And then, quite suddenly, out of the night that covered me, black as a pit from pole to pole, there shone a gleam of light. It spread, illuminating the entire horizon, and I realized that, taken by and large, I was sitting pretty.
You see, what I had failed till now to spot was the fact that Stilton hadn’t a notion that I was at Brinkley. Thinking me to be in the metropolis, it was there that he would be spreading his drag-net. He would call at the flat, ring bells, get no answer and withdraw, baffled. He would haunt the Drones, expecting me to drop in, and eventually, when I didn’t so drop, would slink away, baffled again. ‘He cometh not’, he would say, no doubt grinding his teeth, and a fat lot of good that would do him.
And of course, after what had occurred, there was no chance of him visiting Brinkley. A man who has broken off his engagement doesn’t go to the country house where he knows the girl to be. Well, I mean, I ask you. Naturally he doesn’t. If there was one spot on earth which could be counted on as of even date to be wholly free from Cheesewrights, it was Brinkley Court, Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Worcestershire.
Profoundly relieved, I picked up the feet and hastened to my room with a song on my lips. Jeeves was there, not actually holding a stop-watch but obviously shaking his head a bit over the young master’s tardiness. His left eyebrow quivered perceptibly as I entered.
‘Yes, I know I’m late, Jeeves,’ I said, starting to shed the upholstery. ‘I went for a stroll.’
He accepted the explanation indulgently.
‘I quite understand, sir. It had occurred to me that, the evening being so fine, you were probably enjoying a saunter in the grounds. I told Mr. Cheesewright that this was no doubt the reason for your absence.’
11
* * *
HALF IN AND half out of the shirt, I froze like one of those fellows in the old fairy stories who used to talk out of turn to magicians and have spells cast upon them. My ears were sticking up like a wirehaired terrier’s, and I could scarcely believe that they had heard aright.
‘Mr. Chuch?’ I quavered. ‘What’s that, Jeeves?’
‘Sir?’
‘I don’t understand you. Are you saying … are you telling me … are you actually asserting that Stilton Cheesewright is on the premises?’
‘Yes, sir. He arrived not long ago in his car. I found him waiting here. He expressed a desire to see you and appeared chagrined at your continued absence. Eventually, the dinner-hour becoming imminent, he took his departure. He is hoping, I gathered from his remarks, to establish contact with you at the conclusion of the meal.’
I slid dumbly into the shirt and started to tie the tie. I was quivering, partly with apprehension, but even more with justifiable indignation. To say that I felt that this was a bit thick would not be straining the facts unduly. I mean, I know D’Arcy Cheesewright to be of coarse fibre, the sort of bozo who, as Percy had said, would look at a sunset and see in it only a resemblance to a slice of under-done roast beef, but surely one is entitled to expect even bozos of coarse fibre to have a certain amount of delicacy and decent feeling and what not. This breaking off his engagement to Florence with one hand and coming thrusting his society on her with the other struck me, as it would have struck any fine-minded man, as about as near the outside rim as it was possible to go.
‘It’s monstrous, Jeeves!’ I cried. ‘Has this pumpkin-headed oaf no sense of what is fitting? Has he no tact, no discretion? Are you aware that this very evening, through the medium of a telegram which I have every reason to believe was a stinker, he severed his relations with Lady Florence?’
‘No, sir, I had not been apprised. Mr. Cheesewright did not confide in me.’
‘He must have stopped off en route to compose the communication, for it arrived not so very long before he did. Fancy doing the thing by telegram, thus giving some post-office clerk the laugh of a lifetime. And then actually having the crust to come barging in here! That, Jeeves, is serving it up with cream sauce. I don’t want to be harsh, but there is only one word for D’Arcy Cheesewright – the word “uncouth”. What are you goggling at?’ I asked, noticing that his gaze was fixed upon me in a meaning manner.
He spoke with quiet severity.
‘Your tie, sir. It will not, I fear, pass muster.’
‘Is this a time to talk of ties?’
‘Yes, sir. One aims at the perfect butterfly shape, and this you have not achieved. With your permission, I will adjust it.’
He did so, and I must say made a very fine job of it, but I continued to chafe.
‘Do you realize, Jeeves, that my life is in peril?’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘I assure you. That hunk of boloney … I allude to G. D’Arcy Cheesewright … has formally stated his intention of breaking my spine in five places.’
‘Indeed, sir? Why is that?’
I gave him the facts, and he expressed the opinion that the position of affairs was disturbing.
I shot one of my looks at him.
‘You would go so far as that, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir. Most disturbing.’
‘Ho!’ I said, borrowing a bit of Stilton’s stuff, and was about to tell him that if he couldn’t think of a better word than that to describe what was probably the ghastliest imbroglio that had ever broken loose in the history of the human race, I would be glad to provide him with a Roget’s Thesaurus at my personal expense, when the gong went and I had to leg it for the trough.
