Marshalling his thoughts, no doubt.
Then he got down to it.
'The importance attached by the electorate to the debate,' he
began, 'was very evident. An audience of considerable size had
assembled in the Town Hall. The Mayor and Corporation were there,
together with the flower of Market Snodsbury's aristocracy and a
rougher element in cloth caps and turtleneck sweaters who should
never have been admitted.'
I had to rebuke him at this point.
'Bit snobbish, that, Jeeves, what? You are a little too
inclined to judge people by their clothes. Turtleneck sweaters are
royal raiment when they're worn for virtue's sake, and a cloth cap
may hide an honest heart. Probably frightfully good chaps, if one
had got to know them.'
'I would prefer not to know them, sir. It was they who
subsequently threw eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and turnips.'
I had to concede that he had a point there.
'True,' I said. 'I was forgetting that. All right, Jeeves.
Carry on.'
'The proceedings opened with a rendering of the national anthem
by the boys and girls of Market Snodsbury element
ary school.'
'Pretty ghastly, I imagine?'
'Somewhat revolting, sir.'
'And then?'
'The Mayor made a short address, introducing the contestants,
and Mrs McCorkadale rose to speak. She was wearing a smart coat in
fine quality repp over a long-sleeved frock of figured marocain
pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with -'
'Skip all that, Jeeves.'
'I am sorry, sir. I thought you wished every detail, however
slight.'
'Only when they're ... what's the word?'
'Pertinent, sir?'
'That's right. Take the McCorkadale's outer crust as read. How
was her speech?'
'Extremely telling, in spite of a good deal of heckling.'
'That wouldn't put her off her stroke.'
'No, sir. She impressed me as being of a singularly forceful
character.'
'Me, too.'
'You have met the lady, sir?'
'For a few minutes - which, however, were plenty. She spoke at
some length?'
'Yes, sir. If you would care to read her remarks? I took down
both speeches in shorthand.'
'Later on, perhaps.'
'At any time that suits you, sir.'
'And how was the applause? Hearty? Or sporadic?'
'On one side of the hall extremely hearty. The rougher element
appeared to be composed in almost equal parts of her supporters and
this had done it. I don't know how many of my public have ever been
slapped between the eyes with a wet fish, but those who have will
appreciate my emotions as the seventh Earl of Sidcup delivered this
devastating bulletin. Everything started to go all wobbly, and
through what is known as a murky mist I seemed to be watching a
quivering-at-the-edges seventh Earl performing the sort of
gyrations travelled friends have told me the Ouled Nail dancers do
in Cairo.
I was stunned. It seemed to me incredible that Madeline Bassett
should have blown the whistle on their engagement. Then I
remembered that at the time when she had plighted her troth Spode
was dangling a countess's coronet before her eyes, and the thing
became more understandable. I mean, take away the coronet and what
had you got? Just Spode. Not good enough, a girl would naturally
feel.
He, meanwhile, was going on to explain why he found it so
bizarre that Madeline should be contemplating marrying me, and
almost immediately I saw that I had been mistaken in supposing that
he was not hostile. He spoke from between clenched teeth, and that
always tells the story.
'As far as I can see, Wooster, you are without attraction of
any kind. Intelligence? No. Looks? No. Efficiency? No. You can't
even steal an umbrella without getting caught. All that can be said
for you is that you don't wear a moustache. They tell me you did
grow one once, but mercifully shaved it off. That is to your
credit, but it is a small thing to weigh in the balance against all
your other defects. When one considers how numerous these are, one
can only suppose that it is your shady record of stealing anything
you can lay your hands on that appeals to Madeline's romantic soul.
She is marrying you in the hope of reforming you, and let me tell
you, Wooster, that if you disappoint that hope, you will be sorry.
She may have rejected me, but I shall always love her as I have
done since she was so high, and I shall do my utmost to see that
her gentle heart is not broken by any sneaking son of a what not
who looks like a chorus boy in a touring revue playing the small
towns and cannot see anything of value without pocketing it. You
will probably think you are safe from me when you are doing your
stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for larceny, but I shall be waiting for
you when you come out and I shall tear you limb from limb. And,' he
added, for his was a one-track mind, 'dance on the fragments in
hobnailed boots.'
He paused, produced his cigarette case, asked me if I had a
match, thanked me when I gave him one, and withdrew.
He left behind him a Bertram Wooster whom the dullest eye could
have spotted as not being at the peak of his form. The prospect of
being linked for life to a girl who would come down to breakfast
and put her hands over my eyes and say 'Guess who' had given my
morale a sickening wallop, reducing me to the level of one of those
wee sleekit timorous cowering beasties Jeeves tells me the poet
Burns used to write about. It is always my policy in times of
crisis to try to look on the bright side, but I make one proviso -
viz. that there has to be a bright side to look on, and in the
present case there wasn't even the sniff of one.
As I sat there draining the bitter cup, there were noises off
stage and my meditations were interrupted by the return of the old
ancestor. Well, when I say return, she came whizzing in but didn't
stop, just whizzed through, and I saw, for I am pretty quick at
noticing things, that she was upset about something. Reasoning
closely, I deduced that her interview with L. P. Runkle must have
gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley.
