I had not, I confess, looked forward with any great keenness to hobnobbing with Bobbie Wickham’s cousin Clementina, but I’m bound to admit that she might have been considerably worse. Small girls as a rule, I have noticed, are inclined, when confronted with me, to giggle a good deal. They snigger and they stare. I look up and find their eyes glued on me in an incredulous manner, as if they were reluctant to believe that I was really true. I suspect them of being in the process of memorizing any little peculiarities of deportment that I may possess, in order to reproduce them later for the entertainment of their fellow-inmates.
With the kid Clementina there was nothing of this description. She was a quiet, saintlike child of about thirteen – in fact, seeing that this was her birthday, exactly thirteen – and her gaze revealed only silent admiration. Her hands were spotless; she had not a cold in the head; and at dinner, during which her behaviour was unexceptionable, she proved a sympathetic listener, hanging on my lips, so to speak, when with the aid of a fork and two peas I explained to her how my opponent that afternoon had stymied me on the tenth.
She was equally above criticism at the movies, and at the conclusion of the proceedings thanked me for the treat with visible emotion. I was pleased with the child, and said as much to Bobbie while assisting her into her two-seater.
‘Yes, I told you she was a dear,’ said Bobbie, treading on the self-starter in preparation for the dash to London. ‘I always insist that they misjudge her at that school. They’re always misjudging people. They misjudged me when I was there.’
‘Misjudged her? How?’
‘Oh, in various ways. But, then, what can you expect of a dump like St Monica’s?’
I started.
‘St Monica’s?’
‘That’s the name of the place.’
‘You don’t mean the kid is at Miss Mapleton’s school?’
‘Why shouldn’t she be?’
‘But Miss Mapleton is my Aunt Agatha’s oldest friend.’
‘I know. It was your Aunt Agatha who got mother to send me there when I was a kid.’
‘I say,’ I said earnestly, ‘when you were there this afternoon you didn’t mention having met me down here?’
‘No.’
‘That’s all right.’ I was relieved. ‘You see, if Miss Mapleton knew I was in Bingley, she would expect me to call. I shall be leaving tomorrow morning, so all will be well. But, dash it,’ I said, spotting the snag, ‘how about tonight?’
‘What about tonight?’
‘Well, shan’t I have to see her? I can’t just ring the front-door bell, sling the kid in, and leg it. I should never hear the last of it from Aunt Agatha.’
Bobbie looked at me in an odd, meditative sort of way.
‘As a matter of fact, Bertie,’ she said, ‘I had been meaning to touch on that point. I think, if I were you, I wouldn’t ring the front-door bell.’
‘Eh? Why not?’
‘Well, it’s like this, you see. Clementina is supposed to be in bed. They sent her there just as I was leaving this afternoon. Think of it! On her birthday – right plumb spang in the middle of her birthday – and all for putting sherbet in the ink to make it fizz!’
I reeled.
‘You aren’t telling me that this foul kid came out without leave?’
‘Yes, I am. That’s exactly it. She got up and sneaked out when nobody was looking. She had set her heart on getting a square meal. I suppose I really ought to have told you right at the start, but I didn’t want to spoil your evening.’
As a general rule, in my dealings with the delicately-nurtured, I am the soul of knightly chivalry – suave, genial and polished. But I can on occasion say the bitter, cutting thing, and I said it now.
‘Oh?’ I said.
‘But it’s all right.’
‘Yes,’ I said, speaking, if I recollect, between my clenched teeth, ‘nothing could be sweeter, could it? The situation is one which it would be impossible to view with concern, what? I shall turn up with the kid, get looked at through steel-rimmed spectacles by the Mapleton, and after an agreeable five minutes shall back out, leaving the Mapleton to go to her escritoire and write a full account of the proceedings to my Aunt Agatha. And, contemplating what will happen after that, the imagination totters. I confidently expect my Aunt Agatha to beat all previous records.’
The girl clicked her tongue chidingly.
