“Oh, there you are!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rather a sad affair, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lucky I happened to have all that money handy.”
“Well—er—yes, sir.”
“You speak as though you didn’t think much of it.”
“It is not my place to criticize your actions, sir, but I will venture to say that I think you behaved a little rashly.”
“What, lending that money?”
“Yes, sir. These fashionable French watering–places are notoriously infested by dishonest characters.”
This was a bit too thick.
“Now, look here, Jeeves,” I said, “I can stand a lot, but when it comes to your casting asp-whatever-the-word-is on the sweetest girl in the world and a bird in Holy Orders——”
“Perhaps I am over-suspicious, sir. But I have seen a great deal of these resorts. When I was in the employment of Lord Frederick Ranelagh, shortly before I entered your service, his lordship was very neatly swindled by a criminal known, I believe, by the sobriquet of Soapy Sid, who scraped acquaintance with us in Monte Carlo with the assistance of a female accomplice. I have never forgotten the circumstance.”
“I don’t want to butt in on your reminiscences, Jeeves,” I said, coldly, “but you’re talking through your hat. How can there have been anything fishy about this business? They’ve left me the pearls, haven’t they? Very well, then, think before you speak. You had better be tooling down to the desk now and having these things shoved in the hotel safe.” I picked up the case and opened it. “Oh, Great Scot!”
The bally thing was empty!
“Oh, my Lord!” I said, staring, “don’t tell me there’s been dirty work at the crossroads after all!”
“Precisely, sir. It was in exactly the same manner that Lord Frederick was swindled on the occasion to which I have alluded. While his female accomplice was gratefully embracing his lordship, Soapy Sid substituted a duplicate case for the one containing the pearls, and went off with the jewels, the money, and the receipt. On the strength of the receipt he subsequently demanded from his lordship the return of the pearls, and his lordship, not being able to produce them, was obliged to pay a heavy sum in compensation. It is a simple but effective ruse.”
I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of things with a jerk. I mean to say, Aline Hemmingway, you know. What I mean is, if Love hadn’t actually awakened in my heart, there’s no doubt it was having a jolly good stab at it, and the thing was only a question of days. And all the time—well, I mean, dash it, you know.
“Soapy Sid? Sid! Sidney! Brother Sidney! Why, by Jove, Jeeves, do you think that parson was Soapy Sid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But it seems so extraordinary. Why, his collar buttoned at the back—I mean, he would have deceived a bishop. Do you really think he was Soapy Sid?”
“Yes, sir. I recognized him directly he came into the room.”
I stared at the blighter.
“You recognized him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, dash it all,” I said, deeply moved, “I think you might have told me.”
“I thought it would save disturbance and unpleasantness if I merely abstracted the case from the man’s pocket as I assisted him with his coat, sir. Here it is.”
He laid another case on the table beside the dud one, and, by Jove, you couldn’t tell them apart. I opened it, and there were the good old pearls, as merry and bright as dammit, smiling up at me. I gazed feebly at the man. I was feeling a bit overwrought.
“Jeeves,” I said, “you’re an absolute genius!”
“Yes, sir.”
Relief was surging over me in great chunks by now. I’d almost forgotten that a woman had toyed with my heart and thrown it away like a worn-out tube of tooth-paste and all that sort of thing. What seemed to me the important item was the fact that, thanks to Jeeves, I was not going to be called on to cough up several thousand quid.
“It looks to me as though you had saved the old home. I mean, even a chappie endowed with the immortal rind of dear old Sid is hardly likely to have the nerve to come back and retrieve these little chaps.”
“I should imagine not, sir.”
“Well, then——Oh, I say, you don’t think they are just paste or anything like that?”
“No, sir. These are genuine pearls, and extremely valuable.”
“Well, then, dash it, I’m on velvet. Absolutely reclining on the good old plush! I may be down a hundred quid, but I’m up a jolly good string of pearls. Am I right or wrong?”
“Hardly that, sir. I think that you will have to restore the pearls.”
“What! To Sid? Not while I have my physique!”
“No, sir. To their rightful owner.”
“But who is their rightful owner?”
“Mrs. Gregson, sir.”
“What! How do you know?”
“It was all over the hotel an hour ago that Mrs. Gregson’s pearls had been abstracted. The man Sid travelled from Paris in the same train as Mrs. Gregson, and no doubt marked them down. I was speaking to Mrs. Gregson’s maid shortly before you came in, and she informed me that the manager of the hotel is now in Mrs. Gregson’s suite.”
“And having a devil of a time, what?”
“So I should be disposed to imagine, sir.”
The situation was beginning to unfold before me.
“I’ll go and give them back to her, eh? It’ll put me one up, what?”
“If I might make the suggestion, sir, I think it would strengthen your position if you were to affect to discover the pearls in Mrs. Gregson’s suite—say, in a bureau drawer.”
“I don’t see why.”
“I think I am right, sir.”
“Well, I stand on you. If you say so— I’ll be popping, what?”
“The sooner the better, sir.”