And so it proved when she bobbed up again some little time
later. Her first observation was that L. P. Runkle was an
illegitimate offspring to end all illegitimate offsprings, and I
hastened to commiserate with her. I could have done with a bit of
commiseration myself, but Women and Children First is always the
Wooster slogan.
'No luck?' I said.
'None.'
'Wouldn't part?'
'Not a penny.'
'You mentioned that without his co-operation Tuppy and Angela's
wedding bells would not ring out?'
'Of course I did. And he said it was a great mistake for young
people to marry before they knew their own minds.'
'You could have pointed out that Tuppy and Angela have been
engaged for two years.'
'I did.'
'What did he say to that?'
'He said "Not nearly long enough".'
'So what are you going to do?'
'I've done it,' said the old ancestor. 'I pinched his
porringer.'
I goggled at her, one hundred per cent non-plussed. She had
spoken with the exuberance of an aunt busily engaged in patting
herself between the shoulder-blades for having done something
particularly clever, but I could make nothing of her statement.
This habit of speaking in riddles seemed to be growing on her.
'You what?' I said. 'You pinched his what?'
'His porringer. I told you about it the day you got here. Don't
you remember? That silver thing he came to try to sell to Tom.'
She had refreshed my memory. I recalled the conversation to
which she referred. I had asked her why she was entertaining in her
home a waste product like L. P. Runkle, and she had said that he
had come hoping to sell Uncle Tom a silver something for his
collection and she had got him to stay on in order to soften him up
with Anatole's cooking and put to him, when softened up, her
request for cash for Tuppy.
'When he turned me down just now, it suddenly occurred to me
that if I got hold of the thing and told him he wouldn't get it
back unless he made a satisfactory settlement, I would have a
valuable bargaining point and we could discuss the matter further
at any time that suited him.'
I was ap-what-is-it. Forget my own name next. Appalled, that's
the word, though shocked to the core would be about as good;
nothing much in it, really. I hadn't read any of those etiquette
books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that
the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two
at carrying-ons of this description. The chapter on Hints To
Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning
them that it wasn't the done thing to invite people to the home and
having got them settled in to pinch their porringers.
'But good Lord!' I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it,
shocked to the core.
'Now what?'
'The man is under your roof.'
'Did you expect him to be on it?'
'He has eaten your salt.'
'Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor
probably forbids it.'
'You can't do this.'
'I know I can't, but I have,' she said, just like the chap in
the story, and I saw it would be fruitless or bootless to go on
arguing. It rarely is with aunts - if you're their nephew, I mean,
because they were at your side all through your formative years and
know what an ass you were then and can't believe that anything that
you may say later is worth listening to. I shouldn't be at all
surprised if Jeeves's three aunts don't shut him up when he starts
talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn't
know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the
ground.
Ceasing to expostulate, therefore, if expostulate is the word I
want, I went to the bell and pressed it, and when she asked for
footnotes throwing a light on why I did this, I told her I proposed
to place the matter in the hands of a higher power.
'I'm ringing for Jeeves.'
'You'll only get Seppings.'
'Seppings will provide Jeeves.'
'And what do you think Jeeves can do?'
'Make you see reason.'
'I doubt it.'
'Well, it's worth a try.'
Further chit-chat was suspended till Jeeves arrived and silence
fell except for the ancestor snorting from time to time and self
breathing more heavily than usual, for I was much stirred. It
always stirs a nephew to discover that a loved aunt does not know
the difference between right and wrong. There is a difference ...
at my private school Arnold Abney MA used to rub it into the
student body both Sundays and weekdays ... but apparently nobody
had told the aged relative about it, with the result that she could
purloin people's porringers without a yip from her conscience.
Shook me a bit, I confess.
When Jeeves blew in, it cheered me to see the way his head
stuck out at the back, for that's where the brain is, and what was
needed here was a man with plenty of the old grey matter who would
put his points so that even a fermenting aunt would have to be
guided by him.
'Well, here's Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Tell him the facts
and I'll bet he says I've done the only possible thing and can
carry on along the lines I sketched out.'
I might have risked a fiver on this at say twelve to eight, but
it didn't seem fitting. But telling Jeeves the facts was a good
idea, and I did so without delay, being careful to lay a proper
foundation.
'Jeeves,' I said.
'Sir?' he responded.
'Sorry to interrupt you again. Were you reading Spinoza?'
'No, sir, I was writing a letter to my Uncle Charlie.'
'Charlie Silversmith,' I explained in an aside to the ancestor.
'Butler at Deverill Hall. One of the best.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'I know few men whom I esteem more highly than your Uncle
Charlie. Well, we won't keep you long. It's just that another
problem presenting certain points of interest has come up. In a
recent conversation I revealed to you the situation relating to
Tuppy Glossop and L. P. Runkle. You recall?'
'Yes, sir. Madam was hoping to extract a certain sum of money
from Mr Runkle on Mr Glossop's behalf.'
'Exactly. Well, it didn't come off.'
