It was a moment fraught with embarrassment. It's bad enough to be caught by your host prowling about his house after hours even when said host is a warm admirer and close personal friend, and I have, I think, made it clear that Pop Bassett was not one of my fans. He could barely stand the sight of me by daylight, and I suppose I looked even worse to him at one o'clock in the morning.
My feeling of having been slapped between the eyes with a custard pie was deepened by the spectacle of his dressing-gown. He was a small man . . . you got the impression, seeing him, that when they were making magistrates there wasn't enough material left over when they came to him . . . and for some reason not easy to explain it nearly always happens that the smaller the ex-magistrate, the louder the dressing-gown. His was a bright purple number with yellow frogs, and I am not deceiving my public when I say that it smote me like a blow, rendering me speechless.
Not that I'd have felt chatty even if he had been upholstered in something quiet in dark blue. I don't believe you can ever be completely at your ease in the company of someone before whom you've stood in the dock saying 'Yes, your worship' and 'No, your worship' and being told by him that you're extremely lucky to get off with a fine and not fourteen days without the option. This is particularly so if you have just smashed a grandfather clock whose welfare is no doubt very near his heart. At any rate, be that as it may, he was the one to open the conversation, not me.
'Good God!' he said, speaking with every evidence of horror. 'You!'
A thing I never know, and probably never will, is what to say when somebody says 'You!' to me. A mild 'Oh, hullo' was the best I could do on this occasion, and I felt at the time it wasn't good. Better, of course, than 'What ho, there, Bassett!' but nevertheless not good.
'Might I ask what you are doing here at this hour, Mr. Wooster?'
Well, I might have laughed a jolly laugh and replied 'Upsetting grandfather clocks', keeping it light, as it were, if you know what I mean, but something told me it wouldn't go so frightfully well. I had what amounted to an inspiration.
'I came down to get a book. I'd finished my Erie Stanley Gardner and I couldn't seem to drop off to sleep, so I came to see if I couldn't pick up something from your shelves. And in the dark I bumped into the clock.'
'Indeed?' he said, putting a wealth of sniffmess into the word. A thing about this undersized little son of a bachelor I ought to have mentioned earlier is that during his career on the bench he was one of those unpleasant sarcastic magistrates who get themselves so disliked by the criminal classes. You know the type. Their remarks are generally printed in the evening papers with the word 'laughter' after them in brackets, and they count the day lost when they don't make some unfortunate pickpocket or some wretched drunk and disorderly feel like a piece of cheese. I know that on the occasion when we stood face to face in Bosher Street police court he convulsed the audience with three solid jokes at my expense in the first two minutes, bathing me in confusion. 'Indeed?' he said. 'Might I inquire why you were conducting your literary researches in the dark? It would surely have been well within the scope of even your limited abilities to press a light switch.'
He had me there, of course. The best I could say was that I hadn't thought of it, and he sniffed a nasty sniff, as much as to suggest that I was just the sort of dead-from-the-neck-up dumb brick who wouldn't have thought of it. He then turned to the subject of the clock, one which I would willingly have left unventilated. He said he had always valued it highly, it being more or less the apple of his eye.
'My father bought it many years ago. He took it everywhere with him.'
Here again I might have lightened things by asking him if his parent wouldn't have found it simpler to have worn a wrist-watch, but I felt once more that he was not in the mood.
'My father was in the Diplomatic service, and was constantly transferred from one post to another. He was never parted from the clock. It accompanied him in perfect safety from Rome to Vienna, from Vienna to Paris, from Paris to Washington, from Washington to Lisbon. One would have said it was indestructible. But it had still to pass the supreme test of encountering Mr. Wooster, and that was too much for it. It did not occur to Mr. Wooster . . . one cannot think of everything . . . that light may be obtained by pressing a light switch, so he -'
Here he broke off, not so much because he had finished what he had to say as because at this point in the conversation I sprang on to the top of a large chest which stood some six or seven feet distant from the spot where we were chewing the fat. I may have touched the ground once while in transit, but not more than once and that once not willingly. A cat on hot bricks could not have moved with greater nippiness.
