‘You feel that will be a lot of help?’
‘Of course it will. If I see her coming, I’ll sing.’
‘Always glad to hear you singing, of course, but in what way will that ease the strain?’
‘Oh, Bertie, you really are an abysmal chump. Don’t you get it? When you hear me burst into song, you’ll know there’s peril afoot and you’ll have plenty of time to nip out of the window.’
‘And break my bally neck?’
‘How can you break your neck? There’s a balcony outside the Blue Room. I’ve seen Wilbert Cream standing on it, doing his Daily Dozen. He breathes deeply and ties himself into a lovers’ knot and –’
‘Never mind Wilbert Cream’s excesses.’
‘I only put that in to make it more interesting. The point is that there is a balcony and once on it you’re home. There’s a water pipe at the end of it. You just slide down that and go on your way, singing a gypsy song. You aren’t going to tell me that you have any objection to sliding down water pipes. Jeeves says you’re always doing it.’
I mused. It was true that I had slid down quite a number of water pipes in my time. Circumstances had often so moulded themselves as to make such an action imperative. It was by that route that I had left Skeldings Hall at three in the morning after the hot-water-bottle incident. So while it would be too much, perhaps, to say that I am never happier than when sliding down water pipes, the prospect of doing so caused me little or no concern. I began to see that there was something in this plan she was mooting, if mooting is the word I want.
What tipped the scale was the thought of Uncle Tom. His love for the cow-creamer might be misguided, but you couldn’t get away from the fact that he was deeply attached to the beastly thing, and one didn’t like the idea of him coming back from Harrogate and saying to himself ‘And now for a refreshing look at the old cow-creamer’ and finding it was not in residence. It would blot the sunshine from his life, and affectionate nephews hate like the dickens to blot the sunshine from the lives of uncles. It was true that I had said ‘Let Uncle Tom eat cake,’ but I hadn’t really meant it. I could not forget that when I was at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, this relative by marriage had often sent me postal orders sometimes for as much as ten bob. He, in short, had done the square thing by me, and it was up to me to do the s.t. by him.
And so it came about that some five minutes later I stood once more outside the Blue Room with Bobbie beside me, not actually at the moment singing in the wilderness but prepared so to sing if Ma Cream, modelling her strategy on that of the Asyrian, came down like a wolf on the fold. The nervous system was a bit below par, of course, but not nearly so much so as it might have been. Knowing that Bobbie would be on sentry-go made all the difference. Any gangster will tell you that the strain and anxiety of busting a safe are greatly diminished if you’ve a look-out man ready at any moment to say ‘Cheese it, the cops!’
Just to make sure that Wilbert hadn’t returned from his hike, I knocked on the door. Nothing stirred. The coast seemed c. I mentioned this to Bobbie, and she agreed that it was as c. as a whistle.
‘Now a quick run-through, to see that you have got it straight. If I sing, what do you do?’
‘Nip out of the window.’
‘And –?’
‘Slide down the water pipe.’
‘And –?’
‘Leg it over the horizon.’
‘Right. In you go and get cracking,’ she said, and I went in.
The dear old room was just as I’d left it, nothing changed, and my first move, of course, was to procure another chair and give the top of the armoire the once-over. It was a set-back to find that the cow-creamer wasn’t there. I suppose these kleptomaniacs know a thing or two and don’t hide the loot in the obvious place. There was nothing to be done but start the exhaustive search elsewhere, and I proceeded to do so, keeping an ear cocked for any snatch of song. None coming, it was with something of the old debonair Wooster spirit that I looked under this and peered behind that, and I had just crawled beneath the dressing-table in pursuance of my researches, when one of those disembodied voices which were so frequent in the Blue Room spoke, causing me to give my head a nasty bump.
‘For goodness’ sake!’ it said, and I came out like a pickled onion on the end of a fork, to find that Ma Cream was once more a pleasant visitor. She was standing there, looking down at me with a what-the-hell expression on her finely-chiselled face, and I didn’t blame her. Gives a woman a start, naturally, to come into her son’s bedroom and observe an alien trouser-seat sticking out from under the dressing-table.
We went into our routine.
‘Mr. Wooster!’
‘Oh, hullo.’
‘It’s you again?’
‘Why, yes,’ I said, for this of course was perfectly correct, and an odd sound proceeded from her, not exactly a hiccup and yet not quite not a hiccup.
‘Are you still looking for that mouse?’
‘That’s right. I thought I saw it run under there, and I was about to deal with it regardless of its age or sex.’
‘What makes you think there is a mouse here?’
‘Oh, one gets these ideas.’
‘Do you often hunt for mice?’
‘Fairly frequently.’
An idea seemed to strike her.
‘You don’t think you’re a cat?’
‘No, I’m pretty straight on that.’
‘But you pursue mice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this is very interesting. I must consult my psychiatrist when I get back to New York. I’m sure he will tell me that this mouse-fixation is a symbol of something. Your head feels funny, doesn’t it?’
‘It does rather,’ I said, the bump I had given it had been a juicy one, and the temples were throbbing.
