The Gawd-help-us fellow appeared to notice nothing amiss. His manner continued to be that of one who has met a pal of long standing.
‘How’s yourself, Reggie?’
‘I am in tolerably good health, thank you.’
‘Lost weight, haven’t you? You ought to live in the country like me and get good country butter.’ He turned to me. ‘And you ought to be more careful, cocky, dancing about in the middle of the street like that. I was in that cab and I thought you were a goner. You’re Wooster, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, amazed. I hadn’t known I was such a public figure.
‘Thought so. I don’t often forget a face. Well, I can’t stay chatting with you. I’ve got to see the secretary about something. Nice to have seen you, Reggie.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Nice to have seen you, Wooster, old man.’
I thanked him, and he withdrew. I turned to Jeeves, that wild surmise I was speaking about earlier functioning on all twelve cylinders.
‘Who was that?’
He did not reply immediately, plainly too ruffled for speech. He had to take a sip of his liqueur brandy before he was master of himself. His manner, when he did speak, was that of one who would have preferred to let the whole thing drop.
‘The person you mentioned at the breakfast table, sir. Bingley,’ he said, pronouncing the name as if it soiled his lips.
I was astounded. You could have knocked me down with a toothpick.
‘Bingley? I’d never have recognized him. He’s changed completely. He was quite thin when I knew him, and very gloomy, you might say sinister. Always seemed to be brooding silently on the coming revolution, when he would be at liberty to chase me down Park Lane with a dripping knife.’
The brandy seemed to have restored Jeeves. He spoke now with his customary calm.
‘I believe his political views were very far to the left at the time when he was in your employment. They changed when he became a man of property.’
‘A man of property, is he?’
‘An uncle of his in the grocery business died and left him a house and a comfortable sum of money.’
‘I suppose it often happens that the views of fellows like Bingley change when they come into money.’
‘Very frequently. They regard the coming revolution from a different standpoint.’
‘I see what you mean. They don’t want to be chased down Park Lane with dripping knives themselves. Is he still a gentleman’s gentleman?’
‘He has retired. He lives a life of leisure in Market Snodsbury.’
‘Market Snodsbury? That’s funny.’
‘Sir?’
‘Odd, I mean, that he should live in Market Snodsbury.’
‘Many people do, sir.’
‘But when that’s just where we’re going. Sort of a coincidence. His uncle’s house is there, I suppose.’
‘One presumes so.’
‘We may be seeing something of him.’
‘I hope not, sir. I disapprove of Bingley. He is dishonest. Not a man to be trusted.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘It is merely a feeling.’
Well, it was no skin off my nose. A busy man like myself hasn’t time to go about trusting Bingley. All I demanded of Bingley was that if our paths should cross he would remain sober and keep away from carving knives. Live and let live is the Wooster motto. I finished my whisky and soda and rose.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s one thing. Holding the strong Conservative views he does, it ought to be a snip to get him to vote for Ginger. And now we’d better be getting along. Ginger is driving us down in his car, and I don’t know when he’ll be coming to fetch us. Thanks for your princely hospitality, Jeeves. You have brought new life to the exhausted frame.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
5
* * *
GINGER TURNED UP in due course, and on going out to the car I saw that he had managed to get hold of Magnolia all right, for there was a girl sitting in the back and when he introduced us his ‘Mr Wooster, Miss Glendennon’ told the story.
Nice girl she seemed to me and quite nice-looking. I wouldn’t say hers was the face that launched a thousand ships, to quote one of Jeeves’s gags, and this was probably all to the good, for Florence, I imagine, would have had a word to say if Ginger had returned from his travels with something in tow calculated to bring a whistle to the lips of all beholders. A man in his position has to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries, ruling out anything that might have done well in the latest Miss America contest. But you could certainly describe her appearance as pleasant. She gave me the impression of being one of those quiet, sympathetic girls whom you could tell your troubles to in the certain confidence of having your hand held and your head patted. The sort of girl you could go to and say ‘I say, I’ve just committed a murder and it’s worrying me rather,’ and she would reply, ‘There, there, try not to think about it, it’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody.’ The little mother, in short, with the added attraction of being tops at shorthand and typing. I could have wished Ginger’s affairs in no better hands.
