‘Why the devil did you come in here?’
A lesser man than Bertram Wooster would have been nonplussed, and I don’t mind admitting that I was, too, for about a couple of ticks. But as I stood shuffling the feet and twiddling the fingers I caught sight of that camera of his standing on an adjacent table, and I got one of those inspirations you get occasionally. Shakespeare and Burns and even Oliver Wendell Holmes probably used to have them all the time, but self not so often. In fact, this was the first that had come my way for some weeks.
‘Aunt Dahlia sent me to ask you if you would come and take a few photographs of her and the house and all that sort of thing, so that she’ll have them to look at in the long winter evenings. You know how long the winter evenings get nowadays.’
The moment I had said it I found myself speculating as to whether the inspiration had been as hot as I had supposed. I mean, this man had just had a conference with the old ancestor which, unlike those between ministers of state, had not been conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, and he might be thinking it odd that so soon after its conclusion she should be wanting him to take photographs of her. But all was well. No doubt he looked on her request as what is known as an olive branch. Anyway, he was all animation and eagerness to cooperate.
‘I’ll be right down,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’ll be right down.’
Having hidden the porringer in my room and locked the door, I went back to the aged relative and found her with Jeeves. She expressed relief at seeing me.
‘Oh, there you are, my beautiful bounding Bertie. Thank goodness you didn’t go to Runkle’s room. Jeeves tells me Seppings met Runkle on the stairs and he asked him to bring him a cup of tea in half an hour. He said he was going to lie down. You might have run right into him.’
I laughed one of those hollow, mirthless ones.
‘Jeeves speaks too late, old ancestor. I did run into him.’
‘You mean he was there?’
‘With his hair in a braid.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I told him you had asked me to ask him to come and take some photographs.’
‘Quick thinking.’
‘I always think like lightning.’
‘And did he swallow it?’
‘He appeared to. He said he would be right down.’
‘Well, I’m damned if I’m going to smile.’
Whether I would have pleaded with her to modify this stern resolve and at least show a portion of her front teeth when Runkle pressed the button, I cannot say, for as she spoke my thoughts were diverted. A sudden query presented itself. What, I asked myself, was keeping L. P. Runkle? He had said he would be right down, but quite a time had elapsed and no sign of him. I was toying with the idea that on a warm afternoon like this a man of his build might have had a fit of some kind, when there came from the stairs the sound of clumping feet, and he was with us.
But a very different L. P. Runkle from the man who had told me he would be right down. Then he had been all sunny and beaming, the amateur photographer who was not only going to make a pest of himself by taking photographs but had actually been asked to make a pest of himself in this manner, which seldom happens to amateur photographers. Now he was cold and hard like a picnic egg, and he couldn’t have looked at me with more loathing if I really had trodden on his Panama hat.
‘Mrs Travers!’
His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood oranges and Brussels sprouts. I saw the ancestor stiffen, and I knew she was about to go into her grande dame act. This relative, though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn in a flash into a carbon copy of a Duchess of the old school reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so remarkable is that she doesn’t have to use a lorgnette, just does it all with the power of the human eye. I think girls in her day used to learn the trick at their finishing schools.
‘Will you kindly not bellow at me, Mr Runkle. I am not deaf. What is it?’
The aristocratic ice in her tone sent a cold shiver down my spine, but in L. P. Runkle she had picked a tough customer to try to freeze. He apologized for having bellowed, but briefly and with no real contrition. He then proceeded to deal with her query as to what it was, and with a powerful effort forced himself to speak quite quietly. Not exactly like a cooing pigeon, but quietly.
‘I wonder if you remember, Mrs Travers, a silver porringer I showed you on my arrival here.’
‘I do.’
‘Very valuable.’
‘So you told me.’
‘I kept it in the top left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedroom. It did not occur to me that there was any necessity to hide it. I took the honesty of everybody under your roof for granted.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Even when I found that Mr Wooster was one of my fellow guests I took no precautions. It was a fatal blunder. He has just stolen it.’
I suppose it’s pretty much of a strain to keep up that grande dame stuff for any length of time, involving as it does rigidity of the facial muscles and the spinal column, for at these words the ancestor called it a day and reverted to the Quorn-and-Pytchleyness of her youth.
‘Don’t be a damned fool, Runkle. You’re talking rot. Bertie would never dream of doing such a thing, would you, Bertie?’
‘Not in a million years.’
‘The man’s an ass.’
‘One might almost say a silly ass.’
‘Comes of sleeping all the time.’
‘I believe that’s the trouble.’
‘Addles the brain.’
‘Must, I imagine. It’s the same thing with Gus the cat. I love Gus like a brother, but after years of non-stop sleep he’s got about as much genuine intelligence as a Cabinet minister.’
‘I hope Runkle hasn’t annoyed you with his preposterous allegations?’
‘No, no, old ancestor, I’m not angry, just terribly terribly hurt.’
You’d have thought all this would have rendered Runkle a spent force and a mere shell of his former self, but his eye was not dimmed nor his natural force abated. Turning to the door, he paused there to add a few words.
