'Tell me now.'
'Well, it was his idea.'
I eyed her sternly. Bertram Wooster has no objection to listening to drivel, but it must not be pure babble from the padded cell, as this appeared to be.
'His idea?'
'Yes.'
'Are you asking me to believe that Sir Roderick Glossop got up one morning, gazed at himself in the mirror, thought he was looking a little pale and said to himself, «I need a change. I think I'll try being a butler for awhile»?'
'No, not that, but… I don't know where to begin.'
'Begin at the beginning. Come on now, young B. Wickham, smack into it,' I said, and took a piece of cake in a marked manner.
The austerity of my tone seemed to touch a nerve and kindle the fire that always slept in this vermilion-headed menace to the common weal, for she frowned a displeased frown and told me for heaven's sake to stop goggling like a dead halibut.
'I have every right to goggle like a dead halibut,' I said coldly, 'and I shall continue to do so as long as I see fit. I am under a considerable nervous s. As always seems to happen when you are mixed up in the doings, life has become one damn thing after another, and I think I am justified in demanding an explanation. I await your statement.'
'Well, let me marshal my thoughts.'
She did so, and after a brief intermission, during which I finished my piece of cake, proceeded.
'I'd better begin by telling you about Upjohn, because it all started through him. You see, he's egging Phyllis on to marry Wilbert Cream.'
'When you say egging –'
'I mean egging. And when a man like that eggs, something has to give, especially when the girl's a pill like Phyllis, who always does what Daddy tells her.'
'No will of her own?'
'Not a smidgeon. To give you an instance, a couple of days ago he took her to Birmingham to see the repertory company's performance of Chekhov's Seagull, because he thought it would be educational. I'd like to catch anyone trying to make me see Chekhov's Seagull, but Phyllis just bowed her head and said, «Yes, Daddy.» Didn't even attempt to put up a fight. That'll show you how much of a will of her own she's got.'
It did indeed. Her story impressed me profoundly. I knew Chekhov's Seagull. My Aunt Agatha had once made me take her son Thos to a performance of it at the Old Vic, and what with the strain of trying to follow the cock-eyed goings-on of characters called Zarietchnaya and Medvienko and having to be constantly on the alert to prevent Thos making a sneak for the great open spaces, my suffering had been intense. I needed no further evidence to tell me that Phyllis Mills was a girl whose motto would always be 'Daddy knows best'. Wilbert had only got to propose and she would sign on the dotted line because Upjohn wished it.
'Your aunt's worried sick about it.'
'She doesn't approve?'
'Of course she doesn't approve. You must have heard of Willie Cream, going over to New York so much.'
'Why yes, news of his escapades has reached me. He's a playboy.'
'Your aunt thinks he's a screwball.'
'Many playboys are, I believe. Well, that being so, one can understand why she doesn't want those wedding bells to ring out. But,' I said, putting my finger on the res in my unerring way, 'that doesn't explain where Pop Glossop comes in.'
'Yes, it does. She got him here to observe Wilbert.'
I found myself fogged.
'Cock an eye at him, you mean? Drink him in, as it were? What good's that going to do?'
She snorted impatiently.
'Observe in the technical sense. You know how these brain specialists work. They watch the subject closely. They engage him in conversation. They apply subtle tests. And sooner or later –'
'I begin to see. Sooner or later he lets fall an incautious word to the effect that he thinks he's a poached egg, and then they've got him where they want him.'
'Well, he does something which tips them off. Your aunt was moaning to me about the situation, and I suddenly had this inspiration of bringing Glossop here. You know how I get sudden inspirations.'
'I do. That hot-water-bottle episode.'
'Yes, that was one of them.'
'Ha!'
'What did you say?'
'Just «Ha!"'
'Why «Ha!»?'
'Because when I think of that night of terror, I feel like saying «Ha!"'
She seemed to see the justice of this. Pausing merely to eat a cucumber sandwich, she proceeded.
'So I said to your aunt, «I'll tell you what to do,» I said. «Get Glossop here,» I said, «and have him observe Wilbert Cream. Then you'll be in a position to go to Upjohn and pull the rug from under him."'
