‘But look here, Bingo,’ I said, ‘this is all rot. I see the solution right off. I’m surprised that a bloke of Jeeves’s mentality overlooked it. Aunt Dahlia must engage the parlourmaid as well as Anatole. Then they won’t be parted.’
‘I thought of that, too. Naturally.’
‘I bet you didn’t.’
‘I certainly did.’
‘Well, what’s wrong with the scheme?’
‘It can’t be worked. If your aunt engaged our parlourmaid she would have to sack her own, wouldn’t she?’
‘Well?’
‘Well, if she sacks her parlourmaid, it will mean that the chauffeur will quit. He’s in love with her.’
‘With my aunt?’
‘No, with the parlourmaid. And apparently he’s the only chauffeur your uncle has ever found who drives carefully enough for him.’
I gave it up. I had never imagined before that life below stairs was so frightfully mixed up with what these coves call the sex complex. The personnel of domestic staffs seemed to pair off like characters in a musical comedy.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Well, that being so, we do seem to be more or less stymied. That article will have to appear after all, what?’
‘No, it won’t.’
‘Has Jeeves thought of another scheme?’
‘No, but I have.’ Bingo bent forward and patted my knee affectionately. ‘Look here, Bertie,’ he said, ‘you and I were at school together. You’ll admit that?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And you’re a fellow who never lets a pal down. That’s well known, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but listen—’
‘You’ll cluster round. Of course you will. As if,’ said Bingo with a scornful laugh, ‘I ever doubted it! You won’t let an old school-friend down in his hour of need. Not you. Not Bertie Wooster. No, no!’
‘Yes, but just one moment. What is this scheme of yours?’
Bingo massaged my shoulder soothingly.
‘It’s something right in your line, Bertie, old man; something that’ll come as easy as pie to you. As a matter of fact, you’ve done very much the same thing before – that time you were telling me about when you pinched your uncle’s Memoirs at Easeby. I suddenly remembered that, and it gave me the idea. It’s—’
‘Here! Listen!’
‘It’s all settled, Bertie. Nothing for you to worry about. Nothing whatever. I see now that we made a big mistake in ever trying to tackle this job in Jeeves’s silly, roundabout way. Much better to charge straight ahead without any of that finesse and fooling about. And so—’
‘Yes, but listen—’
‘And so this afternoon I’m going to take Rosie to a matinée. I shall leave the window of her study open, and when we have got well away you will climb in, pinch the cylinder and pop off again. It’s absurdly simple—’
‘Yes, but half a second—’
‘I know what you are going to say,’ said Bingo, raising his hand. ‘How are you to find the cylinder? That’s what is bothering you, isn’t it? Well, it will be quite easy. Not a chance of a mistake. The thing is in the top left-hand drawer of the desk, and the drawer will be left unlocked because Rosie’s stenographer is to come round at four o’clock and type the article.’
‘Now listen, Bingo,’ I said. ‘I’m frightfully sorry for you and all that, but I must firmly draw the line at burglary.’
‘But, dash it, I’m only asking you to do what you did at Easeby.’
‘No, you aren’t. I was staying at Easeby. It was simply a case of having to lift a parcel off the hall table. I hadn’t got to break into a house. I’m sorry, but I simply will not break into your beastly house on any consideration whatever.’
He gazed at me, astonished and hurt.
‘Is this Bertie Wooster speaking?’ he said in a low voice.
‘Yes, it is!’
‘But, Bertie,’ he said gently, ‘we agreed that you were at school with me.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘At school, Bertie. The dear old school.’
‘I don’t care. I will not—’
‘Bertie!’
‘I will not—’
‘Bertie!’
‘No!’
‘Bertie!’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said.
‘There,’ said young Bingo, patting me on the shoulder, ‘spoke the true Bertram Wooster!’
I don’t know if it has ever occurred to you, but to the thoughtful cove there is something dashed reassuring in all the reports of burglaries you read in the papers. I mean, if you’re keen on Great Britain maintaining her prestige and all that. I mean, there can’t be much wrong with the morale of a country whose sons go in to such a large extent for housebreaking, because you can take it from me that the job requires a nerve of the most cast-iron description. I suppose I was walking up and down in front of that house for half an hour before I could bring myself to dash in at the front gate and slide round to the side where the study window was. And even then I stood for about ten minutes cowering against the wall and listening for police-whistles.
