‘I thought you scarcely knew her.’
‘Oh yes, we saw quite a bit of one another in Switzerland. We’re great buddies.’
It seemed to me that the moment had come to bring the good news from Aix to Ghent, as the expression is.
‘I don’t know that I would propose to Phyllis Mills, Kipper. Bobbie might not like it.’
‘But that’s the whole idea, to show her she isn’t the only onion in the stew and that if she doesn’t want me, there are others who feel differently. What are you grinning about?’
As a matter of fact, I was smiling subtly, but I let it go.
‘Kipper,’ I said, ‘I have an amazing story to relate.’
I don’t know if you happen to take Old Doctor Gordon’s Bile Magnesia, which when the liver is disordered gives instant relief, acting like magic and imparting an inward glow? I don’t myself, my personal liver being always more or less in mid-season form, but I’ve seen the advertisements. They show the sufferer before and after taking, in the first case with drawn face and hollow eyes and the general look of one shortly about to hand in his dinner pail, in the second all beans and buck and what the French call bien être. Well, what I’m driving at is that my amazing story had exactly the same effect on Kipper as the daily dose for adults … He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, and while I don’t suppose he actually put on several pounds in weight as the tale proceeded, one got the distinct illusion that he was swelling like one of those rubber ducks which you fill with air before inserting them in the bath tub.
‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ he said, when I had placed the facts before him. ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a what-not!’
‘I thought you would be.’
‘Bless her ingenious little heart! Not many girls would have got the grey matter working like that.’
‘Very few.’
‘What a helpmeet! Talk about service and co-operation. Have you any idea how the thing is working out?’
‘Rather smoothly, I think. On reading the announcement in The Times, Wickham senior had hysterics and swooned in her tracks.’
‘She doesn’t like you?’
‘That was the impression I got. It has been confirmed by subsequent telegrams to Bobbie in which she refers to me as a guffin and a gaby. She also considers me a nincompoop.’
‘Well, that’s fine. It looks as though, after you, I shall come to her like … it’s on the tip of my tongue.’
‘Rare and refreshing fruit?’
‘Exactly. If you care to have a bet on it, five bob will get you ten that this scenario will end with a fade-out of Lady Wickham folding me in her arms and kissing me on the brow and saying she knows I will make her little girl happy. Gosh, Bertie, when I think that she – Bobbie, I mean, not Lady Wickham – will soon be mine and that shortly after yonder sun has set I shall be tucking into one of Anatole’s dinners, I could dance a saraband. By the way, talking of dinner, do you suppose it would also run to a bed? The “Bull and Bush” is well spoken of in the Automobile Guide, but I’m always a bit wary of these country pubs. I’d much rather be at Brinkley Court, of which I have such happy memories. Could you swing it with your aunt?’
‘She isn’t here. She left to minister to her son Bonzo, who is down with German measles at his school. But she rang up this afternoon and instructed me to wire you to come and make a prolonged stay.’
‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘No, this is official.’
‘But what made her think of me?’
‘There’s something she wants you to do for her.’
‘She can have anything she asks, even unto half my kingdom. What does she …’ He paused, and a look of alarm came into his face. ‘Don’t tell me she wants me to present the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammer School, like Gussie?’
He was alluding to a mutual friend of ours of the name of Gussie Fink-Nottle, who, hounded by the aged relative into undertaking this task in the previous summer, had got pickled to the gills and made an outstanding exhibition of himself, setting up a mark at which all future orators would shoot in vain.
‘No, no, nothing like that. The prizes this year will be distributed by Aubrey Upjohn.’
‘That’s a relief. How is he, by the way? You’ve met him, of course?’
‘Oh, yes, we got together. I spilled some tea on him.’
‘You couldn’t have done better.’
‘He’s grown a moustache.’
‘That eases my mind. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing that bare upper lip of his. Remember how it used to make us quail when he twitched it at us? I wonder how he’ll react when confronted with not only one former pupil but two, and those two the very brace that have probably haunted him in his dreams for the last fifteen years. Might as well unleash me on him now.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘You said he was.’
