Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (13 page)

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 that 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.’

12

I endeavoured to soothe
her with a kindly pat on the topknot. ‘Jeeves will be back in a moment,’ I
said, ‘and will doubtless put everything right with one wave of his magic wand.
Tell me, my fluttering old aspen, what seems to be the trouble?’

She
gulped like a stricken bull pup. I had rarely seen a more jittery aunt.

‘It’s
Tom!’

‘The
uncle of that name?’

‘How
many Toms do you think there are in this joint, for goodness’ sake?’ she said,
with a return of her normal forcefulness. ‘Yes, Thomas Portarlington Travers,
my husband.’

‘Portarlington?’
I said, a little shocked.

‘He
came pottering into my room just now.’

I
nodded intelligently. I remembered that he had spoken of having done so. It,
was on that occasion, you recall, that he had observed her pressing her hand to
the top of her head.

‘I see.
Yes, so far I follow you. Scene, your room. Discovered sitting, you. Enter
Uncle Tom, pottering. What then?’

She was
silent for a space. Then she spoke in what was for her a hushed voice. That is
to say, while rattling the vases on the mantelpiece, it did not bring plaster
down from the ceiling.

‘I’d
better tell you the whole thing.’

‘Do,
old ancestor. Nothing like getting it off the chest, whatever it is.’

She
gulped like another stricken bull pup.

‘It’s
not a long story.’

‘Good,’
I said, for the hour was late and I had had a busy day. ‘You remember when we were
talking after you got here this evening … Bertie, you revolting object,’ she
said, deviating momentarily from the main thread, ‘that moustache of yours is
the most obscene thing I ever saw outside a nightmare. It seems to take one
straight into another and a dreadful world. What made you commit this rash
act?’

I
tut-tutted a bit austerely.

‘Never
mind my moustache, old flesh and blood. You leave it alone, and it’ll leave you
alone. When we were talking this evening, you were saying?’

She
accepted the rebuke with a moody nod.

‘Yes, I
mustn’t get side—tracked. I must stick to the point.’

‘Like
glue.’

‘When
we were talking this evening, you said you wondered how I had managed to get
Tom to cough up the price of the Daphne Dolores Morehead serial. You remember?’

‘I do.
I’m still wondering.’

‘Well,
it’s quite simple. I didn’t.’

‘Eh?’

‘Tom
didn’t contribute a penny.’

‘Then
how —?‘

‘I’ll
tell you how. I pawned my pearl necklace.’

I gazed
at her … well, I suppose ‘awestruck’ would be the word. Acquaintance with
this woman dating from the days when I was an infant mewling and puking in my
nurse’s arms, if you will excuse the expression, had left me with the feeling
that her guiding motto in life was ‘Anything goes’, but this seemed pretty
advanced stuff even for one to whom the sky had always been the limit.

‘Pawned
it?’ I said.

‘Pawned
it.’

‘Hocked
it, you mean? Popped it? Put it up the spout?’

‘That’s
right. It was the only thing to do. I had to have that serial in order to salt
the mine, and Tom absolutely refused to give me so much as a flyer to slake the
thirst for gold of this blood-sucking Morehead. “Nonsense, nonsense”, he kept
saying. “Quite out of the question, quite out of the question.” So I slipped up
to London, took the necklace to Aspinall’s, told them to make a replica, and
then went along to the pawnbroker’s. Well, when I say pawnbroker’s, that’s a
figure of speech. My fellow was much higher class. More of a moneylender, you
would call him.’

I
whistled a bar or two.

‘Then
that thing I picked up for you this morning was a dud?’

‘Cultured
stuff.’

‘Golly!’
I said. ‘You aunts do live!’ I hesitated. I was loath to bruise that gentle
spirit, especially at a moment when she was worried about something, but it seemed
to me a nephew’s duty to point out the snag. ‘And when … I’m afraid this is
going to spoil your day, but what happens when Uncle Tom finds out?’

‘That’s
exactly the trouble.’ ‘I thought it might be.’

She
gulped like a third stricken bull pup.

‘If it
hadn’t been for a foul bit of bad luck, he wouldn’t have found out in a million
years. I don’t suppose Tom, bless him, would know the difference between the
Koh-i-noor and something from Woolworth’s.’

I saw
her point. Uncle Tom, as I have indicated, is a red—hot collector of old silver
and there is nothing you can teach him about sconces, foliation, scrolls and
ribbon wreaths, but jewellery is to him, as to most of the male sex, a sealed
book.

‘But
he’s going to find out tomorrow evening, and I’ll tell you why. I told you he
came to my room just now. Well, we had been kidding back and forth for a few
moments, all very pleasant and matey, when he suddenly … Oh, my God!’

I
administered another sympathetic pat on the bean.

‘Pull
yourself together, old relative. What did he suddenly do?’

‘He
suddenly told me that this Lord Sidcup who is coming tomorrow is not only an
old-silver hound but an expert on jewellery, and he was going to ask him, while
here, to take a look at my necklace.’

‘Gosh!’

‘He
said he had often had a suspicion that the bandits who sold it to him had taken
advantage of his innocence and charged him a lot too much. Sidcup, he said,
would be able to put him straight about it.’

‘Golly!’

‘“Gosh!”
is right, and so is “Golly!”‘

‘Then
that’s why you clutched the top of your head and tottered?’

‘That’s
why. How long do you suppose it will take this fiend in human shape to see
through that dud string of pearls and spill the beans? Just about ten seconds,
if not less. And then what? Can you blame me for tottering?’

I
certainly couldn’t. In her place, I would have tottered myself and tottered
like nobody’s business. A far duller man than Bertram Wooster would have been
able to appreciate that this aunt who sat before me clutching feverishly at her
perm was an aunt who was in the dickens of a spot. A crisis had been
precipitated in her affairs which threatened, unless some pretty adroit
staff—work was pulled by her friends and well-wishers, to put the home right
plumb spang in the melting-pot.

I have
made a rather close study of the married state, and I know what happens when
one turtle dove gets the goods on the other turtle dove. Bingo Little has often
told me that if Mrs. Bingo had managed to get on him some of the things it
seemed likely she was going to get, the moon would have been turned to blood
and Civilization shaken to its foundations. I have heard much the same thing
from other husbands of my acquaintance, and of course similar upheavals occur
when it is the little woman who is caught bending.

Always
up to now Aunt Dahlia had been the boss of Brinkley Court, maintaining a strong
centralized government, but let Uncle Tom discover that she had pawned her
pearl necklace in order to buy a serial story for what for some reason he
always alluded to as Madame’s Nightshirt, a periodical which from the very
start he had never liked, and she would be in much the same position as one of
those monarchs or dictators who wake up one morning to find that the populace
has risen against them and is saying it with bombs. Uncle Tom is a kindly old
bimbo, but even kindly old bimbos can make themselves dashed unpleasant when
the conditions are right.

‘Egad!’
I said, fingering the chin. ‘This is not so good.’

‘It’s
the end of all things.’

‘You
say this Sidcup bird will be here tomorrow? It doesn’t give you much time to
put your affairs in order. No wonder you’re sending out 5 0 S’s for Jeeves.’

‘Only
he can save me from the fate that is worse than death.’