‘He isn’t always as dippy as he looked just now.’
‘Nevertheless –’
‘And let me tell you something, Roddy. If you were as up against it as he is, you’d have a neurosis, too.’
And feeling that it would do no harm to get his views on the Kipper situation, I unfolded the tale.
‘So you see the posish,’ I concluded. ‘The only way he can avoid the fate that is worse than death – viz. letting his employers get nicked for a sum beyond the dreams of avarice – is by ingratiating himself with Upjohn, which would seem to any thinking man a shot that’s not on the board. I mean, he had four years with him at Malvern House and didn’t ingratiate himself once, so it’s difficult to see how he’s going to start doing it now. It seems to me the thing’s an impasse. French expression,’ I explained, ‘meaning that we’re stymied good and proper with no hope of finding a formula.’
To my surprise, instead of clicking the tongue and waggling the head gravely to indicate that he saw the stickiness of the dilemma, he chuckled fatly, as if having spotted an amusing side to the thing which had escaped me. Having done this, he blessed his soul, which was his way of saying ‘Gorblimey’.
‘It really is quite extraordinary, my dear Bertie,’ he said, ‘how associating with you restores my youth. Your lightest word seems to bring back old memories. I find myself recollecting episodes in the distant past which I have not thought of for years and years. It is as though you waved a magic wand of some kind. This matter of the problem confronting your friend Mr. Herring is a case in point. While you were telling me of his troubles, the mists shredded away, the hands of the clock turned back, and I was once again a young fellow in my early twenties, deeply involved in the strange affair of Bertha Simmons, George Lanchester and Bertha’s father, old Mr. Simmons, who at that time resided in Putney. He was in the imported lard and butter business.’
‘The what was that strange affair again?’
He repeated the cast of characters, asked me if I would care for another drop of port, a suggestion with which I readily fell in, and proceeded.
‘George, a young man of volcanic passions, met Bertha Simmons at a dance at Putney Town Hall in aid of the widows of deceased railway porters and became instantly enamoured. And his love was returned. When he encountered Bertha next day in Putney High Street and, taking her off to a confectioner’s for an ice cream, offered her with it his hand and heart, she accepted them enthusiastically. She said that when they were dancing together on the previous night something had seemed to go all over her, and he said he had had exactly the same experience.’
‘Twin souls, what?’
‘A most accurate description.’
‘In fact, so far, so good.’
‘Precisely. But there was an obstacle, and a very serious one. George was a swimming instructor at the local baths, and Mr. Simmons had higher views for his daughter. He forbade the marriage. I am speaking, of course, of the days when fathers did forbid marriage. It was only when George saved him from drowning that he relented and gave the young couple his consent and blessing.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘Perfectly simple. I took Mr. Simmons for a stroll on the river bank and pushed him in, and George, who was waiting in readiness, dived into the water and pulled him out. Naturally I had to undergo a certain amount of criticism of my clumsiness, and it was many weeks before I received another invitation to Sunday supper at Chatsworth, the Simmons residence, quite a privation in those days when I was a penniless medical student and perpetually hungry, but I was glad to sacrifice myself to help a friend and the results, as far as George was concerned, were of the happiest. And what crossed my mind, as you were telling me of Mr. Herring’s desire to ingratiate himself with Mr. Upjohn, was that a similar – is “set-up” the term you young fellows use? – would answer in his case. All the facilities are here at Brinkley Court. In my rambles about the grounds I have noticed a small but quite adequate lake, and … well, there you have it, my dear Bertie. I throw it out, of course, merely as a suggestion.’
His words left me all of a glow. When I thought how I had misjudged him in the days when our relations had been distant, I burned with shame and remorse. It seemed incredible that I could ever have looked on this admirable loony-doctor as the menace in the treatment. What a lesson, I felt, this should teach all of us that a man may have a bald head and bushy eyebrows and still remain at heart a jovial sportsman and one of the boys. There was about an inch of the ruby juice nestling in my glass, and as he finished speaking I raised the beaker in a reverent toast. I told him he had hit the bull’s eye and was entitled to a cigar or coconut according to choice.
