I smiled another tolerant smile. The young boll weevil amused me. I was thinking how right I had been in predicting that any job assigned by her to anyone would be unfit for human consumption.
‘Well, really, Stiffy!’
The quiet rebuke in my voice ought to have bathed her in shame and remorse, but it didn’t. She came back at me strongly.
‘I don’t know what you’re Well-really-ing about. You’re always pinching things, aren’t you? Policemen’s helmets and things like that.’
I inclined the bean. It was true that I had once lived in Arcady.
‘There is,’ I was obliged to concede, ‘a certain substance in what you say. I admit that in my time I may have removed a lid or two from the upper stories of members of the constabulary –’
‘Well, then.’
‘– but only on Boat Race Night and when the heart was younger than it is as of even date. It was an episode of the sort that first brought me and your Uncle Watkyn together. But you can take it from me that the hot blood has cooled and I’m a reformed character. My answer to your suggestion is No.’
‘No?’
‘N-ruddy-o,’ I said, making it clear to the meanest intelligence. ‘Why don’t you pinch the thing yourself?’
‘It wouldn’t be any good. I couldn’t take it to Plank. I’m confined to barracks. Bartholomew bit the butler, and the sins of the Scottie are visited upon its owner. I do think you might reconsider, Bertie.’
‘Not a hope.’
‘You’re a blighter!’
‘But a blighter who knows his own mind and is not to be shaken by argument or plea, however specious.’
She was silent for a space. Then she gave a little sigh.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘And I did hope I wouldn’t have to tell Madeline about Gussie.’
I gave another of those visible starts of mine. I’ve seldom heard words I liked the sound of less. Fraught with sinister significance they seemed to me.
‘Do you know what happened tonight, Bertie? I was roused from sleep about an hour ago, and what do you think roused me? Stealthy footsteps, no less. I crept out of my room, and I saw Gussie sneaking down the stairs. All was darkness, of course, but he had a little torch and it shone on his spectacles. I followed him. He went to the kitchen. I peered in, and there was the cook shovelling cold steak and kidney pie into him like a stevedore loading a grain ship. And the thought flashed into my mind that if Madeline heard of this, she would give him the bum’s rush before he knew what had hit him.’
‘But a girl doesn’t give a fellow the bum’s rush just because she’s told him to stick to the sprouts and spinach and she hears that he’s been wading into the steak and kidney pie,’ I said, trying to reassure myself but not getting within several yards of it.
‘I bet Madeline would.’
And so, thinking it over, did I. You can’t judge goofs like Madeline Bassett by ordinary standards. What the normal popsy would do and what she would do in any given circumstances were two distinct and separate things. I had not forgotten the time when she had severed relations with Gussie purely because through no fault of his own he got stinko when about to present the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School.
‘You know how high her ideals are. Yes, sir, if someone were to drop an incautious word to her about tonight’s orgy, those wedding bells would not ring out. Gussie would be at liberty, and she would start looking about her for somebody else to fill the vacant spot. I really think you’ll have to reconsider that decision of yours, Bertie, and do just this one more bit of pinching.’
‘Oh, my sainted aunt!’
I spoke as harts do when heated in the chase and panting for cooling streams. It would have been plain to a far less astute mind than mine that this blighted Byng had got me by the short hairs and was in a position to dictate tactics and strategy.
Blackmail, of course, but the gentler sex love blackmail. Not once but on several occasions has my Aunt Dahlia bent me to her will by threatening that if I didn’t play ball she would bar me from her table, thus dashing Anatole’s lunches and dinners from my lips. Show me a delicately nurtured female, and I will show you a ruthless Napoleon of Crime prepared without turning a hair to put the screws on some unfortunate male whose services she happens to be in need of. There ought to be a law.
‘It looks as if the die were cast,’ I said reluctantly.
‘It is,’ she assured me.
‘You’re really adamant?’
‘Couldn’t be more so. My heart bleeds for Plank, and I’m going to see that justice is done.’
‘Right ho, then. I’ll have a crack at it.’