‘Don’t make such heavy weather, Bertie. You must learn not to fuss so.’
‘I must, must I?’
‘Everything’s going to be all right. I’m not saying it won’t be necessary to exercise a little strategy in getting Clem into the house, but it will be perfectly simple, if you’ll only listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. First, you will need a good long piece of string.’
‘String?’
‘String. Surely even you know what string is?’
I stiffened rather haughtily.
‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘You mean string.’
‘That’s right. String. You take this with you –’
‘And soften the Mapleton’s heart by doing tricks with it, I suppose?’
Bitter, I know. But I was deeply stirred.
‘You take this string with you,’ proceeded Bobbie patiently, ‘and when you get into the garden you go through it till you come to a conservatory near the house. Inside it you will find a lot of flower-pots. How are you on recognizing a flower-pot when you see one, Bertie?’
‘I am thoroughly familiar with flower-pots. If, as I suppose, you mean those sort of pot things they put flowers in.’
‘That’s exactly what I do mean. All right, then. Grab an armful of these flower-pots and go round the conservatory till you come to a tree. Climb this, tie a string to one of the pots, balance it on a handy branch which you will find overhangs the conservatory, and then, having stationed Clem near the front door, retire into the middle distance and jerk the string. The flower-pot will fall and smash the glass, someone in the house will hear the noise and come out to investigate, and while the door is open and nobody near, Clem will sneak in and go up to bed.’
‘But suppose no one comes out?’
‘Then you repeat the process with another pot.’
It seemed sound enough.
‘You’re sure it will work?’
‘It’s never failed yet. That’s the way I always used to get in after lock-up when I was at St Monica’s. Now, you’re sure you’ve got it clear, Bertie? Let’s have a quick run-through to make certain, and then I really must be off. String.’
‘String.’
‘Conservatory.’
‘Or greenhouse.’
‘Flower-pot.’
‘Flower-pot.’
‘Tree. Climb. Branch. Climb down. Jerk. Smash. And then off to beddy-bye. Got it?’
‘I’ve got it. But,’ I said sternly, ‘let me tell you just one thing –’
‘I haven’t time. I must rush. Write to me about it, using one side of the paper only. Goodbye.’
She rolled off, and after following her with burning eyes for a moment I returned to Jeeves, who was in the background showing the kid Clementina how to make a rabbit with a pocket handkerchief. I drew him aside. I was feeling a little better now, for I perceived that an admirable opportunity had presented itself for putting the man in his place and correcting his view that he is the only member of our establishment with brains and resource.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘You will doubtless be surprised to learn that something in the nature of a hitch has occurred.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
‘No?’
‘No, sir. In matters where Miss Wickham is involved, I am, if I may take the liberty of saying so, always on the alert for hitches. If you recollect sir, I have frequently observed that Miss Wickham, while a charming young lady, is apt –’
‘Yes, yes, Jeeves. I know.’
‘What would the precise nature of the trouble be this time, sir?’
I explained the ci
rcs.
‘The kid is AWOL. They sent her to bed for putting sherbet in the ink, and in bed they imagine her to have spent the evening. Instead of which, she was out with me, wolfing the eight-course table d’hôte dinner at seven and six, and then going on to the Marine Plaza to enjoy an entertainment on the silver screen. It is our task to get her back into the house without anyone knowing. I may mention, Jeeves, that the school in which this young excrescence is serving her sentence is the one run by my Aunt Agatha’s old friend, Miss Mapleton.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘A problem, Jeeves, what?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In fact, one might say a pretty problem?’
‘Undoubtedly, sir. If I might suggest –’
I was expecting this. I raised the hand.
‘I do not require any suggestions, Jeeves. I can handle this matter myself.’
‘I was merely about to propose –’
I raised the hand again.