My motives in doing so were founded on a solid basis. Toward the later stages of his observations on the clock I had gradually become aware of a curious sound, as if someone in the vicinity was gargling mouthwash, and looking about me I found myself gazing into the eyes of the dog Bartholomew, which were fixed on me with the sinister intentness which is characteristic of this breed of animal. Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls.
Not that I noticed his eyes very much, my attention being riveted on his teeth. He had an excellent set and was baring them, and all I had ever heard of his tendency to bite first and ask questions afterwards passed through my mind in a flash. Hence the leap for life. The Woosters are courageous, but they do not take chances.
Pop Bassett was plainly nonplussed, and it was only when his gaze, too, fell upon Bartholomew that he abandoned what must have been his original theory, that Bertram had cracked under the strain and would do well to lose no time in seeing a good mental specialist. He eyed Bartholomew coldly and addressed him as if he had been up before him in his police court.
'Go away, sir! Lie down, sir! Go away!' he said, rasping, if that's the word.
Well, I could have told him that you can't talk to an Aberdeen terrier in that tone of voice for, except perhaps for Doberman pin-schers, there is no breed of dog quicker to take offence.
'Really, the way my niece allows this infernal animal to roam at large about the -'
'House' I suppose he was about to say, but the word remained unspoken. It was a moment for rapid action, not for speech. The gargling noise had increased in volume, and Bartholomew was flexing his muscles and getting under way. He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, as the fellow said, and Pop Bassett with a lissomness of which I would not have suspected him took to himself the wings of the dove and floated down beside me on the chest. Whether he clipped a second or two off my time I cannot say, but I rather think he did.
'This is intolerable!' he said as I moved courteously to make room for him, and I could see the thing from his point of view. All he asked from life, now that he had made his pile, was to be as far away as possible from Bertram Wooster, and here he was cheek by jowl, as you might say, on a rather uncomfortable chest with him. A certain peevishness was inevitable.
'Not too good,' I agreed. 'Unquestionably open to criticism, the animal's behaviour.'
'He must be off his head. He knows me perfectly well. He sees me every day.'
'Ah,' I said, putting my finger on the weak spot in his argument, 'but I don't suppose he's ever seen you in that dressing-gown.'
I had been too outspoken. He let me see at once that he had taken umbrage.
'What's wrong with my dressing-gown?' he demanded hotly.
'A bit on the bright side, don't you think?'
'No, I do not.'
'Well, that's how it would strike a highly-strung dog.'
I paused here to chuckle softly, and he asked what the devil I was giggling about. I put him abreast.
'I was merely thinking that I wish we could strike the highly-strung dog. The trouble on these occasions is that one is always weapo
nless. It was the same some years ago when an angry swan chased self and friend on to the roof of a sort of boathouse building at my Aunt Agatha's place in Hertfordshire. Nothing would have pleased us better than to bung a brick at the bird, or slosh him with a boathook, but we had no brick and were short of boathooks. We had to wait till Jeeves came along, which he eventually did in answer to our cries. It would have thrilled you to have seen Jeeves on that occasion. He advanced dauntlessly and -'
'Mr. Wooster!'
'Speaking.'
'Kindly spare me your reminiscences.'
'I was merely saying -'
'Well, don't.'
Silence fell. On my part, a wounded silence, for all I'd tried to do was take his mind off things with entertaining chit-chat. I moved an inch or two away from him in a marked manner. The Woosters do not force their conversation on the unwilling.
All this time Bartholomew had been trying to join us, making a series of energetic springs. Fortunately Providence in its infinite wisdom had given Scotties short legs, and though full of the will to win he could accomplish nothing constructive. However much an Aberdeen terrier may bear 'mid snow and ice a banner with the strange device Excelsior, he nearly always has to be content with dirty looks and the sharp, passionate bark.
