He appeared to be one of those fellows who are not interested in July in London, for he showed no disposition to pursue the subject, merely giving one of those snorts of his.
‘Where were you last night, you blighted louse?’ he said, and I noticed that the face was suffused, the cheek muscles twitching and the eyes, like stars, starting from their spheres.
I had a pop at being cool and nonchalant.
‘Last night?’ I said, musing. ‘Let me see, that would be the night of July the twenty-second, would it not? H’m. Ha. The night of –’
He swallowed a couple of times.
‘I see you have forgotten. Let me assist your memory. You were in a low night club with Florence Craye, my fiancée.’
‘Who, me?’
‘Yes, you. And this morning you were in the dock at Vinton Street police court.’
‘You’re sure you mean me?’
‘Quite sure. I had the information from my uncle, who is the magistrate there. He came to lunch at my flat today, and as he was leaving he caught sight of your photograph on the wall.’
‘I didn’t know you kept my photograph on your wall, Stilton. I’m touched.’
He continued to ferment.
‘It was a group photograph,’ he said curtly, ‘and you happened to be in it. He looked at it, sniffed sharply and said “Do you know this young man?” I explained that we belonged to the same club, so it was not always possible to avoid you, but that was the extent of our association. I was going on to say that, left to myself, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, when he proceeded. Still sniffing, he said he was glad I was not a close friend of yours, because you weren’t at all the sort of fellow he liked to think of any nephew of his being matey with. He said you had been up before him this morning, charged with assaulting a policeman, who stated that he had arrested you for tripping him up while he was chasing a girl with platinum hair in a night club.’
I pursed the lips. Or, rather, I tried to, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the machinery. Still, I spoke boldly and with spirit.
‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘Personally I would be inclined to attach little credence to the word of the sort of policeman who spends his time chasing platinum-haired girls in night clubs. And as for this uncle of yours, with his wild stories of me having been up before him – well, you know what magistrates are. The lowest form of pond life. When a fellow hasn’t the brains and initiative to sell jellied eels, they make him a magistrate.’
‘You mean that when he said that about your photograph he was deceived by some slight resemblance?’
I waved a hand.
‘Not necessarily a slight resemblance. London’s full of chaps who look like me. I’m a very common type. People have told me that there is a fellow called Ephraim Gadsby – one of the Streatham Common Gadsbys – who is positively my double. I shall, of course, take this into consideration when weighing the question of bringing an action for slander and defamation of character against this uncle of yours, and shall probably decide to let justice be tempered with mercy. But it would be a kindly act to warn the old son of a bachelor to be more careful in future how he allows his tongue to run away with him. There are limits to one’s forbearance.’
He brooded darkly for about forty-five seconds.
‘Platinum hair, the policeman said,’ he observed at the end of this lull. ‘This girl had platinum hair.’
‘No doubt very becoming.’
‘I find it extremely significant that Florence has platinum hair.’
‘I don’t see why. Hundreds of girls have. My dear Stilton, ask yourself if it is likely that Florence would have been at a night club like the … what did you say the name was?’
‘I didn’t. But I believe it was called The Mottled Oyster.’
‘Ah, yes, I have heard of it. Not a very nice place, I understand. Quite incredible that she would have gone to a joint like that. A fastidious, intellectual girl like Florence? No, no.’
He pondered. It seemed to me that I had him going.
‘She wanted me to take her to a night club last night,’ he said. ‘Something to do with getting material for her new book.’
‘But you very properly refused?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I said I would. Then we had that bit of trouble, so of course it was off.’
‘And she, of course, went home to bed. What else would any pure, sweet English girl have done? It amazes me that you can suppose even for a moment that she would have gone to one of these dubious establishments without you. Especially a place where, as I understand your story, squads of policemen are incessantly chasing platinum-haired girls hither and thither, and probably even worse things happening as the long night wears on. No, Stilton, dismiss these thoughts – which, if you will allow me to say so, are unworthy of you – and … Ah, here is Jeeves,’ 1 said, noting with relief that the sterling fellow, who had just oozed in, was carrying the old familiar shaker. ‘What have you there, Jeeves? Some of your specials?’
‘Yes, sir. I fancied that Mr. Cheesewright might possibly be glad of refreshment.’
‘He’s just in the vein for it. I won’t join you, Stilton, because, as you know, with this Darts tournament coming on, I am in more or less strict training these days, but I must insist on your trying one of these superb mixtures of Jeeves’s. You have been anxious … worried … disturbed … and it will pull you together. Oh, by the way, Jeeves.’
‘Sir?’
‘I wonder if you remember, when I came home last night after chatting with Mr. Cheesewright at the Drones, my saying to you that I was going straight to bed with an improving book?’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish, was it not?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘I think I said something to the effect that I could hardly wait till I could get at it?’
‘As I recollect, those were your exact words, sir. You were, you said, counting the minutes until you could curl up with the volume in question.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
He oozed off, and I turned to Stilton, throwing the arms out in a sort of wide gesture. I don’t suppose I have ever come closer in my life to saying ‘Voilà’!