‘I’ll go and take the matter up with my principals immediately.’
‘Can Mr. Herring swim?’
‘Like several fishes.’
‘Then I see no obstacle in the path.’
We parted with mutual expressions of good will, and it was only after I had emerged into the summer air that I remembered I hadn’t told him that Wilbert had purchased, not pinched, the cow-creamer, and for a moment I thought of going back to apprise him. But I thought again, and didn’t. First things first, I said to myself, and the item at the top of the agenda paper was the bringing of a new sparkle to Kipper’s eyes. Later on, I told myself, would do, and carried on to where he and Bobbie were pacing the lawn with bowed heads. It would not be long, I anticipated, before I would be bringing those heads up with a jerk.
Nor was I in error. Their enthusiasm was unstinted. Both agreed unreservedly that if Upjohn had the merest spark of human feeling in him, which of course had still to be proved, the thing was in the bag.
‘But you never thought this up yourself, Bertie,’ said Bobbie, always inclined to underestimate the Wooster shrewdness. ‘You’ve been talking to Jeeves.’
‘No, as a matter of fact, it was Swordfish who had the idea.’
Kipper seemed surprised.
‘You mean you told him about it?’
‘I thought it the strategic move. Four heads are better than three.’
‘And he advised shoving Upjohn into the lake?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Rather a peculiar butler.’
I turned this over in my mind.
‘Peculiar? Oh, I don’t know. Fairly run-of-the-mill I should call him. Yes, more or less the usual type,’ I said.
15
* * *
WITH SELF ALL eagerness and enthusiasm for the work in hand, straining at the leash, as you might say, and full of the will to win, it came as a bit of a damper when I found on the following afternoon that Jeeves didn’t think highly of Operation Upjohn. I told him about it just before starting out for the tryst, feeling that it would be helpful to have his moral support, and was stunned to see that his manner was austere and even puff-faced. He was giving me a description at the time of how it felt to act as judge at a seaside bathing belles contest, and it was with regret that I was compelled to break into this, for he had been holding me spellbound.
‘I’m sorry, Jeeves,’ I said, consulting my watch, ‘but I shall have to be dashing off. Urgent appointment. You must tell me the rest later.’
‘At any time that suits you, sir.’
‘Are you doing anything for the next half hour or so?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Not planning to curl up in some shady nook with a cigarette and Spinoza?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then I strongly advise you to come down to the lake and witness a human drama.’
And in a few brief words I outlined the programme and the events which had led up to it. He listened attentively and raised his left eyebrow a fraction of an inch.
‘Was this Miss Wickham’s idea, sir?’
‘No. I agree that it sounds like one of hers, but actually it was Sir Roderick Glossop who suggested it. By the way, you were probably surprised to find him buttling here.’
‘It did occasion me a momentary astonishme
nt, but Sir Roderick explained the circumstances.’
‘Fearing that if he didn’t let you in on it, you might unmask him in front of Mrs. Cream?’
‘No doubt, sir. He would naturally wish to take all precautions. I gathered from his remarks that he has not yet reached a definite conclusion regarding the mental condition of Mr. Cream.’
‘No, he’s still observing. Well, as I say, it was from his fertile bean that the idea sprang. What do you think of it?’
‘Ill-advised, sir, in my opinion.’
I was amazed. I could hardly b. my e.
‘Ill-advised?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But it worked without a hitch in the case of Bertha Simmons, George Lanchester and old Mr. Simmons.’
‘Very possibly, sir.’
‘Then why this defeatist attitude?’
‘It is merely a feeling, sir, due probably to my preference for finesse. I mistrust these elaborate schemes. One cannot depend on them. As the poet Burns says, the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.’
‘Scotch, isn’t it, that word?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I thought as much. The “gang” told the story. Why do Scotsmen say gang?’