‘I thought as much. A sort of burning sensation, I imagine. Now you do just as I tell you. Go to your room and lie down. Relax. Try to get a little sleep. Perhaps a cup of strong tea would help. And … I’m trying to think of the name of that alienist I’ve heard people over here speak so highly of. Miss Wickham mentioned him yesterday. Bossom? Blossom? Glossop, that’s it, Sir Roderick Glossop. I think you ought to consult him. A friend of mine is at his clinic now, and she says he’s wonderful. Cures the most stubborn cases. Meanwhile, rest is the thing. Go and have a good rest.’
At an early point in these exchanges I had started to sidle to the door, and I now sidled through it, rather like a diffident crab on some sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade. But I didn’t go to my room and relax, I went in search of Bobbie, breathing fire. I wanted to take up with her the matter of that absence of the burst of melody. I mean, considering that a mere couple of bars of some popular song hit would have saved me from an experience that had turned the bones to water and whitened the hair from the neck up, I felt entitled to demand an explanation of why those bars had not emerged.
I found her outside the front door at the wheel of her car.
‘Oh, hullo, Bertie,’ she said, and a fish on ice couldn’t have spoken more calmly. ‘Have you got it?’
I ground a tooth or two and waved the arms in a passionate gesture.
‘No,’ I said, ignoring her query as to why I had chosen this moment to do my Swedish exercises. ‘I haven’t. But Ma Cream got me.’
Her eyes widened. She squeaked a bit.
‘Don’t tell me she caught you bending again?’
‘Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing table. You and your singing,’ I said, and I’m not sure I didn’t add the word ‘Forsooth!’
Her eyes widened a bit further, and she squeaked another squeak.
‘Oh, Bertie, I’m sorry about that.’
‘Me, too.’
‘You see, I was called away to the telephone. Mother rang up. She wanted to tell me you were a nincompoop.’
‘One wonders where she picks up such expressions.’
‘From her literary friends, I suppose.
She knows a lot of literary people.’
‘Great help to the vocabulary.’
‘Yes. She was delighted when I told her I was coming home. She wants to have a long talk.’
‘About me, no doubt?’
‘Yes, I expect your name will crop up. But I mustn’t stay here chatting with you, Bertie. If I don’t get started, I shan’t hit the old nest till daybreak. It’s a pity you made such a mess of things. Poor Mr. Travers, he’ll be broken-hearted. Still, into each life some rain must fall,’ she said, and drove off, spraying gravel in all directions.
If Jeeves had been there, I would have turned to him and said ‘Women, Jeeves!’, and he would have said ‘Yes, sir’ or possibly ‘Precisely, sir’, and this would have healed the bruised spirit to a certain extent, but as he wasn’t I merely laughed a bitter laugh and made for the lawn. A go at Ma Cream’s goose-flesher might, I thought, do something to soothe the vibrating ganglions.
And it did. I hadn’t been reading long when drowsiness stole over me, the tired eyelids closed, and in another couple of ticks I was off to dreamland, slumbering as soundly as if I had been the cat Augustus. I awoke to find that some two hours had passed, and it was while stretching the limbs that I remembered I hadn’t sent that wire to Kipper Herring, inviting him to come and join the gang. I went to Aunt Dahlia’s boudoir and repaired this omission, telephoning the communication to someone at the post office who would have been well advised to consult a good aurist. This done, I headed for the open spaces again, and was approaching the lawn with a view to getting on with my reading when, hearing engine noises in the background and turning to cast an eye in their direction, blow me tight if I didn’t behold Kipper alighting from his car at the front door.
9
* * *
THE DISTANCE FROM London to Brinkley Court being a hundred miles or so and not much more than two minutes having elapsed since I had sent off that telegram, the fact that he was now outside the Brinkley front door struck me as quick service. It lowered the record of the chap in the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow he’s going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says ‘How far is that?’ and the fellow says ‘Three hundred miles’ and the other fellow says ‘How long will it take you to get there?’ and the fellow says ‘Oh, about half an hour, about half an hour.’ The What-ho with which I greeted the back of his head as I approached was tinged, accordingly, with a certain bewilderment.
At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad oyster. Guessing now what was biting him, I smiled one of my subtle smiles. I would soon, I told myself, be bringing the roses back to his cheeks.
He gulped a bit, then spoke in a hollow voice, like a spirit at a séance.
‘Hullo, Bertie.’
‘Hullo.’
‘So there you are.’
‘Yes, here I am.’
‘I was hoping I might run into you.’
‘And now the dream’s come true.’
‘You see, you told me you were staying here.’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s everything?’
‘Pretty fruity.’
‘Your aunt well?’
‘Fine.’
‘You all right?’
‘More or less.’
‘Capital. Long time since I was at Brinkley.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing much changed, I mean.’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s how it goes.’
He paused and did another splash of gulping, and I could see that we were about to come to the nub, all that had gone before having been merely what they call pour-parlers. I mean the sort of banana oil that passes between statesmen at conferences conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality before they tear their whiskers off and get down to cases.
I was right. His face working as if the first bad oyster had been followed by a second with even more spin on the ball, he said:
‘I saw that thing in The Times, Bertie.’
