‘Nothing. We have often laughed heartily at the thought of that moment’s madness in New York.’
‘I never heard you.’
‘Well, we have done – frequently.’
‘Oh? … In that case … Well, yes, I suppose … Well, anyway, I’ll go off and write that letter.’
For some time after he had left me, I remained with the feet up on the mantelpiece, relaxing. Take it for all in all, it had been a pretty strenuous day, and I was feeling the strain a bit. The recent exchange of thoughts with Chuffy alone had taken it out of the nervous system considerably. And when Brinkley came in and wanted to know when I would have dinner, the thought of sitting down to a solitary steak and fried in the cottage didn’t appeal. I felt restless, on edge.
‘I shall dine out, Brinkley,’ I said.
This successor to Jeeves had been sent down by the agency in London, and I’m bound to say he wasn’t the fellow I’d have selected if I had had time to go round to the place and make a choice in person. Not at all the man of my dreams. A melancholy blighter, with a long, thin, pimple-studded face and deep, brooding eyes, he had shown himself averse from the start to that agreeable chit-chat between employer and employed to which the society of Jeeves had accustomed me. I had been trying to establish cordial relations ever since he had arrived, but with no success. Outwardly he was all respectfulness, but inwardly you could see that he was a man who was musing on the coming Social Revolution and looked on Bertram as a tyrant and an oppressor.
‘Yes, Brinkley, I shall dine out.’
He said nothing, merely looking at me as if he were measuring me for my lamp-post.
‘I have had a fatiguing day, and I feel a need for the lights and the wine. Both of these, I should imagine, may be had in Bristol. And there ought to be a show of some kind playing there, don’t you think? It’s one of the Number One touring towns.’
He sighed slightly. All this talk of my going to shows was distressing him. What he really wanted was to see me sprinting down Park Lane with the mob after me with dripping knives.
‘I shall take the car and drive over there. You can have the evening off.’
‘Very good, sir,’ he moaned.
I gave it up. The man annoyed me. I hadn’t the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie, but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn’t do it with a bright and cheerful smile. Dismissing him with a gesture, I went round to the garage and got the car out.
It was only a matter of thirty miles or so to Bristol, and I got there in nice time for a comfortable bite before the theatre. The show was a musical comedy which I had seen on several occasions during its London run, but it stood up quite well on a further visit, and altogether I was feeling rested and refreshed when I started back home.
I suppose it would have been getting on for midnight when I fetched up at the rural retreat: and, being about ready for sleep by now, I lost no time in lighting a candle and toddling upstairs. As I opened the door of my room, I recollect I was thinking how particularly well a dollop of slumber would go: and I was just making for the bed with a song on my lips, so to speak, when something suddenly sat up in it.
The next moment I had dropped the candle and the room was plunged in darkness. But not before I had seen quite enough to be getting along with.
Reading from left to right, the contents of the bed consisted of Pauline Stoker in my heliotrope pyjamas with the old gold stripe.
7
* * *
A Visitor for Bertie
THE ATTITUDE OF fellows towards finding girls in their bedroom shortly after midnight varies. Some like it. Some don’t. I didn’t. I suppose it’s some old Puritan strain in the Wooster blood. I drew myself up censoriously and shot a sternish glance in her direction. Absolutely wasted, of course, because it was pitch dark.
‘What … What … What –?’
‘It’s all right.’
‘All right?’
‘Quite all right.’
‘Oh?’ I said, and I don’t pretend to disguise the fact that I spoke bitterly. I definitely meant it to sting.
I stooped to pick up the candle, and the next moment I had uttered a startled cry.
‘Don’t make such a noise!’
‘But there’s a corpse on the floor.’
‘There isn’t. I should have noticed it.’
‘There is, I tell you. I was groping about for the candle, and my fingers touched something cold and still and clammy.’
‘Oh, that’s my swimming suit.’
‘Your swimming suit?’
‘Well, do you think I came ashore by aeroplane?’
‘You swam here from the yacht?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘About half an hour ago.’
In that level-headed, practical way of mine, I went straight to the root of the matter.
‘Why?’ I asked.
A match scratched and a candle by the bed flamed up and lent a bit of light to the scene. Once more I was able to observe those pyjamas, and I’m bound to admit they looked extraordinarily dressy. Pauline was darkish in her general colour scheme, and heliotrope suited her. I said as much, always being ready to give credit where credit is due.
‘You look fine in that slumber-wear.’
‘Thanks.’
She blew out the match, and gazed at me in a sort of wondering way.
‘You know, Bertie, steps should be taken about you.’
‘Eh?’
‘You ought to be in some sort of a home.’
‘I am,’ I replied coldly and rather cleverly. ‘My own. The point I wish to thresh out is, what are you doing in it?’
Womanlike, she evaded the issue.
‘What on earth did you want to kiss me like that for in front of Father? You needn’t tell me you were carried away by my radiant beauty. No, it was just plain, straight goofiness, and I can quite understand now why Sir Roderick told Father that you ought to be under restraint. Why are you still at large? You must have a pull of some kind.’