‘I have no information, sir. They have not confided in me.’
I was getting a bit peeved by now, not at all liking the sniffiness of his manner. I had expected him to speed me on my way with words of encouragement and uplift, not to go trying to blunt the keen edge of my zest like this. I was rather in the position of a child who runs to his mother hoping for approval and endorsement of something he’s done, and is awarded instead a brusque kick in the pants. It was with a good deal of warmth that I came back at him.
‘So you think the poet Burns would look askance at this enterprise of ours, do you? Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass. We’ve thought the thing out to the last detail. Miss Wickham asks Mr. Upjohn to come for a stroll with her. She leads him to the lake. I am standing on the brink, ostensibly taking a look at the fishes playing amongst the reeds. Kipper, ready to the last button, is behind a neighbouring tree. On the cue “Oh, look!” from Miss Wickham, accompanied by business of pointing with girlish excitement at something in the water, Upjohn bends over to peer. I push, Kipper dives in, and there we are. Nothing can possibly go wrong.’
‘Just as you say, sir. But I still have that feeling.’
The blood of the Woosters is hot, and I was about to tell him in set terms what I thought of his bally feeling, when I suddenly spotted what it was that was making him crab the act. The green-eyed monster had bitten him. He was miffed because he wasn’t the brains behind this binge, the blue prints for it having been laid down by a rival. Even great men have their weaknesses. So I held back the acid crack I might have made, and went off with a mere ‘Oh, yeah?’ No sense in twisting the knife in the wound, I mean.
All the same, I remained a bit hot under the collar, because when you’re all strung up and tense and all that, the last thing you want is people upsetting you by bringing in the poet Burns. I hadn’t told him, but our plans had already nearly been wrecked at the outset by the unfortunate circumstance of Upjohn, while in the metropolis, having shaved his moustache, this causing Kipper to come within a toucher of losing his nerve and calling the whole thing off. The sight of that bare expanse or steppe of flesh beneath the nose, he said, did something to him, bringing back the days when he had so often found his blood turning to ice on beholding it. It had required quite a series of pep talks to revive his manly spirits.
However, there was good stuff in the lad, and though for a while the temperature of his feet had dropped sharply, threatening to reduce him to the status of a non-cooperative cat in an adage, at 3.30 Greenwich Mean Time he was at his post behind the selected tree, resolved to do his bit. He poked his head round the tree as I arrived, and when I waved a cheery hand at him, waved a fairly cheery hand at me. Though I only caught a glimpse of him, I could see that his upper lip was stiff.
There being no signs as yet of the female star and her companion, I deduced that I was a bit on the early side. I lit a cigarette and stood awaiting their entrance, and was pleased to note that conditions could scarcely have been better for the coming water fête. Too often on an English summer day you find the sun going behind the clouds and a nippy wind springing up from the north east, but this afternoon was one of those still, sultry afternoons when the slightest movement brings the persp. in beads to the brow, an afternoon, in short, when it would be a positive pleasure to be shoved into a lake. ‘Most refreshing,’ Upjohn would say to himself as the cool water played about his limbs.
I was standing there running over the stage directions in my mind to see that I had got them all clear, when I beheld Wilbert Cream approaching, the dog Poppet curvetting about his ankles. On seeing me, the hound rushed forward with uncouth cries as was his wont, but on heaving alongside and getting a whiff of Wooster Number Five calmed down, and I was at liberty to attend to Wilbert, who I could see desired speech with me.
He was looking, I noticed, fairly green about the gills, and he conveyed the same suggestion of having just swallowed a bad oyster which I had observed in Kipper on his arrival at Brinkley. It was plain that the loss of Phyllis Mills, goofy though she unquestionably was, had hit him a shrewd wallop, and I presumed that he was coming to me for sympathy and heart balm, which I would have been only too pleased to dish out. I hoped, of course, that he would make it crisp and remove himself at an early date, for when the moment came for the balloon to go up I didn’t want to be hampered by an audience. When you’re pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.