‘That’s my little man. The whole thing’s so frightfully easy and simple. All you have to do is lift the thing off the dining-room table and smuggle it over to Plank. Think how his face’ll light up when you walk in on him with it. “My hero!” I expect he’ll say.’
And with a laugh which, though silvery, grated on my ear like a squeaking slate pencil, she buzzed off.
10
* * *
PROCEEDING TO MY room and turning in between the sheets, I composed myself for sleep, but I didn’t get a lot of it and what I did get was much disturbed by dreams of being chased across difficult country by sharks, some of them looking like Stiffy, some like Sir Watkyn Bassett, others like the dog Bartholomew. When Jeeves came shimmering in next morning with the breakfast tray, I lost no time in supplying him with full information re the harrow I found myself the toad under.
‘You see the posish, Jeeves,’ I concluded. ‘When the loss of the thing is discovered and the hue and cry sets in, who will be the immediate suspect? Wooster, Bertram. My name in this house is already mud, and the men up top will never think of looking further for the guilty party. On the other hand, if I refuse to sit in, Stiffy will consider herself scorned, and we all know what happens when you scorn a woman. She’ll tell Madeline Bassett that Gussie has been at the steak and kidney pie, and ruin and desolation will ensue. I see no way of beating the game.’
To my surprise, instead of raising an eyebrow the customary eighth of an inch and saying ‘Most disturbing, sir,’ he came within an ace of smiling. That is to say, the left corner of his mouth quivered almost imperceptibly before returning to position one.
‘You cannot accede to Miss Byng’s request, sir.’
I took an astonished sip of coffee. I couldn’t follow his train of thought. It seemed to me that he couldn’t have been listening.
‘But if I don’t, she’ll squeal to the F.B.I.’
‘No, sir, for the lady will be forced to admit that it is physically impossible for you to carry out her wishes. The statuette is no longer at large. It has been placed in Sir Watkyn’s collection room behind a stout steel door.’
‘Good Lord! How do you know?’
‘I chanced to pass the dining-room, sir, and inadvertently overheard a conversation between Sir Watkyn and his lordship.’
‘Call him Spode.’
‘Very good, sir. Mr. Spode was observing to Sir Watkyn that he had not at all liked the interest you displayed in the figurine at dinner last night.’
‘I was just giving Pop B. the old salve in the hope of sweetening the atmosphere a bit.’
‘Precisely, sir, but your statement that the object was “just the sort of thing Uncle Tom would like to have” made a deep impression on Mr. Spode. Remembering the unfortunate episode of the cow-creamer, which did so much to mar the pleasantness of your previous visit to Totleigh Towers, he informed Sir Watkyn that he had revised his original view that you were here to attempt to lure Miss Bassett from Mr. Fink-Nottle, and that he was now convinced that your motive in coming to the house had to do with the figurine, and that you were planning to purloin it on Mr. Travers’s behalf. Sir Watkyn, who appeared much moved, accepted the theory in toto, all the more readily because of an encounter which he said he had had with you in the early hours of this morning.’
I nodded.
‘Yes, we got t
ogether in the hall at, I suppose, about one a.m. I had gone down to see if I could get a bit of that steak and kidney pie.’
‘I quite understand, sir. It was an injudicious thing to do, if I may say so, but the claims of steak and kidney pie are of course paramount. It was immediately after this that Sir Watkyn fell in with Mr. Spode’s suggestion that the statuette be placed under lock and key in the collection room. I presume that it is now there, and when it is explained to Miss Byng that only by means of burglar’s tools or a flask of trinitrotoluol could you obtain access to it and that neither of these is in your possession, I am sure the lady will see reason and recede from her position.’
Only the circumstance of my being in bed at the moment kept me from dancing a few carefree steps.
‘You speak absolute sooth, Jeeves. This lets me out.’
‘Completely, sir.’
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going and explaining the position of affairs to Stiffy now. You can tell the story so much better than I could, and she ought to be given the low-down as soon as possible. I don’t know where she is at this time of day, but you’ll find her messing about somewhere, I’ve no doubt.’
