'Mrs Travers was showing it to Willie the other day, and he was thrilled. Willie collects old silver himself.'
With each hour that passed I was finding it more and more difficult to get a toe-hold on the character of W. Cream. An in-and-out performer, if ever there was one. First all that poetry, I mean, and now this. I had always supposed that playboys didn't give a hoot for anything except blondes and cold bottles. It just showed once again that half the world doesn't know how the other three-quarters lives.
'He says there are any number of things in Mr Travers's collection that he would give his back teeth for. There was an eighteenth-century cow-creamer he particularly coveted. So keep your eye on that butler. I'm certainly going to keep mine. Well,' said the Cream, rising, 'I must be getting back to my work. I always like to rough out a new chapter before finishing for the day.'
She legged it, and for a moment silence reigned. Then Bobbie said, 'Phew!' and I agreed that 'Phew!' was the mot juste.
'We'd better get Glossop out of here quick,' I said.
'How can we? It's up to your aunt to do that, and she's away.'
'Then I'm jolly well going to get out myself. There's too much impending doom buzzing around these parts for my taste. Brinkley Court, once a peaceful country-house, has become like something sinister out of Edgar Allan Poe, and it makes my feet cold. I'm leaving.'
'You can't till your aunt gets back. There has to be some sort of host or hostess here, and I simply must go home tomorrow and see Mother. You'll have to clench your teeth and stick it.'
'And the severe mental strain to which I am being subjected doesn't matter, I suppose?'
'Not a bit. Does you good. Keeps your pores open.'
I should probably have said something pretty cutting in reply to this, if I could have thought of anything, but as I couldn't I didn't.
'What's Aunt Dahlia's address?' I said.
'Royal Hotel, Eastbourne. Why?'
'Because,' I said, taking another cucumber sandwich, 'I'm going to wire her to ring me up tomorrow without fail, so that I can apprise her of what's going on in this joint.'
6
I forget how the subject arose, but I remember Jeeves once saying that sleep knits up the ravelled sleave of care. Balm of hurt minds, he described it as. The idea being, I took it, that if things are getting sticky, they tend to seem less glutinous after you've had your eight hours.
Apple sauce, in my opinion. It seldom pans out that way with me, and it didn't now. I had retired to rest taking a dim view of the current situation at Brinkley Court and opening my eyes to a new day, as the expression is, I found myself taking an even dimmer. Who knew, I asked myself as I practically pushed the breakfast egg away untasted, what Ma Cream might not at any moment uncover? And who could say how soon, if I continued to be always at his side, Wilbert Cream would get it up his nose and start attacking me with tooth and claw? Already his manner was that of a man whom the society of Bertram Wooster had fed to the tonsils, and one more sight of the latter at his elbow might quite easily make him decide to take prompt steps through the proper channels.
Musing along these lines, I had little appetite for lunch, though Anatole had extended himself to the utmost. I winced every time the Cream shot a sharp, suspicious look at Pop Glossop as he messed about at the sideboard, and the long, loving looks her son Wilbert kept directing at Phyllis Mills chilled me to the marrow. At the conclusion of the meal he would, I presumed, invite the girl to accompany him again to that leafy glade, and it was idle to suppose that there would not be pique on his part, or even chagrin, when I came along, too.
Fortunately, as we rose from the table, Phyllis said she was going to her room to finish typing Daddy's speech, and my mind was eased for the nonce. Even a New York playboy, accustomed from his earliest years to pursue blondes like a bloodhound, would hardly follow her there and press his suit.
Seeming himself to recognize that there was nothing constructive to be done in that direction for the moment, he said in a brooding voice that he would take Poppet for a walk. This, apparently, was his invariable method of healing the stings of disappointment, and an excellent thing of course from the point of view of a dog who liked getting around and seeing the sights. They headed for the horizon and passed out of view; the hound gambolling, he not gambolling but swishing his stick a good deal in an overwrought sort of manner, and I, feeling that this was a thing that ought to be done, selected one of Ma Cream's books from Aunt Dahlia's shelves and took it out to read in a deck chair on the lawn. And I should no doubt have enjoyed it enormously, for the Cream unquestionably wielded a gifted pen, had not the warmth of the day caused me to drop off into a gentle sleep in the middle of Chapter Two.
