'Yes, there's that, I suppose.'
Some further talk followed, for an aunt who has got hold of a telephone receiver does not lightly relinquish it, but eventually she rang off, and I picked up Daffodil Days and gave it a casual glance.
Its contents proved even less fit for human consumption than I had expected. I turned away with rising nausea, and was thus enabled to get a good view of Herbert Graham, who was coming in from the kitchen.
The suddenness of his appearance, coupled with the fact that I had supposed him to be up at Eggesford Court, had made me bite my tongue, but in my concern I ignored the anguish.
'Good Lord!' I ejaculated, if that's the word.
'Sir?'
'Haven't you gone yet? You should have been there and back by this time.'
'Very true, sir, but something occurred which prevented me making the immediate start which I had intended.'
'What was that? Did they keep you a long time at the bank, counting your money?'
Bitter, yes, but I thought justified. Wasted, however, for he did not wince beneath my sarcasm.
'No, sir,' he replied. 'I bank in Bridmouth-on-Sea, and it is long past office hours. The occurrence to which I refer took place on these premises, in fact in this very room. I had gone to the kitchen to get the cat, which I had left there in its little basket, and I heard sounds proceeding from in here and assuming that you were not at home I went in to investigate, fearing that a burglar might have effected an entry, and there on the floor was a human form enveloped in a tablecloth. I raised this, and there underneath it was Mr Cook with a picture round his neck, vociferating something chronic.'
He paused, and I decided not to put him abreast. Never does to take fellows like Graham too fully into one's confidence.
'Wrapped in a tablecloth, was he?' I said nonchalantly. 'I suppose chaps like Cook are bound to get wrapped in tablecloths sooner or later.'
'The sight affected me profoundly.'
'I bet it did. Sights like that do give one a start. But you soon got over it, eh?'
'No, sir, I did not, and I'll tell you why I was what you might call stupefied. It was his language that did it chiefly. As I was saying, he expressed himself in a very violent manner, and I saw that it would be madness to proceed to Eggesford Court and possibly encounter him in this dangerous mood. I am a married man and have others to think of. So if you want that cat re-established in its former quarters, you'll have to get another operative to do it for you or else nip up to the Court and do it yourself.'
And while I looked at him with a wild surmise, silent upon a sitting-room carpet in Maiden Eggesford, Somerset, he withdrew.
I was still gazing at the spot where he had been and thinking how crazy I must have been to let Jeeves wander off, frittering away his time whooping it up with aunts, when I might have known I was bound to need his advice and moral support at any moment, and it was only after a bit that I realized that the telephone was ringing.
It was, as I had rather expected it would be, my late father's sister Dahlia, and it was made clear immediately that she had just been hearing from Billy Graham and getting the bad news. In a moving passage in which she referred to him as a double-crossing rat she said that he had formally refused to fulfil his sacred obligations.
'He had some extraordinary story about finding Cook in your cottage with a picture round his neck and a tablecloth over him and of being scared of going near him. Sounded like raving to me.'
'No, it was quite true.'
'You mean he really did have the picture round his neck and the tablecloth over him?'
'Yes.'
'How did he get that way?'
'We had a little argument, and that was how it worked out.'
She snorted in a rather febrile manner.
'Are you telling me that you are responsible for the man Graham's cold feet?'
'In a measure, yes. Let me give you a brief account of the episode,' I said, and did so. When I had finished, she spoke again, and her manner was almost calm.
'I might have known that if there was a chance of mucking up these very delicate negotiations, you would spring to the task. Well, as you are the cause of Graham walking out on us, you'll have to take his place.'
I was expecting this. Graham himself, it will be remembered, had made the same suggestion. I was resolved to discourage it from the outset.
'No!' I cried.
'Did you say No?'
'Yes, a thousand times no.'
'Scared, eh?'
'I am not ashamed to admit it.'