‘You heard?’ I said. ‘If that doesn’t leave me without a stain on my character, it is difficult to see what it does leave me without. But let me help you to your special. You will find it rare and refreshing.’
It’s a curious thing about those specials of Jeeves’s, and one on which many revellers have commented, that while, as I mentioned earlier, they wake the sleeping tiger in you, they also work the other way round. I mean, if the tiger in you isn’t sleeping but on the contrary up and doing with a heart for any fate, they lull it. You come in like a lion, you take your snootful, and you go out like a lamb. Impossible to explain it, of course. One can merely state the facts.
It was so now with Stilton. In his pre-special phase he had been all steamed up and fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, as the fellow said, and he became a better, kindlier man beneath my very gaze. Half-way through the initial snifter he was admitting in the friendliest way that he had wronged me. I might be the most consummate ass that ever eluded the vigilance of the talent scouts of Colney Hatch, he said, but it was obvious that I had not taken Florence to The Mottled Oyster. And dashed lucky for me I hadn’t, he added, for had such been the case, he would have broken my spine in three places. In short, all very chummy and cordial.
‘Harking back to the earlier portion of our conversation, Stilton,’ I said, changing the subject after we had agreed that his Uncle Joseph was a cockeyed fathead who would do well to consult some good oculist, ‘I noticed that when you spoke of Florence, you used the expression “My fiancée”. Am I to infer from this that the dove of peace has pulled a quick one since I saw you last? That broken engagement, has it been soldered?’
He nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I ma
de certain concessions and yielded certain points.’ Here his hand strayed to his upper lip and a look of pain passed over his face. ‘A reconciliation took place this morning.’
‘Splendid!’
‘You’re pleased?’
‘Of course.’
‘Ho!’
‘Eh?’
He eyed me fixedly.
‘Wooster, come off it. You know you’re in love with her yourself.’
‘Absurd.’
‘Absurd, my foot! You needn’t think you can fool me. You worship that girl, and I am still inclined to believe that the whole of this moustache sequence was a vile plot on your part to steal her from me. Well, all I have to say is that if I ever catch you oiling round her and trying to alienate her affections, I shall break your spine in four places.’
‘Three, I thought you said.’
‘No, four. However, she will be out of your reach for some little time, I am glad to say. She goes today to visit your aunt, Mrs. Travers, in Worcestershire.’
Amazing how with a careless word you can land yourself in the soup. I was within the merest toucher of saying Yes, so she had told me, which would, of course, have been fatal. In the nick of time I contrived to substitute an ‘Oh, really?’
‘She’s going to Brinkley, is she? You also?’
‘I shall be following in a few days.’
‘You aren’t going with her?’
‘Talk sense. You don’t suppose I intend to appear in public during the early stages of growing that damned moustache she insists on. I shall remain confined to my room till the foul thing has started to sprout a bit. Good-bye, Wooster. You will remember what I was saying about your spine?’
I assured him that I would bear it in mind, and he finished his special and withdrew.
8
* * *
THE DAYS THAT followed saw me at the peak of my form, fizzy to an almost unbelievable extent and enchanting one and all with my bright smile and merry sallies. During this halcyon period, if halcyon is the word I want, it would not be too much to say that I revived like a watered flower.
It was as if a great weight had been rolled off the soul. Only those who have had to endure the ordeal of having G. D’Arcy Cheesewright constantly materialize from thin air and steal up behind them, breathing down the back of their necks as they took their ease in their smoking-room, can fully understand the relief of being able to sink into a chair and order a restorative, knowing that the place would be wholly free from this pre-eminent scourge. My feelings, I suppose, were roughly what those of Mary would have been, had she looked over her shoulder one morning and found the lamb no longer among those present.
And then – bing – just as I was saying to myself that this was the life, along came all those telegrams.
The first to arrive reached me at my residence just as I was lighting the after-breakfast cigarette, and I eyed it with something of the nervous discomfort of one confronted with a ticking bomb. Telegrams have so often been the heralds or harbingers or whatever they’re called of sharp crises in my affairs that I have come to look on them askance, wondering if something is going to pop out of the envelope and bite me in the leg. It was with a telegram, it may be recalled, that Fate teed off in the sinister episode of Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and the silver cow-creamer which I was instructed by Aunt Dahlia to pinch from the first-named’s collection at Totleigh Towers.
Little wonder, then, that as I brooded over this one – eyeing it, as I say, askance – I was asking myself if Hell’s foundations were about to quiver again.
Still, there the thing was, and it seemed to me, weighing the pros and cons, that only one course lay before me – viz. to open it.
I did so. Handed in at Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, it was signed ‘Travers’, this revealing it as the handiwork either of Aunt Dahlia or Thomas P. Travers, her husband, a pleasant old bird whom she had married at her second pop some years earlier. From the fact that it started with the words ‘Bertie, you worm’ I deduced that it was the former who had taken post-office pen in hand. Uncle Tom is more guarded in his speech than the female of the species. He generally calls me ‘Me boy’.
This was the substance of the communication:
Bertie, you worm, your early presence desired. Drop everything and come down here pronto, prepared for lengthy visit. Urgently need you to buck up a blighter with whiskers. Love. Travers.