'I am sorry to hear that, sir.'
'But not, I imagine, surprised. If I remember, you considered
it a hundred to one shot.'
'Approximately that, sir.'
'Runkle being short of bowels of compassion.'
'Precisely, sir. A twenty-minute egg.'
Here the ancestor repeated her doubts with regard to L. P.
Runkle's legitimacy, and would, I think, have developed the theme
had I not shushed her down with a raised hand.
'She pleaded in vain,' I said. 'He sent her away with a flea in
her ear. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he laughed her to
scorn.'
'The superfatted old son of a bachelor,' the ancestor
interposed, and once more I shushed her down.
'Well, you know what happens when you do that sort of thing to
a woman of spirit. Thoughts of reprisals fill her mind. And so,
coming to the nub, she decided to purloin Runkle's porringer. But I
mustn't mislead you. She did this not as an act of vengeance, if
you know what I mean, but in order to have a bargaining point when
she renewed her application. "Brass up," she would have said when
once more urging him to scare the moths out of his pocketbook, "or
you won't get back your porringer". Do I make myself clear?'
'Perfectly clear, sir. I find you very lucid.'
'Now first it will have to be explained to you what a porringer
is, and here I am handicapped by not having the foggiest notion
myself, except that it's silver and old and the sort of thing Uncle
Tom has in his collection. Runkle was hoping to sell it to him.
Could you supply any details?' I asked the aged relative.
She knitted the brows a bit, and said she couldn't do much in
that direction.
'All I know is that it was made in the time of Charles the
Second by some Dutchman or other.'
'Then I think I know the porringer to which you allude, sir,'
said Jeeves, his face lighting up as much as it ever lights up, he
for reasons of his own preferring at all times to preserve the
impassivity of a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's. 'It was featured in a
Sotheby's catalogue at which I happened to be glancing not long
ago. Would it,' he asked the ancestor, 'be a silver-gilt porringer
on a circular moulded foot, the lower part chased with acanthus
foliage, with beaded scroll handles, the cover surmounted by a
foliage on a rosette of swirling acanthus leaves, the stand of
tazza form on circular detachable feet with acanthus border joined
to a multifoil plate, the palin top with upcurved rim?'
He paused for a reply, but the ancestor did not speak
immediately, her aspect that of one who has been run over by a
municipal tram. Odd, really, because she must have been listening
to that sort of thing from Uncle Tom for years. Finally she mumbled
that she wouldn't be surprised or she wouldn't wonder or something
like that.
'Your guess is as good as mine,' she said.
'I fancy it must be the same, madam. You mentioned a workman of
Dutch origin. Would the name be Hans Conrael Brechtel of the
Hague?'
'I couldn't tell you. I know it wasn't Smith or Jones or
Robinson, and that's as far as I go. But what's all this in aid of
? What does it matter if the stand is of tazza form or if the palin
top has an upcurved rim?'
'Exactly,' I said, thoroughly concurring. 'Or if the credit for
these tazza forms and palin tops has to be chalked up to Hans
Conrael Brechtel of the Hague. The point, Jeeves, is not what
particular porringer the ancestor has pinched, but how far she was
justified in pinching any porringer at all when its owner was a
guest of hers. I hold that it was a breach of hospitality and the
thing must be returned. Am I right?'
'Well, sir ...'
'Go on, Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Say I'm a crook who ought
to be drummed out of the Market Snodsbury Ladies Social and
Cultural Garden Club.'
'Not at all, madam.'
'Then what were you going to say when you hesitated?'
'Merely that in my opinion no useful end will be served by
retaining the object.'
'I don't follow you. How about that bargaining point?'
'It will, I fear, avail you little, madam. As I understand Mr
Wooster, the sum you are hoping to obtain from Mr Runkle amounts to
a good many thousand pounds.'
'Fifty at least, if not a hundred.'
'Then I cannot envisage him complying with your demands. Mr
Runkle is a shrewd financier -'
'Born out of wedlock.'
'Very possibly you are right, madam, nevertheless he is a man
well versed in weighing profit and loss. According to Sotheby's
catalogue the price at which the object was sold at the auction
sale was nine thousand pounds. He will scarcely disburse a hundred
or even fifty thousand in order to recover it.'
'Of course he won't,' I said, as enchanted with his lucidity as
he had been with mine. It was the sort of thing you have to pay
topnotchers at the Bar a king's ransom for. 'He'll simply say "Easy
come, easy go" and write it off as a business loss, possibly
consulting his legal adviser as to whether he can deduct it from
his income tax. Thank you, Jeeves. You've straightened everything
out in your customary masterly manner. You're a ... what were you
saying the other day about Daniel somebody?'
'A Daniel come to judgment, sir?'
'That was it. You're a Daniel come to judgment.'
'It is very kind of you to say so, sir.'
'Not at all. Well-deserved tribute.'