Again I was not abreast. There had been, as far as I could recollect, no mention of any rug.
'How do you mean?'
'Well, isn't it obvious? «Rope in old Glossop,» I said, «and let him observe. Then you'll be in a position,» I said, «to go to Upjohn and tell him that Sir Roderick Glossop, the greatest alienist in England, is convinced that Wilbert Cream is round the bend and to ask him if he proposes to marry his stepdaughter to a man who at any moment may be marched off and added to the membership list of Colney Hatch.» Even Upjohn would shrink from doing a thing like that. Or don't you think so?'
I weighed this.
'Yes,' I said, 'I should imagine you were right. Quite possibly Upjohn has human feelings, though I never noticed them when I was in statu pupillari, as I believe the expression is. One sees now why Glossop is at Brinkley Court. What one doesn't see is why one finds him buttling.'
'I told you that was his idea. He thought he was such a celebrated figure that it would arouse Mrs Cream's suspicions if he came here under his own name.'
'I see what you mean. She would catch him observing Wilbert and wonder why-'
' – and eventually put two and two together –'
' – and start Hey-what's-the-big-idea-ing.'
'Exactly. No mother likes to find that her hostess has got a brain specialist down to observe the son who is the apple of her eye. It hurts her feelings.'
'Whereas, if she catches the butler observing him, she merely says to herself, «Ah, an observant butler.» Very sensible. With this deal Uncle Tom's got on with Homer Cream, it would be fatal to risk giving her the pip in any way. She would kick to Homer, and Homer would draw himself up and say «After what has occurred, Travers, I would prefer to break off the negotiations,» and Uncle Tom would lose a packet. What is this deal they've got on, by the way? Did Aunt Dahlia tell you?'
'Yes, but it didn't penetrate. It's something to do with some land your uncle owns somewhere, and Mr Cream is thinking of buying it and putting up hotels and things. It doesn't matter, anyway. The fundamental thing, the thing to glue the eye on, is that the Cream contingent have to be kept sweetened at any cost. So not a word to a soul.'
'Quite. Bertram Wooster is not a babbler. No spiller of the beans he. But why are you so certain that Wilbert Cream is loopy? He doesn't look loopy to me.'
'Have you met him?'
'Just for a moment. He was in a leafy glade, reading poetry to the Mills girl.'
She took this big.
'Reading poetry? To Phyllis?'
'That's right. I thought it odd that a chap like him should be doing such a thing. Limericks, yes. If he had been reciting limericks to her, I could have understood it. But this was stuff from one of those books they bind in limp purple leather and sell at Christmas. I wouldn't care to swear to it, but it sounded to me extremely like Omar Khayyam.'
She continued to take it big.
'Break it up, Bertie, break it up! There's not a moment to be lost. You must go and break it up immediately.'
'Who, me? Why me?'
'That's what you're here for. Didn't your aunt tell you? She wants you to follow Wilbert Cream and Phyllis about everywhere and see that he doesn't get a chance of proposing.'
'You mean that I'm to be a sort of private eye or shamus, tailing them up? I don't like it,' I said dubiously.
'You don't have to like it,' said Bobbie. 'You just do it.'
5
Wax in the hands of the other sex, as the expression is, I went and broke it up as directed, but not blithely. It is never pleasant for a man of sensibility to find himself regarded as a buttinski and a trailing arbutus, and it was thus, I could see at a g., that Wilbert Cream was pencilling me in. At the moment of my arrival he had suspended the poetry reading and had taken Phyllis's hand in his, evidently saying or about to say something of an intimate and tender nature. Hearing my 'What ho', he turned, hurriedly released the fin and directed at me a look very similar to the one I had recently received from Aubrey Upjohn. He muttered something under his breath about someone, whose name I did not catch, apparently having been paid to haunt the place.
'Oh, it's you again,' he said.
Well, it was, of course. No argument about that.
'Kind of at a loose end?' he said. 'Why don't you settle down somewhere with a good book?'
I explained that I had just popped in to tell them that tea was now being served on the main lawn, and Phyllis squeaked a bit, as if agitated.
