‘Madeline,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Oh, Roderick! How is your eye?’
‘Never mind my eye,’ said Spode. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about eyes.’
‘They say a piece of beefsteak reduces the swelling.’
‘Nor about beefsteaks. Sir Watkyn has told me the awful news about you and Wooster. Is it true you’re going to marry him?’
‘Yes, Roderick, it is true.’
‘But you can’t love a half-baked, half-witted ass like Wooster,’ said Spode, and I thought the remark extremely offensive. Pick your words more carefully, Spode, I might have said, rising and confronting him. However, for one reason and another I didn’t, but continued to nestle and I heard Madeline sigh, unless it was the draught under the sofa.
‘No, Roderick, I do not love him. He does not appeal to the essential me. But I feel it is my duty to make him happy.’
‘Tchah!’ said Spode, or something that sounded like that. ‘Why on earth do you want to go about making worms like Wooster happy?’
‘He loves me, Roderick. You must have seen that dumb, worshipping look in his eyes as he gazes at me.’
‘I’ve something better to do than peer into Wooster’s eyes. Though I can well imagine they look dumb. We’ve got to have this thing out, Madeline.’
‘I don’t understand you, Roderick.’
‘You will.’
‘Ouch!’
I think on the cue ‘You will’ he must have grabbed her by the wrist, for the word ‘Ouch!’ had come through strong and clear, and this suspicion was confirmed when she said he was hurting her.
‘I’m sorry, sorry,’ said Spode. ‘But I refuse to allow you to ruin your life. You can’t marry this man Wooster. I’m the one you’re going to marry.’
I was with him heart and soul, as the expression is. Nothing would ever make me really fond of Roderick Spode, but I liked the way he was talking. A little more of this, I felt, and Bertram would be released from his honourable obligations. I wished he had thought of taking this firm line earlier.
‘I’ve loved you since you were so high.’
Not being able to see him, I couldn’t ascertain how high that was, but I presumed he must have been holding his hand not far from the floor. A couple of feet, would you say? About that, I suppose.
Madeline was plainly moved. I heard her gurgle.
‘I know, Roderick, I know.’
‘You guessed my secret?’
‘Yes, Roderick. How sad life is!’
Spode declined to string along with her in this view.
‘Not a bit of it. Life’s fine. At least, it will be if you give this blighter Wooster the push and marry me.’
‘I have always been devoted to you, Roderick.’
‘Well, then?’
‘Give me time to think.’
‘Carry on. Take all the time you need.’
‘I don’t want to break Bertie’s heart.’
‘Why not? Do him good.’
‘He loves me so dearly.’
‘Nonsense. I don’t suppose he has ever loved anything in his life except a dry martini.’
‘How can you say that? Did he not come here because he found it impossible to stay away from me?’
‘No, he jolly well didn’t. Don’t let him fool you on that point. He came here to pinch that black amber statuette of your father’s.’
‘What!’
‘That’s what. In addition to being half-witted, he’s a low thief.’
‘It can’t be true!’
‘Of course it’s true. His uncle wants the thing for his collection. I heard him plotting with his aunt on the telephone not half an hour ago. “It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it,” he was saying, “but I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette.” He’s always stealing things. The very first time I met him, in an antique shop in the Brompton Road, he as near as a toucher got away with your father’s umbrella.’
A monstrous charge, and one which I can readily refute. He and Pop Bassett and I were, I concede, in the antique shop in the Brompton Road to which he had alluded, but the umbrella sequence was purely one of those laughable misunderstandings. Pop Bassett had left the blunt instrument propped against a seventeenth-century chair, and what caused me to take it up was the primeval instinct which makes a man without an umbrella, as I happened to be that morning, reach out unconsciously for the nearest one in sight, like a flower turning to the sun. The whole thing could have been explained in two words, but they hadn’t let me say even one, and the slur had been allowed to rest on me.
‘You shock me, Roderick!’ said Madeline.
‘Yes, I thought it would make you sit up.’
‘If this is really so, if Bertie is really a thief –’
‘Well?’
‘Naturally I will have nothing more to do with him. But I can’t believe it.’
‘I’ll go and fetch Sir Watkyn,’ said Spode. ‘Perhaps you’ll believe him.’
For several minutes after he had clumped out, Madeline must have stood in a reverie, for I didn’t hear a sound out of her. Then the door opened, and the next thing that came across was a cough which I had no difficulty in recognizing.
23
* * *
IT WAS THAT soft cough of Jeeves’s which always reminds me of a very old sheep clearing its throat on a distant mountain top. He coughed it at me, if you remember, on the occasion when I first swam into his ken wearing the Alpine hat. It generally signifies disapproval, but I’ve known it to occur also when he’s about to touch on a topic of a delicate nature. And when he spoke, I knew that that was what he was going to do now, for there was a sort of hushed note in his voice.
‘I wonder if I might have a moment of your time, miss?’
‘Of course, Jeeves.’
‘It is with reference to Mr. Wooster.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I must begin by saying that I chanced to be passing the door when Lord Sidcup was speaking to you and inadvertently overheard his lordship’s observations on the subject of Mr. Wooster. His lordship has a carrying voice. And I find myself in a somewhat equivocal position, torn between loyalty to my employer and a natural desire to do my duty as a citizen.’