I shot a glance at the aged relative. It is notoriously
difficult to change the trend of an aunt's mind when that mind is
made up about this or that, but I could see at a g. that Jeeves had
done it. I hadn't expected her to look pleased, and she didn't, but
it was evident that she had accepted what is sometimes called the
inevitable. I would describe her as not having a word to say, had
she not at this moment said one, suitable enough for the hunting
field but on the strong side for mixed company. I registered it in
my memory as something to say to Spode some time, always provided
it was on the telephone.
'I suppose you're right, Jeeves,' she said, heavy-hearted,
though bearing up stoutly. 'It seemed a good idea at the time, but
I agree with you that it isn't as watertight as I thought it. It's
so often that way with one's golden dreams. The -'
' - best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,' I said
helping her out. 'See the poet Burns. I've often wondered why
Scotsmen say "gang". I asked you once, Jeeves, if you recall, and
you said they had not confided in you. You were saying, ancestor?'
'I was about to say -'
'Or, for that matter, "agley".'
'I was about to say -'
'Or "aft" for "often".'
'I was about to say,' said the relative, having thrown her Rex
Stout at me, fortunately with a less accurate aim than the other
time, 'that there's nothing to be done but for me to put the thing
back in Runkle's room where I took it from.'
'Whence I took it' would have been better, but it was not to
comment on her prose style that I interposed. I was thinking that
if she was allowed to do the putting back, she might quite possibly
change her mind on the way to Runkle's room and decide to stick to
the loot after all. Jeeves's arguments had been convincing to the
last drop, but you can never be sure that the effect of convincing
arguments won't wear off, especially with aunts who don't know the
difference between right and wrong, and it might be that she would
take the view that if she pocketed the porringer and kept it among
her souvenirs, she would at least be saving something from the
wreck. 'Always difficult to know what to give Tom for his
birthday,' she might say to herself. 'This will be just the thing.'
'I'll do it,' I said. 'Unless you'd rather, Jeeves.'
'No, thank you, sir.'
'Only take a minute of your time.'
'No, thank you, sir.'
'Then you may leave us, Jeeves. Much obliged for your Daniel
come to judgmenting.'
'A pleasure, sir.'
'Give Uncle Charlie my love.'
'I will indeed, sir.'
As the door closed behind him, I started to make my plans and
dispositions, as I believe the word is, and I found the blood
relation docile and helpful. Runkle's room, she told me, was the
one known as the Blue Room, and the porringer should be inserted in
the left top drawer of the chest of drawers, whence she had removed
it. I asked if she was sure he was still in the hammock, and she
said he must be, because on her departure he was bound to have gone
to sleep again. Taking a line through the cat Augustus, I found
this plausible. With these traumatic symplegia cases waking is
never more than a temporary thing. I have known Augustus to resume
his slumbers within fifteen seconds of having had a shopping bag
containing tins of cat food fall on him. A stifled oath, and he was
off to dreamland once more.
As I climbed the stairs, I was impressed by the fact that L. P.
Runkle had been given the Blue Room, for in this house it amounted
to getting star billing. It was the biggest and most luxurious of
the rooms allotted to bachelors. I once suggested to the aged
relative that I be put there, but all she said was 'You?' and the
conversation turned to other topics. Runkle having got it in spite
of the presence on the premises of a seventh Earl showed how
determined the a. r. had been that no stone should be left unturned
and no avenue unexplored in her efforts to soften him up; and it
seemed ironical that all her carefully thought-out plans should
have gone agley. Just shows Burns knew what he was talking about.
You can generally rely on these poets to hit the mark and entitle
themselves to a cigar or coconut according to choice.
The old sweats will remember, though later arrivals will have
to be told, that this was not the first time I had gone on a secret
mission to the Blue Room. That other visit, the old sweats will
recall, had ended in disaster and not knowing which way to look,
for Mrs Homer Cream, the well-known writer of suspense novels, had
found me on the floor with a chair round my neck, and it had not
been easy to explain. This was no doubt why on the present occasion
I approached the door with emotions somewhat similar to those I had
had in the old days when approaching that of Arnold Abney MA at the
conclusion of morning prayers. A voice seemed to whisper in my ear
that beyond that door there lurked something that wasn't going to
do me a bit of good.
The voice was perfectly right. It had got its facts correct
first shot. What met my eyes as I entered was L. P. Runkle asleep
on the bed, and with my customary quickness I divined what must
have happened. After being cornered there by the old ancestor he
must have come to the conclusion that a hammock out in the middle
of a lawn, with access to it from all directions, was no place for
a man who wanted peace and seclusion, and that these were to be
obtained only in his bedroom. Thither, accordingly, he had gone,
and there he was.
Voila tout, as one might say if one had made a study of the
French language.
The sight of this sleeping beauty had, of course, given me a
nasty start, causing my heart to collide rather violently with my
front teeth, but it was only for a moment that I was unequal to
what I have heard Jeeves call the intellectual pressure of the
situation. It is pretty generally recognized in the circles in
which I move that Bertram Wooster, though he may be down, is never
out, the betting being odds on that, given time to collect his
thoughts and stop his head spinning, he will rise on stepping
stones of his dead self to higher things, as the fellow said, and
it was so now. I would have preferred, of course, to operate in a
room wholly free from the presence of L. P. Runkle, but I realized
that as long as he remained asleep there was nothing to keep me
from carrying on. All that was required was that my activities
should be conducted in absolute silence. And it was thus that I was
conducting them, more like a spectre or wraith than a chartered
member of the Drones Club, when the air was rent, as the expression
is, by a sharp yowl such as you hear when a cougar or a snow
leopard stubs its toe on a rock, and I became aware that I had
trodden on the cat Augustus, who had continued to follow me, still,
I suppose, under the mistaken impression that I had kippered
herrings on my person and might at any moment start loosening up.