‘Peace, Jeeves. I have the situation well under control. I have had one of my ideas. It may interest you to hear how my brain worked. It occurred to me, thinking the thing over, that a house like St Monica’s would be likely to have near it a conservatory containing flower-pots. Then, like a flash, the whole thing came to me. I propose to procure some string, to tie it to a flower-pot, to balance the pot on a branch – there will, no doubt, be a tree near the conservatory with a branch overhanging it – and to retire to a distance, holding the string. You will station yourself with the kid near the front door, taking care to keep carefully concealed. I shall then jerk the string, the pot will smash the glass, the noise will bring someone out, and while the front door is open you will shoot the kid in and leave the rest to her personal judgment. Your share in the proceedings, you will notice, is simplicity itself – mere routine-work – and should not tax you unduly. How about it?’
‘Well, sir –’
‘Jeeves, I have had occasion before to comment on this habit of yours of saying “Well, sir” whenever I suggest anything in the nature of a ruse or piece of strategy. I dislike it more every time you do it. But I shall be glad to hear what possible criticism you can find to make.’
‘I was merely about to express the opinion, sir, that the plan seems a trifle elaborate.’
‘In a place as tight as this you have got to be elaborate.’
‘Not necessarily, sir. The alternative scheme which I was about to propose –’
I shushed the man.
‘There will be no need for alternative schemes, Jeeves. We will carry on along the lines I have indicated. I will give you ten minutes’ start. That will enable you to take up your position near the front door and self to collect the string. At the conclusion of that period I will come along and do all the difficult part. So no more discussion. Snap into it, Jeeves.’
‘Very good, sir.’
I felt pretty bucked as I tooled up the hill to St Monica’s and equally bucked as I pushed open the front gate and stepped into the dark garden. But, just as I started to cross the lawn, there suddenly came upon me a rummy sensation as if all my bones had been removed and spaghetti substituted, and I paused.
I don’t know if you have even had the experience of starting off on a binge filled with a sort of glow of exhilaration, if that’s the word I want, and then, without a moment’s warning, having it disappear as if somebody had pressed a switch. That is what happened to me at this juncture, and a most unpleasant feeling it was – rather like when you take one of those express elevators in New York at the top of the building and discover, on reaching the twenty-seventh floor, that you have carelessly left all your insides up on the thirty-second, and too late now to stop and fetch them back.
The truth came to me like a bit of ice down the neck. I perceived that I had been a dashed sight too impulsive. Purely in order to score off Jeeves, I had gone and let myself in for what promised to be the mouldiest ordeal of a lifetime. And the nearer I got to the house, the more I wished that I had been a bit less haughty with the man when he had tried to outline that alternative scheme of his. An alternative scheme was just what I felt I could have done with, and the more alternative it was the better I would have liked it.
At this point I found myself at the conservatory door, and a few moments later I was inside, scooping up the pots.
Then ho, for the tree, bearing ’mid snow and ice the banner with the strange device ‘Excelsior!’
I will say for that tree that it might have been placed there for the purpose. My views on the broad, general principle of leaping from branch to branch in a garden belonging to Aunt Agatha’s closest friend remained unaltered; but I had to admit that, if it was to be done, this was undoubtedly the tree to do it on. It was a cedar of sorts; and almost before I knew where I was, I was sitting on top of the world with the conservatory roof gleaming below me. I balanced the flower-pot on my knee and began to tie the string round it.
And, as I tied, my thoughts turned in a moody sort of way to the subject of Woman.
I was suffering from a considerable strain of the old nerves at the moment, of course, and, looking back, it may be that I was too harsh; but the way I felt in that dark, roosting hour was that you can say what you like, but the more a thoughtful man has to do with women, the more extraordinary it seems to him that such a sex should be allowed to clutter up the earth.