Jeeves brought out the suitcases and stowed them away, and Ginger asked me to do the driving, as he had a lot of business to go into with his new secretary, giving her the low-down on her duties, I suppose. We set out, accordingly, with me and Jeeves in front, and about the journey down there is nothing of interest to report. I was in merry mood throughout, as always when about to get another whack at Anatole’s cooking. Jeeves presumably felt the same, for he, like me, is one of that master skillet-wielder’s warmest admirers, but whereas I sang a good deal as we buzzed along, he maintained, as is his custom, the silent reserve of a stuffed frog, never joining in the chorus, though cordially invited to.
Arriving at journey’s end, we all separated. Jeeves attended to the luggage, Ginger took Magnolia Glendennon off to his office, and I made my way to the drawing-room, which I found empty. There seemed to be nobody about, as so often happens when you fetch up at a country house lateish in the afternoon. No sign of Aunt Dahlia, nor of Uncle Tom, her mate. I toyed with the idea of going to see if the latter was in the room where he keeps his collection of old silver, but thought better not. Uncle Tom is one of those enthusiastic collectors who, if in a position to grab you, detain you for hours, talking about sconces, foliation, ribbon wreaths in high relief and gadroon borders, and one wants as little of that sort of thing as can be managed.
I might have gone to pay my respects to Anatole, but there again I thought better not. He, too, is inclined to the long monologue when he gets you in his power, his pet subject the state of his interior. He suffers from bouts of what he calls mal au foie, and his conversation would be of greater interest to a medical man than to a layman like myself. I don’t know why it is, but when somebody starts talking to me about his liver I never can listen with real enjoyment.
On the whole, the thing to do seemed to be to go for a saunter in the extensive grounds and messuages.
It was one of those heavy, sultry afternoons when Nature seems to be saying to itself ‘Now shall I or shall I not scare the pants off these people with a hell of a thunderstorm?’, but I decided to risk it. There’s a small wooded bit not far from the house which I’ve always been fond of, and thither I pushed along. This wooded bit contains one or two rustic benches for the convenience of those who wish to sit and meditate, and as I hove alongside the first of these I saw that there was an expensive-looking camera on it.
It surprised me somewhat, for I had no idea that Aunt Dahlia had taken to photography, but of course you never know what aunts will be up to next. The thought that occurred to me almost immediately was that if there was going to be a thunder-storm, it would be accompanied by rain, and rain falling on a camera doesn’t do it any good. I picked the thing up, accordingly, and started off with it to take it back to the house, feeling that the old relative would thank me for my thoughtfulness, possibly with tears in her eye
s, when there was a sudden bellow and an individual emerged from behind a clump of bushes. Startled me considerably, I don’t mind telling you.
He was an extremely stout individual with a large pink face and a Panama hat with a pink ribbon. A perfect stranger to me, and I wondered what he was doing here. He didn’t look the sort of crony Aunt Dahlia would have invited to stay, and still less Uncle Tom, who is so allergic to guests that when warned of their approach he generally makes a bolt for it and disappears, leaving not a wrack behind as I have heard Jeeves put it. However, as I was saying, you never know what aunts will be up to next and no doubt the ancestor had had some good reason for asking the chap to come and mix, so I beamed civilly and opened the conversation with a genial ‘Hullo there’.
‘Nice day,’ I said, continuing to beam civilly. ‘Or, rather, not so frightfully nice. Looks as if we were in for a thunderstorm.’
Something seemed to have annoyed him. The pink of his face had deepened to about the colour of his Panama hat ribbon, and both his chins trembled slightly.
‘Damn thunderstorms!’ he responded – curtly, I suppose, would be the word – and I said I didn’t like them myself. It was the lightning, I added, that I chiefly objected to.
