Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (21 page)

I stood
there defenceless.

Well,
‘stood’ is putting it loosely. In crises like this we Woosters do not stand. It
was soon made abundantly clear that Stilton was not the only one of our little
circle who could get off marks like jack rabbits. I doubt if in the whole of
Australia, where this species of animal abounds, you could have found a jack
rabbit capable of a tithe of the swift smoothness with which I removed myself
from the pulsating centre of things. To do a backward jump of some eleven feet
and install myself behind the sofa was with me the work of an instant, and
there for awhile the matter rested, because every time he came charging round
to my side like a greyhound I went whizzing round to his side like an electric
hare, rendering his every effort null and void. Those great Generals, of whom I
was speaking earlier, go in for this manoeuvre quite a bit. Strategic retreat
is the technical term.

How
long this round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush sequence would have continued, it
is not easy to say, but probably not for any great length of time, for already
my partner in the rhythmic doings was beginning to show signs of feeling the
pace. Stilton, like so many of these beefy birds, is apt, when not in training
for some aquatic contest, to yield to the lure of the flesh pots. This takes
its toll. By the end of the first dozen laps, while I remained as fresh as a
daisy, prepared to fight it out on this line if it took all summer, he was
puffing quite considerably and his brow had become wet with honest sweat.

But, as
so often happens on these occasions, the fixture was not played to a finish.
Pausing for a moment before starting on lap thirteen, we were interrupted by
the entry of Seppings, Aunt Dahlia’s butler, who came toddling in, looking rather
official.

I was
glad to see him myself, for some sort of interruption was just what I had been
hoping for, but this turning of the thing into a threesome plainly displeased
Stilton, and I could understand why. The man’s presence hampered him and
prevented him from giving of his best. I have already explained that the
Cheesewright code prohibits brawling if there are females around. The same rule
holds good when members of the domestic staff appear at the ringside. If
butlers butt in while they are in the process of trying to ascertain the colour
of some acquaintance’s insides, the Cheesewrights cheese it.

But,
mark you, they don’t like cheesing it, and it is not to be wondered at that,
compelled by this major-domo’s presence to suspend hostilities, Stilton should
have eyed him with ill-concealed animosity. His manner, when he spoke, was
brusque.

‘What
do you want?’

‘The
door, sir.’

Stilton’s
ill-concealed animosity became rather worse concealed. So packed indeed, with
deleterious animal magnetism was the glance he directed at Seppings that one
felt that there was a considerable danger of Aunt Dahlia at no distant date
finding herself a butler short.

‘What
do you mean, you want the door? Which door? What door? What on earth do you
want a door for?’

I saw
that it was most improbable that he would ever get the thing straight in his
mind without a word of explanation, so I supplied it. I always like, if I can,
to do the square thing by one and all on these occasions. Scratch Bertram
Wooster, I sometimes say, and you find a Boy Scout.

‘The
front door, Stilton, old dance partner, is what one presumes Pop Seppings has
in mind,’ I said. ‘I would hazard the guess that the bell rang. Correct,
Seppings?’

‘Yes,
sir,’ he replied with quiet dignity. ‘The front-door bell rang, and in
pursuance of my duties I came to answer it.’

And,
his manner suggesting that that in his opinion would hold Stilton for awhile,
he carried on as planned.

‘What
I’ll bet has happened, Stilton, old scone,’ I said, clarifying the whole
situation, ‘is that some visitor waits without.’

I was
right. Seppings flung wide the gates, there was a flash of blond hair and a
whiff of Chanel Number Five and a girl came sailing in, a girl whom I was able
to classify at a single glance as a pipterino of the first water.

Those who know Bertram
Wooster best are aware that he is not a man who readily slops over when
speaking of the opposite sex. He is cool and critical. He weighs his words. So
when I describe this girl as a pipterino, you will gather that she was something
pretty special. She could have walked into any assembly of international beauty
contestants, and the committee of judges would have laid down the red carpet.
One could imagine fashionable photographers fighting to the death for her
custom.

