The result of this following of doctor’s orders was sensational. Say what you might about his whiskers and his habit of looking as if he had been attending the funeral of a dear friend, E. Jimpson knew his job. After about ten hours of restful sleep I sprang from between the sheets, leaped to the bathroom, dressed with a song on my lips and headed for the breakfast table like a two-year-old. I had cleaned up the eggs and b., and got the toast and marmalade down the hatch to the last crumb with all the enthusiasm of a tiger of the jungle tucking into its ration of coolie, and was smoking a soothing cigarette, when the telephone rang and Aunt Dahlia’s voice came booming over the wire.
‘Hullo, old ancestor,’ I said, and it was a treat to hear me, so full of ginger and loving-kindness was my diction. ‘A very hearty good morning to you, aged relative.’
‘You’ve got here, have you?’
‘In person.’
‘So you’re still alive. The spots didn’t turn out to be fatal.’
‘They’ve entirely disappeared,’ I assured her. ‘Gone with the wind.’
‘That’s good. I wouldn’t have liked introducing a piebald nephew to the Briscoes, and they want you to come to lunch today.’
‘Vastly civil of them.’
‘Have you a clean collar?’
‘Several, with immaculate shirts attached.’
‘Don’t wear that Drones Club tie.’
‘Certainly not,’ I agreed. If the Drones Club tie has a fault, it is a little on the loud side and should not be sprung suddenly on nervous people and invalids, and I had no means of knowing if Mrs Briscoe was one of these. ‘What time is the binge?’
‘One-thirty.’
‘Expect me then with my hair in a braid.’
The invitation showed a neighbourly spirit which I applauded, and I said as much to Jeeves.
‘They sound good eggs, these Briscoes.’
‘I believe they give uniform satisfaction, sir.’
‘Aunt Dahlia didn’t say where they lived.’
‘At Eggesford Hall, sir.’
‘How does one get there?’
‘One proceeds up the main street of the village to the high road, where one turns to the left. You cannot miss the house. It is large and stands in extensive grounds. It is a walk of about a mile and a half, if you were intending to walk.’
‘I think I’d better. Murgatroyd would advise it. You, I take it, in my absence will go and hobnob with your aunt. Have you seen her yet?’
‘No, sir. I learn from the lady behind the bar of the Goose and Grasshopper, where I looked in on the night of my arrival, that she has gone to Liverpool for her annual holiday.’
Liverpool, egad! Sometimes one feels that aunts live for pleasure alone.
I made an early start. If these Briscoes were courting my society, I wanted to give them as much of it as possible.
Reaching the high road, where Jeeves had told me to turn to the left, I thought I had better make sure. He had spoken confidently, but it is always well to get a second opinion. And by jove I found that he had goofed. I accosted a passing centenarian – everybody in Maiden Eggesford seemed to be about a hundred and fifty, no doubt owing to the pure air – and asked which way I turned for Eggesford Court, and he said to the right. It just showed how even Jeeves can be mistaken.
On one point, however, he had been correct. A large house, he had said, standing in extensive grounds, and I had been walking what must have been a mile and a half when I came in sight of just such a residence, standing in grounds such as he had described. There were gates opening on a long drive, and I was starting to walk up this, when it occurred to me that I could save time by cutting across country, because the house I could see through the trees was a good deal to the nor’-nor’-east. They make these drives winding so as to impress visitors.
Bless my soul, the visitor says, this drive must be three-quarters of a mile long; shows how rich the chap is.
Whether I was singing or not I can’t remember – more probably whistling – but be that as it may I made good progress, and I had just come abreast of what looked like stables when there appeared from nowhere a cat.
It was a cat of rather individual appearance, being black in its general colour scheme but with splashes of white about the ribs and also on the tip of its nose. I chirruped and twiddled my fingers, as is my custom on these occasions, and it advanced with its tail up and rubbed its nose against my leg in a manner that indicated clearly that in Bertram Wooster it was convinced that it had found a kindred soul and one of the boys.