I do not look back to that first dinner at Brinkley Court as among the pleasantest functions which I have attended. Ironically, considering the circumstances, Anatole, that wizard of the pots and pans, had come through with one of his supremest efforts. He had provided the company with, if memory serves me correctly,
Le Caviar Frais
Le Consommé aux Pommes d’Amour
Les Sylphides à la crème d’Écrevisses
Les Fried Smelts
Le Bird of some kind with chipped potatoes
Le Ice Cream
and, of course, les fruits and le café, but for all its effect on the Wooster soul it might have been corned beef hash. I don’t say I pushed it away untasted, as Aunt Dahlia had described Percy doing with his daily ration, but the successive courses turned to ashes in my mouth. The sight of Stilton across the table blunted appetite.
I suppose it was just imagination, but he seemed to have grown quite a good deal both upwards and sideways since I had last seen him, and the play of expression on his salmon-coloured face showed only too clearly the thoughts that were occupying his mind, if you could call it that. He gave me from eight to ten dirty looks in the course of the meal, but except for a remark at the outset to the effect that he was hoping to have a word with me later, did not address me.
Nor, for the matter of that, did he address anyone. His demeanour throughout was that of a homicidal deaf mute. The Trotter female, who sat on his right, endeavoured to entertain him with a saga about Mrs. Alderman Blenkinsop’s questionable behaviour at a recent church bazaar, but he confined his response to gaping at her like some dull, half-witted animal, as Percy would have said, and digging silently into the foodstuffs.
Sitting next to Florence, who spoke little, merely looking cold and proud and making bread pills, I had ample leisure for thought during the festivities, and by the time the coffee came round I had formed my plans and perfected my strategy. When eventually Aunt Dahlia blew the whistle for the gentler sex to buzz off and leave the men to their port, I took advantage of their departure to execute a quiet sneak through the french windows into the garden, being well in the open before the first of the procession had crossed the threshold. Whether or not this clever move brought a hoarse cry to Stilton’s lips, I cannot say for certain, but I fancied I heard something that sounded like the howl of a timber wolf that has stubbed its toe on a passing rock. Not bothering to go back and ask if he had spoken, I made my way into the spacious grounds.
Had circumstances been different from what they were – no
t, of course, that they ever are – I might have derived no little enjoyment from this after-dinner saunter, for the air was full of murmurous scents and a brave breeze sang like a bugle from a sky liberally studded with stars. But to appreciate a starlit garden one has to have a fairly tranquil mind, and mine was about as far from being tranquil as it could jolly well stick.
What to do? I was asking myself. It seemed to me that the prudent course, if I wished to preserve a valued spine intact, would be to climb aboard the two-seater first thing in the morning and ho for the open spaces. To remain in statu quo would, it was clear, involve a distasteful nippiness on my part, for only by the most unremitting activity could I hope to elude Stilton and foil his sinister aims. I would be compelled, I saw, to spend a substantial portion of my time flying like a youthful hart or roe over the hills where spices grow, as I remembered having heard Jeeves once put it, and the Woosters resent having to sink to the level of harts and roes, whether juvenile or getting on in years. We have our pride.
I had just reached the decision that on the morrow I would melt away like snow on the mountain-tops and go to America or Australia or the Fiji Islands or somewhere for awhile, when the murmurous summer scents were augmented by the aroma of a powerful cigar and I observed a dim figure approaching. After a tense moment when I supposed it to be Stilton and braced myself for a spot of that youthful-hart-or-roe stuff, I got it placed. It was only Uncle Tom, taking his nightly prowl.
Uncle Tom is a great lad for prowling in the garden. A man with greyish hair and a face like a walnut – not that that has anything to do with it, of course – I just mention it in passing – he likes to be among the shrubs and flowers early and late, particularly late, for he suffers a bit from insomnia and the tribal medicine man told him that a breath of fresh air before hitting the hay would bring relief.
Seeing me, he paused for station identification.
‘Is that you, Bertie, me boy?’
I conceded this, and he hove alongside, puffing smoke.
‘Why did you leave us?’ he asked, alluding to that quick duck of mine from the dining-room.
‘Oh, I thought I would.’
‘Well, you didn’t miss much. What a set! That man Trotter makes me sick.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘His stepson Percy makes me sick.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘And that fellow Cheesewright makes me sick. They all make me sick,’ said Uncle Tom. He is not one of your jolly-innkeeper-with-entrance-number-in-act-one hosts. He looks with ill-concealed aversion on at least ninety-four per cent of the guests within his gates and spends most of his time dodging them. ‘Who invited Cheesewright here? Dahlia, I suppose, though why we shall never know. A deleterious young slab of damnation, if ever I saw one. But she will do these things. I’ve even known her to invite her sister Agatha. Talking of Dahlia, Bertie, me boy, I’m worried about her.’
‘Worried?’
‘Exceedingly worried. I believe she’s sickening for something. Has her manner struck you as strange since you got here?’
I mused.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She seemed to be about the same as usual. How do you mean, strange?’
He waved a concerned cigar. He and the old relative are a fond and united couple.
‘It was just now, when I looked in on her in her room to ask if she would care to come for a stroll. She said No, she didn’t think she would, because if she went out at night she always swallowed moths and midges and things and she didn’t believe it was good for her on top of a heavy dinner. And we were talking idly of this and that, when she suddenly seemed to come over all faint.’