'You wouldn't be ashamed to admit practically anything. Where's your pride? Have you forgotten your illustrious ancestors? There was a Wooster at the time of the Crusades who would have won the Battle of Joppa singlehanded, if he hadn't fallen off his horse.'
'I daresay, but –'
'And the one in the Peninsular War. Wellington always used to say he was the best spy he ever had.'
'Quite possible. Nevertheless –'
'You don't want to show yourself worthy of those splendid fellows?'
'Not if it involves crossing Cook's path again.'
'Well, if you won't, you won't. Poor old Tom, how he will have to suffer. And talking of Tom, I had a letter from him this morning. It was all about the superb dinner Anatole had dished up on the previous night. He was absolutely lyrical. I must give it you to read. Apparently Anatole has struck one of these veins of perfection which French chefs do occasionally strike. Tom says in a postscript "How dear Bertie would have enjoyed this".'
I'm pretty shrewd, and I didn't miss the hideous unspoken threat behind her words. She was switching from the iron hand to the hand in the velvet glove, or rather the other way round, and letting me know without being crude about it that if I didn't allow myself to be bent to her will she would put sanctions on me and bar me from Anatole's cooking.
I made the great decision.
'Say no more, old flesh-and-blood,' I said. 'I will return the cat to store. And if while I am doing so Cook jumps out from behind a bush and tears me into a hundred fragments, what of it? It will be merely one more grave among the hills. What did you say?'
'Just "My Hero",' said the aged relative.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was more to be pitied than censured, mind you, for quailing a bit in the circs. A touch of the wee sleekit cowering beastie is unavoidable when you're up against it as I was. I remember once when I was faced with the task of defying my Aunt Agatha and stoutly refusing to put up her son Thos at my flat for his mid-term holiday from his school and take him (a) to the British Museum (b) to the National Gallery and (c) to a play at the Old Vic by a bloke of the name of Chekhov, Jeeves, in whom I had confided the uneasiness I felt when contemplating the shape of things to come, told me my agitation was quite normal.
'Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion,' he said, 'all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. The genius and the mortal instruments are then in council and the state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers the nature of an insurrection.'
I could have put it better myself, but I saw what he meant. At these times your feet are bound to get chilly, and there's nothing you can do about it.
I hid my tremors. A lifetime of getting socks on the jaw from the fist of Fate has made Bertram Wooster's face an inscrutable mask, and no one would have suspected that I was not as calm as an oyster on the half-shell as I started out for Eggesford Court with the cat. But actually, behind those granite features I was far from being tranquil. Indeed, you wouldn't have been wrong in saying that I was as jumpy as the above cat would have been if on hot bricks.
I never know when I'm telling a tale of peril and suspense whether to charge straight ahead or whether to pause from time to time and bung in what is called atmosphere. Some prefer the first way, others the second. For the benefit of the latter I will state that it was a nice evening with gentle breezes blowing and stars peeping out and the scent of growing things and all t
hat, and then I can get down to the res.
It was dark when I reached the Cook premises, which suited me, for I had dark work to do. I halted the car about half-way up the drive and took the short cut across country. My best friends would have warned me that I was asking for trouble, and they would have been right. The visibility being poor, the terrain lumpy and the cat wriggling, it was a pretty safe bet that sooner or later I would come a purler. This I did as I approached the stables. I struck a wet patch, my feet slid from under me, the cat shot from my arms, falling to earth I know not where, and I found myself face down in what was unquestionably mud which had been there some time and had had a number of unpleasant substances thrown into it. I remember thinking as I extracted myself that it was lucky I wasn't on my way to mix in company, as that mud must have taken at least eighty per cent off my glamour. It was not Bertram Wooster, the natty boulevardier, who started to return to the car but one of the dregs of society who had got his clothes off a handy scarecrow and had slept in them.
I say 'started to return', for I had not gone more than a yard or two when something solid bumped against my leg and I became aware that I had been joined by a dog of formidable physique, none other than the one I had exchanged civilities with at Wee Nooke. I recognized him by his ears.