‘Yes, he was and he will be, but he isn’t. He’s gone up to London.’
‘Isn’t anybody here?’
‘Certainly. There’s Phyllis Mills –’
‘Nice girl.’
‘– and Mrs. Homer Cream of New York City, N.Y., and her son Wilbert. And that brings me to the something Aunt Dahlia wants you to do for her.’
I was pleased, as I put him hep on the Wilbert-Phyllis situation and revealed the part he was expected to play in it, to note that he showed no signs of being about to issue the presidential veto. He followed the set-up intelligently and when I had finished said that of course he would be only too willing to oblige. It wasn’t much, he said, to ask of a fellow who esteemed Aunt Dahlia as highly as he did and who ever since she had lushed him up so lavishly two summers ago had been wishing there was something he could do in the way of buying back.
‘Rely on me, Bertie,’ he said. ‘We can’t have Phyllis tying herself up with a man who on the evidence would appear to be as nutty as a fruit cake. I will be about this Cream’s bed and about his board, spying out all his ways. Every time he lures the poor girl into a leafy glade, I will be there, nestling behind some wild flower all ready to pop out and gum the game at the least indication that he is planning to get mushy. And now if you would show me to my room, I will have a bath and brush-up so as to be all sweet and fresh for the evening meal. Does Anatole still do those Timbales de ris de veau Toulousiane?’
‘And the Sylphids à la crême d’écrevisses.’
‘There is none like him, none,’ said Kipper, moistening the lips with the tip of the tongue and looking like a wolf that has just spotted its Russian peasant. ‘He stands alone.’
10
* * *
AS I HADN’T the remotest which rooms were available and which weren’t, getting Kipper dug in necessitated ringing for Pop Glossop. I pressed the button and he appeared, giving me, as he entered, the sort of conspiratorial glance the acting secretary of a secret society would have given a friend on the membership roll.
‘Oh, Swordfish,’ I said, having given him a conspiratorial glance in return, for one always likes to do the civil thing, ‘this is Mr. Herring, who has come to join our little group.’
He bowed from the waist, not that he had much waist.
‘Good evening, sir.’
‘He will be staying some time. Where do we park him?’
‘The Red Room suggests itself, sir.’
‘You get the Red Room, Kipper.’
‘Right ho.’
‘I had it last year. ’Tis not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve,’ I said, recalling a gag of Jeeves’s. ‘Will you escort Mr. Herring thither, Swordfish?’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And when you have got him installed, perhaps I could have a word with you in your pantry,’ I said, giving him a conspiratorial glance.
‘Certainly, sir,’ he responded, giving me a conspiratorial glances.
It was one of those big evenings for conspiratorial glances.
I hadn’t b
een waiting in the pantry long when he navigated over the threshold, and my first act was to congratulate him on the excellence of his technique. I had been much impressed by all that ‘Very good, sir,’ ‘Certainly, sir,’ bowing-from-the-waist stuff. I said that Jeeves himself couldn’t have read his lines better, and he simpered modestly and said that one picked up these little tricks of the trade from one’s own butler.
‘Oh, by the way,’ I said, ‘where did you get the Swordfish?’
He smiled indulgently.
‘That was Miss Wickham’s suggestion.’
‘I thought as much.’
‘She informed me that she had always dreamed of one day meeting a butler called Swordfish. A charming young lady. Full of fun.’
‘It may be fun for her,’ I said with one of my bitter laughs, ‘but it isn’t so diverting for the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she plunges so ruthlessly in the soup. Let me tell you what occurred after I left you this afternoon.’
‘Yes, I am all eagerness to hear.’
‘Then pin your ears back and drink it in.’