We Woosters are pretty sharp on this sort of thing. I spoke with a good deal of asperity.
‘The incident to which you allude is readily explained. I thought he was Chuffy.’
‘Thought who was Chuffy?’
‘Your father.’
‘If you’re trying to make out that Marmaduke looks the least bit like Father you must be cuckoo,’ she replied with a warmth equal to my own. I gathered that she was not a great admirer of the parent’s appearance, and I’m not saying she wasn’t right. ‘Besides, I don’t see what you mean.’
I explained.
‘The idea was to let Chuffy observe you in my embrace, so that the generous fire would be stirred within him and he would get keyed up to proposing to you, feeling that if he didn’t get into action right speedily he might lose you.’
Her manner softened.
‘You didn’t think that out by yourself?’
‘I did.’ I was somewhat nettled. ‘Why everybody should imagine that I can’t get ideas without the assistance of Jeeves …’
‘But that was very sweet of you.’
‘We Woosters are sweet, exceedingly sweet, when a pal’s happiness is in the balance.’
‘I can see now why I accepted you that night in New York,’ she said meditatively. ‘There’s a sort of woolly-headed duckiness about you. If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could easily marry you, Bertie.’
‘No, no,’ I said with some alarm. ‘Don’t dream of it. I mean to say …’
‘Oh, it’s all right. I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Marmaduke; that’s why I’m here.’
‘And now,’ I said, ‘we’ve come right back to it. Once more we have worked round to the very point concerning which I most desire enlightenment. What on earth is the idea behind all this? You say you swam ashore from the yacht? Why? You came and dumped yourself in my little home. Why?’
‘Because I wanted somewh
ere to lie low till I could get clothes, of course. I can’t go to the Hall in a swimming suit.’
I began to follow the train of thought.
‘Oh, you swam ashore to get to Chuffy?’
‘Of course. Father was keeping me a prisoner on board the yacht, and this evening your man Jeeves –’
I winced.
‘My late man.’
‘All right. Your late man. Your late man Jeeves arrived with an early letter from Marmaduke. Oh, boy!’
‘How do you mean, oh, boy?’
‘Was that a letter? I cried six pints when I read it.’
‘Hot stuff?’
‘It was beautiful. It throbbed with poetry.’
‘It did?’
‘Yes.’
‘This letter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Chuffy’s letter?’
‘Yes. You seem surprised.’
I was a bit. One of the very best, old Chuffy, of course, but I wouldn’t have said he could write letters like that. But then one has got to take into consideration the fact that when I’ve been with him he has generally been eating steak-and-kidney pudding or cursing horses for not running fast enough. On such occasions, the poetic side of a man is not uppermost.
‘So this letter stirred you up, did it?’
‘You bet it stirred me up. I felt I couldn’t wait another day without seeing him. What was that poem about a woman wailing for her demon lover?’
‘Ah, there you have me. Jeeves would know.’
‘Well, that’s what I felt like. And, talking of Jeeves, what a man! Sympathy? He drips with it.’
‘Oh, you confided in Jeeves?’
‘Yes. And told him what I was going to do.’
‘And he didn’t try to stop you?’
‘Stop me? He was all for it.’
‘He was, was he?’
‘You should have seen him. Such a kind smile. He said you would be delighted to help me.’
‘He did, eh?’
‘He spoke most highly of you.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. “Mr Wooster, miss,” he said, “is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible, but he has a heart of gold.” He said that as he was lowering me from the side of the boat by a rope, having first made sure that the coast was clear. I couldn’t dive, you see, because of the splash.’
I was chewing the lip in some chagrin.
‘What the devil did he mean, “mentally negligible”?’
‘Oh, you know. Loopy.’
‘Tchah!’
‘Eh?’
‘I said “Tchah!”’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ I was a good deal moved. ‘Well, wouldn’t you say “Tchah!” if your late man was going about the place telling people you were mentally negligible …’
‘But with a heart of gold.’
‘Never mind the heart of gold. The point is that my man, my late man, a fellow I have always looked on more as some sort of an uncle than a personal attendant, is shooting to and fro bellowing out at the top of his voice that I am mentally negligible and filling my bedroom with girls –’
‘Bertie! Are you annoyed?’
‘Annoyed!’
‘You sound annoyed. And I can’t see why. I should have thought you would have been only too glad of the chance of helping me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold I hear so much about.’
‘The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Heaps of people have hearts of gold and yet would be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms in the small hours. What you don’t seem to realize, what you and this Jeeves of yours have omitted to take into your calculations, is that I have a reputation to keep up, an unspotted name to maintain in its pristine purity. This cannot be done by entertaining girls who come in, in the middle of the night, without so much as a by-your-leave and coolly pinch your heliotrope pyjamas –’
‘You didn’t expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?’
‘– and leap into your bed –’
She uttered an exclamation.
‘I know what this reminds me of. I’ve been trying to think ever since you came in. The story of the Three Bears. You must have been told it as a kid. “There’s somebody in my bed …” Wasn’t that what the Big Bear said?’