At our former meeting, overcome by having found what he instantly recognized as one of the right sort, he had made the welkin ring in his enthusiasm. I urged him in an undertone to preserve a tactful silence now, for you never knew what minions of Pop Cook might be abroad in the night, and my presence would be difficult to explain, but there was no reasoning with him. At Wee Nooke he had found the Wooster aroma roughly equivalent to Chanel Number Five, and it was as if he were trying now to assure me that he was not the dog to be put off a pal just because the pal's scent had deteriorated somewhat. It's the soul that counts, you could hear him saying to himself between barks.
Well, I appreciated the compliment, of course, but I was not my usual debonair self, for I feared the worst. Barking like this, I felt, could not go unheard unless Cook's outdoor staff had been recruited entirely from deaf adders. And I was right. Somewhere off-stage a voice shouted 'Hey', making it clear that Bertram, as so often before, was about to cop it amidships.
I gave the dog a reproachful look. Not much good in that light, of course. I was recalling the story they used to read to me in my childhood, the one about the fellow who had written a book and his dog Diamond chewed up the manuscript; the point being what a decent chap the fellow was, because all he said was 'Ah, Diamond, Diamond, you little know what you have done'. It ought to be 'thou little knowest' and 'what thou hast done', but I can't do the dialect.
I feature the story because I was equally restrained. 'I told you not to bark, you silly ass,' was my only comment, and as I spoke the shouter who had shouted 'Hey' came up.
He had not made a good impression on me from the start because his voice had reminded me of the Sergeant-Major who used to come twice a week to drill us at the private school where I won the Scripture Knowledge prize which I may have mentioned once or twice. The Sergeant-Major's voice had been like a vehicle full of tin cans going over gravel, and so was the Hey chap's. Some relation, perhaps.
It was pretty dark, of course, by now, but the visibility was good enough to enable me to see that there was something else I didn't like about this creature of the night – viz. that he was shoving a whacking great shotgun against my midriff. Taken all in all, a bloke to be conciliated with soft speech rather than struck in the mazzard. I tried speech, keeping it as soft as I could manage with my teeth chattering.
'Nice evening,' I said. 'I wonder if you could direct me to the village of Maiden Eggesford,' and would have gone on to explain that I had been for a country ramble and had lost my way, but I don't think he was listening, because all he did was bellow ''Enry', presumably addressing a colleague called Henry something, and a voice that might have been that of the Sergeant-Major's son replied 'Yus?'
'Cummere.'
'Where?'
'Here. Wanteher.'
'I'm having me supper.'
'Well, stop having it and cummere. I've cotched a chap after the horses.'
He had found the right talking-point. Henry was plainly a man who let nothing stand between him and his duty. When d. called he abandoned his eggs and bacon or whatever it was and hastened to answer the summons. In next to no time he was with us. The dog had disappeared. It was a dog, no doubt, with all sorts of interests and could give only a certain amount of its attention to each. Having sniffed my trouser legs and put his front paws on my chest, he felt that the time had come to seek other fields of endeavour.
Henry had a torch with him. He let it play on me.
'Coo,' he said. 'Is this him?'
'R.'
'Nasty slinking-looking bleeder.'
'R.'
'He don't half niff.'
'R.'
'Brings to mind that old song "It ain't all violets".'
'Lavender.'
'Violets, I always thought.'
'No, lavender.'
'Well, have it your own way. What are you going to do with him?'
'Take him to Mr Cook.'
The prospect of another meeting with Pop Cook under such conditions and after what had occurred between us was naturally distasteful to me, but there seemed little I could do about it, for at this moment Henry attached himself to my collar and we moved off, his associate prodding me in the back with his gun.
They took me to the house, where we were ill received by a butler annoyed at being interrupted while smoking an off-duty pipe. He further resented being confronted with what he called tramps who smelled like something gone wrong with the drains. I didn't know what I had fallen into, but it was becoming abundantly evident that it had been something rather special. The whole tone of the public's reaction to my society emphasized this.