‘I disagree with you, Mrs Travers, in the view you take of your nephew’s honesty. I prefer to be guided by Lord Sidcup, who assures me that Mr Wooster invariably steals anything that is not firmly fastened to the floor. It was only by the merest chance, Lord Sidcup tells me, that at their first meeting he did not make away with an umbrella belonging to Sir Watkyn Bassett, and from there he has, as one might put it, gone from strength to strength. Umbrellas, cow-creamers, amber statuettes, cameras, all are grist to his mill. I was unfortunately asleep when he crept into my room, and he had plenty of time before I woke to do what he had come for. It was only some minutes after he had slunk out that it occurred to me to look in the top left-hand drawer of my chest of drawers. My suspicions were confirmed. The drawer was empty. He had got away with the swag. But I am a man of action. I have sent your butler to the police station to bring a constable to search Wooster’s room. I, until he arrives, propose to stand outside it, making sure that he does not go in and tamper with the evidence.’
Having said which in the most unpleasant of vocal deliveries, L. P. Runkle became conspic by his a, and the ancestor spoke with considerable eloquence on the subject of fat slobs of dubious parentage who had the immortal crust to send her butler on errands. I, too, was exercised by the concluding portion of his remarks.
‘I don’t like that,’ I said, addressing Jeeves, who during the recent proceedings had been standing in the background giving a lifelike impersonation of somebody who wasn’t there.
‘Sir?’
‘If the fuzz search my room, I’m sunk.’
‘Have no anxiety, sir. A police officer is not permitted to enter private property without authority, nor do the regulations allow him to ask the owner of such property for permission to enter.’
‘You
’re sure of that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Well, that was a crumb of comfort, but it would be deceiving my public if I said that Bertram Wooster was his usual nonchalant self. Too many things had been happening one on top of the other for him to be the carefree boulevardier one likes to see. If I hoped to clarify the various situations which were giving me the pip and erase the dark circles already beginning to form beneath the eyes, it would, I saw, be necessary for me to marshal my thoughts.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, leading him from the room, ‘I must marshal my thoughts.’
‘Certainly, sir, if you wish.’
‘And I can’t possibly do it here with crises turning hand-springs on every side. Can you think of a good excuse for me to pop up to London for the night? A few hours alone in the peaceful surroundings of the flat are what I need. I must concentrate, concentrate.’
‘But do you require an excuse, sir?’
‘It’s better to have one. Aunt Dahlia is on a sticky wicket and would be hurt if I deserted her now unless I had some good reason. I can’t let her down.’
‘The sentiment does you credit, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves. Can you think of anything?’
‘You have been summoned for jury duty, sir.’
‘Don’t they let you have a longish notice for that?’
‘Yes, sir, but when the post arrived containing the letter from the authorities, I forgot to give it to you, and only delivered it a moment ago. Fortunately it was not too late. Would you be intending to leave immediately?’
‘If not sooner. I’ll borrow Ginger’s car.’
‘You will miss the debate, sir.’
‘The what?’
‘The debate between Mr Winship and his opponent. It takes place tomorrow night.’
‘What time?’
‘It is scheduled for a quarter to seven.’
‘Taking how long?’
‘Perhaps an hour.’
‘Then expect me back at about seven-thirty. The great thing in life, Jeeves, if we wish to be happy and prosperous, is to miss as many political debates as possible. You wouldn’t care to come with me, would you?’
‘No, thank you, sir. I am particularly anxious to hear Mr Winship’s speech.’
‘He’ll probably only say “Er”,’ I riposted rather cleverly.
16
* * *
IT WAS WITH a heart-definitely-bowed-down mood and the circles beneath my eyes darker than ever that I drove back next day in what is known as the quiet evenfall. I remember Jeeves saying something to me once about the heavy and the weary weight of this unintelligible world … not his own, I gathered, but from the works of somebody called Wordsworth, if I caught the name correctly … and it seemed to me rather a good way of describing the depressing feeling you get when the soup is about to close over you and no life-belt is in sight. I was conscious of this heavy and weary weight some years ago, that time when my cousins Eustace and Claude without notifying me inserted twenty-three cats in my bedroom, and I had it again, in spades, at the present juncture.
Consider the facts. I had gone up to London to wrestle in solitude with the following problems:
(a) How am I to get out of marrying Madeline Bassett?
(b) How am I to restore the porringer to L. P. Runkle before the constabulary come piling on the back of my neck?
(c) How is the ancestor to extract that money from Runkle?
(d) How is Ginger to marry Magnolia Glendennon while betrothed to Florence?
and I was returning with all four still in status quo. For a night and day I had been giving them the cream of the Wooster brain, and for all I had accomplished I might have been the aged relative trying to solve the Observer crossword puzzle.
Arriving at journey’s end, I steered the car into the drive. About half-way along it there was a tricky right-hand turn, and I had slowed down to negotiate this, when a dim figure appeared before me, a voice said, ‘Hoy!’, and I saw that it was Ginger.
He seemed annoyed about something. His ‘Hoy!’ had had a note of reproach in it, as far as it is possible to get the note of reproach into a ‘Hoy!’, and as he drew near and shoved his torso through the window I received the distinct impression that he was displeased.