In normal circumstances I would have hastened to make my
apologies and to endeavour by tickling him behind the ear to apply
balm to his wounded feelings, but at this moment L. P. Runkle sat
up, said 'Wah-wah-wah', rubbed his eyes, gave me an unpleasant look
with them and asked me what the devil I was doing in his room.
It was not an easy question to answer. There had been nothing
in our relations since we first swam into each other's ken to make
it seem likely that I had come to smooth his pillow or ask him if
he would like a cooling drink, and I did not put forward these
explanations. I was thinking how right the ancestor had been in
predicting that, if aroused suddenly, he would wake up cross. His
whole demeanour was that of a man who didn't much like the human
race as a whole but was particularly allergic to Woosters. Not even
Spode could have made his distaste for them plainer.
I decided to see what could be done with suavity. It had
answered well in the case of Ginger, and there was no saying that
it might not help to ease the current situation.
'I'm sorry,' I said with an enchanting smile, 'I'm afraid I
woke you.'
'Yes, you did. And stop grinning at me like a half-witted ape.'
'Right-ho,' I said. I removed the enchanting smile. It came off
quite easily. 'I don't wonder you're annoyed. But I'm more to be
pitied than censured. I inadvertently trod on the cat.'
A look of alarm spread over his face. It had a long way to go,
but it spread all right.
'Hat?' he quavered, and I could see that he feared for the well-
being of his Panama with the pink ribbon.
I lost no time in reassuring him.
'Not hat. Cat.'
'What cat?'
'Oh, haven't you met? Augustus his name is, though for purposes
of conversation this is usually shortened to Gus. He and I have
been buddies since he was a kitten. He must have been following me
when I came in here.'
It was an unfortunate way of putting it, for it brought him
back to his original theme.
'Why the devil did you come in here?'
A lesser man than Bertram Wooster would have been non-plussed,
and I don't mind admitting that I was, too, for about a couple of
ticks. But as I stood shuffling the feet and twiddling the fingers
I caught sight of that camera of his standing on an adjacent table,
and I got one of those inspirations you get occasionally.
Shakespeare and Bums and even Oliver Wendell Holmes probably used
to have them all the time, but self not so often. In fact, this was
the first that had come my way for some weeks.
'Aunt Dahlia sent me to ask you if you would come and take a
few photographs of her and the house and all that sort of thing, so
that she'll have them to look at in the long winter evenings. You
know how long the winter evenings get nowadays.'
The moment I had said it I found myself speculating as to
whether the inspiration had been as hot as I had supposed. I mean,
this man had just had a conference with the old ancestor which,
unlike those between ministers of state, had not been conducted in
an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, and he might be thinking it
odd that so soon after its conclusion she should be wanting him to
take photographs of her. But all was well. No doubt he looked on
her request as what is known as an olive branch. Anyway, he was all
animation and eagerness to co-operate.
'I'll be right down,' he said. 'Tell her I'll be right down.'
Having hidden the porringer in my room and locked the door, I
went back to the aged relative and found her with Jeeves. She
expressed relief at seeing me.
'Oh, there you are, my beautiful bounding Bertie. Thank
goodness you didn't go to Runkle's room. Jeeves tells me Seppings
met Runkle on the stairs and he asked him to bring him a cup of tea
in half an hour. He said he was going to lie down. You might have
run right into him.'
I laughed one of those hollow, mirthless ones.
'Jeeves speaks too late, old ancestor. I did run into him.'
'You mean he was there?'
'With his hair in a braid.'
'What did you do?'
'I told him you had asked me to ask him to come and take some
photographs.'
'Quick thinking.'
'I always think like lightning.'
'And did he swallow it?'
'He appeared to. He said he would be right down.'
'Well, I'm damned if I'm going to smile.'
Whether I would have pleaded with her to modify this stern
resolve and at least show a portion of her front teeth when Runkle
pressed the button, I cannot say, for as she spoke my thoughts were
diverted. A sudden query presented itself. What, I asked myself,
was keeping L. P. Runkle? He had said he would be right down, but
quite a time had elapsed and no sign of him. I was toying with the
idea that on a warm afternoon like this a man of his build might
have had a fit of some kind, when there came from the stairs the
sound of clumping feet, and he was with us.
But a very different L. P. Runkle from the man who had told me
he would be right down. Then he had been all sunny and beaming, the
amateur photographer who was not only going to make a pest of
himself by taking photographs but had actually been asked to make a
pest of himself in this manner, which seldom happens to amateur
photographers. Now he was cold and hard like a picnic egg, and he
couldn't have looked at me with more loathing if I really had
trodden on his Panama hat.
