‘It’s something quite simple.’
I doubted it. I mean to say, if her idea of a suitable job for curates was the pinching of policemen’s helmets, what sort of an assignment, I could not but ask myself, was she likely to hand to me? It seemed that the moment had come for a bit of in-the-bud-nipping.
‘Oh, yes?’ I said. ‘Well, let me tell you here and now that I’m jolly well not going to do it.’
‘Yellow, eh?’
‘Bright yellow. Like my Aunt Agatha.’
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘She’s got jaundice.’
‘Enough to give her jaundice, having a nephew like you. Why, you don’t even know what it is.’
‘I would prefer not to know.’
‘Well, I’m going to tell you.’
‘I do not wish to listen.’
‘You would rather I unleashed Bartholomew? I notice he has been looking at you in that odd way of his. I don’t believe he likes you. He does take sudden dislikes to people.’
The Woosters are brave, but not rash. I allowed her to lead me to the stone wall that bordered the terrace, and we sat down. The evening, I remember, was one of perfect tranquillity, featuring a sort of serene peace. Which just shows you.
‘I won’t keep you long,’ she said. ‘It’s all quite simple and straightforward. I shall have to begin, though, by telling you why we have had to be so dark and secret about the engagement. That’s Gussie’s fault.’
‘What has he done?’
‘Just been Gussie, that’s all. Just gone about with no chin, goggling through his spectacles and keeping newts in his bedroom. You can understand Uncle Watkyn’s feelings. His daughter tells him she is going to get married. “Oh, yes?” he says. “Well, let’s have a dekko at the chap.” And along rolls Gussie. A nasty jar for a father.’
‘Quite.’
‘Well, you can’t tell me that a time when he is reeling under the blow of having Gussie for a son-in-law is the moment for breaking it to him that I want to marry the curate.’
I saw her point. I recollected Freddie Threepwood telling me that there had been trouble at Blandings about a cousin of his wanting to marry a curate. In that case, I gathered, the strain had been eased by the discovery that the fellow was the heir of a Liverpool shipping millionaire; but as a broad, general rule, parents do not like their daughters marrying curates, and I take it that the same thing applies to uncles with their nieces.
‘You’ve got to face it. Curates are not so hot. So before anything can be done in the way of removing the veil of secrecy, we have got to sell Harold to Uncle Watkyn. If we play our cards properly, I am hoping that he will give him a vicarage which he has in his gift. Then we shall begin to get somewhere.’
I didn’t like her use of the word ‘we’, but I saw what she was driving at, and I was sorry to have to insert a spanner in her hopes and dreams.
‘You wish me to put in a word for Stinker? You would like me to draw your uncle aside and tell him what a splendid fellow Stinker is? There is nothing I would enjoy more, my dear Stiffy, but unfortunately we are not on those terms.’
‘No, no, nothing like that.’
‘Well, I don’t see what more I can do.’
‘You will,’ she said, and again I was conscious of that subtle feeling of uneasiness. I told myself that I must be firm. But I could not but remember Roberta Wickham and the hot-water bottle. A man thinks he is being chilled steel – or adamant, if you prefer the expression – and suddenly the mists clear away and he finds that he has allowed a girl to talk him into something frightful. Samson had the same experience with Delilah.
‘Oh?’ I said, guardedly.
She paused in order to tickle the dog Bartholomew under the left ear. Then she resumed.
‘Just praising Harold to Uncle Watkyn isn’t any use. You need something much cleverer than that. You want to engineer some terrifically brainy scheme that will put him over with a bang. I thought I had got it a few days ago. Do you ever read Milady’s Boudoir?’
‘I once contributed an article to it on “What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing”, but I am not a regular reader. Why?’
‘There was a story in it last week about a Duke who wouldn’t let his daughter marry the young secretary, so the secretary got a friend of his to take the Duke out on the lake and upset the boat, and then he dived in and saved the Duke, and the Duke said “Right ho”.’
I resolved that no time should be lost in quashing this idea.