‘I don’t understand you, Jeeves,’ said Madeline, which made two of us.
He coughed again.
‘I am anxious not to take a liberty, miss, but if I may speak frankly –’
‘Please do.’
‘Thank you, miss. His lordship’s words seemed to confirm a rumour which is circulating in the servants’ hall that you are contemplating a matrimonial union with Mr. Wooster. Would it be indiscreet of me if I were to inquire if this is so?’
‘Yes, Jeeves, it is quite true.’
‘If you will pardon me for saying so, I think you are making a mistake.’
Well spoken, Jeeves, you are on the right lines, I was saying to myself, and I hoped he was going to rub it in. I waited anxiously for Madeline’s reply, a little afraid that she would draw herself to her full height and dismiss him from her presence. But she didn’t. She merely said again that she didn’t understand him.
‘If I might explain, miss. I am loath to criticize my employer, but I feel that you should know that he is a kleptomaniac.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, miss. I had hoped to be able to preserve his little secret, as I have always done hitherto, but he has now gone to lengths which I cannot countenance. In going through his effects this afternoon I discovered this small black figure, concealed beneath his underwear.’
I heard Madeline utter a sound like a dying soda-water syphon.
‘But that belongs to my father!’
‘If I may say so, nothing belongs to anyone if Mr. Wooster takes a fancy to it.’
‘Then Lord Sidcup was right?’
‘Precisely, miss.’
‘He said Mr. Wooster tried to steal my father’s umbrella.’
Madeline went into the soda-syphon routine once more.
‘You mean he might be sent to prison?’
‘It is a contingency that seems to me far from remote.’
Again I felt that he was on the right lines. His trained senses told him that if there’s one thing that puts a girl off marrying a chap, it is the thought that the honeymoon may be spoiled at any moment by the arrival of Inspectors at the love nest, come to scoop him in for larceny. No young bride likes that sort of thing, and you can’t blame her if she finds herself preferring to team up with someone like Spode, who, though a gorilla in fairly human shape, is known to keep strictly on the right side of the law. I could almost hear Madeline’s thoughts turning in this direction, and I applauded Jeeves’s sound grip on the psychology of the individual, as he calls it.
Of course, I could see that all this wasn’t going to make my position in the Bassett home any too good, but there are times when only the surgeon’s knife will serve. And I had the sustaining thought that if ever I got out from behind this sofa I could sneak off to where my car waited champing at the bit and drive off Londonwards without stopping to say goodbye and thanks for a delightful visit. This would obviate – is it obviate? – all unpleasantness.
Madeline continued shaken.
‘Oh dear, Oh dear!’ she said.
‘Yes, miss.’
‘This has come as a great shock.’
‘I can readily appreciate it, miss.’
‘Have you known of this long?’
‘Ever since I entered Mr. Wooster’s employment.’
‘Oh dear, Oh dear! Well, thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, miss.’
I think Jeeves must have shimmered off after this, for silence fell and nothing happened except that my nose began to tickle. I would have given ten quid to have been able to sneeze, but this of course was outside the range of practical politics. I just crouched there, thinking of this and that, and after quite a while the door opened once more, this time to admit something in the nature of a mob scene. I could see three pairs of shoes, and deduced that they were those of Spode, Pop Bassett and Plank. Spode, it will be recalled, had gone to fetch Pop, and Plank presumably had come along for the ride, hoping no doubt for something moist at journey’s end.
Spode was the first to speak, and his voice rang with the triumph that comes into the voices of suitors who have caught a dangerous rival bending.
‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought Sir Watkyn to support my statement that Wooster is a low sneak thief who goes about snapping up everything that isn’t nailed down. You agree, Sir Watkyn?’
‘Of course I do, Roderick. It’s only a month or so ago that he and that aunt of his stole my cow-creamer.’
‘What’s a cow-creamer?’ asked Plank.
‘A silver cream jug, one of the gems of my collection.’
‘They got away with it, did they?’
‘They did.’
‘Ah,’ said Plank. ‘Then in that case I think I’ll have a whisky and soda.’
Pop Bassett was warming to his theme. His voice rose above the hissing of Plank’s syphon.
‘And it was only by the mercy of Providence that Wooster didn’t make off with my umbrella that day in the Brompton Road. If that young man has one defect more marked than another, it is that he appears to be totally ignorant of the distinction between meum and tuum. He came up before me in my court once, I remember, charged with having stolen a policeman’s helmet, and it is a lasting regret to me that I merely fined him five pounds.’
‘Mistaken kindness,’ said Spode.
‘So I have always felt, Roderick. A sharper lesson might have done him all the good in the world.’
‘Never does to let these fellows off lightly,’ said Plank. ‘I had a servant chap in Mozambique who used to help himself to my cigars, and I foolishly overlooked it because he assured me he had got religion and everything would be quite all right from now on. And it wasn’t a week later that he skipped out, taking with him a box of Havanas and my false teeth, which he sold to one of the native chiefs in the neighbourhood. Cost me a case of trade gin and two strings of beads to get them back. Severity’s the only thing. The iron hand. Anything else is mistaken for weakness.’