Women, the way I looked at it, simply wouldn’t do. Take the females who were mixed up in this present business. Aunt Agatha, to start with, better known as the Pest of Pont Street, the human snapping-turtle. Aunt Agatha’s closest friend, Miss Mapleton, of whom I can only say that on the single occasion on which I had met her she had struck me as just the sort of person who would be Aunt Agatha’s closest friend. Bobbie Wickham, a girl who went about the place letting the pure in heart in for the sort of thing I was doing now. And Bobbie Wickham’s cousin Clementina, who, instead of sticking sedulously to her studies and learning to be a good wife and mother, spent the springtime of her life filling ink-pots with sherbet –
What a crew! What a crew!
I mean to say, what a crew!
I had just worked myself up into rather an impressive state of moral indignation, and was preparing to go even further, when a sudden bright light shone upon me from below and a voice spoke.
‘Ho!’ it said.
It was a policeman. Apart from the fact of his having a lantern, I knew it was a policeman because he had said ‘Ho!’ I don’t know if you recollect my telling you of the time I broke into Bingo Little’s house to pinch the dictaphone record of the mushy article his wife had written about him and sailed out of the study window right into the arms of the Force? On that occasion the guardian of the Law had said ‘Ho!’ and kept on saying it, so evidently policemen are taught this as part of their training. And after all, it’s not a bad way of opening conversation in the sort of circs in which they generally have to chat with people.
‘You come on down out of that,’ he said.
I came down. I had just got the flower-pot balanced on its branch, and I left it there, feeling rather as if I had touched off the time-fuse of a bomb. Much seemed to me to depend on its stability and poise, as it were. If it continued to balance, an easy nonchalance might still get me out of this delicate position. If it fell, I saw things being a bit hard to explain. In fact, even as it was, I couldn’t see my way to any explanation which would be really convincing.
However, I had a stab at it.
‘Ah, officer,’ I said.
It sounded weak. I said it again, this time with the emphasis on the ‘Ah!’ It sounded weaker than ever. I saw that Bertram would have to do better than this.
‘It’s all right, officer,’ I said.
‘All right, is it?’
‘Oh, yes. Oh, yes.’
‘What you doing up there?’
‘Me, officer?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Nothing, sergeant.’
‘Ho!’
; We eased into the silence, but it wasn’t one of those restful silences that occur in talks between old friends. Embarrassing. Awkward.
‘You’d better come along with me,’ said the gendarme.
The last time I had heard those words from a similar source had been in Leicester Square one Boat Race night when, on my advice, my old pal Oliver Randolph Sipperley had endeavoured to steal a policeman’s helmet at a moment when the policeman was inside it. On that occasion they had been addressed to young Sippy, and they hadn’t sounded any too good, even so. Addressed to me, they more or less froze the marrow.
‘No, I say, dash it!’ I said.
And it was at this crisis, when Bertram had frankly shot his bolt and could only have been described as nonplussed, that a soft step sounded beside us and a soft voice broke the silence.
‘Have you got them, officer? No, I see. It is Mr Wooster.’
The policeman switched the lantern round.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Mr Wooster’s personal gentleman’s gentleman.’
‘Whose?’
‘Mr Wooster’s.’
‘Is this man’s name Wooster?’
‘This gentleman’s name is Mr Wooster. I am in his employment as gentleman’s personal gentleman.
I think the cop was awed by the man’s majesty of demeanour, but he came back strongly.
‘Ho!’ he said. ‘Not in Miss Mapleton’s employment?’
‘Miss Mapleton does not employ a gentleman’s personal gentleman.’
‘Then what are you doing in her garden?’
‘I was in conference with Miss Mapleton inside the house, and she desired me to step out and ascertain whether Mr Wooster had been successful in apprehending the intruders.’
‘What intruders?’
‘The suspicious characters whom Mr Wooster and I had observed passing through the garden as we entered it.’
‘And what were you doing entering it?’
‘Mr Wooster had come to pay a call on Miss Mapleton, who is a close friend of his family. We noticed suspicious characters crossing the lawn. On perceiving these suspicious characters, Mr Wooster dispatched me to warn and reassure Miss Mapleton, he himself remaining to investigate.’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 Page 57