Waking from this some little time later and running an eye over myself to see if the ravelled sleave of care had been knitted up – which it hadn't – I was told that I was wanted on the telephone. I hastened to the instrument, and Aunt Dahlia's voice came thundering over the wire.
'Bertie?'
'Bertram it is.'
'Why the devil have you been such a time? I've been hanging on to this damned receiver a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.'
'Sorry. I came on winged feet, but I was out on the lawn when you broke loose.'
'Sleeping off your lunch, I suppose?'
'My eyes may have closed for a moment.'
'Always eating, that's you.'
'It is customary, I believe, to take a little nourishment at about this hour,' I said rather stiffly. 'How's Bonzo?'
'Getting along.'
'What was it?'
'German measles, but he's out of danger. Well, what's all the excitement about? Why did you want me to phone you? Just so that you could hear Auntie's voice?'
'I am always glad to hear Auntie's voice, but I had a deeper and graver reason. I thought you ought to know about all these lurking perils in the home.'
'What lurking perils?'
'Ma Cream for one. She's hotting up. She entertains suspicions.'
'What of ?'
'Pop Glossop. She doesn't like his face.'
'Well, hers is nothing to write home about.'
'She thinks he isn't a real butler.'
From the fact that my ear-drum nearly split in half I deduced that she had laughed a jovial laugh.
'Let her think.'
'You aren't perturbed?'
'Not a bit. She can't do anything about it. Anyway, Glossop ought to be leaving in about a week. He told me he didn't think it would take longer than that to make up his mind about Wilbert. Adela Cream doesn't worry me.'
'Well, if you say so, but I should have thought she was a menace.'
'She doesn't seem so to me. Anything else on your mind?'
'Yes, this Wilbert-Cream-Phyllis-Mills thing.'
'Ah, now you're talking. That's important. Did young Bobbie Wickham tell you that you'd got to stick to Wilbert closer than –'
'A brother?'
'I was going to say porous plaster, but have it your own way. She explained the position of affairs?'
'She did, and it's precisely that that I want to thresh out with you.'
'Do what out?'
'Thresh.'
'All right, start threshing.'
Having given the situation the best of the Wooster brain for some considerable time, I had the res all clear in my mind. I proceeded to decant it.
'As we go through this life, my dear old ancestor,' I said, 'we should always strive to see the other fellow's side of a thing, the other fellow in the case under advisement being Wilbert Cream. Has it occurred to you to put yourself in Wilbert Cream's place and ask yourself how he's going to feel, being followed around all the time? It isn't as if he was Mary.'
'What did you say?'
'I said it wasn't as if he was Mary. Mary, as I remember, enjoyed the experience of being tailed up.'
'Bertie, you're tight.'
'Nothing of the kind.'
'Say «British constitution."'
I di
d so.
'And now «She sells sea shells by the sea shore."'
I reeled it off in a bell-like voice.
'Well, you seem all right,' she said grudgingly. 'How do you mean he isn't Mary? Mary who?'
'I don't think she had a surname, had she? I was alluding to the child who had a little lamb with fleece as white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go. Now I'm not saying that I have fleece as white as snow, but I am going everywhere that Wilbert Cream goes, and one speculates with some interest as to what the upshot will be. He resents my constant presence.'
'Has he said so?'
'Not yet. But he gives me nasty looks.'
'That's all right. He can't intimidate me.'
I saw that she was missing the gist.
'Yes, but don't you see the peril that looms?'
'I thought you said it lurked.'