‘They say it never strikes twice in the same place, but then it hasn’t got to.’
‘Damn the lightning! What are you doing with my camera?’
This naturally opened up a new line of thought.
‘Oh, is this your camera?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I was taking it to the house.’
‘You were, were you?’
‘I didn’t want it to get wet.’
‘Oh? And who are you?’
I was glad he had asked me that. His whole manner had made it plain to a keen mind like mine that he was under the impression that he had caught me in the act of absconding with his property, and I was glad to have the opportunity of presenting my credentials. I could see that if we were ever to have a good laugh together over this amusing misunderstanding, there would have to be a certain amount of preliminary spadework.
‘Wooster is the name,’ I said. ‘I’m my aunt’s nephew. I mean,’ I went on, for those last words seemed to me not to have rung quite right, ‘Mrs Travers is my aunt.’
‘You are staying in the house?’
‘Yes. Just arrived.’
‘Oh?’ he said again, but this time in what you might call a less hostile tone.
‘Yes,’ I said, rubbing it in.
There followed a silence, presumably occupied by him in turning things over in his mind in the light of my statement and examining them in depth, and then he said ‘Oh?’ once more and stumped off.
I made no move to accompany him. What little I had had of his society had been ample. As we were staying in the same house, we would no doubt meet occasionally, but not, I resolved, if I saw him first. The whole episode reminded me of my first encounter with Sir Watkyn Bassett and the misunderstanding about his umbrella. That had left me shaken, and so had this. I was glad to have a rustic bench handy, so that I could sit and try to bring my nervous system back into shape. The sky had become more and more inky I suppose is the word I want and the odds on a thunderstorm shorter than ever, but I still lingered. It was only when there came from above a noise like fifty-seven trucks going over a wooden bridge that I felt that an immediate move would be judicious. I rose and soon gathered speed, and I had reached the French window of the drawing-room and was on the point of popping through, when from within there came the sound of a human voice. On second thoughts delete the word ‘human’, for it was the voice of my recent acquaintance with whom I had chatted about cameras.
I halted. There was a song I used to sing in my bath at one time, the refrain or burthen of which began with the words ‘I stopped and I looked and I listened’, and this was what I did now, except for the looking. It wasn’t raining, nor was there any repetition of the trucks-going-over-a-wooden-bridge noise. It was as though Nature had said to itself ‘Oh to hell with it’ and decided that it was too much trouble to have a thunderstorm after all. So I wasn’t getting struck by lightning or even wet, which enabled me to remain in status quo.
The camera bloke was speaking to some unseen companion, and what he said was;
‘Wooster, his name is. Says he’s Mrs Travers’s nephew.’
It was plain that I had arrived in the middle of a conversation. The words must have been preceded by a query, possibly ‘Oh, by the way, do you happen to know who a tall, slender, good-looking – I might almost say fascinating – young man I was talking to outside there would be?’, though of course possibly not. That, at any rate, must have been the gist, and I suppose the party of the second part had replied ‘No, sorry, I can’t place him’, or words to that effect. Whereupon the camera chap had spoken as above. And as he spoke as above a snort rang through the quiet room; a voice, speaking with every evidence of horror and disgust, exclaimed ‘Wooster!’; and I quivered from hair-do to shoe sole. I may even have gasped, but fortunately not loud enough to be audible beyond the French window.
For it was the voice of Lord Sidcup – or, as I shall always think of him, no matter how many titles he may have inherited, Spode. Spode, mark you, whom I had thought and hoped I had seen the last of after dusting the dust of Totleigh Towers from the Wooster feet; Spode, who went about seeking whom he might devour and from early boyhood had been a hissing and a by-word to all right-thinking men. Little wonder that for a moment everything seemed to go black and I had to clutch at a passing rose bush to keep from falling.