‘Any notion you may have entertained that I am going to take Sir W. Bassett out in a boat and upset him can be dismissed instanter. To start with, he wouldn’t come out on a lake with me.’
‘No. And we haven’t a lake. And Harold said that if I was thinking of the pond in the village, I could forget it, as it was much too cold to dive into ponds at this time of year. Harold is funny in some ways.’
‘I applaud his sturdy common sense.’
‘Then I got an idea from another story. It was about a young lover who gets a friend of his to dress up as a tramp and attack the girl’s father, and then he dashes in and rescues him.’
I patted her hand gently.
‘The flaw in all these ideas of yours,’ I pointed out, ‘is that the hero always seems to have a half-witted friend who is eager to place himself in the foulest positions on his behalf. In Stinker’s case, this is not so. I am fond of Stinker – you could even go so far as to say that I love him like a brother – but there are sharply defined limits to what I am prepared to do to further his interests.’
‘Well, it doesn’t matter, because he put the presidential veto on that one, too. Something about what the vicar would say if it all came out. But he loves my new one.’
‘Oh, you’ve got a new one?’
‘Yes, and it’s terrific. The beauty of it is Harold’s part in it is above reproach. A thousand vicars couldn’t get the goods on him. The only snag was that he has to have someone working with him, and until I heard you were coming down here I couldn’t think who we were to get. But now you have arrived, all is well.’
‘It is, is it? I informed you before, young Byng, and I now inform you again that nothing will induce me to mix myself up with your loathsome schemes.’
‘Oh, but, Bertie, you must! We’re relying on you. And all you have to do is practically nothing. Just steal Uncle Watkyn’s cow-creamer.’
I don’t know what you would have done, if a girl in heather-mixture tweeds had sprung this on you, scarcely eight hours after a mauve-faced aunt had sprung the same. It is possible that you would have reeled. Most chaps would, I imagine. Personally, I was more amused than aghast. Indeed, if memory serves me aright, I laughed. If so, it was just as well, for it was about the last chance I had.
‘Oh, yes?’ I said. ‘Tell me more,’ I said, feeling that it would be entertaining to allow the little blighter to run on. ‘Steal his cow-creamer, eh?’
‘Yes. It’s a thing he brought back from London yesterday for his collection. A sort of silver cow with a kind of blotto look on its face. He thinks the world of it. He had it on the table in front of him at dinner last night, and was gassing away about it. And it was then that I got the idea. I thought that if Harold could pinch it, and then bring it back, Uncle Watkyn would be so grateful that he would start spouting vicarages like a geyser. And then I spotted the catch.’
‘Oh, there was a catch?’
‘Of course. Don’t you see? How would Harold be supposed to have got the thing? If a silver cow is in somebody’s collection, and it disappears, and next day a curate rolls round with it, that curate has got to do some good, quick explaining. Obviously, it must be made to look like an outside job.’
‘I see. You want me to put on a black mask and break in through the window and snitch this object d’art and hand it over to Stinker? I see. I see.’
I spoke with satirical bitterness, and I should have thought that anyone could have seen that satirical bitterness was what I was speaking with,
but she merely looked at me with admiration and approval.
‘You are clever, Bertie. That’s exactly it. Of course you needn’t wear a mask.’
‘You don’t think it would help me throw myself into the part?’ I said with s. b., as before.
‘Well, it might. That’s up to you. But the great thing is to get through the window. Wear gloves, of course, because of the fingerprints.’
‘Of course.’
‘Then Harold will be waiting outside, and he will take the thing from you.’
‘And after that I go off and do my stretch at Dartmoor?’
‘Oh, no. You escape in the struggle, of course.’
‘What struggle?’
‘And Harold rushes into the house, all over blood –’
‘Whose blood?’