'And looms. What I'm driving at is that if I persist in this porous plastering, a time must inevitably come when, feeling that actions speak louder than words, he will haul off and bop me one. In which event, I shall have no alternative but to haul off and bop him one. The Woosters have their pride. And when I bop them, they stay bopped till nightfall.'
She bayed like a foghorn, showing that she was deeply stirred.
'You'll do nothing of the sort, unless you want to have an aunt's curse delivered on your doorstep by special messenger. Don't you dare to start mixing it with that man, or I'll tattoo my initials on your chest with a meat axe. Turn the other cheek, you poor fish. If my nephew socked her son, Adela Cream would never forgive me. She would go running to her husband –'
' – and Uncle Tom's deal would be dished. That's the very point I'm trying to make. If Wilbert Cream is bust by anyone, it must be by somebody having no connection with the Travers family. You must at once engage a substitute for Bertram.'
'Are you suggesting that I hire a private detective?'
'"Eye» is the more usual term. No, not that, but you must invite Kipper Herring down here. Kipper is the man you want. He will spring to the task of dogging Wilbert's footsteps, and if Wilbert bops him and he bops Wilbert, it won't matter, he being outside talent. Not that I anticipate that Wilbert will dream of doing so, for Kipper's mere appearance commands respect. The muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands, and he has a cauliflower ear.'
There was a silence of some moments, and it was not difficult to divine that she was passing my words under review, this way and that dividing the swift mind, as I have heard Jeeves put it. When she spoke, it was in quite an awed voice.
'Do you know, Bertie, there are times – rare, yes, but they do happen – when your intelligence is almost human. You've hit it. I never thought of young Herring. Do you think he could come?'
'He was saying to me only the day before yesterday that his dearest wish was to cadge an invitation. Anatole's cooking is green in his memory.'
'Then send him a wire. You can telephone it to the post office. Sign it with my name.'
'Right-ho.'
'Tell him to drop everything and come running.'
She rang off, and I was about to draft the communication, when, as so often happens to one on relaxing from a great strain, I became conscious of an imperious desire for a little something quick. Oh, for a beaker full of the warm south, as Jeeves would have said. I pressed the bell, accordingly, and sank into a chair, and presently the door opened and a circular object with a bald head and bushy eyebrows manifested itself, giving me quite a start. I had forgotten that ringing bells at Brinkley Court under prevailing conditions must inevitably produce Sir Roderick Glossop.
It's always a bit difficult to open the conversation with a blend of brain specialist and butler, especially if your relations with him in the past have not been too chummy, and I found myself rather at a loss to know how to set the ball rolling. I yearned for that drink as the hart desireth the water-brook, but if you ask a butler to bring you a whisky-and-soda and he happens to be a brain specialist, too, he's quite apt to draw himself up and wither you with a glance. All depends on which side of him is uppermost at the moment. It was a relief when I saw that he was smiling a kindly smile and evidently welcoming this opportunity of having a quiet chat with Bertram. So long as we kept off the subject of hot-water bottles, it looked as if all would be well.
'Good afternoon, Mr Wooster. I had been hoping for a word with you in private. But perhaps Miss Wickham has already explained the circumstances? She has? Then that clears the air, and there is no danger of you incautiously revealing my identity. She impressed it upon you that Mrs Cream must have no inkling of why I am here?'
'Oh, rather. Secrecy and silence, what? If she knew you were observing her son with a view to finding out if he was foggy between the ears, there would be umbrage on her part, or even dudgeon.'
'Exactly.'
'And how's it coming along?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'The observing. Have you spotted any dippiness in the subject?'
'If by that expression you mean have I formed any definite views on Wilbert Cream's sanity, the answer is no. It is most unusual for me not to be able to make up my mind after even a single talk with the person I am observing, but in young Cream's case I remain uncertain. On the one hand, we have his record.'
'The stink bombs?'
'Exactly.'
'And the cheque-cashing with levelled gat?'