Eventually, however, I braced myself up and got to business. The study was on the ground floor and the window was nice and large, and, what is more, wide open. I got the old knee over the sill, gave a jerk which took an inch of skin off my ankle, and hopped down into the room. And there I was, if you follow me.
I stood for a moment, listening. Everything seemed to be all right. I was apparently alone in the world.
In fact, I was so much alone that the atmosphere seemed positively creepy. You know how it is on these occasions. There was a clock on the mantelpiece that ticked in a slow, shocked sort of way that was dashed unpleasant. And over the clock a large portrait stared at me with a good deal of dislike and suspicion. It was a portrait of somebody’s grandfather. Whether he was Rosie’s or Bingo’s I didn’t know, but he was certainly a grandfather. In fact, I wouldn’t be prepared to swear that he wasn’t a great-grandfather. He was a big, stout old buffer in a high collar that seemed to hurt his neck, for he had drawn his chin back a goodish way and was looking down his nose as much as to say, ‘You made me put this dam’ thing on!’
Well, it was only a step to the desk, and nothing between me and it but a brown shaggy rug; so I avoided grandfather’s eye and, summoning up the good old bulldog courage of the Woosters, moved forward and started to navigate the rug. And I had hardly taken a step when the south-east corner of it suddenly detached itself from the rest and sat up with a snuffle.
Well, I mean to say, to bear yourself fittingly in the face of an occurrence of this sort you want to be one of those strong, silent, phlegmatic birds who are ready for anything. This type of bloke, I imagine, would simply have cocked an eye at the rug, said to himself, ‘Ah, a Pekingese dog, and quite a good one, too!’ and started at once to make cordial overtures to the animal in order to win its sympathy and moral support. I suppose I must be one of the neurotic younger generation you read about in the papers nowadays, because it was pretty plain within half a second that I wasn’t strong and I wasn’t phlegmatic. This wouldn’t have mattered so much, but I wasn’t silent either. In the emotion of the moment I let out a sort of sharp yowl and leaped about four feet in a north-westerly direction. And there was a crash that sounded as though somebody had touched off a bomb.
What a female novelist wants with an occasional table in her study containing a vase, two framed photographs, a saucer, a lacquer box, and a jar of potpourri, I don’t know; but that was what Bingo’s Rosie had, and I caught it squarely with my right hip and knocked it endways. It seemed to me for a moment as if the whole world had dissolved into a kind of cataract of glass and china. A few years ago, when I legged it to America to elude my Aunt Agatha, who was out with her hatchet, I remember going to Niagara and listening to the Falls. They made much the same sort of row, but not so loud.
And at the same instant the dog began to bark.
It was a small dog – the sort of animal from which
you would have expected a noise like a squeaking slate-pencil; but it was simply baying. It had retired into a corner, and was leaning against the wall with bulging eyes; and every two seconds it chucked its head back in a kind of pained way and let out another terrific bellow.
Well, I know when I’m licked. I was sorry for Bingo and regretted the necessity of having to let him down; but the time had come, I felt, to shift. ‘Outside for Bertram!’ was the slogan, and I took a running leap at the window and scrambled through.
And there on the path, as if they had been waiting for me by appointment, stood a policeman and a parlourmaid.
It was an embarrassing moment.
‘Oh – er – there you are!’ I said. And there was what you might call a contemplative silence for a moment.
‘I told you I heard something,’ said the parlourmaid.
The policeman was regarding me in a boiled way.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked.
I smiled in a sort of saint-like manner.
‘It’s a little hard to explain,’ I said.
‘Yes, it is!’ said the policeman.
‘I was just – er – just having a look round, you know. Old friend of the family, you understand.’
‘How did you get in?’
‘Through the window. Being an old friend of the family, if you follow me.’
‘Old friend of the family, are you?’