Like
the heroine of
The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish
and, indeed, the
heroines of all the thrillers I have ever come across, she had hair the colour
of ripe corn and eyes of cornflower blue. Add a tiptilted nose and a figure as
full of curves as a scenic railway, and it will not strike you as strange that
Stilton, sheathing the sword, should have stood gaping at her dumbly, his
aspect that of a man who has been unexpectedly struck by a thunderbolt.

‘Is
Mrs. Travers around?’ inquired this vision, addressing herself to Seppings.
‘Will you tell her Miss Morehead has arrived.’

I was
astounded. For some reason, possibly because she had three names, the picture I
had formed in my mind of Daphne Dolores Morehead was that of an elderly female
with a face like a horse and gold-rimmed pince-nez attached to her top button
with a black string. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, I found myself
commending Aunt Dahlia’s sagacity in inviting her to Brinkley Court, presumably
to help promote the sale of the
Boudoir.
A word from her, advising its
purchase, would, I felt, go a long way with L.G. Trotter. He was doubtless a
devoted and excellent husband, true as steel to the wife of his b., but even
devoted and excellent husbands are apt to react powerfully when girls of the
D.D. Morehead type start giving them Treatment A.

Stilton
was still goggling at her like a bulldog confronted with a pound of steak, and
now, her eyes of cornflower blue becoming accustomed to the dim light of the
hall, she took a dekko at him and uttered an exclamation that seemed — oddly,
considering what Stilton was like — one of pleasure.

‘Mr.
Cheesewright!’ she said. ‘Well, fancy! I thought your face was familiar.’ She
took another dekko. ‘You
are
D’Arcy Cheesewright, who used to row for
Oxford?’

Stilton
inclined the bean dumbly. He seemed incapable of speech.

‘I
thought so. Somebody pointed you out to me at the Eights Week ball one year.
But I almost didn’t recognize you. You had a moustache then. I’m so glad you
haven’t any longer. You look so much handsomer without it. I do think
moustaches are simply awful. I always say that a man who can lower himself to
wearing a moustache might just as well grow a beard.’

I could
not let this pass.

‘There
are moustaches and moustaches,’ I said, twirling mine. Then, seeing that she
was asking herself who this slim, distinguished-looking stranger might be, I
tapped myself on the wishbone. ‘Wooster, Bertram,’ I said. ‘I’m Mrs. Travers’s
nephew, she being my aunt. Should I lead you into her presence? She is probably
counting the minutes.’

She
pursed the lips dubiously, as if the programme I had suggested deviated in many
respects from the ideal.

‘Yes, I
suppose I ought to be going and saying Hello, but what I would really like
would be to explore the grounds. It’s such a lovely place.’

Stilton,
who was now a pretty vermilion, came partially out of the ether, uttering odd,
strangled noises like a man with no roof to his mouth trying to recite ‘Gunga
Din’. Finally something coherent emerged.

‘May I
show you round?’ he said hoarsely.

‘I’d
love it.’

‘Ho!’
said Stilton. He spoke quickly, as if feeling he had been remiss in not saying
that earlier, and a moment later they were up and doing. And I, with something
of the emotions of Daniel passing out of the stage door of the lions’ den, went
to my room.

It was
cool and restful there. Aunt Dahlia is a woman who believes in doing her guests
well in the matter of armchairs and chaises-longues, and the chaise—longue
allotted to me yielded gratefully to the form. It was not long before a pleasant
drowsiness stole over me. The weary eyelids closed. I slept.

When I
woke up half an hour later, my first act was to start with some violence. The
brain cleared by slumber, I had remembered the cosh.

I rose
to my feet, appalled, and shot from the room. It was imperative that I should
recover possession of that beneficent instrument with all possible speed, for
though in our recent encounter I had outgeneralled Stilton in round one,
foiling him with my superior footwork and ring science, there was no knowing
when he might not be feeling ready for round two. A setback may discourage a
Cheesewright for the moment, but it does not dispose of him as a logical
contender.