‘I saw Miss Byng in the garden with Mr. Pinker, sir. I think she was trying to prepare him for his approaching ordeal.’
‘Eh?’
‘If you recall, sir, owing to the temporary indisposition of the vicar, Mr. Pinker will be in sole charge of the school treat tomorrow, and he views the prospect with not unnatural qualms. There is a somewhat lawless element among the school children of Totleigh-in-the-Wold, and he fears the worst.’
‘Well, tell Stiffy to take a couple of minutes off from the pep talk and listen to your communiqué.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He was absent quite a time – so long, in fact, that I was dressed when he returned.
‘I saw Miss Byng, sir.’
‘And –?’
‘She is still insistent that you restore the statuette to Mr. Plank.’
‘She’s cuckoo. I can’t get into the collection room.’
‘No, sir, but Miss Byng can. She informs me that not long ago Sir Watkyn chanced to drop his key, and she picked it up and omitted to apprise him. Sir Watkyn had another key made, but the original remains in Miss Byng’s possession.’
I clutched the brow.
‘You mean she can get into the room any time she feels like it?’
‘Precisely, sir. Indeed, she has just done so.’
And so saying he fished the eyesore from an inner pocket and handed it to me.
‘Miss Byng suggests that you take the object to Mr. Plank after luncheon. In her droll way she said the meal – I quote her words – would put the necessary stuffing into you and nerve you for the … It is somewhat early, sir, but shall I get you a little brandy?’
‘Not a little, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Fetch the cask.’
I don’t know how Emerald Stoker was with brush and palette, never having seen any of her output, but she unquestionably had what it takes where cooking was concerned, and any householder would have been glad to sign her up for the duration. The lunch she provided was excellent, everything most toothsome.
But with this ghastly commission of Stiffy’s on the agenda paper, I had little appetite for her offerings. The brow was furrowed, the manner distrait, the stomach full of butterflies.
‘Jeeves,’ I said as he accompanied me to my car at the conclusion of the meal, speaking rather peevishly, perhaps, for I was not my usual sunny self, ‘doesn’t it strike you as odd that, with infant mortality so rife, a girl like Stiffy should have been permitted to survive into the early twenties? Some mismanagement there. What’s the tree I read about somewhere that does you in if you sit under it?’
‘The Upas tree, sir.’
‘She’s a female Upas tree. It’s not safe to come near her. Disaster on every side is what she strews. And another thing. It’s all very well for her to say … glibly?’
‘Or airily, sir. The words are synonymous.’
‘It’s all very well for her to say glibly or airily “Take this blasted eyesore to Plank,” but how do I find him? I can’t go rapping on every door in Hockley-cum-Meston, saying “Excuse me, are you Plank?” It’d be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘A very colourful image, sir. I appreciate your difficulty. I would suggest that you proceed to the local post office and institute inquiries there. Post office officials invariably have information at their disposal as to the whereabouts of dwellers in the vicinity.’
He had not erred. Braking the car in the Hockley-cum-Meston High Street, I found that the post office was one of those shops you get in villages, where in addition to enjoying the postal facilities you can purchase cigarettes, pipe tobacco, wool, lollipops, string, socks, boots, overalls, picture postcards and bottles containing yellow non-alcoholic drinks, probably fizzy. In answer to my query the old lady behind the counter told me I would find Plank up at the big house with the red shutters about half a mile further back along the road. She seemed a bit disappointed that information was all I was after and that I had no intention of buying a pair of socks or a ball of string, but she bore up philosophically, and I toddled back to the car.
I remembered the house she had spoken of, having passed it on my way. Imposing mansion with a lot of land. This Plank, I took it, would be some sort of labourer on the estate. I pictured him as a sturdy, gnarled old fellow whose sailor son had brought home the eyesore from one of his voyages, and neither of them had had the foggiest that it was valuable. ‘I’ll put it on the mantelpiece, Dad,’ no doubt the son had said. ‘It’ll look well up there,’ to which the old gaffer had replied ‘Aye, lad, gormed if ’twon’t look gradely on the mantelpiece.’ Or words to that effect. I can’t do the dialect, of course. So they had shoved it on the mantelpiece, and then along had come Sir Watkyn Bassett with his smooth city ways and made suckers out of parent and offspring. Happening all the time, that sort of thing.
