by Unknown
‘I see! And then you heard a noise—’
‘A curious noise that sounded like the splintering of glass. And I popped round the house to investigate, and there was a bounder smashing the scullery window.’
‘Of course!’
‘I knew you would see it.’
‘Then everything depends on Bertie.’
‘Everything.’
‘You don’t think he’ll object?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. You’ll hurt his feelings. You don’t realize the sort of fellow Bertie is. His nerve is like chilled steel, and when it is a question of helping a pal, he sticks at nothing.’
Nobby drew a deep breath.
‘He’s wonderful, isn’t he?’
‘He stands alone.’
‘I’ve always been devoted to Bertie. When I was a child, he once gave me threepennyworth of acid drops.’
‘Generous to a fault. These splendid fellows always are.’
‘How I admired him!’
‘Me, too. I don’t know a man I admire more.’
‘Doesn’t he remind you rather of Sir Galahad?’
‘The name was on the tip of my tongue.’
‘Of course, he wouldn’t dream of not doing his bit.’
‘Of course not. All settled, eh, Bertie?’
It’s odd what a few kind words will do. Until now, I had, as I say, been all ready with the nolle prosequi, and had indeed opened my lips to shoot it across with all the emphasis at my disposal. But as I caught Nobby’s eye, fixed on me in a devout sort of way, and at the same time was conscious of Boko shaking my hand and kneading my shoulder, something seemed to check me. I mean, there really didn’t seem to be any way of nolle-prosequi-ing without spoiling the spirit of the party.
‘Oh, rather,’ I said. ‘Absolutely.’
But not blithely. Not with any real chirpiness.
CHAPTER 13
No, not with any real chirpiness. And this shortage of c., I must confess, continued to make its presence felt right up to zero hour. All through the quiet evenfall, the frugal dinner and the long, weary waiting for midnight to strike on the village clock, I was conscious of a growing concern. And when the moment arrived and Boko and self passed through the silent gardens of Bumpleigh Hall on our way to start the doings, it was going stronger than ever.
Boko was in gay and effervescent mood, speaking from time to time in a low but enthusiastic voice of the beauties of Nature and drawing my attention in a cautious whisper to the agreeable niffiness of the flowers past which we flitted, but it was far different with Bertram. Bertram, and I do not attempt to conceal it, was not at his fizziest. His spine crawled, and his heart was bowed down with weight of woe. The word of a Wooster was pledged; I had placed my services at the disposal of the young couple and there was no question of my doing a quick sneak and edging out of the enterprise, but nothing was going to make me like it.
I think I have mentioned before my dislike for creeping about strange gardens in the dark. Too many painful episodes in my past have been connected with other people’s dark gardens, notably the time when circumstances compelled me to slide out in the small hours and ring the fire bell at Brinkley Court and that other occasion when Roberta Wickham induced me against my better judgement to climb a tree and drop a flower-pot through the roof of a greenhouse, in order to create a diversion which would enable her cousin Clementina, who was A.W.O.L. from her school, to ooze back into it unobserved.
Of all these experiences, the last named had been, to date, the most soul searing, because it had culminated in the sudden appearance of a policeman saying ‘What’s all this?’ And it was the thought that there might quite possibly be a repetition of this routine, and the realization that if a policeman did come muscling in now it would be Stilton, that curdled the blood and made me feel a dry, fluttering feeling in the pit of the stomach, as if I had swallowed a heaping tablespoonful of butterflies.
So pronounced was this sensation that I found myself clutching Boko’s arm in ill-concealed panic and drawing him beneath a passing tree.
‘Boko,’ I gurgled, ‘what about Stilton? Have you considered the Stilton angle?’
‘Eh?’
‘Suppose he’s on duty at night? Suppose he’s prowling? Suppose he suddenly pops out at us, complete with whistle and notebook?’
‘Nonsense.’
‘It would be an awful thing to be pinched by a chap you were boys together with. And he would spring to the task. He’s got it in for me.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Boko, continuing debonair to the gills. ‘You mustn’t allow your thoughts to take this morbid trend, Bertie. These tremors are unworthy of you. Don’t you worry about Stilton. You have only to look at him – that clear eye, those rosy cheeks – to know that he is a man who makes a point of getting his regular eight hours. Early to bed and early to rise, is his slogan. Stilton is tucked up between the sheets, sleeping like a little child, and won’t start functioning again till his alarm clock explodes at seven-thirty.’
Well, that was all right, as far as it went. His reasoning was specious, and did much to reassure me. Stilton’s cheeks unquestionably were rosy. But it was only for a moment that I was strengthened. After all, I reflected, Stilton was merely a part of the menace. Even leaving him out of it, there was the Uncle Percy-Aunt Agatha side of the business. You couldn’t get away from it that these gardens and messuages whose privacy we were violating belonged to the former, and that the latter had a joint interest in them. I might, that is to say, be safe from the dragon, but what about the hippogriffs? That was the question I asked myself. What price the hippogriffs?