If I do say so, I told my story well, omitting no detail however slight. It had him Bless-my-soul-ing throughout, and when I had finished he t’ck-t’ck-t’ck-ed and said it must have been most unpleasant for me, and I said that ‘unpleasant’ covered the facts like the skin on a sausage.
‘But I think that in your place I should have thought of an explanation of your presence calculated to carry more immediate conviction than that you were searching for a mouse.’
‘Such as?’
‘It is hard to say on the spur of the moment.’
‘Well, it was on the spur of the m. that I had to say it,’ I rejoined with some heat. ‘You don’t get time to polish your dialogue and iron out the bugs in the plot when a woman who looks like Sherlock Holmes catches you in her son’s room with your rear elevation sticking out from under the dressing-table.’
‘True. Quite true. But I wonder …’
‘Wonder what?’
‘I do not wish to hurt your feelings.’
‘Go ahead. My feelings have been hurt so much already that a little bit extra won’t make any difference.’
‘I may speak frankly?’
‘Do.’
‘Well, then, I am wondering if it was altogether wise to entrust this very delicate operation to a young fellow like yourself. I am coming round to the view you put forward when we were discussing the matter with Miss Wickham. You said, if you recall, that the enterprise should have been placed in the hands of a mature, experienced man of the world and not in those of one of less ripe years who as a child had never been expert at hunt-the-slipper. I am, you will agree, mature, and in my earlier days I won no little praise for my skill at hunt-the-slipper. I remember one of the hostesses whose Christmas parties I attended comparing me to a juvenile bloodhound. An extravagant encomium, of course, but that is what she said.’
I looked at him with a wild surmise. It seemed to me that there was but one meaning to be attached to his words.
‘You aren’t thinking of having a pop at it yourself?’
‘That is precisely my intention, Mr. Wooster.’
‘Lord love a duck!’
‘The expression is new to me, but I gather from it that you consider my conduct eccentric.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, but do you realize what you are letting yourself in for? You won’t enjoy meeting Ma Cream. She has an eye like … what are those things that have eyes? Basilisks, that’s the name I was groping for. She has an eye like a basilisk. Have you considered the possibility of having that eye go through you like a dose of salts?’
‘Yes, I can envisage the peril. But the fact is, Mr. Wooster, I regard what has happened as a challenge. My blood is up.’
‘Mine froze.’
‘And you may possibly not believe me, but I find the prospect of searching Mr. Cream’s room quite enjoyable.’
‘Enjoyable?’
‘Yes. In a curious way it restores my youth. It brings back to me my preparatory school days, when I would often steal down at night to the headmaster’s study to eat his biscuits.’
I started. I looked at him with a kindling eye. Deep had called to deep, and the cockles of the heart were warmed.
‘Biscuits?’
‘He kept them in a tin on his desk.’
‘You really used to do that at your prep school?’
‘Many years ago.’
‘So did I,’ I said, coming within an ace of saying, ‘My brother!’
He raised his bushy eyebrows, and you could see that his heart’s cockles were warmed, too.
‘Indeed? Fancy that! I had supposed the idea original with myself, but no doubt all over England today the rising generation is doing the same thing. So you too have lived in Arcady? What kind of biscuits were yours? Mine were mixed.’
‘The ones with pink and white sugar on?’
‘In many instances, though some were plain.’
‘Mine were ginger nuts.’
‘Those are very good, too, of course, but I prefer the mixed.’
‘So do I. But you had to take what you could get in those days. Were you ever copped?’
‘I am glad to say never.’
‘I was once. I can feel the place in frosty weather still.’
‘Too bad. But these things will happen. Embarking on the present venture, I have the sustaining thought that if the worst occurs and I am apprehended, I can scarcely be given six of the best bending over a chair, as we used to call it. Yes, you may leave this little matter entirely to me, Mr. Wooster.’
‘I wish you’d call me Bertie.’
‘Certainly, certainly.’
‘And might I call you Roderick?’
‘I shall be delighted.’
‘Or Roddy? Roderick’s rather a mouthful.’