It was not, however, on the subject of Phyllis that he proceeded to touch.
‘Oh, Wooster,’ he said, ‘I was talking to my mother a night or two ago.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I said, with a slight wave of the hand intended to indicate that if he liked to talk to his mother anywhere, all over the house, he had my approval.
‘She tells me you are interested in mice.’
I didn’t like the trend the conversation was taking, but I preserved my aplomb.
‘Why, yes, fairly interested.’
‘She says she found you trying to catch one in my bedroom!’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Good of you to bother.’
‘Not at all. Always a pleasure.’
‘She says you seemed to be making a very thorough search of my room.’
‘Oh, well, you know, when one sets one’s hand to the plough.’
‘You didn’t find a mouse?’
‘No, no mouse. Sorry.’
‘I wonder if by any chance you happened to find an eighteenth-century cow-creamer?’
‘Eh?’
‘A silver jug shaped like a cow.’
‘No. Why, was it on the floor somewhere?’
‘It was in a drawer of the bureau.’
‘Ah, then I would have missed it.’
‘You’d certainly miss it now. It’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Gone.’
‘You mean disappeared, as it were?’
‘I do.’
‘Strange.’
‘Very strange.’
‘Yes, does seem extremely strange, doesn’t it?’
I had spoken with all the old Wooster coolness, and I doubt if a casual observer would have detected that Bertram was not at his ease, but I can assure my public that he wasn’t by a wide margin. My heart had leaped in the manner popularized by Kipper Herring and Scarface McColl, crashing against my front teeth with a thud which must have been audible in Market Snodsbury. A far less astute man would have been able to divine what had happened. Not knowing the score owing to having missed the latest stop-press news and looking on the cow-creamer purely in the light of a bit of the swag collected by Wilbert in the course of his larcenous career, Pop Glossop, all zeal, had embarked on the search h
e had planned to make, and intuition, developed by years of hunt-the-slipper, had led him to the right spot. Too late I regretted sorely that, concentrating so tensely on Operation Upjohn, I had failed to place the facts before him. Had he but known, about summed it up.
‘I was going to ask you,’ said Wilbert, ‘if you think I should inform Mrs. Travers.’
The cigarette I was smoking was fortunately one of the kind that make you nonchalant, so it was nonchalantly – or fairly nonchalantly – that I was able to reply.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Might upset her.’
‘You consider her a sensitive plant?’
‘Oh, very. Rugged exterior, of course, but you can’t go by that. No, I’d just wait awhile, if I were you. I expect it’ll turn out that the thing’s somewhere you put it but didn’t think you’d put it. I mean, you often put a thing somewhere and think you’ve put it somewhere else and then find you didn’t put it somewhere else but somewhere. I don’t know if you follow me?’
‘I don’t.’
‘What I mean is, just stick around and you’ll probably find the thing.’
‘You think it will return?’
‘I do.’
‘Like a homing pigeon?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Oh?’ said Wilbert, and turned away to greet Bobbie and Upjohn, who had just arrived on the boathouse landing stage. I had found his manner a little peculiar, particularly that last ‘Oh?’ but I was glad that there was no lurking suspicion in his mind that I had taken the bally thing. He might so easily have got the idea that Uncle Tom, regretting having parted with his ewe lamb, had employed me to recover it privily, this being the sort of thing, I believe, that collectors frequently do. Nevertheless, I was still much shaken, and I made a mental note to tell Roddy Glossop to slip it back among his effects at the earliest possible moment.
I shifted over to where Bobbie and Upjohn were standing, and though up and doing with a heart for any fate couldn’t help getting that feeling you get at times like this of having swallowed a double portion of butterflies. My emotions were somewhat similar to those I had experienced when I first sang the Yeoman’s Wedding Song. In public, I mean, for of course I had long been singing it in my bath.