'Mrs Travers!'
His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger
seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood
oranges and Brussels sprouts. I saw the ancestor stiffen, and I
knew she was about to go into her grande dame act. This relative,
though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn
in a flash into a carbon copy of a Duchess of the old school
reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so
remarkable is that she doesn't have to use a lorgnette, just does
it all with the power of the human eye. I think girls in her day
used to learn the trick at their finishing schools.
'Will you kindly not bellow at me, Mr Runkle. I am not deaf.
What is it?'
The aristocratic ice in her tone sent a cold shiver down my
spine, but in L. P. Runkle she had picked a tough customer to try
to freeze. He apologized for having bellowed, but briefly and with
no real contrition. He then proceeded to deal with her query as to
what it was, and with a powerful effort forced himself to speak
quite quietly. Not exactly like a cooing pigeon, but quietly.
'I wonder if you remember, Mrs Travers, a silver porringer I
showed you on my arrival here.'
'I do.'
'Very valuable.'
'So you told me.'
'I kept it in the top left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers
in my bedroom. It did not occur to me that there was any necessity
to hide it. I took the honesty of everybody under your roof for
granted.'
'Naturally.'
'Even when I found that Mr Wooster was one of my fellow guests
I took no precautions. It was a fatal blunder. He has just stolen
it.'
I suppose it's pretty much of a strain to keep up that grande
dame stuff for any length of time, involving as it does rigidity of
the facial muscles and the spinal column, for at these words the
ancestor called it a day and reverted to the Quorn-and-Pytchleyness
of her youth.
'Don't be a damned fool, Runkle. You're talking rot. Bertie
would never dream of doing such a thing, would you, Bertie?'
'Not in a million years.'
'The man's an ass.'
'One might almost say a silly ass.'
'Comes of sleeping all the time.'
'I believe that's the trouble.'
'Addles the brain.'
'Must, I imagine. It's the same thing with Gus the cat. I love
Gus like a brother, but after years of non-stop sleep he's got
about as much genuine intelligence as a Cabinet minister.'
'I hope Runkle hasn't annoyed you with his preposterous
allegations?'
'No, no, old ancestor, I'm not angry, just terribly terribly
hurt.'
You'd have thought all this would have rendered Runkle a spent
force and a mere shell of his former self, but his eye was not
dimmed nor his natural force abated. Turning to the door, he paused
there to add a few words.
'I disagree with you, Mrs Travers, in the view you take of your
nephew's honesty. I prefer to be guided by Lord Sidcup, who assures
me that Mr Wooster invariably steals anything that is not firmly
fastened to the floor. It was only by the merest chance, Lord
Sidcup tells me, that at their first meeting he did not make away
with an umbrella belonging to Sir Watkyn Bassett, and from there he
has, as one might put it, gone from strength to strength.
Umbrellas, cow-creamers, amber statuettes, cameras, all are grist
to his mill. I was unfortunately asleep when he crept into my room,
and he had plenty of time before I woke to do what he had come for.
It was only some minutes after he had slunk out that it occurred to
me to look in the top left-hand drawer of my chest of drawers. My
suspicions were confirmed. The drawer was empty. He had got away
with the swag. But I am a man of action. I have sent your butler to
the police station to bring a constable to search Wooster's room.
I, until he arrives, propose to stand outside it, making sure that
he does not go in and tamper with the evidence.'
Having said which in the most unpleasant of vocal deliveries,
L. P. Runkle became conspic. by his a., and the ancestor spoke with
considerable eloquence on the subject of fat slobs of dubious
parentage who had the immortal crust to send her butler on errands.
I, too, was exercised by the concluding portion of his remarks.
'I don't like that,' I said, addressing Jeeves, who during the
recent proceedings had been standing in the background giving a
lifelike impersonation of somebody who wasn't there.
'Sir?'
'If the fuzz search my room, I'm sunk.'
'Have no anxiety, sir. A police officer is not permitted to
enter private property without authority, nor do the regulations
allow him to ask the owner of such property for permission to
enter.'
'You're sure of that?'
'Yes, sir.'
Well, that was a crumb of comfort, but it would be deceiving my
public if I said that Bertram Wooster was his usual nonchalant
self. Too many things had been happening one on top of the other
for him to be the carefree boulevardler one likes to see. If I
hoped to clarify the various situations which were giving me the
pip and erase the dark circles already beginning to form beneath
the eyes, it would, I saw, be necessary for me to marshal my
thoughts.
'Jeeves,' I said, leading him from the room, 'I must marshal my
thoughts.'
'Certainly, sir, if you wish.'
'And I can't possibly do it here with crises turning
handsprings on every side. Can you think of a good excuse for me to
pop up to London for the night? A few hours alone in the peaceful
surroundings of the flat are what I need. I must concentrate,
concentrate.'
'But do you require an excuse, sir?'
'It's better to have one. Aunt Dahlia is on a sticky wicket and
would be hurt if I deserted her now unless I had some good reason.
I can't let her down.'