‘Oh, very. Very. Very old. Oh, a very old friend of the family.’
‘I’ve never seen him before,’ said the parlourmaid.
I looked at the girl with positive loathing. How she could have inspired affection in anyone, even a French cook, beat me. Not that she was a bad-looking girl, mind you. Not at all. On another and happier occasion I might even have thought her rather pretty. But now she seemed one of the most unpleasant females I had ever encountered.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You have never seen me before. But I’m an old friend of the family.’
‘Then why didn’t you ring at the front door?’
‘I didn’t want to give any trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble answering front doors, that being what you’re paid for,’ said the parlourmaid virtuously. ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life,’ she added, perfectly gratuitously. A horrid girl.
‘Well, look here,’ I said, with an inspiration, ‘the undertaker knows me.’
‘What undertaker?’
‘The cove who was waiting at table when I dined here the night before last.’
‘Did the undertaker wait at table on the sixteenth instant?’ asked the policeman.
‘Of course he didn’t,’ said the parlourmaid.
‘Well, he looked like—By Jove, no. I remember now. He was the greengrocer.’
‘On the sixteenth instant,’ said the policeman – pompous ass! – ‘did the greengrocer—?’
‘Yes, he did, if you want to know,’ said the parlourmaid. She seemed disappointed and baffled, like a tigress that sees its prey being sneaked away from it. Then she brightened. ‘But this fellow could easily have found that out by asking round about.’
A perfectly poisonous girl.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the policeman.
‘Well, I say, do you mind awfully if I don’t give my name, because—’
‘Suit yourself. You’ll have to tell it to the magistrate.’
‘Oh, no, I say, dash it!’
‘I think you’d better come along.’
‘But I say, really, you know, I am an old friend of the family. Why, by Jove, now I remember, there’s a photograph of me in the drawing-room. Well, I mean, that shows you!’
‘If there is,’ said the policeman.
‘I’ve never seen it,’ said the parlourmaid.
I absolutely hated this girl.
‘You would have seen it if you had done your dusting more conscientiously,’ I said severely. And I meant it to sting, by Jove!
‘It is not a parlourmaid’s place to dust the drawing-room,’ she sniffed haughtily.
‘No,’ I said bitterly. ‘It seems to be a parlourmaid’s place to lurk about and hang about and – er – waste her time fooling about in the garden with policeman who ought to be busy about their duties elsewhere.’
‘It’s a parlourmaid’s place to open the front door to visitors. Them that don’t come in through windows.’
I perceived that I was getting the loser’s end of the thing. I tried to be conciliatory.
‘My dear old parlourmaid,’ I said, ‘don’t let us descend to vulgar wrangling. All I’m driving at is that there is a photograph of me in the drawing-room, cared for and dusted by whom I know not; and this photograph will, I think, prove to you that I am an old friend of the family. I fancy so, officer?’
‘If it’s there,’ said the man in a grudging way.
‘Oh, it’s there all right. Oh, yes, it’s there.’
‘Well, we’ll go to the drawing-room and see.’
‘Spoken like a man, my dear old policeman,’ I said.
The drawing-room was on the first floor, and the photograph was on the table by the fire-place. Only, if you understand me, it wasn’t. What I mean is there was the fire-place, and there was the table by the fire-place, but, by Jove, not a sign of any photograph of me whatsoever. A photograph of Bingo, yes. A photograph of Bingo’s uncle, Lord Bittlesham, right. A photograph of Mrs Bingo, three-quarter face, with a tender smile on her lips, all present and correct. But of anything resembling Bertram Wooster, not a trace.
‘Ho!’ said the policeman.
‘But, dash it, it was there the night before last.’
‘Ho!’ he said again. ‘Ho! Ho!’ As if he were starting a drinking-chorus in a comic opera, confound him.
Then I got what amounted to the brain-wave of a lifetime.
‘Who dusts these things?’ I said, turning on the parlourmaid.
‘I don’t.’
‘I didn’t say you did. I said who did.’
‘Mary. The housemaid, of course.’
