The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can’t think what the deuce to do with the body.
‘We’re so scared, Mr Wooster,’ said the girl. ‘We were hoping that you might suggest a way of breaking it to him.’
Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me as if she were saying to herself, ‘Oh, I do hope this great strong man isn’t going to hurt me.’ She gave a fellow a protective kind of feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, ‘There, there, little one!’ or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you’re doing, you’re starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
‘I don’t see why your uncle shouldn’t be most awfully bucked,’ I said to Corky. ‘He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.’
Corky declined to cheer up.
‘You don’t know him. Even if he did like Muriel, he wouldn’t admit it. That’s the sort of pig-headed ass he is. It would be a matter of principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he would raise Cain automatically. He’s always done it.’
I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
‘You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer’s acquaintance without knowing that you know her. Then you come along—’
‘But how can I work it that way?’
I saw his point. That was the catch.
‘There’s only one thing to do,’ I said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Leave it to Jeeves.’
And I rang the bell.
‘Sir?’ said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird birds in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.
The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his father in the offing.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we want your advice.’
‘Very good, sir.’
I boiled down Corky’s painful case into a few well-chosen words.
‘So you see what it amounts to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way by which Mr Worple can make Miss Singer’s acquaintance without getting on to the fact that Mr Corcoran already knows her. Understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘Well, try to think of something.’
‘I have thought of something already, sir.’
‘You have!’
‘The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay.’
‘He means,’ I translated to Corky, ‘that he has got a pippin of an idea, but it’s going to cost a bit.’
Naturally the poor chap’s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl’s melting gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as the knight-errant.
‘You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,’ I said. ‘Only too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.’
‘I would suggest, sir, that Mr Corcoran take advantage of Mr Worple’s attachment to ornithology.’
‘How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?’
‘It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I have mentioned.’
‘Oh! Well?’
‘Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled – let us say – “The Children’s Book of American Birds” and dedicate it to Mr Worple? A limited edition could be published at your expense, sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to eulogistic remarks concerning Mr Worple’s own larger treatise on the same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to Mr Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable.’
I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn’t let me down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to hang around pressing my clothes and what not. If I had half Jeeves’s brain I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best efforts.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
The girl made an objection.
‘But I’m sure I couldn’t write a book about anything. I can’t even write good letters.’
‘Muriel’s talents,’ said Corky, with a little cough, ‘lie more in the direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn’t mention it before, but one of our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show “Choose your Exit” at the Manhattan. It’s absurdly unreasonable, but we both feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander’s natural tendency to kick like a steer.’
I saw what he meant. I don’t know why it is – one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose, – but uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama, legitimate or otherwise. They don’t seem able to stick it at any price.
But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
‘I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady’s name should appear on the title page.’
‘That’s true,’ said Corky. ‘Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him. I’ll get after him right away.’
‘Fine!’
‘Will that be all, sir?’ said Jeeves. ‘Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.’
I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because I’ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old flat with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.
I happened to be down at Corky’s place when the first copies of ‘The Children’s Book of American Birds’ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the door and the parcel was delivered.
It was certainly som
e book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some species on it, and underneath the girl’s name in gold letters. I opened a copy at random.
‘Often of a spring morning,’ it said at the top of page twenty-one, ‘as you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned, carelessly-flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are older you must read all about him in Mr Alexander Worple’s wonderful book, “American Birds”.’
You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves’s genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn’t see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can’t call a chap the world’s greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
‘It’s a cert!’ I said.
‘An absolute cinch!’ said Corky.
And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my flat to tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn’t known Mr Worple’s handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would be delighted to make her acquaintance.
Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn’t for several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don’t feel inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
‘Well, well, well, what?’ I said.
‘Why, Mr Wooster! How do you do?’
‘Corky around?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’re waiting for Corky, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, I didn’t understand. No, I’m not waiting for him.’
It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind of thingummy, you know.
‘I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?’
‘A row?’
‘A spat, don’t you know – little misunderstanding – faults on both sides – er – and all that sort of thing.’
‘Why, whatever makes you think that?’
‘Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is – I thought you usually dined with him before you went to the theatre.’
‘I’ve left the stage now.’
Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time I had been away.
‘Why, of course, I see now! You’re married!’
‘Yes.’
‘How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.’
‘Thank you so much. Oh, Alexander,’ she said, looking past me, ‘this is a friend of mine – Mr Wooster.’
I spun round. A bloke with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he looked, though peaceful at the moment.
‘I want you to meet my husband, Mr Wooster. Mr Wooster is a friend of Bruce’s, Alexander.’
The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
‘So you know my nephew, Mr Wooster?’ I heard him say. ‘I wish you would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious. Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr Wooster? Or have you dined?’
I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
When I reached my flat I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I called him.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I’ve a bit of news for you.’
He came back with a tray and a long glass.
‘Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You’ll need it.’
‘Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.’
‘All right. Please yourself. But you’re going to get a shock. You remember my friend, Mr Corcoran?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle’s esteem by writing the book on birds?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘Well, she’s slid. She’s married the uncle.’
He took it without blinking, You can’t rattle Jeeves.
‘That was always a development to be feared, sir.’
‘You don’t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?’
‘It crossed my mind as a possibility.’
‘Did it, by Jove! Well, I think you might have warned us!’
‘I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.’
Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer frame of mind, what had happened wasn’t my fault, if you came down to it. I couldn’t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the same I’m bound to admit that I didn’t relish the idea of meeting Corky again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple had presented her husband with a son and heir.
I was so dashed sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn’t the heart to touch my breakfast. I was bowled over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn’t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.
But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the studio.
I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle age, holding a baby.
A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
‘Oh, ah!’ I said, and started to back out.
Corky looked over his shoulder.
‘Hallo, Bertie. Don’t go. We’re just finishing for the day. That will be all this afternoon,’ he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
‘At the same hour to-morrow, Mr Corcoran?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon.’
Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn’t as awkward as it might have been.
‘It’s my uncle’s idea,’ he said. ‘Muriel doesn’t know about it yet. The portrait’s to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here. If you want an instanc
e of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted with this. Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a black-jack and swiped all I possess. I can’t refuse to paint the portrait, because if I did my uncle would stop my allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid’s vacant eye, I suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a patronising glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are moments when I can almost see the headlines: “Promising Young Artist Beans Baby With Axe.”’
I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was too deep for words.
I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn’t seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie’s sorrow. Besides, I’m bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
But one afternoon Corky called me on the ’phone.
‘Bertie!’
‘Hallo?’
‘Are you doing anything this afternoon?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘You couldn’t come down here, could you?’
‘What’s the trouble? Anything up?’
‘I’ve finished the portrait.’
‘Good boy! Stout work!’
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded rather doubtful. ‘The fact is, Bertie, it doesn’t look quite right to me. There’s something about it—My uncle’s coming in half an hour to inspect it, and – I don’t know why it is, but I kind of feel I’d like your moral support!’
I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
‘You think he’ll cut up rough?’
‘He may.’
I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.