If anything were to go wrong, if this frightful binge on which I had embarked were in the slightest detail to slip a cog, what would be the upshot? I’ll tell you what would jolly well be the upshot. Not only should I be placed in the position of having to explain to a slavering uncle, justly incensed at being deprived of his beauty sleep, why I was going about the place breaking his scullery windows, but the whole story would be told to Aunt Agatha on her return with a wealth of detail, and then what?
Far less serious offences on my part in the past had brought the old relative leaping after me with her hatchet, like a Red Indian on the warpath, howling for my blood.
I mentioned this to Boko as we fetched up at journey’s end, and he patted me on the shoulder. Well meant, no doubt, and a kindly gesture, but one that accomplished little or nothing in the way of stiffening my morale.
‘If you’re copped,’ said Boko, ‘just pass it off.’
‘Pass it off?’
‘That’s right. Nonchalantly. Got the treacle?’
I said I had got the treacle.
‘And the paper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll take a stroll for ten minutes. That will give you eight minutes to screw your courage to the sticking-point, one minute to break window and one to make getaway.’
This treacle idea was Boko’s. He had insisted upon it as an indispensable adjunct to the proceedings, claiming that it would lend the professional touch at which we were aiming. According to him, and he is a chap who has studied these things, the knowledgeable burglar’s first act is to equip himself with treacle and brown paper. He glues the latter to the window by means of the former, and then hauls off and busts the glass with a sharp buffet of the fist.
What a way to earn a living! I suppose I must have used up quite three minutes of my ten in meditating on these hardy fellows and wondering what made them go in for such an exacting life work. Large profits, no doubt, and virtually no overhead, but think what they must have to spend on nerve specialists and rest cures. Some sort of tonic alone must form a heavy item of a burglar’s expenses.
I could have gone on for quite a while musing along these lines, but was obliged to dismiss the subject from my mind, for time was passing and I might expect Boko’s return at any minute. And I shrank from the prospect of having to explain to him that I had bee
n frittering away in daydreaming the moments which should have been earmarked for action.
Feeling, therefore, that if the thing was to be smacked into, ‘twere well ‘twere smacked into quickly, as Shakespeare says, I treacled the paper and attached it to the window. All that now remained to be done was to deliver the sharp buffet. And it was at this point that I suddenly came over all cat-in-the-adage-y. The chilliness of the feet became intensified, and I began to hover, as Stilton had done outside that jeweller’s shop.
I had thought, while watching him on that occasion, that he had accomplished what you might call the last word in backing and filling, but I now realized that he had merely scratched the surface. Compared with mine at this juncture, Stilton’s hovering could scarcely be termed hovering at all. I moved towards my objective and away from my objective, and some of the time I moved sideways. To an observer, had one been present, it might have seemed that I was trying out the intricate steps of some rhythmic dance.
Finally, however, stiffening the sinews and summoning up all the splendid Wooster courage, I made a quick forward movement and was in the act of raising my fist, when it was as if a stick of dynamite had been touched off beneath me. The hair rose in a solid mass, and every nerve in the body stood straight up, curling at the ends. There have been moments in his career, many of them, when Bertram Wooster has not felt at his ease, but this one was the top.
From somewhere above, a voice had spoken.
‘Coo!’ it said. ‘Who’s there?’
If it hadn’t been for that ‘Coo!’ I might have supposed it the voice of Conscience. As it was, I was enabled to ticket it correctly as that of young blasted Edwin. Glued against the wall, as if I had been a bit of treacled paper, I could just see him leaning out of an adjacent window. And when I reflected that, after all I had gone through, I was now being set upon by Boy Scouts, I don’t mind admitting that the iron entered into my soul. Very bitter, the whole thing.
After he had said ‘Who’s there?’ he was silent for a space, as if pausing for a reply, though you would have thought even a cloth-headed kid like that would have known that it’s hopeless to expect burglars to keep the conversation going.
‘Who’s that?’ he said, at length.
I maintained a prudent reserve. He then said ‘I can see you all right,’ but in an uncertain voice which told me he was lying in his teeth. The one thing that was serving to buoy me up and still the fluttering heart-strings at this most unpleasant moment was the fact that it was a dark night, without a moon or any rot of that sort. Stars, yes. Moon, no. A lynx might have seen me, but only a lynx, and it would have had to be a pretty sharpsighted lynx, at that.
My silence seemed to discourage him. These one-sided conversations always flag fairly quickly. He brooded over the scene a bit longer – Jeeves would have spotted a resemblance to the Blessed Damozel gazing out from the gold bar of heaven – then drew his head in, and I was alone at last.
Not, however, for long. A moment later, Boko hove alongside.
‘All set?’ he asked, in a hearty voice that seemed to boom through the garden like a costermonger calling attention to his brussels sprouts, and I grabbed him feverishly, begging him to pipe down a bit.
‘Not so loud!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Edwin.’
‘Edwin?’
‘He just poked his foul head out of a window and wanted to know who was there.’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘No.’
‘Excellent. Very wise move. He’s probably gone to sleep again.’
‘Boy Scouts never sleep.’
‘Of course they do. In droves. Have you smashed the window?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because of Edwin.’