'Precisely. And a number of other things which one would say pointed to a mental unbalance. Unquestionably Wilbert Cream is eccentric.'
'But you feel the time has not yet come to measure him for the strait waistcoat?'
'I would certainly wish to observe further.'
'Jeeves told me there was something about Wilbert Cream that someone had told him when we were in New York. That might be significant.'
'Quite possibly. What was it?'
'He couldn't remember.'
'Too bad. Well, to return to what I was saying, the young man's record appears to indicate some deep-seated neurosis, if not actual schizophrenia, but against this must be set the fact that he gives no sign of this in his conversation. I was having quite a long talk with him yesterday morning, and found him most intelligent. He is interested in old silver, and spoke with a great deal of enthusiasm of an eighteenth-century cow-creamer in your uncle's collection.'
'He didn't say he was an eighteenth-century cow-creamer?'
'Certainly not.'
'Probably just wearing the mask.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I mean crouching for the spring, as it were. Lulling you into security. Bound to break out sooner or later in some direction or other. Very cunning, these fellows with deep-seated neuroses.'
He shook his head reprovingly.
'We must not judge hastily, Mr Wooster. We must keep an open mind. Nothing is ever gained by not pausing to weigh the evidence. You may remember that at one time I reached a hasty judgment regarding your sanity. Those twenty-three cats in your bedroom.'
I flushed hotly. The incident had taken place several years previously, and it would have been in better taste, I considered, to have let the dead past bury its dead.
'That was explained fully.'
'Exactly. I was shown to be in error. And that is why I say I must not form an opinion prematurely in the case of Wilbert Cream. I must wait for further evidence.'
'And weigh it?'
'And, as you say, weigh it. But you rang, Mr Wooster. Is there anything I can do for you?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, I wanted a whisky-and-soda, but I hate to trouble you.'
'My dear Mr Wooster, you forget that I am, if only temporarily, a butler and, I hope, a conscientious one. I will bring it immediately.'
I was wondering, as he melted away, if I ought to tell him that Mrs Cream, too, was doing a bit of evidence-weighing, and about him, but decided on the whole better not. No sense in disturbing his peace of mind. It seemed to me that having to answer to the name of Swordfish was en
ough for him to have to cope with for the time being. Given too much to think about, he would fret and get pale.
When he returned, he brought with him not only the beaker full of the warm south, on which I flung myself gratefully, but a letter which he said had just come for me by the afternoon post. Having slaked the thirst, I glanced at the envelope and saw that it was from Jeeves. I opened it without much of a thrill, expecting that he would merely be informing me that he had reached his destination safely and expressing a hope that this would find me in the pink as it left him at present. In short, the usual guff.
It wasn't the usual guff by a mile and a quarter. One glance at its contents and I was Gosh-ing sharply, causing Pop Glossop to regard me with a concerned eye.
'No bad news, I trust, Mr Wooster?'
'It depends what you call bad news. It's front-page stuff, all right. This is from Jeeves, my man, now shrimping at Herne Bay, and it casts a blinding light on the private life of Wilbert Cream.'
'Indeed? This is most interesting.'
'I must begin by saying that when Jeeves was leaving for his annual vacation, the subject of W. Cream came up in the home, Aunt Dahlia having told me he was one of the inmates here, and we discussed him at some length. I said this, if you see what I mean, and Jeeves said that, if you follow me. Well, just before Jeeves pushed off, he let fall that significant remark I mentioned just now, the one about having heard something about Wilbert and having forgotten it. If it came back to him, he said, he would communicate with me. And he has, by Jove! Do you know what he says in this missive? Give you three guesses.'
'Surely this is hardly the time for guessing games?'
'Perhaps you're right, though they're great fun, don't you think? Well, he says that Wilbert Cream is a … what's the word?' I referred to the letter. 'A kleptomaniac,' I said. 'Which means, if the term is not familiar to you, a chap who flits hither and thither pinching everything he can lay his hands on.'
'Good gracious!'
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