Some minutes later my fellow-rooster came out of the silence. No doubt the haughtiness of my manner had intimidated him, for there was a mildness in his voice which had not been there before.
'Mr. Wooster.'
I turned coldly.
'Were you addressing me, Bassett?'
'There must be something we can do.'
'You might fine the animal five pounds.'
'We cannot stay here all night.'
'Why not? What's to stop us?'
This held him. He relapsed into silence once more. And we were sitting there like a couple of Trappist monks, when a voice said 'Well, for heaven's sake!' and I perceived that Stiffy was with us.
Not surprising, of course, that she should have turned up sooner or later. If Scotties come, I ought to have said to myself, can Stiffy be far behind?
9
Considering that so substantial a part of her waking hours is devoted to thrusting innocent bystanders into the soup, Stiffy is far prettier than she has any right to be. She's on the small side - petite, I believe, is the technical term - and I have always felt that when she and Stinker walk up the aisle together, if they ever do, their disparity in height should be good for a laugh or two from the ringside pews. The thought has occurred to me more than once that the correct response for Stinker to make, when asked by the M.C. if he is prepared to take this Stephanie to be his wedded wife, would be, 'Why, certainly, what there is of her.'
'What on earth do you two think you're doing?' she inquired, not unnaturally surprised to see her uncle and an old friend in our current position. 'And why have you been upsetting the furniture?'
'That was me,' I said. 'I bumped into the grandfather clock. I'm as bad as Stinker, aren't I, bumping into things, ha-ha.'
'Less of the ha-ha,' she riposted warmly. 'And don't mention yourself in the same breath as my Harold. Well, that doesn't explain why you're sitting up there like a couple of buzzards on a tree top.'
Pop Bassett intervened, speaking at his sniffiest. Her comparison of him to a buzzard, though perfectly accurate, seemed to have piqued him.
'We were savagely attacked by your dog.'
'Not so much attacked,' I said, 'as given nasty looks. We didn't vouchsafe him time to attack us, deeming it best to get out of his sphere of influence before he could settle down to work. He's been trying to get at us for the last two hours, at least it seems like two hours.'
She was quick to defend the dumb chum.
'Well, how can you blame the poor angel? Naturally he thought you were international spies in the pay of Moscow. Prowling about the house at this time of night. I can understand Bertie doing it, because he was dropped on the head as a baby, but I'm surprised at you, Uncle Watkyn. Why don't you go to bed?'
'I shall be delighted to go to bed,' said Pop Basseit stiffly, 'if you will kindly remove this animal. He is a public menace.'
'Very highly-strung,' I put in. 'We were remarking on it only just now.'
'He's all right, if you don't go out of your way to stir him up. Get back to your basket, Bartholomew, you bounder,' said Stiffy, and such was the magic of her personality that the hound turned on its heel without a word and passed into the night.
Pop Bassett climbed down from the chest, and directed a fishy magisterial look at me.
'Good night, Mr. Wooster. If there is any more of my furniture you wish to break, pray consider yourself at perfect liberty to indulge your peculiar tastes,' he said, and he, too, passed into the night.
Stiffy looked after him with a thoughtful eye.
'I don't believe Uncle Watkyn likes you, Bertie. I noticed the way he kept staring at you at dinner, as if appalled. Well, I don't wonder your arrival hit him hard. It did me. I've never been so surprised in my life as when you suddenly bobbed up like a corpse rising to the surface of a sheet of water. Harold told me he had pleaded with you to come here, but nothing would induce you. What made you change your mind?'
In my previous sojourn at Totleigh Towers circumstances had compelled me to confide in this young prune my position as regarded her cousin Madeline, so I had no hesitation now in giving her the low-down.
'I learned that there was trouble between Madeline and Gussie, due, I have since been informed, to her forcing him to follow in the footsteps of the poet Shelley and become a vegetarian, and I felt that I might accomplish something as a raisonneur?'