‘Well, I said yours, and Harold thought his. There have got to be signs of a struggle to make it more interesting, and my idea was that he should hit you on the nose. But he said the thing would carry greater weight if he was all covered with gore. So how we’ve left it is that you both hit each other on the nose. And then Harold rouses the house and comes in and shows Uncle Watkyn the cow-creamer and explains what happened, and everything’s fine. Because, I mean, Uncle Watkyn couldn’t just say “Oh thanks” and leave it at that, could he? He would be compelled, if he had a spark of decency in him, to cough up that vicarage. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful scheme, Bertie?’
I rose. My face was cold and hard.
‘Most. But I’m sorry –’
‘You don’t mean you won’t do it, now that you see that it will cause you practically no inconvenience at all? It would only take about ten minutes of your time.’
‘I do mean I won’t do it.’
‘Well, I think you’re a pig.’
‘A pig, maybe, but a shrewd, level-headed pig. I wouldn’t touch the project with a bargepole. I tell you I know Stinker. Exactly how he would muck the thing up and get us all landed in the jug, I cannot say, but he would find a way. And now I’ll take that book, if you don’t mind.’
‘What book? Oh, that one of Gussie’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you want it for?’
‘I want it,’ I said gravely, ‘because Gussie is not fit to be in charge of it. He might lose it again, in which event it might fall into the hands of your uncle, in which event he would certainly kick the stuffing out of the Gussie-Madeline wedding arrangements, in which event I would be up against it as few men have ever been up against it before.’
‘You?’
‘None other.’
‘How do you come into it?’
‘I will tell you.’
And in a few terse words I outlined for her the events which had taken place at Brinkley Court, the situation which had arisen from those events and the hideous peril which threatened me if Gussie’s entry were to be scratched.
‘You will understand,’ I said, ‘that I am implying nothing derogatory to your cousin Madeline, when I say that the idea of being united to her in the bonds of holy wedlock is one that freezes the gizzard. The fact is in no way to her discredit. I should feel just the same about marrying many of the world’s noblest women. There are certain females whom one respects, admires, reveres, but only from a distance. If they show any signs of attempting to come closer, one is prepared to fight them off with a blackjack. It is to this group that your cousin Madeline belongs. A charming girl, and the ideal mate for Augustus Fink-Nottle, but ants in the pants to Bertram.’
She drank this in.
‘I see. Yes, I suppose Madeline is a bit of a Gawd-help-us.’
‘The expression “Gawd-help-us” is one which I would not have gone so far as to use myself, for I think a chivalrous man ought to stop somewhere. But since you have brought it up, I admit that it covers the facts.’
‘I never realized that that was how things were. No wonder you want that book.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, all this has opened up a new line of thought.’
That grave, dreamy look had come into her face. She massaged the dog Bartholomew’s spine with a pensive foot.
‘Come on,’ I said, chaffing at the delay. ‘Slip it across.’
‘Just a moment. I’m trying to straighten it all out in my mind. You know, Bertie, I really ought to take that book to Uncle Watkyn.’
‘What!’
‘That’s what my conscience tells me to do. After all, I owe a lot to him. For years he has been a second father to me. And he ought to know how Gussie feels about him, oughtn’t he? I mean to say, a bit tough on the old buster, cherishing what he thinks is a harmless newt-fancier in his bosom, when all the time it’s a snake that goes about criticizing the way he drinks soup. However, as you’re being so sweet and are going to help Harold and me by stealing that cow-creamer, I suppose I shall have to stretch a point.’
We Woosters are pretty quick. I don’t suppose it was more than a couple of minutes before I figured out what she meant. I read her purpose, and shuddered.
She was naming the Price of the Papers. In other words, after being blackmailed by an aunt at breakfast, I was now being blackmailed by a female crony before dinner. Pretty good going, even for this lax post-war world.
‘Stiffy!’ I cried.
‘It’s no good saying “Stiffy!” Either you sit in and do your bit, or Uncle Watkyn gets some racy light reading over his morning egg and coffee. Think it over, Bertie.’
She hoisted the dog Bartholomew to his feet, and trickled off towards the house. The last I saw of her was a meaning look, directed at me over her shoulder, and it went through me like a knife.