I dissembled. I ought, I suppose, to have started bringing those roses back right away, but I felt it would be amusing to kid the poor fish along for awhile, so I wore the mask.
‘Ah, yes. In The Times. That thing. Quite. You saw it, did you?’
‘At the club, after lunch. I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
Well, I hadn’t been able to believe mine, either, but I didn’t mention this. I was thinking how like Bobbie it was, when planning this scheme of hers, not to have let him in on the ground floor. Slipped her mind, I suppose, or she may have kept it under her hat for some strange reason of her own. She had always been a girl who moved in a mysterious way her wonders to perform.
‘And I’ll tell you why I couldn’t. You’ll scarcely credit this, but only a couple of days ago she was engaged to me.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘Yes, I jolly well do.’
‘Engaged to you, eh?’
‘Up to the hilt. And all the while she must have been contemplating this ghastly bit of treachery.’
‘A bit thick.’
‘If you can tell me anything that’s thicker, I shall be glad to hear it. It just shows you what women are like. A frightful sex, Bertie. There ought to be a law. I hope to live to see the day when women are no longer allowed.’
‘That would rather put a stopper on keeping the human race going, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well, who wants to keep the human race going?’
‘I see what you mean. Yes, something in that, of course.’
He kicked petulantly at a passing beetle, frowned awhile and resumed.
‘It’s the cold, callous heartlessness of the thing that shocks me. Not a hint that she was proposing to return me to store. As short a while ago as last week, when we had a bite of lunch together, she was sketching out plans for the honeymoon with the greatest animation. And now this! Without a word of warning. You’d have thought that a girl who was smashing a fellow’s life into hash would have dropped him a line, if only a postcard. Apparently that never occurred to her. She just let me get the news from the morning paper. I was stunned.’
‘I bet you were. Did everything go black?’
‘Pretty black. I took the rest of the day thinking it over, and this morning wangled leave from the office and got the car out and came down here to tell you …’
He paused, seeming overcome with emotion.
‘Yes?’
‘To tell you that, whatever we do, we mustn’t let this thing break our old friendship.’
‘Of course not. Damn silly idea.’
‘It’s such a very old friendship.’
‘I don’t know when I’ve met an older.’
‘We were boys together.’
‘In Eton jackets and pimples.’
‘Exactly. And more like brothers than anything. I would share my last bar of almond rock with you, and you would cut me in fifty-fifty on your last bag of acid drops. When you had mumps, I caught them from you, and when I had measles, you caught them from me. Each helping each. So we must carry on regardless, just as if this had not happened.’
‘Quite.’
‘The same old lunches.’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘And golf on Saturdays and the occasional game of squash. And when you are married and settled down, I shall frequently look in on you for a cocktail.’
‘Yes, do.’
‘I will. Though I shall have to exercise an iron self-restraint to keep me from beaning that pie-faced little hornswoggler Mrs. Bertram Wooster, née Wickham, with the shaker.’
‘Ought you to call her a pie-faced little hornswoggler?’
‘Why, can you think of something worse?’ he said, with the air of one always open to suggestions. ‘Do you know Thomas Otway?’
‘I
don’t believe so. Pal of yours?’
‘Seventeenth-century dramatist. Wrote The Orphan. In which play these words occur. “What mighty ills have not been done by Woman? Who was’t betrayed the Capitol? A woman. Who lost Marc Antony the world? A woman. Who was the cause of a long ten years’ war and laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman. Deceitful, damnable, destructive Woman.” Otway knew what he was talking about. He had the right slant. He couldn’t have put it better if he had known Roberta Wickham personally.’
I smiled another subtle smile. I was finding all this extremely diverting.
‘I don’t know if it’s my imagination, Kipper,’ I said, ‘but something gives me the impression that at moment of going to press you aren’t too sold on Bobbie.’
He shrugged a shoulder.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Apart from wishing I could throttle the young twister with my bare hands and jump on the remains with hobnailed boots, I don’t feel much about her one way or the other. She prefers you to me, and there’s nothing more to be said. The great thing is that everything is all right between you and me.’
‘You came all the way here just to make sure of that?’ I said, moved.
‘Well, there may possibly also have been an idea at the back of my mind that I might get invited to dig in at one of those dinners of Anatole’s before going on to book a room at the “Bull and Bush” in Market Snodsbury. How is Anatole’s cooking these days?’
‘Superber than ever.’
‘Continues to melt in the mouth, does it? It’s two years since I bit into his products, but the taste still lingers. What an artist!’
‘Ah!’ I said, and would have bared my head, only I hadn’t a hat on.
‘Would it run to a dinner invitation, do you think?’
‘My dear chap, of course. The needy are never turned from our door.’
‘Splendid. And after the meal I shall propose to Phyllis Mills.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking. She is closely related to Aubrey Upjohn, you are saying to yourself. But surely, Bertie, she can’t help that.’
‘More to be pitied than censured, you think?’
‘Exactly. We mustn’t be narrow-minded. She is a sweet, gentle girl, unlike certain scarlet-headed Delilahs who shall be nameless, and I am very fond of her.’