'Oh, dear!' she said. 'I must run. Daddy doesn't like me to be late for tea. He says it's not respectful to my elders.'
I could see trembling on Wilbert Cream's lips a suggestion as to where Daddy could stick himself and his views on respect to elders, but with a powerful effort he held it back.
'I shall take Poppet for a walk,' he said, chirruping to the dachshund, who was sniffing at my legs, filling his lungs with the delicious Wooster bouquet.
'No tea?' I said.
'No.'
'There are muffins.'
'Tchah!' he ejaculated, if that's the word, and strode off, followed by the low-slung dog, and it was borne in upon me that here was another source from which I could expect no present at Yule-Tide. His whole demeanour made it plain that I had not added to my little circle of friends. Though going like a breeze with dachshunds, I had failed signally to click with Wilbert Cream.
When Phyllis and I reached the lawn, only Bobbie was at the tea table, and this surprised us both.
'Where's Daddy?' Phyllis asked.
'He suddenly decided to go to London,' said Bobbie.
'To London?'
'That's what he said.'
'Why?'
'He didn't tell me.'
'I must go and see him,' said Phyllis, and buzzed off.
Bobbie seemed to be musing.
'Do you know what I think, Bertie?'
'What?'
'Well, when Upjohn came out just now, he was all of a doodah, and he had this week's Thursday Review in his hand. Came by the afternoon post, I suppose. I think he had been reading Reggie's comment on his book.'
This seemed plausible. I number several authors among my aquaintance – the name of Boko Fittleworth is one that springs to the mind – and they invariably become all of a doodah when they read a stinker in the press about their latest effort.
'Oh, you know about that thing Kipper wrote?'
'Yes, he showed it to me one day when we were having lunch together.'
'Very mordant, I gathered from what he told me. But I don't see why that should make Upjohn bound up to London.'
'I suppose he wants to ask the editor who wrote the thing, so that he can horsewhip him on the steps of his club. But of course they won't tell him, and it wasn't signed so … Oh, hullo, Mrs Cream.'
The woman she was addressing was tall and thin with a hawk-like face that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. She had an ink spot on her nose, the result of working on her novel of suspense. It is virtually impossible to write a novel of suspense without getting a certain amount of ink on the beezer. Ask Agatha Christie or anyone.
'I finished my chapter a moment ago, so I thought I would stop for a cup of tea,' said this literateuse. 'No good overdoing it.'
'No. Quit when you're ahead of the game, that's the idea. This is Mrs Travers's nephew Bertie Wooster,' said Bobbie with what I considered a far too apologetic note in her voice. If Roberta Wickham has one fault more pronounced than another, it is that she is inclined to introduce me to people as if I were something she would much have preferred to hush up. 'Bertie loves your books,' she added, quite unnecessarily, and the Cream started like a Boy Scout at the sound of a bugle.
'Oh, do you?'
'Never happier than when curled up with one of them,' I said, trusting that she wouldn't ask me which one of them I liked best.
'When I told him you were here, he was overcome.'
'Well, that certainly is great. Always glad to meet the fans. Which of my books do you like best?'
And I had got as far as 'Er' and was wondering, though not with much hope, if 'All of them' would meet the case, when Pop Glossop joined us with a telegram for Bobbie on a salver. From her mother, I presumed, calling me some name which she had forgotten to insert in previous communications. Or, of course, possibly expressing once more her conviction that I was a guffin, which, I thought, having had time to ponder over it, would be something in the nature of a bohunkus or a hammerhead.
'Oh, thank you, Swordfish,' said Bobbie, taking the 'gram.
It was fortunate that I was not holding a tea cup as she spoke, for hearing Sir Roderick thus addressed I gave another of my sudden starts and, had I had such a cup in my hand, must have strewn its contents hither and thither like a sower going forth sowing. As it was, I merely sent a cucumber sandwich flying through the air.
'Oh, sorry,' I said, for it had missed the Cream by a hair's breadth.
I could have relied on Bobbie to shove her oar in. The girl had no notion of passing a thing off.