Long before I reached Aunt Agatha’s lair I could tell that the hunt was up.
Divers chappies in hotel uniform and not a few chambermaids of sorts were hanging about in the corridor, and through the panels I could hear a mixed assortment of voices, with Aunt Agatha’s topping the lot. I knocked, but no one took any notice, so I trickled in. Among those present I noticed a chambermaid in hysterics, Aunt Agatha with her hair bristling, and a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, as no doubt he was, being the proprietor of the hotel.
“Oh, hallo,” I said. “I got your note. Aunt Agatha.”
She waved me away. No welcoming smile for Bertram.
“Oh, don’t bother me now,” she snapped, looking at me as if I were more or less the last straw.
“Something up?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I’ve lost my pearls.”
“Pearls? Pearls? Pearls?” I said. “No, really? Dashed annoying. Where did you see them last?”
“What does it matter where I saw them last? They have been stolen.”
Here Wilfred the Whisker-King, who seemed to have been taking a rest between rounds, stepped into the ring again and began to talk rapidly in French. Cut to the quick he seemed. The chambermaid whooped in the corner.
“Sure you’ve looked everywhere?” I asked.
“Of course I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, you know, I’ve often lost a collar-stud and——”
“Do try not to be so maddening, Bertie! I have enough to bear without your imbecilities. Oh, be quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted in the sort of voice used by sergeant-majors and those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee. And such was the magnetism of what Jeeves called her forceful personality that Wilfred subsided as though he had run into a wall. The chambermaid continued to go strong.
“I say,” I said, “I think there’s something the matter with this girl. Isn’t she crying or something?”
“She stole my pearls! I am convinced of it.”
This started the whisker-specialist off again, and I left them at it and wandered off on a tour round
the room. I slipped the pearls out of the case and decanted them into a drawer. By the time I’d done this and had leisure to observe the free-for-all once more, Aunt Agatha had reached the frozen grande-dame stage and was putting the last of the bandits through it in the voice she usually reserves for snubbing waiters in restaurants.
“I tell you, my good man, for the hundredth time, that I have searched thoroughly—everywhere. Why you should imagine that I have overlooked so elementary——”
“I say,” I said, “don’t want to interrupt you and all that sort of thing, but aren’t these the little chaps?”
I pulled them out of the drawer and held them up.
“These look like pearls, what?”
I don’t know when I’ve had a more juicy moment. It was one of those occasions about which I shall prattle to my grandchildren—if I ever have any, which at the moment of going to press seems more or less of a hundred-to-one shot. Aunt Agatha simply deflated before my eyes. It reminded me of when I once saw some chappies letting the gas out of a balloon.
“Where—where—where——?” she gurgled.
“In this drawer. They’d slid under some paper.”
“Oh!” said Aunt Agatha, and there was a bit of a silence.
I dug out my entire stock of manly courage, breathed a short prayer, and let her have it right in the thorax.
“I must say, Aunt Agatha, dash it,” I said, crisply, “I think you have been a little hasty, what? I mean to say, giving this poor man here so much anxiety and worry and generally biting him in the gizzard. You’ve been very, very unjust to this poor man!”
“Yes, yes,” chipped in the poor man.
“And this unfortunate girl, what about her? Where does she get off? You’ve accused her of pinching the things on absolutely no evidence. I think she would be jolly well advised to bring an action for—for whatever it is, and soak you for substantial damages.”
“Mais oui, mais oui, c’est trop fort!” shouted the Bandit Chief, backing me up like a good ’un. And the chambermaid looked up inquiringly, as if the sun was breaking through the clouds.
“I shall recompense her,” said Aunt Agatha, feebly.
“If you take my tip, you jolly well will, and that eftsoones or right speedily. She’s got a cast-iron case, and if I were her I wouldn’t take a cent under twenty quid. But what gives me the pip most is the way you’ve abused this poor man here and tried to give his hotel a bad name——”
“Yes, by dam’! It’s too bad!” cried the whiskered marvel. “You careless old woman! You give my hotel bad names, would you or wasn’t it? To-morrow you leave my hotel.”
And more to the same effect, all good, ripe stuff. And presently, having said his say, he withdrew, taking the chambermaid with him, the latter with a crisp tenner clutched in a vice-like grip. I suppose she and the bandit split it outside. A French hotel-manager wouldn’t be likely to let real money wander away from him without counting himself in on the division.
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down-express in the small of the back.
“There was something you wished to speak to me about?” I said.
“No, no. Go away, go away.”
“You said in your note——”
“Yes, yes, never mind. Please go away, Bertie. I wish to be alone.”
“Oh, right-ho!” I said. “Right-ho! right-ho!” And back to the good old suite.
“Ten o’clock, a clear night, and all’s well, Jeeves,” I said, breezing in.
“I am gratified to hear it, sir.”
“If twenty quid would be any use to you, Jeeves——?”
“I am much obliged, sir.”
There was a pause. And then—well, it was a wrench, but I did it. I unstripped the cummerbund and handed it over.