He clicked his tongue, causing me to quiver from stem to stern. To me, a little nervous at the moment, as I have shown, it sounded like a mass meeting of Spanish dancers playing the castanets.
‘You mustn’t let yourself be diverted from the task in hand by trifles, Bertie. I can’t help wondering if you’re taking this thing with the proper seriousness. I may be wrong, but there seems to me something frivolous in your attitude. Do pull yourself together and try to remember what this means to Nobby and me.’
‘But I can’t smash windows, with Edwin lurking above.’
‘Of course you can. I can’t see your difficulty. Pay no attention whatever to Edwin. If he is on the alert, so much the better. It will all help when the moment comes for me to put on my act. His story will support mine. I’ll give you another ten minutes, and then I really must insist on a little action. Got a cigarette?’
‘No.’
‘Then I shall simply have to go on smoking mine. That’s what it amounts to,’ said Boko, and breezed off.
Now, reading the above splash of dialogue, you will have noticed something. I don’t know if you happen to know the meaning of the French expression sang-froid, but, if you do, you can scarcely have failed to observe to what an extraordinary extent the recent Fittleworth had been exhibiting this quality. While I trembled and twittered, he remained as cool and calm as a turbot on ice, and it now occurred to me that the reason for this might very possibly be that he was keeping on the move.
It helps on these occasions to be able to circulate freely instead of standing on point duty outside scullery windows, and it was quite on the cards, I felt, that a short stroll might do something towards keying up my sagging nervous system. With this end in view, I wandered off round the house.
Any hope I may have entertained, however, that the vibrating ganglions would cease to quiver and the fluttering feeling in the pit of the stomach simmer down was shattered before I had gone a dozen yards. A dim figure suddenly loomed up before me in the darkness, causing me to leap perhaps five feet in the air and utter a sharp yip.
My composure was somewhat restored – not altogether, but somewhat – when the dim f spoke, and I recognized Jeeves’s voice.
CHAPTER 14
‘Good evening, sir,’ he said.
‘Good evening, Jeeves,’ I responded.
‘You gave me quite a start, sir.’
‘Nothing to the one you gave me. I thought the top of my head had come off.’
‘I am sorry to have been the cause of your experiencing any discomfort, sir. I was unable to herald my approach, the encounter being quite unforeseen. You are up late, sir.’
‘Yes.’
‘One could scarcely desire more delightful conditions for a nocturnal ramble.’
‘That is your view, is it?’
‘It is indeed, sir. I always feel that nothing is so soothing as a walk in a garden at night.’
‘Ha!’
‘The cool air. The scent of growing things. That is tobacco plant which you can smell, sir.’
‘Is it?’
‘The stars, sir.’
‘Stars?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What about them?’
‘I was merely directing your attention to them, sir. Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.’
‘Jeeves—’
‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, sir, but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims.’
‘Jeeves—’
‘Such harmony is in immortal souls. But whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.’
‘Jeeves—’
‘Sir?’
‘You couldn’t possibly switch it off, could you?’
‘Certainly, sir, if you wish it.’
‘I’m not in the mood.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘You know how one isn’t, sometimes.’
‘Yes, sir. I quite understand. I procured the brooch, sir.’
‘Brooch?’
‘The one which you wished me to purchase in place of the trinket lost in the fire, sir. Lady Florence’s birthday pre
sent.’
‘Oh, ah.’ It will give you some rough indication of how what he had called this nocturnal ramble of mine had affected me, when I say that I had completely forgotten about the damn’ thing. ‘You got it, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And handed it in?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. That’s offmy mind, then. And, believe me, Jeeves, the more I can get offmy mind at this juncture, the better I shall like it, because it’s already loaded down well above the Plimsoll mark.’
‘I am sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Do you know why I’m prowling about this garden?’
‘I was hoping that you might enlighten me, sir.’
‘I will. This is no careless saunter on which you find me engaged, Jeeves, but an enterprise whose consequences may well stagger humanity.’
He listened attentively while I sketched out the events which had led up to the tragedy, interrupting only with a respectful intake of the breath as I spoke of Uncle Percy, Boko and the Joke Goods. It was plain that my story had gripped him.
‘An eccentric young gentleman, Mr Fittleworth, sir,’ was his comment, as I concluded.
‘Loony to the eyebrows,’ I agreed.
‘The scheme which he has formulated is not, however, without its ingenuity. His lordship would undoubtedly be most grateful to anyone whom he supposed to have foiled a raid on the premises on this particular night. I happen to be aware that, despite her ladyship’s repeated instructions to him to attend to the matter, he forgot to post the letter renewing his burglary insurance.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I had the facts from his lordship in person, sir. Ascertaining that I was about to drive to London this afternoon, he gave me the communication to dispatch in the metropolitan area, so that it should reach its destination to-morrow morning by the first delivery. His emotion, as he urged me not to fail him and alluded to what her ladyship would say if she ever discovered his negligence, was very noticeable. He shook visibly.’
I was amazed.
‘You don’t mean he’s scared of Aunt Agatha?’