'The sentiment does you credit, sir.'
'Thank you, Jeeves. Can you think of anything?'
'You have been summoned for jury duty, sir.'
'Don't they let you have a longish notice for that?'
'Yes, sir, but when the post arrived containing the letter from
the authorities, I forgot to give it to you, and only delivered it
a moment ago. Fortunately it was not too late. Would you be
intending to leave immediately?'
'If not sooner. I'll borrow Ginger's car.'
'You will miss the debate, sir.'
'The what?'
'The debate between Mr Winship and his opponent. It takes place
tomorrow night.'
'What time?'
'It is scheduled for a quarter to seven.'
'Taking how long?'
'Perhaps an hour.'
'Then expect me back at about seven-thirty. The great thing in
life, Jeeves, if we wish to be happy and prosperous, is to miss as
many political debates as possible. You wouldn't care to come with
me, would you?'
'No, thank you, sir. I am particularly anxious to hear Mr
Winship's speech.'
'He'll probably only say "Er",' I riposted rather cleverly.
It was with a heart-definitely-bowed-down mood and the circles
beneath my eyes darker than ever that I drove back next day in what
is known as the quiet evenfall. I remember Jeeves saying something
to me once about the heavy and the weary weight of this
unintelligible world ... not his own, I gathered, but from the
works of somebody called Wordsworth, if I caught the name correctly
... and it seemed to me rather a good way of describing the
depressing feeling you get when the soup is about to close over you
and no life-belt is in sight. I was conscious of this heavy and
weary weight some years ago, that time when my cousins Eustace and
Claude without notifying me inserted twenty-three cats in my
bedroom, and I had it again, in spades, at the present juncture.
Consider the facts. I had gone up to London to wrestle in
solitude with the following problems:
(a) How am I to get out of marrying Madeline Bassett?
(b) How am I to restore the porringer to L. P. Runkle before
the constabulary come piling on the back of my neck?
(c) How is the ancestor to extract that money from Runkle?
(d) How is Ginger to marry Magnolia Glendennon while betrothed
to Florence?
and I was returning with all four still in status quo. For a
night and day I had been giving them the cream of the Wooster
brain, and for all I had accomplished I might have been the aged
relative trying to solve the Observer crossword puzzle.
Arriving at journey's end, I steered the car into the drive.
About half-way along it there was a tricky right-hand turn, and I
had slowed down to negotiate this, when a dim figure appeared
before me, a voice said, 'Hoy!', and I saw that it was Ginger.
He seemed annoyed about something. His 'Hoy!' had had a note of
reproach in it, as far as it is possible to get the note of
reproach into a 'Hoy!', and as he drew near and shoved his torso
through the window I received the distinct impression that he was
displeased.
His opening words confirmed this.
'Bertie, you abysmal louse, what's kept you all this time? When
I lent you my car, I didn't expect you'd come back at two o'clock
in the morning.'
'It's only half-past seven.'
He seemed amazed.
'Is that all? I thought it was later. So much has been
happening.'
'What has been happening?'
'No time to tell you now. I'm in a hurry.'
It was at this point that I noticed something in his appearance
which I had overlooked. A trifle, but I'm rather observant.
'You've got egg in your hair,' I said.
'Of course I've got egg in my hair,' he said, his manner
betraying impatience. 'What did you expect me to have in my hair,
Chanel Number Five?'
'Did somebody throw an egg at you?'
'Everybody threw eggs at everybody. Correction. Some of them
threw turnips and potatoes.'
'You mean the meeting broke up in disorder, as the expression
is?'
'I don't suppose any meeting in the history of English politics
has ever broken up in more disorder. Eggs flew hither and thither.
The air was dark with vegetables of every description. Sidcup got a
black eye. Somebody plugged him with a potato.'
I found myself in two minds. On the one hand I felt a pang of
regret for having missed what had all the earmarks of having been a
political meeting of the most rewarding kind: on the other, it was
like rare and refreshing fruit to hear that Spode had got hit in
the eye with a potato. I was conscious of an awed respect for the
marksman who had accomplished this feat. A potato, being so nobbly
in shape, can be aimed accurately only by a master hand.
'Tell me more,' I said, well pleased.
'Tell you more be blowed. I've got to get up to London. We want
to be there bright and early tomorrow in order to inspect
registrars and choose the best one.'
This didn't sound like Florence, who, if she ever gets through
an engagement without breaking it, is sure to insist on a wedding
with bishops, bridesmaids, full choral effects, and a reception
afterwards. A sudden thought struck me, and I think I may have
gasped. Somebody made a noise like a dying soda-water syphon and it
was presumably me.
'When you say "we", do you mean you and M. Glendennon?'
'Who else?'
'But how?'
'Never mind how.'
'But I do mind how. You were Problem (d) on my list, and I want
to know how you have been solved. I gather that Florence has
remitted your sentence -'
'She has, in words of unmistakable clarity. Get out of that
car.'
'But why?'
'Because if you aren't out of it in two seconds, I'm going to
pull you out.'
'I mean why did she r. your s.?'
