The twins looked at each other in a pitying sort of way.
‘Bertie,’ said Eustace, ‘you’ve got the programme nearly right, but not quite. I envisage the evening’s events thus: We will toddle along to Ciro’s after dinner. It’s an extension night, isn’t it? Well, that will see us through till about two-thirty or three.’
‘After which, no doubt,’ said Claude, ‘the Lord will provide.’
‘But I thought you would want to get a good night’s rest.’
‘Good night’s rest!’ said Eustace. ‘My dear old chap, you don’t for a moment imagine that we are dreaming of going to bed tonight, do you?’
I suppose the fact of the matter is, I’m not the man I was. I mean, those all-night vigils don’t seem to fascinate me as they used to a few years ago. I can remember the time, when I was up at Oxford, when a Covent Garden ball till six in the morning, with breakfast at the Hammams and probably a free fight with a few selected costermongers to follow, seemed to me what the doctor ordered. But nowadays two o’clock is about my limit; and by two o’clock the twins were just settling down and beginning to go nicely.
As far as I can remember, we went on from Ciro’s to play chemmy with some fellows I don’t recall having met before, and it must have been about nine in the morning when we fetched up again at the flat. By which time, I’m bound to admit, as far as I was concerned the first careless freshness was beginning to wear off a bit. In fact, I’d just got enough strength to say goodbye to the twins, wish them a pleasant voyage and a happy and successful career in South Africa, and stagger into bed. The last I remember was hearing the blighters chanting like larks under the cold shower, breaking off from time to time to shout to Jeeves to rush along the eggs and bacon.
It must have been about one in the afternoon when I woke. I was feeling more or less like something the Pure Food Committee had rejected, but there was one bright thought which cheered me up, and that was that about now the twins would be leaning on the rail of the liner, taking their last glimpse of the dear old homeland. Which made it all the more of a shock when the door opened and Claude walked in.
‘Hallo, Bertie!’ said Claude. ‘Had a nice refreshing sleep? Now, what about a good old bite of lunch?’
I’d been having so many distorted nightmares since I had dropped off to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of them, and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.
‘Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here?’ I gurgled.
Claude looked at me reproachfully.
‘Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Why, it was only last night that you were saying you wished I was stopping a good long time. Your dream has come true. I am.’
‘But why aren’t you on your way to South Africa?’
‘Now that,’ said Claude, ‘is a point I rather thought you would want to have explained. It’s like this, old man. You remember that girl you introduced me to at Ciro’s last night?’
‘Which girl?’
‘There was only one,’ said Claude coldly. ‘Only one that counted, that is to say. Her name was Marion Wardour. I danced with her a good deal, if you remember.’
I began to recollect in a hazy sort of way. Marion Wardour has been a pal of mine for some time. A very good sort. She’s playing in that show at the Apollo at the moment. I remembered now that she had been at Ciro’s with a party the night before, and the twins had insisted on being introduced.
‘We are soul-mates, Bertie,’ said Claude. ‘I found it out quite early in the PM, and the more thought I’ve given to the matter the more convinced I’ve become. It happens like that now and then, you know. Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So the long and the short of it is that I gave old Eustace the slip at Waterloo and slid back here. The idea of going to South Africa and leaving a girl like that in England doesn’t appeal to me a bit. I’m for all thinking imperially and giving the Colonies a leg-up and all that sort of thing; but it can’t be done. After all,’ said Claude reasonably, ‘South Africa has got along all right without me up to now, so why shouldn’t it stick it?’
‘But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He’ll be expecting you to turn up.’
‘Oh, he’ll have Eustace. That’ll satisfy him. Very sound fellow, Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can’t explain, I’ve got a slight headache this morning.’
And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill to look at.
‘Oh, my aunt!’ I said.
Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.
‘Smooth work, Bertie, smooth work!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for poor old Claude, but there was no alternative. I eluded his vigilance at Waterloo and snaked off in a taxi. I suppose the poor old ass is wondering where the deuce I’ve got to. But it couldn’t be helped. If you really seriously expected me to go slogging off to South Africa, you shouldn’t have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to tell you all about that, Bertie. I’m not a man,’ said Eustace, sitting down on the bed, ‘who falls in love with every girl he sees. I suppose “strong, silent”, would be the best description you could find for me. But when I do meet my affinity I don’t waste time. I –’
‘Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?’
‘Too? What do you mean, “too”?’
I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in person, looking like a giant refreshed. There’s no doubt that Jeeves’s pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. It’s something he puts in them – the Worcester sauce or something. Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he said.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ said Eustace.
‘Have you come back to inflict your beastly society upon Miss Wardour?’
‘Is that why you’ve come back?’
They thrashed the subject out a bit further.
‘Well,’ said Claude at last. ‘I suppose it can’t be helped. If you’re here, you’re here. May the best man win!’