Madeline gave a sob, at least it sounded like a sob.
‘But, Daddy.’
‘Well?’
‘I don’t think Bertie can help himself.’
‘My dear child, it is precisely his habit of helping himself to everything he can lay his hands on that we are criticizing.’
‘I mean, he’s a kleptomaniac.’
‘Eh? Who told you that?’
‘Jeeves.’
‘That’s odd. How did the subject come up?’
‘He told me when he gave me this. He found it in Bertie’s room. He was very worried about it.’
There was a spot of silence – of a stunned nature, I imagine. Then Pop Bassett said ‘Good heavens!’ and Spode said ‘Good Lord!’ and Plank said, ‘Why, that’s that little thingummy I sold you, Bassett, isn’t it?’ Madeline gave another sob, and my nose began to tickle again.
‘Well, this is astounding!’ said Pop. ‘He found it in Wooster’s room, you say?’
‘Concealed beneath his underwear.’
Pop Bassett uttered a sound like the wind going out of a dying duck.
‘How right you were, Roderick! You said his motive in coming here was to steal this. But how he got into the collection room I cannot understand.’
‘These fellows have their methods.’
‘Seems to be a great demand for that thing,’ said Plank. ‘There was a young slab of damnation with a criminal face round at my place only yesterday trying to sell it to me.’
‘Wooster!’
‘No, it wasn’t Wooster. My fellow’s name was Alpine Joe.’
‘Wooster would naturally adopt a pseudonym.’
‘I suppose he would. I never thought of that.’
‘Well, after this –’ said Pop Bassett.
‘Yes, after this,’ said Spode, ‘you’re certainly not going to marry the man, Madeline. He’s worse than Fink-Nottle.’
‘Who’s Fink-Nottle?’ asked Plank.
‘The one who eloped with Stoker,’ said Pop.
‘Who’s Stoker?’ asked Plank. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a fellow with a greater thirst for information.
‘The cook.’
‘Ah yes. I remember you telling me. Knew what he was doing, that chap. I’m strongly opposed to anyone marrying anybody, but if you’re going to marry someone, you unquestionably save something from the wreck by marrying a woman who knows what to do with a joint of beef. There was a fellow I knew in the Federated Malay States who –’
It would probably have been a diverting anecdote, but Spode didn’t let him get on with it any further. Addressing Madeline, he said:
‘What you’re going to do is marry me, and I don’t want any argument. How about it, Madeline?’
‘Yes, Roderick. I will be your wife.’
Spode uttered a whoop which made my nose tickle worse than ever.
‘That’s the stuff! That’s how I like to hear you talk! Come on out into the garden. I have much to say to you.’
I imagine that at this juncture he must have folded her in his embrace and hustled her out, for I heard the door close. And as it did so Pop Bassett uttered a whoop somewhat similar in its intensity to the one that had proceeded from the Spode lips. He was patently boomps-a-daisy, and one could readily understand why. A father whose daughter, after nearly marrying Gussie Fink-Nottle and then nearly marrying me, sees the light and hooks on to a prosperous member of the British aristocracy is entitled to rejoice. I didn’t like Spode and would have been g
lad at any time to see a Peruvian matron spike him in the leg with her dagger, but there was no denying that he was hot stuff matrimonially.
‘Lady Sidcup!’ said Pop, rolling the words round his tongue like vintage port.
‘Who’s Lady Sidcup?’ asked Plank, anxious, as always, to keep abreast.
‘My daughter will shortly be. One of the oldest titles in England. That was Lord Sidcup who has just left us.’
‘I thought his name is Roderick.’
‘His Christian name is Roderick.’
‘Ah!’ said Plank. ‘Now I’ve got it. Now I have the whole picture. Your daughter was to have married someone called Fink-Nottle?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then she was to have married this chap Wooster or Alpine Joe, as the case may be?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now she’s going to marry Lord Sidcup?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clear as crystal,’ said Plank. ‘I knew I should get it threshed out in time. Simply a matter of concentration and elimination. You approve of this marriage? As far,’ he added, ‘as one can approve of any marriage.’
‘I most certainly do.’
‘Then I think this calls for another whisky-and-soda.’
‘I will join you,’ said Pop Bassett.
It was at this point, unable to hold it back any longer, that I sneezed.
‘I knew there was something behind that sofa,’ said Plank, rounding it and subjecting me to the sort of look he had once given native chiefs who couldn’t grasp the rules of Rugby football. ‘Odd sounds came from that direction. Good God, it’s Alpine Joe.’
‘It’s Wooster!’
‘Who’s Wooster? Oh, you told me, didn’t you? What steps do you propose to take?’
‘I have rung for Butterfield.’
‘Who’s Butterfield?’
‘My butler.’
‘What do you want a butler for?’
‘To tell him to bring Oates.’
‘Who’s Oates?’
‘Our local policeman. He is having a glass of whisky in the kitchen.’
‘Whisky!’ said Plank thoughtfully, and as if reminded of something went to the side table.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 Page 52