I frowned doubtfully.
‘As I recollect it, it was something about porridge. “Who’s been eating my porridge?”’
‘I’m sure there was a bed in it.’
‘Bed? Bed? I can’t remember any bed. On the subject of the porridge, however, I am absolutely … But we are wandering from the point once more. What I was saying was that a reputable bachelor like myself, who has never had his licence so much as endorsed, can scarcely be blamed for looking askance at girls in heliotrope pyjamas in his bed …’
‘You said they suited me.’
‘They do suit you.’
‘You said I looked fine in them.’
‘You do look fine in them, but once more you are refusing to meet the issue squarely. The point is –’
‘How many points is that? I seem to have counted about a dozen.’
‘There is only one point, and I am endeavouring to make it clear. In a nutshell, what will people say when they find you here?’
‘But they won’t find me here.’
‘You think so? Ha! What about Brinkley?’
‘Who’s he?’
‘My man.’
‘Your late man?’
I clicked the tongue.
‘My new man. At nine tomorrow morning he will bring me tea.’
‘Well, you’ll like that.’
‘He will bring it to this room. He will approach the bed. He will place it on the table.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘To facilitate my getting at the cup and sipping.’
‘Oh, you mean he will put the tea on the table. You said he would put the bed on the table.’
‘I never said anything of the sort.’
‘You did. Distinctly.’
I tried to reason with the girl.
‘My dear child,’ I said, ‘I must really ask you to use your intelligence. Brinkley is not a juggler. He is a well-trained gentleman’s gentleman, and would consider it a liberty to put beds on tables. And why should he put beds on tables? The idea would never occur to him. He –’
She interrupted my reasoning.
‘But wait a minute. You keep babbling about Brinkley, but there isn’t a Brinkley.’
‘There is a Brinkley. One Brinkley. And one Brinkley coming into this room at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and finding you in that bed will be enough to start a scandal which will stagger humanity.’
‘I mean, he can’t be in the house.’
‘Of course he’s in the house.’
‘Well, he must be deaf, then. I made enough noise getting in to wake six gentlemen’s gentlemen. Apart from smashing a window at the back –’
‘Did you smash a window at the back?’
‘I had to, or I couldn’t have got in. It was the window of some sort of bedroom on the ground floor.’
‘Why dash it, that’s Brinkley’s bedroom.’
‘Well, he wasn’t in it.’
‘Why on earth not? I gave him the evening off, not the night.’
‘I can see what has happened. He’s away on a toot somewhere, and won’t be back for days. Father had a man who did that once. He went out for his evening from our house on East Sixty-Seventh Street, New York, on April the fourth in a bowler hat, grey gloves and a check suit, and the next we heard of him was a telegram from Portland, Oregon, on April the tenth, saying he had overslept himself and would be back shortly. That’s what your Brinkley must have done.’
I must say I drew a good deal of comfort from the idea.
‘Let us hope so,’ I said. ‘If he is really trying to drown his sorrows, it ought to take him weeks.’
‘So, you see, you’ve been making a
fuss about nothing. I always say –’
But what it was she always said, I was not privileged to learn. For at that moment she broke off with a sharp squeak.
Somebody was knocking on the front door.
8
* * *
Police Persecution
WE LOOKED AT each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a first-floor back in Chuffnell Regis. That frightful sound, coming unexpectedly like that in the middle of the peaceful summer night, had been enough to strike the chit-chat from anybody’s lips. And what rendered it so particularly unpleasant to us, personally, was the fact that we had both jumped simultaneously to the same ghastly conclusion.
‘It’s Father!’ Pauline gargled, and with a swift flip of her finger she doused the candle.
‘What did you do that for?’ I said, a good deal pipped. The sudden darkness seemed to make things worse.
‘So that he shouldn’t see a light in the window, of course. If he thinks you’re asleep he may go away.’
‘What a hope!’ I retorted, as the knocking, which had eased off for a moment, started again with more follow-through than ever.
‘Well, I suppose you had better go down,’ said the girl in a subdued sort of voice. ‘Or’ – she seemed to brighten – ‘shall we pour water on him from the staircase window?’
I started violently. She had made the suggestion as if she considered it one of her best and brightest, and I suddenly realized what it meant to play the host to a girl of her temperament and personality. All that I had ever heard or read about the reckless younger generation seemed to come back to me.
‘Don’t dream of it!’ I whispered urgently. ‘Dismiss the project utterly and absolutely from your mind.’
I mean to say, a dry J. Washburn Stoker seeking an errant daughter was bad enough. A J. Washburn Stoker stimulated to additional acerbity by a jugful of H2O on his head, I declined to contemplate. Goodness knows, I wasn’t keen on going down and passing the time of night with the man, but if the alternative was to allow his loved one to drench him to the skin and then wait while he tore the walls down with his bare hands I proposed to do so immediately.
‘I’ll have to see him,’ I said.
‘Well, be careful.’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 Page 7