'Excuse it, please,' she said. 'I ought to have warned you. Bertie is training for the Jerk The Cucumber Sandwich event at the next Olympic Games. He has to be practising all the time.'
On Ma Cream's brow there was a thoughtful wrinkle, as though she felt unable to accept this explanation of what had occurred. But her next words showed that it was not on my activities that her mind was dwelling but on the recent Swordfish. Having followed him with a keen glance as he faded from view, she said:
'This butler of Mrs Travers's. Do you know where she got him, Miss Wickham?'
'At the usual pet shop, I think.'
'Had he references?'
'Oh, yes. He was with Sir Roderick Glossop, the brain specialist, for years. I remember Mrs Travers saying Sir Roderick gave him a super– colossal reference. She was greatly impressed.'
Ma Cream sniffed.
'References can be forged.'
'Good gracious! Why do you say that?'
'Because I am not at all easy in my mind about this man. He has a criminal face.'
'Well, you might say that about Bertie.'
'I feel that Mrs Travers should be warned. In my Blackness at Night the butler turned out to be one of a gang of crooks, planted in the house to make it easy for them to break in. The inside stand, it's called. I strongly suspect that this is why this Swordfish is here, though of course it is quite possible that he is working on his own. One thing I am sure of, and that is that he is not a genuine butler.'
'What makes you think that?' I asked, handkerchiefing my upper slopes, which had become considerably bedewed. I didn't like this line of talk at all. Let the Cream get firmly in her nut the idea that Sir Roderick Glossop was not the butler, the whole butler and nothing but the butler, and disaster, as I saw it, loomed. She would probe and investigate, and before you could say 'What ho' would be in full possession of the facts. In which event, bim would go Uncle Tom's chance of scooping in a bit of easy money. And ever since I've known him failure to get his hooks on any stray cash that's floating around has always put him out of touch with the blue bird. It isn't that he's mercenary. It's just that he loves the stuff.
Her manner suggested that she was glad I had asked her that.
'I'll tell you what makes me think it. He betrays his amateurishness in a hundred ways. This very morning I found him
having a long conversation with Wilbert. A real butler would never do that. He would feel it was a liberty.'
I contested this statement.
'Now there,' I said, 'I take issue with you, if taking issue means what I think it means. Many of my happiest hours have been passed chatting with butlers, and it has nearly always happened that it was they who made the first advances. They seek me out and tell me about their rheumatism. Swordfish looks all right to me.'
'You are not a student of criminology, as I am. I have the trained eye, and my judgment is never wrong. That man is here for no good.'
I could see that all this was making Bobbie chafe, but her better self prevailed and she checked the heated retort. She is very fond of T. Portarlington Travers, who, she tells me, is the living image of a wire-haired terrier now residing with the morning stars but at one time very dear to her, and she remembered that for his sake the Cream had to be deferred to and handled with gloves. When she spoke, it was with the mildness of a cushat dove addressing another cushat dove from whom it was hoping to borrow money.
'But don't you think, Mrs Cream, that it may be just your imagination? You have such a wonderful imagination. Bertie was saying only the other day that he didn't know how you did it. Write all those frightfully imaginative books, I mean. Weren't you, Bertie?'
'My very words.'
'And if you have an imagination, you can't help imagining. Can you, Bertie?'
'Dashed difficult.'
Her honeyed words were wasted. The Cream continued to dig her toes in like Balaam's ass, of whom you have doubtless heard.
'I'm not imagining that that butler is up to something fishy,' she said tartly. 'And I should have thought it was pretty obvious what that something was. You seem to have forgotten that Mr Travers has one of the finest collections of old silver in England.'
This was correct. Owing possibly to some flaw in his mental make-up, Uncle Tom has been collecting old silver since I was so high, and I suppose the contents of the room on the ground floor where he parks the stuff are worth a princely sum. I knew all about that collection of his, not only because I had had to listen to him for hours on the subject of sconces, foliation, ribbon wreaths in high relief and gadroon borders, but because I had what you might call a personal interest in it, once having stolen an eighteenth-century cow-creamer for him. (Long story. No time to go into it now. You will find it elsewhere in the archives.)
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