The
cosh, you will recall, had flashed through the air like a shooting star, to
wind up its trip somewhere near Uncle Tom’s safe, and I proceeded to the spot
on winged feet. And picture my concern on finding on arrival that it wasn’t
there. The way things disappeared at Brinkley Court … ladders, coshes and
what not … was enough to make a man throw in his hand and turn his face to
the wall.

At this
moment I actually did turn my face to the wall, the one the safe was wedged
into, and having done so gave another of those violent starts of mine.

And
what I saw was enough to make a fellow start with all the violence at his
disposal. For two or three ticks I simply couldn’t believe it. ‘Bertram,’ I
said to myself, ‘the strain has been too much for you. You are cockeyed.’ But
no. I blinked once or twice to clear the vision, and when I had finished
blinking there it was, just as I had seen it the first time.

The
safe door was open.

18

It is at moments like this
that you catch Bertram Wooster at his superb best, his ice-cold brain working
like a machine. Many fellows, I mean to say, seeing that safe door open, would
have wasted precious time standing goggling at it, wondering why it was open,
who had opened it and why whoever had opened it hadn’t shut it again, but not
Bertram. Hand him something on a plate with watercress round it, and he does
not loiter and linger. He acts. A quick dip inside and a rapid rummaging, and I
had the thing all sewed up.

There
were half a dozen jewel-cases stowed away on the shelves, and it took a minute
or two to open them and examine the contents, but investigation revealed only
one pearl necklace, so I was spared anything in the nature of a perplexing
choice. Swiftly trouser-pocketing the bijouterie, I shot off to Aunt Dahlia’s
den like the jack rabbit I had so closely resembled at my recent conference
with Stilton. She should, I thought, be there by now, and it was a source of
considerable satisfaction to me to feel that I was about to bring the sunshine
back into the life of this deserving old geezer. When last seen, she had so
plainly been in need of a bit of sunshine.

I found
her in
statu quo,
as foreseen, smoking a gasper and spelling her way
through her Agatha Christie, but I didn’t bring the sunshine into her life,
because it was there already. I was amazed at the change in her demeanour since
she had gone off droopingly to see if Uncle Tom had finished talking to Spode
about old silver. Then, you will recall, her air had been that of one caught in
the machinery. Now, she conveyed the impression of having found the blue bird.
As she looked up on discovering me in her midst, her face was shining like the
seat of a bus—driver’s trousers, and it wouldn’t have surprised me much if she
had started yodelling. Her whole aspect was that of an aunt who on honeydew has
fed and drunk the milk of Paradise, and the thought crossed my mind that if she
was feeling as yeasty as this before hearing the good news, she might quite
easily, when I spilled same, explode with a loud report.

I was
not able, however, to reveal the chunk of secret history which I had up my
sleeve, for, as so often happens when I am closeted with this woman, she made
it impossible for me to get a syllable in edgeways. Even as I crossed the
threshold, words began to flutter from her like bats out of a barn.

‘Bertie!’
she boomed. ‘Just the boy I wanted to see. Bertie, my pet, I have fought the
good fight. Do you remember the hymn about “See the troops of Midian prowl and
prowl around”? It goes on “Christian, up and smite them”, and that is what I
have done, in spades. Let me tell you what happened. It will make your eyes
pop.’

‘I
say,’ I said, but was able to get no further. She rolled over me like a
steam—roller.

‘When
we parted in the hall not long ago, you will remember, I was bewitched,
bothered, and bewildered because I couldn’t get hold of Spode to put the bite
on him about Eulalie Sœurs, and was going to the collection room on the
off—chance of there having been a lull. But when I arrived, I found Tom still
gassing away, so I took a seat and sat there hoping that Spode would eventually
make a break for the open and give me a chance of having a word with him. But
he continued to take it without a murmur, and Tom went rambling on. And then
suddenly my bones were turned to water and the collection room swam before my
eyes. Without any warning Tom suddenly switched to the subject of the necklace.
“You might like to look at it now,” he said. “Certainly,” said Spode. “It’s in
the safe in the hall,” said Tom. “Let’s go,” said Spode, and off they went.’