‘Exactly. As I suspected. As I foresaw. Mary, officer, is notoriously the worst smasher in London. There have been complaints about her on all sides. You see what has happened? The wretched girl has broken the glass of my photograph and, not being willing to come forward and admit it in an honest, manly way, has taken the thing off and concealed it somewhere.’
‘Ho!’ said the policeman, still working through the drinking-chorus.
‘Well, ask her. Go down and ask her.’
‘You go down and ask her,’ said the policeman to the parlourmaid. ‘If it’s going to make him any happier.’
The parlourmaid left the room, casting a pestilential glance at me over her shoulder as she went. I’m not sure she didn’t say ‘Ho!’ too. And then there was a bit of a lull. The policeman took up a position with a large beefy back against the door, and I wandered to and fro and hither and yonder.
‘What are you playing at?’ demanded the policeman.
‘Just looking round. They may have moved the thing.’
‘Ho!’
And then there was another bit of a lull. And suddenly I found myself by the window, and, by Jove, it was six inches open at the bottom. And the world beyond looked so bright and sunny and—Well, I don’t claim that I am a particularly swift thinker, but once more something seemed to whisper ‘Outside for Bertram!’ I slid my fingers nonchalantly under the sash, gave a hefty heave, and up she came. And the next moment I was in a laurel bush, feeling like the cross which marks the spot where the accident occurred.
A large red face appeared in the window. I got up and skipped lightly to the gate.
‘Hi!’ shouted the policeman.
‘Ho!’ I replied, and went forth, moving well.
‘This,’ I said to myself, as I hailed a passing cab and sank back on the cushions, ‘is the last time I try to do anything for young Bingo!’
These sentiments I expressed in no guarded language to Jeeves when I was back in the old flat with
my feet on the mantelpiece, pushing down a soothing whisky-and.
‘Never again, Jeeves!’ I said. ‘Never again!’
‘Well, sir—’
‘No, never again!’
‘Well, sir—’
‘What do you mean, “Well, sir”? What are you driving at?’
‘Well, sir, Mr Little is an extremely persistent young gentleman, and yours, if I may say so, sir, is a yielding and obliging nature—’
‘You don’t think that young Bingo would have the immortal rind to try to get me into some other foul enterprise?’
‘I should say that it was more than probable, sir.’
I removed the dogs swiftly from the mantelpiece, and jumped up, all of a twitter.
‘Jeeves, what would you advise?’
‘Well, sir, I think a little change of scene would be judicious.’
‘Do a bolt?’
‘Precisely, sir. If I might suggest it, sir, why not change your mind and join Mr George Travers at Harrogate?’
‘Oh, I say, Jeeves!’
‘You would be out of what I might describe as the danger zone there, sir.’
‘Perhaps you’re right, Jeeves,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, possibly you’re right. How far is Harrogate from London?’
‘Two hundred and six miles, sir.’
‘Yes, I think you’re right. Is there a train this afternoon?’
‘Yes, sir. You could catch it quite easily.’
‘All right, then. Bung a few necessaries in a bag.’
‘I have already done so, sir.’
‘Ho!’ I said.
It’s a rummy thing, but when you come down to it Jeeves is always right. He had tried to cheer me up at the station by saying that I would not find Harrogate unpleasant, and, by Jove, he was perfectly correct. What I had overlooked, when examining the project, was the fact that I should be in the middle of a bevy of blokes who were taking the cure and I shouldn’t be taking it myself. You’ve no notion what a dashed cosy, satisfying feeling that gives a fellow.
I mean to say, there was old Uncle George, for instance. The medicine-man, having given him the once-over, had ordered him to abstain from all alcoholic liquids, and in addition to tool down the hill to the Royal Pump-Room each morning at eight-thirty and imbibe twelve ounces of warm crescent saline and magnesia. It doesn’t sound much, put that way, but I gather from contemporary accounts that it’s practically equivalent to getting outside a couple of little old last year’s eggs beaten up in sea-water. And the thought of Uncle George, who had oppressed me sorely in my childhood, sucking down that stuff and having to hop out of bed at eight-fifteen to do so was extremely grateful and comforting of a morning.