Nor had its intuition led it astray. One of the first poems I ever learned – I don’t know who wrote it, probably Shakespeare – ran:
I love little pussy; her coat is so warm;
And if I don’t hurt her, she’ll do me no harm;
and that is how I have been all my life. Ask any cat with whom I have had dealings what sort of a chap I am cat-wise, and it will tell you that I am a thoroughly good egg in whom complete confidence can safely be placed. Cats who know me well, like Aunt Dahlia’s Augustus, will probably allude to my skill at scratching them behind the ear.
I scratched this one behind the ear, and it received the attention with obvious gratification, purring like the rumble of distant thunder. Cordial relations having now been established, I was proceeding to what you might call Phase Two – viz. picking it up in my arms in order to tickle its stomach – when the welkin was split by a stentorian ‘Hi’.
There are many ways of saying ‘Hi’. In America it is a pleasant form of greeting, often employed as a substitute for ‘Good morning’. Two friends meet. One of them says ‘Hi, Bill.’ The other replies ‘Hi, George.’ Then Bill says ‘Is this hot enough for you?’, and George says that what he minds is not the heat but the humidity, and they go on their way.
But this ‘Hi’ was something very different. I believe the sort of untamed savages Major Plank mixes with do not go into battle shouting ‘Hi’, but if they did the sound would be just like the uncouth roar which had nearly shattered my ear drums.
Turning, I perceived a red-faced little half-portion brandishing a hunting crop I didn’t much like the look of. I have never been fond of hunting crops since at an early age I was chased for a mile across difficult country by an uncle armed with one, who had found me smoking one of his cigars. In frosty weather I can still feel the old wounds.
But now I wasn’t really perturbed. This, I took it, was the Colonel Briscoe who had asked me to lunch, and though at the moment he had the air of one who would be glad to dissect me with a blunt knife, better conditions would be bound to prevail as soon as I mentioned my name. I mean, you don’t ask a fellow to lunch and start assaulting and battering him as soon as he clocks in.
I mentioned it, accordingly, rather surprised by his size, for I had thought they made colonels somewhat larger. Still, I suppose they come in all sizes, like potatoes or, for the matter of that, girls. Vanessa Cook, for instance, was definitely on the substantial side, whereas others who had turned me down from time to time were practically midgets.
‘Wooster, Bertram,’ I said, tapping my chest.
I had anticipated an instant cooling of the baser passions, possibly a joyful cry and a ‘How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?’ accompanied by a sunny smile of welcome, but nothing of the sort occurred. He continued to effervesce, his face now a rather pretty purple.
‘What are you doing with that cat?’ he demanded hoarsely.
I preserved a dignified calm. I didn’t like his tone, but then one often doesn’t like people’s tones.
‘Merely passing the time of day,’ I replied with a suavity that became me well.
‘You were making away with it.’
‘Making a what?’
‘Stealing it.’
I drew myself up to my full height, and I shouldn’t be surprised if my eyes didn’t flash. I have been accused of a good many things in my time, notably by my Aunt Agatha, but never of stealing cats, and the charge gave deep
offence to the Wooster pride. Heated words were on the tip of my tongue, but I kept them in status quo, as the expression is. After all, the man was my host.
With an effort to soothe, I said:
‘You wrong me, Colonel. I wouldn’t dream such a thing.’
‘Yes you would, yes you would, yes you would. And don’t call me Colonel.’
It was hardly an encouraging start, but I tried again.
‘Nice day.’
‘Damn the day.’
‘Crops coming on nicely?’
‘Curse the crops.’
‘How’s my aunt?’
‘How the devil should I know how your aunt is?’
I thought this odd. When you’ve got an aunt staying with you, you ought to be able to supply enquirers with a bulletin, if only a sketchy one, of her state of health. I began to wonder if the little shrimp I was chatting with wasn’t a bit fuzzy in the upper storey. Certainly, as far as the conversation had gone at present, he would have aroused the professional interest of any qualified brain specialist.