‘Yes, but dash it all!’ I managed to put in at this point. ‘What’s the idea? Where do you think you’re going to stay if you stick on in London?’
‘Why, here,’ said Eustace, surprised.
‘Where else?’ said Claude, raising his eyebrows.
‘You won’t object to putting us up, Bertie?’ said Eustace.
‘Not a sportsman like you,’ said Claude.
‘But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I’m hiding you when you ought to be in South Africa? Where do I get off?’
‘Where does he get off?’ Claude asked Eustace.
‘Oh, I expect he’ll manage somehow,’ said Eustace to Claude.
‘Of course,’ said Claude, quite cheered up. ‘He’ll manage.’
‘Rather!’ said Eustace. ‘A resourceful chap like Bertie! Of course he will.’
‘And now,’ said Claude, shelving the subject, ‘what about that bite of lunch we were discussing a moment ago, Bertie? That stuff good old Jeeves slipped into me just now has given me what you might call an appetite. Something in the nature of six chops and a batter pudding would about meet the case, I think.’
I suppose every chappie in the world has black periods in his life to which he can’t look back without the smouldering eye and the silent shudder. Some coves, if you can judge by the novels you read nowadays, have them practically all the time; but, what with enjoying a sizeable private i
ncome and a topping digestion, I’m bound to say it isn’t very often I find my own existence getting a flat tyre. That’s why this particular epoch is one that I don’t think about more often than I can help. For the days that followed the unexpected resurrection of the blighted twins were so absolutely foul that the old nerves began to stick out of my body a foot long and curling at the ends. All of a twitter, believe me. I imagine the fact of the matter is that we Woosters are so frightfully honest and open and all that, that it gives us the pip to have to deceive.
All was quiet along the Potomac for about twenty-four hours, and then Aunt Agatha trickled in to have a chat. Twenty minutes earlier and she would have found the twins gaily shoving themselves outside a couple of rashers and an egg. She sank into a chair, and I could see that she was not in her usual sunny spirits.
‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘I am uneasy.’
So was I. I didn’t know how long she intended to stop, or when the twins were coming back.
‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if I took too harsh a view towards Claude and Eustace.’
‘You couldn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I – er – mean it would be so unlike you to be harsh to anybody, Aunt Agatha.’ And not bad, either. I mean, quick – like that – without thinking. It pleased the old relative, and she looked at me with slightly less loathing than she usually does.
‘It is nice of you to say that, Bertie, but what I was thinking was, are they safe?’
‘Are they what?’
It seemed such a rummy adjective to apply to the twins, they being about as innocuous as a couple of sprightly young tarantulas.
‘Do you think all is well with them?’
‘How do you mean?’
Aunt Agatha eyed me almost wistfully.
‘Has it ever occurred to you, Bertie,’ she said, ‘that your Uncle George may be psychic?’
She seemed to me to be changing the subject.
‘Psychic?’
‘Do you think it is possible that he could see things not visible to the normal eye?’
I thought it dashed possible, if not probable. I don’t know if you’ve ever met my Uncle George. He’s a festive old egg who wanders from club to club continually having a couple with other festive old eggs. When he heaves in sight, waiters brace themselves up and the wine-steward toys with his corkscrew. It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
‘Your Uncle George was dining with me last night, and he was quite shaken. He declares that, while on his way from the Devonshire Club to Boodle’s he suddenly saw the phantasm of Eustace.’
‘The what of Eustace?’
‘The phantasm. The wraith. It was so clear that he thought for an instant that it was Eustace himself. The figure vanished round a corner, and when Uncle George got there nothing was to be seen. It is all very queer and disturbing. It had a marked effect on poor George. All through dinner he touched nothing but barley-water, and his manner was quite disturbed. You do think those poor, dear boys are safe, Bertie? They have not met with some horrible accident?’
It made my mouth water to think of it, but I said no, I didn’t think they had met with any horrible accident. I thought Eustace was a horrible accident, and Claude about the same, but I didn’t say so. And presently she biffed off, still worried.
When the twins came in, I put it squarely to the blighters. Jolly as it was to give Uncle George shocks, they must not wander at large about the metrop.
‘But, my dear old soul,’ said Claude. ‘Be reasonable. We can’t have our movements hampered.’
‘Out of the question,’ said Eustace.
‘The whole essence of the thing, if you understand me,’ said Claude, ‘is that we should be at liberty to flit hither and thither.’
‘Exactly,’ said Eustace. ‘Now hither, now thither.’
‘But, damn it –’
‘Bertie!’ said Eustace reprovingly. ‘Not before the boy!’
‘Of course, in a way I see his point,’ said Claude. ‘I suppose the solution of the problem would be to buy a couple of disguises.’
‘My dear old chap!’ said Eustace, looking at him with admiration. ‘The brightest idea on record. Not your own, surely?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, it was Bertie who put it into my head.’