I brooded over this for the rest of the morning, and on my way to lunch at the Drones shot off my answer, a brief request for more light:
Did you say whiskers or whisky? Love. Wooster.
I found another from her on returning:
Whiskers, ass. The son of a what-not has short but distinct side-whiskers. Love. Travers.
It’s an odd thing about memory, it so often just fails to spear the desired object. At the back of my mind there was dodging about a hazy impression that somewhere at some time I heard someone mention short side-whiskers in some connection, but I couldn’t pin it down. It eluded me. So, pursuing the sound old policy of going to the fountain-head for information, I stepped out and dispatched the following:
What short side-whiskered son of a what-not would this be, and why does he need bucking up? Wire full details, as at present fogged, bewildered and mystified. Love. Wooster.
She replied with the generous warmth which causes so many of her circle to hold on to their hats when she lets herself go:
Listen, you foul blot. What’s the idea of making me spend a fortune on telegrams like this? Do you think I am made of money? Never you mind what short side-whiskered son of a what-not it is or why he needs bucking up. You just come as I tell you and look slippy about it. Oh, and by the way, go to Aspinall’s in Bond Street and get pearl necklace of mine they have there and bring it down with you. Have you got that? Aspinall’s. Bond Street. Pearl necklace. Shall expect you tomorrow. Love. Travers.
A little shaken but still keeping the flag flying, I responded with the ensuing:
Fully grasp all that Aspinall’s-Bond-Street-pearl-necklace stuff, but what you are overlooking is that coming to Brinkley at present juncture not so jolly simple as you seem to think. There are complications and what not. Wheels within wheels, if you get what I mean. Whole thing calls for deep thought. Will weigh matter carefully and let you know decision. Love. Wooster.
You see, though Brinkley Court is a home from home and gets five stars in Baedeker as the headquarters of Monsieur Anatole, Aunt Dahlia’s French cook – a place, in short, to which in ordinary circs I race, when invited, with a whoop and a holler – it had taken me but an instant to spot that under existing conditions there were grave objections to going there. I need scarcely say that I allude to the fact that Florence was on the premises and Stilton expected shortly.
It was this that was giving me pause. Who could say that the latter, finding me in residence on his arrival, would not leap to the conclusion that I had rolled up in pursuit of the former like young Lochinvar coming out of the west? And should this thought flit into his mind, what, I asked myself, would the harvest be? His parting words about my spine were still green in my memory. I knew him to be a man rather careful in his speech, on whose promises one could generally rely, and if he said he was going to break spines in four places, you could be quite sure that four places was precisely what he would break them in.
I passed a restless and uneasy evening. In no mood for revelry at the Drones, I returned home early and was brushing up on my Mystery of the Pink Crayfish when the telephone rang, and so disordered was the nervous system that I shot ceilingwards at the sound. It was as much as I could do to totter across the room and unhook the receiver.
The voice that floated over the wire was that of Aunt Dahlia.
Well, when I say floated, possibly ‘thundered’ would be more the mot juste. A girlhood and early womanhood spent in chivvying the British fox in all weathers under the auspices of the Quorn and Pytchley have left this aunt brick-red in colour and lent amaz
ing power to her vocal cords. I’ve never pursued foxes myself, but apparently, when you do, you put in a good bit of your time shouting across ploughed fields in a high wind, and this becomes a habit. If Aunt Dahlia has a fault, it is that she is inclined to talk to you when face to face in a small drawing-room as if she were addressing some crony a quarter of a mile away whom she had observed riding over hounds. For the rest, she is a large, jovial soul, built rather on the lines of Mae West, and is beloved by all including the undersigned. Our relations had always been chummy to the last drop.
‘Hullo, hullo, hullo!’ she boomed. The old hunting stuff coming to the surface, you notice. ‘Is that you, Bertie, darling?’
I said it was none other.
‘Then what’s the idea, you half-witted Gadarene swine, of all this playing hard-to-get? You and your matter-weighing! I never heard such nonsense in my life. You’ve got to come here, and immediately, if you don’t want an aunt’s curse delivered on your doorstep by return of post. If I have to cope unaided with that ruddy Percy any longer, I shall crack beneath the strain.’
She paused to take in breath, and I put a question.
‘Is Percy the whiskered bloke?’
‘That’s the one. He’s casting a thick pall of gloom over the place. It’s like living in a fog. Tom says if something isn’t done soon, he will take steps.’
‘But what’s the matter with the chap?’
‘He’s madly in love with Florence Craye.’
‘Oh, I see. And it depresses him to think that she’s engaged to Stilton Cheesewright?’
‘Exactly. He’s as sick as mud about it. He moons broodingly to and fro, looking like Hamlet. I want you to come and divert him. Take him for walks, dance before him, tell him funny stories. Anything to bring a smile to that whiskered, tortoiseshell-rimmed face.’
I saw her point, of course. No hostess wants a Hamlet on the premises. But what I couldn’t understand was how a chap like that came to be polluting the pure air of Brinkley. I knew the old relative to be quite choosey in the matter of guests. Cabinet Ministers have sometimes failed to crash the gate. I put this to her, and she said the explanation was perfectly simple.