But I didn’t give up. We Woosters don’t. I tried another tack altogether.
‘It was awfully kind of you to ask me to lunch,’ I said.
I don’t say he actually frothed at the mouth. There was no question, however, that my words had displeased him:
‘Ask you to lunch? Ask you to lunch? I wouldn’t ask you to lunch—’
I think he was about to add ‘with a ten-foot pole’, but at this moment from off-stage there came the sound of a robust tenor voice singing what sounded like the song hit from some equatorial African musical comedy, and the next moment Major Plank appeared, and the scales fell from my eyes. Plank being on the premises meant that this wasn’t the Briscoe residence by a damn sight. By losing faith in Jeeves and turning to the right on reaching the high road, instead of to the left as he had told me to, I had come to the wrong house. For an instant I felt like blaming the centenarian, but we Woosters are fairminded and I remembered that I had asked him the way to Eggesford Court, which this joint presumably was, and if you say Court when you mean Hall, there’s bound to be confusion.
‘Good Lord,’ I said, suffused with embarrassment, ‘aren’t you Colonel Briscoe?’
He didn’t deign to answer that one, and Plank started talking.
‘Why, hullo, Wooster,’ he said. ‘Who would ever have thought of seeing you here? I didn’t know you knew Cook.’
‘Do you know him?’ said the purple chap, evidently stunned by the idea that I could have a respectable acquaintance.
‘Of course I know him. Met him at my place in Gloucestershire, though under what circumstances I’ve forgotten. It’ll come back, but at the moment all I know is that he has changed his name. It used to be something beginning with Al, and now it’s Wooster. I suppose the original name was something ghastly which he couldn’t stand any longer. I knew a man at the United Explorers who changed his name from Buggins to Westmacote-Trevelyan. I thought it very sensible of him, but it didn’t do him much good, poor chap, because he had scarcely got used to signing his I.O.U.s Gilbert Westmacote-Trevelyan when he was torn asunder by a lion. Still, that’s the way it goes. How did you come out with the doctor, Wooster? Was it bubonic plague?’
I said No, not bubonic plague, and he said he was glad to hear it, because bubonic plague was no joke, ask anyone.
‘You staying in these parts?’
‘No, I have a cottage in the village.’
‘Pity. You could have come here. Been company for Vanessa. But you’ll join us at lunch?’ said Plank, who seemed to think that a guest is entitled to issue invitations to his host’s house, which any good etiquette book would have told him is not the case.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m lunching at Eggesford Hall with the Briscoes.’
This caused Cook, who had been silent for some time, probably having trouble with his vocal cords, to snort visibly.
‘I knew it! I was right! I knew you were Briscoe’s hireling!’
‘What are you talking about, Cook?’ asked Plank, not abreast.
‘Never mind what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about. This man is in the pay of Briscoe, and he came here to steal my cat.’
‘Why would he steal your cat?’
‘You know why he would steal my cat. You know as well as I do that Briscoe stops at nothing. Look at this man. Look at his face. Guilt written all over it. I caught him with the cat in his arms. Hold him there, Plank, while I go and telephone the police.’
And so saying he legged it.
I confess to being a little uneasy when I heard him tell Plank to hold me, because I had had experience of Plank’s methods of holding people. I believe I mentioned earlier that at our previous meeting he had proposed to detain me with the assistance of his Zulu knob-kerrie, and he had in his grasp now a stout stick, which, if it wasn’t a Zulu knob-kerrie, was unquestionably the next best thing.
Fortunately he was in a friendly mood.
‘You mustn’t mind Cook, Wooster. He’s upset. He’s been having a spot of domestic trouble. That’s why he asked me to come and stay. He thought I might have advice to offer. He allowed his daughter Vanessa to go to London to study Art at the Slade, if that’s the name of the place, and she got in with the wrong crowd, got pinched by the police and so on and so forth, upon which Cook did the heavy father and jerked her home and told her she had got to stay there till she learned a bit of sense. She doesn’t like it, poor girl, but I tell her she’s lucky not to be in equatorial Africa, because there if a daughter blots her copybook, her father chops her head off and buries her in the back garden. Well, I hate to see you go, Wooster, but I think you had better be off. I don’t say Cook will be back with a shot-gun, but you never know. I’d leave, if I were you.’