‘Swooned, do you mean?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say she actually swooned. She continued perpendicular. But she tottered, pressing her hand to the top of her head. Pale as a ghost she looked.’
‘Odd.’
‘Very. It worried me. I’m not at all easy in my mind about her.’
I pondered.
‘It couldn’t have been something you said that upset her?’
‘Impossible. I was talking about this fellow Sidcup who’s coming tomorrow to look at my silver collection. You’ve never met him, have you?’
‘No.’
‘Rather a fatheaded ass,’ said Uncle Tom, who thinks most of his circle fatheaded asses, ‘but apparently knows quite a bit about old silver and jewellery and all that sort of thing, and anyway he’ll only be here for dinner, thank God,’ he added in his hospitable way. ‘But I was telling you about your aunt. As I was saying, she tottered and looked as pale as a ghost. The fact of the matter is, she’s been overdoing it. This paper of hers, this Madame’s Nightshirt or whatever it’s called. It’s wearing her to a shadow. Silly nonsense. What does she want with a weekly paper? I’ll be thankful if she sells it to this man Trotter and gets rid of the damned thing, because apart from wearing her to a shadow it’s costing me a fortune. Money, money, money, there’s no end to it.’
He then spoke with considerable fervour for awhile of income-tax and surtax, and after making a tentative appointment to meet me in the breadline at an early date popped off and was lost in the night. And I, feeling that the hour being now advanced, it might be safe to retire to my room, made my way thither.
As I started to get into something loose, I continued to brood on what he had told me about Aunt Dahlia. I found myself mystified. At dinner I had, of course, been distrait and preoccupied, but even so I would, I thought, have noticed if she had shown any signs of being in the grip of a wasting sickness or anything of that kind. As far as I could recollect, she had appeared to be tucking into the various items on the menu with her customary zip and brio. Yet Uncle Tom had spoken of her as looking as pale as a ghost, a thing which took some doing with a face as red as hers.
Odd, not to say mysterious.
I was still musing on this and wondering what Osborne Cross, the sleuth in The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish, would have made of it, when I was jerked out of my meditations by the turning of the door handle. This was followed by a forceful bang on the panel, and I realized how prudent I had been in locking up before settling in for the night. For the voice that now spoke was that of Stilton Cheesewright.
‘Wooster!’
I rose, laying down my Crayfish, into which I had been about to dip, and put my lips to the keyhole.
‘Wooster!’
‘All right, my good fellow,’ I said coldly. ‘I heard you the first time. What do you want?’
‘A word with you.’
‘Well, you jolly well aren’t going to have it. Leave me, Cheesewright. I would be alone. I have a slight headache.’
‘It won’t be slight, if I get at you.’
‘Ah, but you can’t get at me,’ I riposted cleverly, and returning to my chair resumed my literary studies, pleasantly conscious of having worsted him in debate. He called me a few derogatory names through the woodwork, banged and handle-rattled a bit more, and finally shoved off, no doubt muttering horrid imprecations.
It was about five minutes later that there was another knock on the door, this time so soft and discreet that I had no difficulty in identifying it.
‘Is that you, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Just a moment.’
As I crossed the room to admit him, I was surprised to find that the lower limbs were feeling a bit filleted. That verbal duel with my recent guest had shaken me more than I had suspected.
‘I have just had a visit from Stilton Cheesewright, Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Indeed, sir? I trust the outcome was satisfactory.’
‘Yes, I rather nonplussed the simple soul. He had imagined that he could penetrate into my sanctum without let or hindrance, and was struck all of a heap when he found the door locked. But the episode has left me a little weak, and I would be glad if you could dig me out a whisky-and-soda.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
‘It wants to be prepared in just the right way. Who was t
hat pal of yours you were speaking about the other day whose strength was as the strength of ten?’
‘A gentleman of the name of Galahad, sir. You err, however, in supposing him to have been a personal friend. He was the subject of a poem by the late Alfred, Lord Tennyson.’
‘Immaterial, Jeeves. All I was going to say was that I would like the strength of this whisky-and-soda to be as that of ten. Don’t flinch when pouring.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He departed on his errand of mercy, and I buckled down to the Crayfish once more. But scarcely had I started to collect clues and interview suspects when I was interrupted again. A clenched fist had sloshed against the portal with a disturbing booming sound. Assuming that my visitor was Stilton, I was about to rise and rebuke him through the keyhole as before, when there penetrated from the outer spaces an ejaculation so fruity and full of vigour that it could have proceeded only from the lips of one who had learned her stuff among the hounds and foxes.
‘Aunt Dahlia?’
‘Open this door!’
I did so, and she came charging in.
‘Where’s Jeeves?’ she asked, so plainly all of a-twitter that I eyed her in considerable alarm. After what Uncle Tom had been saying about her tottering I didn’t like this febrile agitation.
‘Is something the matter?’ I asked.
‘You bet something’s the matter. Bertie,’ said the old relative, sinking on to the chaise-longue and looking as if at any moment she might start blowing bubbles, ‘I’m up against it, and only Jeeves can save my name in the home from becoming mud. Produce the blighter, and let him exercise that brain of his as never before.’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 Page 9