I reached the house and was about to knock on the door, when there came bustling up an elderly gentleman with a square face, much tanned as if he had been sitting out in the sun quite a lot without his parasol.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said. ‘Hope I haven’t kept you waiting. We were having football practice, and I lost track of the time. Come in, my dear fellow, come in.’
I need scarcely say that this exuberant welcome to one who, whatever his merits, was a total stranger warmed my heart quite a good deal. It was with the feeling that his attitude did credit to Gloucestershire hospitality that I followed him through a hall liberally besprinkled with the heads of lions, leopards, gnus and other fauna into a room with french windows opening on the front garden. Here he left me while he went off to fetch drinks, his first question having been Would I care for one for the tonsils, to which I had replied with considerable enthusiasm that I would. When he returned, he found me examining the photographs on the wall. The one on which my eye was resting at the moment was a school football group, and it was not difficult to spot the identity of the juvenile delinquent holding the ball and sitting in the middle.
‘You?’ I said.
‘That’s me,’ he replied. ‘My last year at school. I skippered the side that season. That’s old Scrubby Willoughby sitting next to me. Fast wing threequarter, but never would learn to give the reverse pass.’
‘He wouldn’t?’ I said, shocked. I hadn’t the remotest what he was talking about, but he had said enough to show me that this Willoughby must have been a pretty dubious character, and when he went on to tell me that poor old Scrubby had died of cirrhosis of the liver in the Federal Malay States, I wasn’t really surprised. I imagine these fellows who won’t learn to give the reverse pass generally come to a fairly sticky end.
‘Chap on my other side is Smiler Todd, prop forward.’
‘Prop forward, eh?’
‘And a very good one. Played for Cambridge later on. You fond of Rugger?’
‘I don’t
think I know him.’
‘Rugby football.’
‘Oh, ah. No, I’ve never gone in for it.’
‘You haven’t?’
‘No.’
‘Good God!’
I could see that I had sunk pretty low in his estimation, but he was a host and managed to fight down the feeling of nausea with which my confession had afflicted him.
‘I’ve always been mad keen on Rugger. Didn’t get much of it after leaving school, as they stationed me in West Africa. Tried to teach the natives there the game, but had to give it up. Too many deaths, with the inevitable subsequent blood feuds. Retired now and settled down here. I’m trying to make Hockley-cum-Meston the best football village in these parts, and I will say for the lads that they’re coming on nicely. What we need is a good prop forward, and I can’t find one. But you don’t want to hear all this. You want to know about my Brazilian expedition.’
‘Oh, have you been to Brazil?’
I seemed to have said the wrong thing, as one so often does. He stared.
‘Didn’t you know I’d been to Brazil?’
‘Nobody tells me anything.’
‘I should have thought they’d have briefed you at the office. Seems silly to send a reporter all the way down here without telling him what they’re sending him for.’
I’m pretty astute, and I saw there had been a mix-up somewhere.
‘Were you expecting a reporter?’
‘Of course I was. Aren’t you from the Daily Express?’
‘Sorry, no.’
‘I thought you must be the chap who was coming to interview me about my Brazilian explorations.’
‘Oh, you’re an explorer?’
Again I had said the wrong thing. He was plainly piqued.
‘What did you think I was? Does the name Plank mean nothing to you?’
‘Is your name Plank?’
‘Of course it is.’
‘Well, what a very odd coincidence,’ I said, intrigued. ‘I’m looking for a character called Plank. Not you, somebody else. The bimbo I want is a sturdy tiller of the soil, probably gnarled, with a sailor son. As you have the same name as him, you’ll probably be interested in the story I’m about to relate. I have here,’ I said, producing the black amber thing, ‘a what-not.’