“Do you wish me to press this, sir?”
I gave the thing one last longing look. It had been very dear to me.
“No,” I said, “take it away; give it to the deserving poor. I shall never wear it again.”
“Thank you very much, sir,” said Jeeves.
Scoring off Jeeves
IT gave me a nasty jar, I can tell you. You see, what happened was this. Once a year Jeeves takes a couple of weeks” vacation and biffs off to the sea or somewhere to restore his tissues. Pretty rotten for me, of course, while he’s away. But it has to be stuck, so I stick it; and I must admit that he usually manages to get hold of a fairly decent fellow to look after me in his absence.
Well, the time had come round again, and Jeeves was in the kitchen giving the understudy a few tips about his duties. I happened to want a stamp or something, or a bit of string or something, and I toddled down the passage to ask him for it. The silly ass had left the kitchen door open; and I hadn’t gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum.
“You will find Mr. Wooster,” he was saying to the substitute chappie, “an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible—quite negligible.”
Well, I mean to say, what!
I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubt whether it’s humanly possible to tick Jeeves off. Personally, I didn’t even have a dash at it. I merely called for my hat and stick in a marked manner and legged it. But the memory rankled, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do—some things—appointments, and people’s birthdays, and letters to post, and all that—but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens.
I was still brooding when I dropped in at the oyster-bar at Buck’s for a quick bracer. I needed a bracer rather particularly at the moment, because I was on my way to lunch with my Aunt Agatha. A pretty frightful ordeal, believe me or believe me not. Practically the nearest thing to being disembowelled. I had just had one quick and another rather slower, and was feeling about as cheerio as was possible under the circs, when a muffled voice hailed me from the north-east, and, turning round, I saw young Bingo Little propped up in a corner, wrapping himself round a sizable chunk of bread and cheese.
“Hallo-allo-allo!” I said. “Haven’t seen you for ages. You’ve not been in here lately, have you?”
“No. I’ve been living out in the country.”
“Eh?” I said, for Bingo’s loathing for the country was well known. “Whereabouts?”
“Down in Hampshire, at a place called Ditteredge.”
“No, really? I know some people who’ve got a house there. The Glossops. Have you met them?”
“Why, that’s where I’m staying!” said young Bingo. “I’m tutoring the Glossop kid.”
“What for?” I said. I couldn’t seem to see young Bingo as a tutor. Though, of course, he did get a degree of sorts at Oxford, and I suppose you can always fool some of the people some of the time.
“What for? For money, of course! An absolute sitter came unstitched in the second race at Haydock Park,” said young Bingo, with some bitterness, “and I dropped my entire month’s allowance. I hadn’t the nerve to touch my uncle for any more, so it was a case of buzzing round to the agents and getting a job. I’ve been down there three weeks.”
“I haven’t met the Glossop kid.”
“Don’t!” advised Bingo, briefly.
“The only one of the family I really know is the girl.” I had hardly spoken these words when the most extraordinary change came over young Bingo’s face. His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed, and his Adam’s apple hopped about like one of those india-rubber balls on the top of the fountain in a shooting-gallery.
“Oh, Bertie!” he said, in a strangled sort of voice.
I looked at the poor fish anxiously. I knew that he was always falling in love with someone, but it didn’t seem possible that even he could have fallen in love with Honoria Glossop. To me the girl was simply nothing more nor less t
han a pot of poison. One of those dashed large, brainy, strenuous, dynamic girls you see so many of these days. She had been at Girton, where, in addition to enlarging her brain to the most frightful extent, she had gone in for every kind of sport and developed the physique of a middle-weight catch-as-catch-can wrestler. I’m not sure she didn’t box for the ’Varsity while she was up. The effect she had on me whenever she appeared was to make me want to slide into a cellar, and lie low till they blew the All-Clear.
Yet here was young Bingo obviously all for her. There was no mistaking it. The love-light was in the blighter’s eyes.
“I worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on!” continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. One or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the chappie behind the bar, was listening with his ears flapping. But there’s no reticence about Bingo. He always reminds me of the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice.
“Have you told her?”
“No. I haven’t had the nerve. But we walk together in the garden most evenings, and it sometimes seems to me that there is a look in her eyes.”
“I know that look. Like a sergeant-major.”
“Nothing of the kind! Like a tender goddess.”
“Half a second, old thing,” I said. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same girl? The one I mean is Honoria. Perhaps there’s a younger sister or something I’ve not heard of?”
“Her name is Honoria,” bawled Bingo, reverently.
“And she strikes you as a tender goddess?”
“She does.”
“God bless you!” I said.
“She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Another bit of bread and cheese,” he said to the lad behind the bar.
“You’re keeping your strength up,” I said.
“This is my lunch. I’ve got to meet Oswald at Waterloo at one-fifteen, to catch the train back. I brought him up to town to see the dentist.”
“Oswald? Is that the kid?”
“Yes. Pestilential to a degree.”
Expecting Jeeves Page 2