The butler was very definite about everything. No, he said, they couldn't see Mr Cook. Were they under the impression, he asked, that Mr Cook was wearing a gas mask? In any case, he added, even if I had been smelling like new-mown hay, Mr Cook could not be disturbed, because he had a gentleman with him. Shut the fellow up in one of the stables why don't you, the butler said, and this was what my proposer and seconder decided to do.
I cannot too strongly recommend those of my readers who are thinking of getting shut up in stables to abandon the idea, for there is no percentage in it. It's stuffy, it's dark and there's nowhere to sit except the floor. Odd squeaking noises and sinister scratching noises making themselves heard from time to time, suggesting that rats are getting up an appetite before starting to chew you to the bone. After my escort had left me I shuffled about a good deal, with a view to finding some way of removing myself from as morale-testing a position as I had been in since I was so high, but the only method which occurred to me was to catch a rat and train it to gnaw through the door, but that would take time and I was anxious to get home and go to bed.
I had groped my way to the door as I was weighing the pros and cons of this rat sequence, and automatically, my mind on other things, I gave the handle a twiddle, more by way of something to do than because I expected anything to come of it, and shiver my timbers if the door didn't come open.
I thought at first that my guardian angel, who had been noticeably lethargic up to this point, had taken a stiff shot of vitamin something and had become the ball of fire he ought to have been right along, but reflection told me what must have happened. There had been confusion between the two principals, arising from inadequate planning. Each had thought the other had turned the key, with the result that it had remained unturned. It just showed how foolish it is to embark on any enterprise without first having a frank round-table conference conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality. It was difficult to think which of the two would kick himself harder when it was drawn to their attention that they had lost their Bertram.
But though I was now as free as the air, as
you might say, I could see that it behooved me, if behooved is the word I want, to watch my step with the utmost vigilance. It would be too silly to run into Henry and the other bloke again and get bunged into durance-whatever-it's-called once more. I wanted complete freedom from both of them. Probably quite decent chaps when you got to know them, but definitely not for me.
Their sphere of influence was no doubt confined to the stable yard and neighbourhood, so it would be safe to leave by the route I had come by, but I shrank from doing that because I might meet that mud again. The thing to do was to roam about till I found the drive and go down it to where I had left the car. This I proceeded to do, and I had rounded the house and was crossing a lawn of sorts, when something gleamed in front of me and before I could stop myself I was stepping into a swimming-pool.
It was with mixed emotions that I rose to the surface. Surprise was one of them, for I hadn't thought that Cook was the sort of fellow to have a swimming-pool. Another was annoyance. I am not accustomed to bathing with all my clothes on, though there was that occasion at the Drones when Tuppy Glossop betted me I couldn't swing across the pool by the rings and I was reaching the last one when I found he had roped it back, causing me to fall into the fluid in correct evening costume.
But oddly enough, the emotion which stood out from the mixture was one of pleasure. Left to myself, I wouldn't have indulged in these aquatic sports, but now that I was in I was quite enjoying my dip. And there was the agreeable thought that this would do much to reduce the bouquet I had been giving out. What I had needed to enable me to rejoin the human herd without exciting adverse comment had been a good rinsing.
So I did not hurry to leave the pool, but floated there like a water-lily, or perhaps it would be better to say like a dead fish. And I had been doing so for some minutes, when there was that old familiar sound of barking in the night, and I gathered that my friend the dog had found another soul-mate.
I paused in my floating. I didn't like this. It suggested that Henry and his pal the man behind the gun were on the prowl again. What more likely than that they had got together and compared notes about locking the door and rushed to the stable and found me conspic. by my absence? I stiffened till my resemblance to a dead fish was even more striking than it had been, and I was still rigid when I heard the sound of galloping feet, as if somebody in a hurry were coming my way, and a human form splashed into the pool beside me.