This Spode, I must explain for the benefit of the newcomers who have not read the earlier chapters of my memoirs, was a character whose path had crossed mine many a time and oft, as the expression is, and always with the most disturbing results. I have spoken of the improbability of a beautiful friendship ever getting under way between me and the camera chap, but the likelihood of any such fusion of souls, as I have heard Jeeves call it, between me and Spode was even more remote. Our views on each other were definite. His was that what England needed if it was to become a land fit for heroes to live in was fewer and better Woosters, while I had always felt that there was nothing wrong with England that a ton of bricks falling from a height on Spode’s head wouldn’t cure.
‘You know him?’ said the camera chap.
‘I’m sorry to say I do,’ said Spode, speaking like Sherlock Holmes asked if he knew Professor Moriarty. ‘How did you happen to meet him?’
‘I found him making off with my camera.’
‘Ha!’
‘Naturally I thought he was stealing it. But if he’s really Mrs Travers’s nephew, I suppose I was mistaken.’
Spode would have none of this reasoning, though it seemed pretty sound to me. He snorted again with even more follow-through than the first time.
‘Being Mrs Travers’s nephew means nothing. If he was the nephew of an archbishop he would behave in a precisely similar manner. Wooster would steal anything that was not nailed down, provided he could do it unobserved. He couldn’t have known you were there?’
‘No. I was behind a bush.’
‘And your camera looks a good one.’
‘Cost me a lot of money.’
‘Then of course he was intending to steal it. He must have thought he had dropped into a bit of good luck. Let me tell you about Wooster. The first time I met him was in an antique shop. I had gone there with Sir Watkyn Bassett, my future father-in-law. He collects old silver. And Sir Watkyn had propped his umbrella up against a piece of furniture. Wooster was there, but lurking, so we didn’t see him.’
‘In a dark corner, perhaps?’
‘Or behind something. The first we saw of him, he was sneaking off with Sir Watkyn’s umbrella.’
‘Pretty cool.’
‘Oh, he’s cool all right. These fellows have to be.’
‘I suppose so. Must take a nerve of ice.’
To say that I boiled with justifiable indignation wou
ld not be putting it too strongly. As I have recorded elsewhere, there was a ready explanation of my behaviour. I had come out without my umbrella that morning, and, completely forgetting that I had done so, I had grasped old Bassett’s, obeying the primeval instinct which makes a man without an umbrella reach out for the nearest one in sight, like a flower groping towards the sun. Unconsciously, as it were.
Spode resumed. They had taken a moment off, no doubt in order to brood on my delinquency. His voice now was that of one about to come to the high spot in his narrative.
‘You’ll hardly believe this, but soon after that he turned up at Totleigh Towers, Sir Watkyn’s house in Gloucestershire.’
‘Incredible!’
‘I thought you’d think so.’
‘Disguised, of course? A wig? A false beard? His cheeks stained with walnut juice?’
‘No, he came quite openly, invited by my future wife. She has a sort of sentimental pity for him. I think she hopes to reform him.’
‘Girls will be girls.’
‘Yes, but I wish they wouldn’t.’
‘Did you rebuke your future wife?’
‘I wasn’t in a position to then.’
‘Probably a wise thing, anyway. I once rebuked the girl I wanted to marry, and she went off and teamed up with a stockbroker. So what happened?’
‘He stole a valuable piece of silver. A sort of silver cream jug. A cow-creamer, they call it.’
‘My doctor forbids me cream. You had him arrested, of course?’
‘We couldn’t. No evidence.’
‘But you knew he had done it?’
‘We were certain.’
‘Well, that’s how it goes. See any more of him after that?’
‘This you will not believe. He came to Totleigh Towers again!’
‘Impossible!’
‘Once more invited by my future wife.’
‘Would that be the Miss Bassett who arrived last night?’
‘Yes, that was Madeline.’
‘Lovely girl. I met her in the garden before breakfast. My doctor recommends a breath of fresh air in the early morning. Did you know she thinks those bits of mist you see on the grass are the elves’ bridal veils?’