'As a whatonneur?'
'I thought that would be a bit above your head. It's a French expression meaning, I believe, though I would have to check with Jeeves, a calm kindly man of the world who intervenes when a rift has occurred between two loving hearts and brings them together again. Very essential in the present crisis.'
'You mean that if Madeline hands Gussie the pink slip, she'll marry you?'
'That, broadly, is about the strength of it. And while I admire and respect Madeline, I'm all against the idea of having her smiling face peeping at me over the coffee pot for the rest of my life. So I came along here to see what I could do.'
'Well, you couldn't have come at a better moment. Now you're here, you can get cracking on that job Harold told you I want you to do for me.'
I saw that the time had come for some prompt in-the-bud-nipping.
'Include me out. I won't touch it. I know you and your jobs.'
'But this is something quite simple. You can do it on your head. And you'll be bringing sunshine and happiness into the life of a poor slob who can do with a bit of both. Were you ever a Boy Scout?'
'Not since early boyhood.'
'Then you've lots of leeway to make up in the way of kind deeds. This'll be a nice start for you. The facts are as follows.'
'I don't want to hear them.'
'You would prefer that I recalled Bartholomew and told him to go on where he left off?'
She had what Jeeves had called a talking point.
'Very well. Tell me all. But briefly.'
'It won't take long, and then you can be off to beddy-bye. You remember that little black statuette thing on the table at dinner.'
'Ah yes, the eyesore.'
'Uncle Watkyn bought it from a man called Plank.'
'So I gathered.'
'Well, do you know what he paid him for it?'
'A thousand quid, didn't you say?'
'No, I didn't. I said it was worth that. But he got it out of this poor blighter Plank for a fiver.'
'You're kidding.'
'No, I'm not. He paid him five pounds. He makes no secret of it. When we were at Brinkley, he was showing the thing to Mr. Travers and telling him all about it... how he happened to see it on Plank's mantelpiece and spotted how valuable it was and told Plank it was worth practically nothing but he would give him five pounds f
or it because he knew how hard up he was. He gloated over how clever he had been, and Mr. Travers writhed like an egg whisk.'
I could well believe it. If there's one thing that makes a collector spit blood, it's hearing about another collector getting a bargain.
'How do you know Plank was hard up?'
'Well, would he have let the thing go for a fiver if he wasn't?'
'Something in that.'
'You can't say Uncle Watkyn isn't a dirty dog.'
'I would never dream of saying he isn't - and always has been -the dirtiest of dogs. It bears out what I have frequently maintained, that there are no depths to which magistrates won't stoop. I don't wonder you look askance. Your Uncle Watkyn stands revealed as a chiseller of the lowest type. But nothing to be done about it, of course.'
'I don't know so much about that.'
'Why, have you tried doing anything?'
'In a sort of way. I arranged that Harold should preach a very strong sermon on Naboth's Vineyard. Not that I suppose you've ever heard of Naboth's Vineyard.'
I bridled. She had offended my amour propre.
'I doubt if there's a man in London and the home counties who has the facts relating to Naboth's Vineyard more thoroughly at his fingertips than me. The news may not have reached you, but when at school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge.'
'I bet you cheated.'
'Not at all. Sheer merit. Did Stinker co-operate?'
'Yes, he thought it was a splendid idea and went about sucking throat pastilles for a week, so as to be in good voice. The set-up was the same as the play in Hamlet. You know. With which to catch the conscience of the king and all that.'
'Yes, I see the strategy all right. How did it all work out?'
'It didn't. Harold lives in the cottage of Mrs. Bootle, the postman's wife, where they only have oil lamps, and the sermon was on a table with a lamp on it, and he bumped into the table and upset the lamp and it burned the sermon and he hadn't time to write it out again, so he had to dig out something on another topic from the old stockpile. He was terribly disappointed.'
STIFF UPPER LIP, JEEVES Page 6