‘Me!’
‘You were telling me the other day about old Bingo Little and the beard he bought when he didn’t want his uncle to recognize him.’
‘If you think I’m going to have you two excrescences popping in and out of my flat in beards –’
‘Something in that,’ agreed Eustace. ‘We’ll make it whiskers, then.’
‘And false noses,’ said Claude.
‘And, as you say, false noses. Right-o, then, Bertie, old chap, that’s a load off your mind. We don’t want to be any trouble to you while we’re paying you this little visit.’
And, when I went buzzing round to Jeeves for consolation, all he would say was something about Young Blood. No sympathy.
‘Very good, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘I shall go for a walk in the park. Kindly put me out the Old Etonion spats.’
‘Very good, sir.’
It must have been a couple of days after that that Marion Wardour rolled in at about the hour of tea. She looked warily round the room before sitting down.
‘Your cousins not at home, Bertie?’ she said.
‘No, thank goodness!’
‘Then I’ll tell you where they are. They’re in my sitting-room, glaring at each other from opposite corners, waiting for me to come in. Bertie, this has got to stop.’
‘You’re seeing a good deal of them, are you?’
Jeeves came in with the tea, but the poor girl was so worked up that she didn’t wait for him to pop off before going on with her complaint. She had an absolutely hunted air, poor thing.
‘I can’t move a step without tripping over one or both of them,’ she said. ‘Generally both. They’ve taken to calling together, and they just settle down grimly and try to sit each other out. It’s wearing me to a shadow.’
‘I know,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I know.’
‘Well, what’s to be done?’
‘It beats me. Couldn’t you tell your maid to say you are not at home?’
She shuddered slightly.
‘I tried that once. They camped on the stairs, and I couldn’t get out all the afternoon. And I had a lot of particularly important engagements. I wish you would persuade them to go to South Africa, where they seem to be wanted.’
‘You must have made the dickens of an impression on them.’
‘I should say I have. They’ve started giving me presents now. At least Claude has. He insisted on my accepting this cigarette-case last night. Came round to the theatre and wouldn’t go away till I took it. It’s not a bad one, I must say.’
It wasn’t. It was a distinctly fruity concern in gold with a diamond stuck in the middle. And the rummy thing was that I had a notion I’d seen something very like it before somewhere. How the deuce Claude had been able to dig up the cash to buy a thing like that was more than I could imagine.
Next day was a Wednesday, and as the object of their devotion had a matinée, the twins were, so to speak, off duty. Claude had gone with his whiskers on to Hurst Park, and Eustace and I were in the flat, talking. At least, he was talking and I was wishing he would go.
‘The love of a good woman, Bertie,’ he was saying, ‘must be a wonderful thing. Sometimes … Good Lord! What’s that?’
The front door had opened, and from out in the hall there came the sound of Aunt Agatha’s voice asking if I was in. Aunt Agatha has one of those high, penetrating voices, but this was the first time I’d ever been thankful for it. There was just about two seconds to clear the way for her, but it was long enough for Eustace to dive under the sofa. His last shoe had just disappeared when she came in.
She had a worried look. It seemed to me a
bout this time that everybody had.
‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘what are your immediate plans?’
‘How do you mean? I’m dining tonight with –’
‘No, no, I don’t mean tonight. Are you busy for the next few days? But, of course you are not,’ she went on, not waiting for me to answer. ‘You never have anything to do. Your whole life is spent in idle – but we can go into that later. What I came for this afternoon was to tell you that I wish you to go with your poor Uncle George to Harrogate for a few weeks. The sooner you can start, the better.’
This appeared to me to approximate so closely to the frozen limit that I uttered a yelp of protest. Uncle George is all right, but he won’t do. I was trying to say as much when she waved me down.
‘If you are not entirely heartless, Bertie, you will do as I ask you. Your poor Uncle George has had a severe shock.’
‘What, another?’
‘He feels that only complete rest and careful medical attendance can restore his nervous system to its normal poise. It seems that in the past he has derived benefit from taking the waters at Harrogate, and he wishes to go there now. We do not think he ought to be alone, so I wish you to accompany him.’
‘But, I say!’
‘Bertie!’
There was a lull in the conversation.
‘What shock has he had?’ I asked.
‘Between ourselves,’ said Aunt Agatha, lowering her voice in an impressive manner, ‘I incline to think that the whole affair was the outcome of an over-excited imagination. You are one of the family, Bertie, and I can speak freely to you. You know as well as I do that your poor Uncle George has for many years not been a – he has – er – developed a bit of a habit – how shall I put it?’
‘Shifting it a bit?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mopping up the stuff to some extent?’
‘I dislike your way of putting it exceedingly, but I must confess that he has not been, perhaps, as temperate as he should. He is highly-strung, and … Well, the fact is, that he has had a shock.’
‘Yes, but what?’
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