I had slumped back on to the wall, and I sat there, stunned. Just how long, I don’t know, but it was a goodish time. Winged creatures of the night barged into me, but I gave them little attention. It was not till a voice suddenly spoke a couple of feet or so above my bowed head that I came out of the coma.
‘Good evening, Wooster,’ said the voice.
I looked up. The cliff-like mass looming over me was Roderick Spode.
I suppose even Dictators have their chummy moments, when they put their feet up and relax with the boys, but it was plain from the outset that if Roderick Spode had a sunnier side, he had not come with any idea of exhibiting it now. His manner was curt. One sensed the absence of the bonhomous note.
‘I should like a word with you, Wooster.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I have been talking to Sir Watkyn Bassett, and he has told me the whole story of the cow-creamer.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘And we know why you are here.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Stop saying “Oh, yes?” you miserable worm, and listen to me.’
Many chaps might have resented his tone. I did myself, as a matter of fact. But you know how it is. There are some fellows you are right on your toes to tick off when they call you a miserable worm, others not quite so much.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, saying it himself, dash it, ‘it is perfectly plain to us why you are here. You have been sent by your uncle to steal this cow-creamer for him. You needn’t trouble to deny it. I found you with the thing in your hands this afternoon. And now, we learn, your aunt is arriving. The muster of the vultures, ha!’
He paused a moment, then repeated ‘The muster of the vultures,’ as if he thought pretty highly of it as a gag. I couldn’t see that it was so very hot myself.
‘Well, what I came to tell you, Wooster, was that you are being watched – watched closely. And if you are caught stealing that cow-creamer, I can assure you that you will go to prison. You need entertain no hope that Sir Watkyn will shrink from creating a scandal. He will do his duty as a citizen and a Justice of the Peace.’
Here he laid a hand upon my shoulder, and I can’t remember when I have experienced anything more unpleasant. Apart from what Jeeves would have called the symbolism of the action, he had a grip like the bite of a horse.
‘Did you say “Oh,
yes?”’ he asked.
‘Oh, no,’ I assured him.
‘Good. Now, what you are saying to yourself, no doubt, is that you will not be caught. You imagine that you and this precious aunt of yours will be clever enough between you to steal the cow-creamer without being detected. It will do you no good, Wooster. If the thing disappears, however cunningly you and your female accomplice may have covered your traces, I shall know where it has gone, and I shall immediately beat you to a jelly. To a jelly,’ he repeated, rolling the words round his tongue as if they were vintage port. ‘Have you got that clear?’
‘Oh, quite.’
‘You are sure you understand?’
‘Oh, definitely.’
‘Splendid.’
A dim figure was approaching across the terrace, and he changed his tone to one of a rather sickening geniality.
‘What a lovely evening, is it not? Extraordinarily mild for the time of year. Well, I mustn’t keep you any longer. You will be wanting to go and dress for dinner. Just a black tie. We are quite informal here. Yes?’
The word was addressed to the dim figure. A familiar cough revealed its identity.
‘I wished to speak to Mr Wooster, sir. I have a message for him from Mrs Travers. Mrs Travers presents her compliments, sir, and desires me to say that she is in the Blue Room and would be glad if you could make it convenient to call upon her there as soon as possible. She has a matter of importance which she wishes to discuss.’
I heard Spode snort in the darkness.
‘So Mrs Travers has arrived?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And has a matter of importance to discuss with Mr Wooster?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ha!’ said Spode, and biffed off with a short, sharp laugh.
I rose from my seat.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘stand by to counsel and advise. The plot has thickened.’
5
* * *
I SLID INTO the shirt, and donned the knee-length underwear.
‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘how about it?’
During the walk to the house I had placed him in possession of the latest developments, and had left him to turn them over in his mind with a view to finding a formula, while I went along the passage and took a hasty bath. I now gazed at him hopefully, like a seal awaiting a bit of fish.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 Page 30