His advice struck me as good. I took it.
5
* * *
I HEADED FOR the cottage, where I had left the car. By the time I got there I should have done three miles of foot-slogging and I proposed to give the leg muscles a bit of time off, and if E. Jimpson Murgatroyd didn’t like it, let him eat cake.
I was particularly anxious to get together with Jeeves and hear what he had to say about the strange experience through which I had just passed, as strange an e. as had come my way in what you might call a month of Sundays.
I could make nothing of the attitude Cook had taken up. Plank’s theory that his asperity had been due to the fact that Vanessa had got into the wrong crowd in London seemed to me pure apple sauce. I mean, if your daughter picks her social circle unwisely and starts clobbering the police, you don’t necessarily accuse the first person you meet of stealing cats. The two things don’t go together.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, reaching the finish line and sinking into an armchair, ‘answer what I am about to ask you frankly. You have known me a good time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You have had every opportunity of studying my psychology.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, would you say I was a fellow who stole cats?’
‘No, sir.’
His ready response pleased me not a little. No hesitation, no humming and hawing, just ‘No, sir’.
‘Exactly what I expected you to say. Just what anyone at the Drones or elsewhere would say. And yet cat-stealing is what I have been accused of.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘By a scarlet-faced blighter named Cook.’
And forthwith, if that’s the expression, I told him about my strange e., passing lightly over my not having trusted his directions on reaching the high road. He listened attentively, and when I had finished came as near to smiling as he ever does. That is to say, a muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched slightly as if some flying object such as a mosquito had settled there momentarily.
‘I think I can explain, sir.’
It seemed incredible. I felt like Doctor Watson hearing Sherlock Holmes talking about the one hundred and forty-seven varieties of t
obacco ash and the time it takes parsley to settle in the butter dish.
‘This is astounding, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Professor Moriarty wouldn’t have lasted a minute with you. You really mean the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle have come together and fallen into their place?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You know all?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Amazing!’
‘Elementary, sir. I found the habitués of the Goose and Grasshopper a ready source of information.’
‘Oh, you asked the boys in the back room?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And what did they tell you?’
‘It appears that bad blood exists between Mr Cook and Colonel Briscoe.’
‘They don’t like each other, you mean?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘I suppose it’s often that way in the country. Not much to do except think what a tick your neighbour is.’
‘It may be as you say, sir, but in the present case there is more solid ground for hostility, at least on Mr Cook’s part. Colonel Briscoe is chairman of the board of magistrates and in that capacity recently imposed a substantial fine on Mr Cook for moving pigs without a permit.’
I nodded intelligently. I could see how this must have rankled. I do not keep pigs myself, but if I did I should strongly resent not being allowed to give them a change of air and scenery without getting permission from a board of magistrates. Are we in Russia?
‘Furthermore—’
‘Oh, that wasn’t all?’
‘No, sir. Furthermore, they are rival owners of race horses, and that provides another source of friction.’
‘Why?’
‘Sir?’
‘I don’t see why. Most of the big owners are very chummy. They love one another like brothers.’
‘The big owners, yes, sir. It is different with those whose activities are confined to small local meetings. There the rivalry is more personal and acute. In the forthcoming contest at Bridmouth-on-Sea the race, in the opinion of my informants at the Goose and Grasshopper, will be a duel between Colonel Briscoe’s Simla and Mr Cook’s Potato Chip. All the other entries are negligible. There is consequently no little friction between the two gentlemen as the date of the contest approaches, and it is of vital importance to both of them that nothing shall go wrong with the training of their respective horses. Rigid attention to training is essential.’