‘Whichever you prefer.’
‘And you are really going to hunt the slipper?’
‘I am resolved to do so. I have the greatest respect and affection for your uncle and appreciate how deeply wounded he would be, were this prized object to be permanently missing from his collection. I would never forgive myself if in the endeavour to recover his property, I were to leave any –’
‘Stone unturned?’
‘I was about to say avenue unexplored. I shall strain every –’
‘Sinew?’
‘I was thinking of the word nerve.’
‘Just as juste. You’ll have to bide your time, of course.’
‘Quite.’
‘And await your opportunity.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Opportunity knocks but once.’
‘So I understand.’
‘I’ll give you one tip. The thing isn’t on top of the cupboard or armoire.’
‘Ah, that is helpful.’
‘Unless of course he’s put it there since. Well, anyway, best of luck, Roddy.’
‘Thank you, Bertie.’
If I had been taking Old Doctor Gordon’s Bile Magnesia regularly, I couldn’t have felt more of an inward glow as I left him and headed for the lawn to get the Ma Cream book and return it to its place on the shelves of Aunt Dahlia’s boudoir. I was lost in admiration of Roddy’s manly spirit. He was well stricken in years, fifty if a day, and it thrilled me to think that there was so much life in the old dog still. It just showed … well, I don’t know what, but something. I found myself musing on the boy Glossop, wondering what he had been like in his biscuit-snitching days. But except that I knew he wouldn’t have been bald then, I couldn’t picture him. It’s often this way when one contemplates one’s seniors. I remember how amazed I was to learn that my Uncle Percy, a tough old egg with apparently not a spark of humanity in him, had once held the metropolitan record for being chucked out of Covent Garden Balls.
I got the book, and ascertaining after reaching Aunt Dahlia’s lair that there remained some twenty minutes before it would be necessary to start getting ready for the evening m
eal I took a seat and resumed my reading. I had had to leave off at a point where Ma Cream had just begun to spit on her hands and start filling the customers with pity and terror. But I hadn’t put more than a couple of clues and a mere sprinkling of human gore under my belt, when the door flew open and Kipper appeared. And as the eye rested on him, he too filled me with pity and terror, for his map was flushed and his manner distraught. He looked like Jack Dempsey at the conclusion of his first conference with Gene Tunney, the occasion, if you remember, when he forgot to duck.
He lost no time in bursting into speech.
‘Bertie! I’ve been hunting for you all over the place!’
‘I was having a chat with Swordfish in his pantry. Something wrong?’
‘Something wrong!’
‘Don’t you like the Red Room?’
‘The Red Room!’
I gathered from his manner that he had not come to beef about his sleeping accommodation.
‘Then what is your little trouble?’
‘My little trouble!’
I felt that this sort of thing must be stopped at its source. It was only ten minutes to dressing-for-dinner time, and we could go on along these lines for hours.
‘Listen, old crumpet,’ I said patiently. ‘Make up your mind whether you are my old friend Reginald Herring or an echo in the Swiss mountains. If you’re simply going to repeat every word I say –’
At this moment Pop Glossop entered with the cocktails, and we cheesed the give-and-take. Kipper drained his glass to the lees and seemed to become calmer. When the door closed behind Roddy and he was at liberty to speak, he did so quite coherently. Taking another beaker, he said:
‘Bertie, the most frightful thing has happened.’
I don’t mind saying that the heart did a bit of sinking. In an earlier conversation with Bobbie Wickham it will be recalled that I had compared Brinkley Court to one of those joints the late Edgar Allan Poe used to write about. If you are acquainted with his works, you will remember that in them it was always tough going for those who stayed in country houses, the visitor being likely at any moment to encounter a walking corpse in a winding sheet with blood all over it. Prevailing conditions at Brinkley were not perhaps quite as testing as that, but the atmosphere had undeniably become sinister, and here was Kipper more than hinting that he had a story to relate which would deepen the general feeling that things were hotting up.