His opening words confirmed this.
‘Bertie, you abysmal louse, what’s kept you all this time? When I lent you my car, I didn’t expect you’d come back at two o’clock in the morning.’
‘It’s only half-past seven.’
He seemed amazed.
‘Is that all? I thought it was later. So much has been happening.’
‘What has been happening?’
‘No time to tell you now. I’m in a hurry.’
It was at this point that I noticed something in his appearance which I had overlooked. A trifle, but I’m rather observant.
‘You’ve got egg in your hair,’ I said.
‘Of course I’ve got egg in my hair,’ he said, his manner betraying impatience. ‘What did you expect me to have in my hair, Chanel Number Five?’
‘Did somebody throw an egg at you?’
‘Everybody threw eggs at everybody. Correction. Some of them threw turnips and potatoes.’
‘You mean the meeting broke up in disorder, as the expression is?’
‘I don’t suppose any meeting in the history of English politics has ever broken up in more disorder. Eggs flew hither and thither. The air was dark with vegetables of every description. Sidcup got a black eye. Somebody plugged him with a potato.’
I found myself in two minds. On the one hand I felt a pang of regret for having missed what had all the earmarks of having been a political meeting of the most rewarding kind: on the other, it was like rare and refreshing fruit to hear that Spode had got hit in the eye with a potato. I was conscious of an awed respect for the marksman who had accomplished this feat. A potato, being so nobbly in shape, can be aimed accurately only by a master hand.
‘Tell me more,’ I said, well pleased.
‘Tell you more be blowed. I’ve got to get up to London. We want to be there bright and early tomorrow in order to inspect registrars and choose the best one.’
This didn’t sound like Florence, who, if she ever gets through an engagement without breaking it, is sure to insist on a wedding with bishops, bridesmaids, full choral effects, and a reception afterwards. A sudden thought struck me, and I think I may have gasped. Somebody made a noise like a dying soda-water syphon and it was presumably me.
‘When you say “we”, do you mean you and M. Glendennon?’
‘Who else?’
‘But how?’
‘Never mind how.’
‘But I do mind how. You were Problem (d) on my list, and I want to know how you have been solved. I gather that Florence has remitted your sentence—’
‘She has, in words of unmistakable clarity. Get out of that car.’
‘But why?’
‘Because if you aren’t out of it in two seconds, I’m going to pull you out.’
‘I mean why did she r your s?’
‘Ask Jeeves,’ he said, and attaching himself to the collar of my coat he removed me from the automobile like a stevedore hoisting a sack of grain. He took my place at the wheel, and disappeared down the drive to keep his tryst with the little woman, who presumably awaited him at some prearranged spot with the bags and baggage.
He left me in a condition which can best be described as befogged, bewildered, mystified, confused and perplexed. All I had got out of him was (a) that the debate had not been conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality, (b) that at its conclusion Florence had forbidden the banns and (c) that if I wanted further information Jeeves would supply it. A little more than the charmers got out of the deaf adder, but not much. I felt like a barrister, as it might be Ma McCorkadale, who has been baffled by an unsatisfactory witness.
However, he had spoken of Jeeves as a fount of information, so my first move on reaching the drawing-room and
finding no one there was to put forefinger to bell button and push.
Seppings answered the summons. He and I have been buddies from boyhood – mine, of course, not his – and as a rule when we meet conversation flows like water, mainly on the subject of the weather and the state of his lumbago, but this was no time for idle chatter.
‘Seppings,’ I said, ‘I want Jeeves. Where is he?’
‘In the servants’ hall, sir, comforting the parlourmaid.’
I took him to allude to the employee whose gong-work I had admired on my first evening, and, pressing though my business was, it seemed only humane to offer a word of sympathy for whatever her misfortunes might be.
‘Had bad news, has she?’
‘No, sir, she was struck by a turnip.’
‘Where?’
‘In the lower ribs, sir.’
‘I mean where did this happen?’
‘At the Town Hall, sir, in the later stages of the debate.’
I drew in the breath sharply. More and more I was beginning to realize that the meeting I had missed had been marked by passions which recalled the worst excesses of the French revolution.
‘I myself, sir, narrowly escaped being hit by a tomato. It whizzed past my ear.’
‘You shock me profoundly, Seppings. I don’t wonder you’re pale and trembling.’ And indeed he was, like a badly set blancmange. ‘What caused all this turmoil?’
‘Mr Winship’s speech, sir.’
This surprised me. I could readily believe that any speech of Ginger’s would be well below the mark set by Demosthenes, if that really was the fellow’s name, but surely not so supremely lousy as to start his audience throwing eggs and vegetables; and I was about to institute further enquiries, when Seppings sidled to the door, saying that he would inform Mr Jeeves of my desire to confer with him. And in due season the hour produced the man, as the expression is.
‘You wished to see me, sir?’ he said.
‘You can put it even stronger, Jeeves. I yearned to see you.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Just now I met Ginger in the drive.’
‘Yes, sir, he informed me that he was going there to await your return.’