'Ask Jeeves,' he said, and attaching himself to the collar of
my coat he removed me from the automobile like a stevedore hoisting
a sack of grain. He took my place at the wheel, and disappeared
down the drive to keep his tryst with the little woman, who
presumably awaited him at some prearranged spot with the bags and
baggage.
He left me in a condition which can best be described as
befogged, bewildered, mystified, confused and perplexed. All I had
got out of him was (a) that the debate had not been conducted in an
atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, (b) that at its conclusion
Florence had forbidden the banns and (c) that if I wanted further
information Jeeves would supply it. A little more than the charmers
got out of the deaf adder, but not much. I felt like a barrister,
as it might be Ma McCorkadale, who has been baffled by an
unsatisfactory witness.
However, he had spoken of Jeeves as a fount of information, so
my first move on reaching the drawing-room and finding no one there
was to put forefinger to bell button and push.
Seppings answered the summons. He and I have been buddies from
boyhood - mine, of course, not his - and as a rule when we meet
conversation flows like water, mainly on the subject of the weather
and the state of his lumbago, but this was no time for idle
chatter.
'Seppings,' I said, 'I want Jeeves. Where is he?'
'In the Servants' Hall, sir, comforting the parlourmaid.'
I took him to allude to the employee whose gong-work I had
admired on my first evening, and, pressing though my business was,
it seemed only humane to offer a word of sympathy for whatever her
misfortunes might be.
'Had bad news, has she?'
'No, sir, she was struck by a turnip.'
'Where?'
'In the lower ribs, sir.'
'I mean where did this happen?'
'At the Town Hall, sir, in the later stages of the debate.'
I drew in the breath sharply. More and more I was beginning to
realize that the meeting I had missed had been marked by passions
which recalled the worst excesses of the French Revolution.
'I myself, sir, narrowly escaped being hit by a tomato. It
whizzed past my ear.'
'You shock me profoundly, Seppings. I don't wonder you're pale
and trembling.' And indeed he was, like a badly set blancmange.
'What caused all this turmoil?'
'Mr Winship's speech, sir.'
This surprised me. I could readily believe that any speech of
Ginger's would be well below the mark set by Demosthenes, if that
really was the fellow's name, but surely not so supremely lousy as
to start his audience throwing eggs and vegetables; and I was about
to institute further enquiries, when Seppings sidled to the door,
saying that he would inform Mr Jeeves of my desire to confer with
him. And in due season the hour produced the man, as the expression
is.
'You wished to see me, sir?' he said.
'You can put it even stronger, Jeeves. I yearned to see you.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'Just now I met Ginger in the drive.'
'Yes, sir, he informed me that he was going there to await your
return.'
'He tells me he is no longer betrothed to Miss Craye, being now
affianced to Miss Glendennon. And when I asked him how this switch
had come about, he said that you would explain.'
'I shall be glad to do so, sir. You wish a complete report?'
'That's right. Omit no detail, however slight.'
He was silent for a space. Marshalling his thoughts, no doubt.
Then he got down to it.
'The importance attached by the electorate to the debate,' he
began, 'was very evident. An audience of considerable size had
assembled in the Town Hall. The Mayor and Corporation were there,
together with the flower of Market Snodsbury's aristocracy and a
rougher element in cloth caps and turtleneck sweaters who should
never have been admitted.'
I had to rebuke him at this point.
'Bit snobbish, that, Jeeves, what? You are a little too
inclined to judge people by their clothes. Turtleneck sweaters are
royal raiment when they're worn for virtue's sake, and a cloth cap
may hide an honest heart. Probably frightfully good chaps, if one
had got to know them.'
'I would prefer not to know them, sir. It was they who
subsequently threw eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and turnips.'
I had to concede that he had a point there.
'True,' I said. 'I was forgetting that. All right, Jeeves.
Carry on.'
'The proceedings opened with a rendering of the national anthem
by the boys and girls of Market Snodsbury element
ary school.'
'Pretty ghastly, I imagine?'
'Somewhat revolting, sir.'
'And then?'
'The Mayor made a short address, introducing the contestants,
and Mrs McCorkadale rose to speak. She was wearing a smart coat in
fine quality repp over a long-sleeved frock of figured marocain
pleated at the sides and finished at the neck with -'
'Skip all that, Jeeves.'
'I am sorry, sir. I thought you wished every detail, however
slight.'
'Only when they're ... what's the word?'
'Pertinent, sir?'
'That's right. Take the McCorkadale's outer crust as read. How
was her speech?'
'Extremely telling, in spite of a good deal of heckling.'
'That wouldn't put her off her stroke.'
'No, sir. She impressed me as being of a singularly forceful
character.'
'Me, too.'
'You have met the lady, sir?'
'For a few minutes - which, however, were plenty. She spoke at
some length?'
'Yes, sir. If you would care to read her remarks? I took down
both speeches in shorthand.'
'Later on, perhaps.'
'At any time that suits you, sir.'
'And how was the applause? Hearty? Or sporadic?'
'On one side of the hall extremely hearty. The rougher element
appeared to be composed in almost equal parts of her supporters and