Jeeves in the offing

20

This was the first time I had seen Ma Cream today, she having gone off around noon to lunch with some friends in Birmingham, and I would willingly not have seen her now, for something in her manner seemed to suggest that she spelled trouble. She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing-gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked. Fixing me with a penetrating eye, she said:

'Oh, there you are, Mr Wooster. I was looking for you.'

'You wished speech with me?'

'Yes. I wanted to say that now perhaps you'd believe me.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'About that butler.'

'What about him?'

'I'll tell you about him. I'd sit down, if I were you. It's a long story.'

I sat down. Clad to, as a matter of fact, for the legs were feeling weak.

'You remember I told you I mistrusted him from the first?'

'Oh ah, yes. You did, didn't you?'

'I said he had a criminal face.'

'He can't help his face.'

'He can help being a crook and an impostor. Calls himself a butler, does he? The police could shake that story. He's no more a butler than I am.'

I did my best.

'But think of those references of his.'

'I am thinking of them.'

'He couldn't have stuck it out as major-domo to a man like Sir Roderick Glossop, if he'd been dishonest.'

'He didn't.'

'But Bobbie said –'

'I remember very clearly what Miss Wickham said. She told me he had been with Sir Roderick Glossop for years.'

'Well, then.'

'You think that puts him in the clear?'

'Certainly.'

'I don't, and I'll tell you why. Sir Roderick Glossop has a large clinic down in Somersetshire at a place called Chuffnell Regis, and a friend of mine is there. I wrote to her asking her to see Lady Glossop and get all the information she could about a former butler of hers named Swordfish. When I got back from Birmingham just now, I found a letter from her. She says that Lady Glossop told her she had never employed a butler called Swordfish. Try that one on for size.'

I continued to do my best. The Woosters never give up.

'You don't know Lady Glossop, do you?'

'Of course I don't, or I'd have written to her direct.'

'Charming woman, but with a memory like a sieve. The sort who's always losing one glove at the theatre. Naturally she wouldn't remember a butler's name. She probably thought all along it was Fotheringay or Binks or something. Very common, that sort of mental lapse. I was up at Oxford with a man called Robinson, and I was trying to think of his name the other day and the nearest I could get to it was Fosdyke. It only came back to me when I saw in The Times a few days ago that Herbert Robinson (26) of Grove Road, Ponder's End, had been had up at Bosher Street police court, charged with having stolen a pair of green and yellow checked trousers. Not the same chap, of course, but you get the idea. I've no doubt that one of these fine mornings Lady Glossop will suddenly smack herself on the forehead and cry «Swordfish! Of course! And all this time I've been thinking of the honest fellow as Catbird!"'

She sniffed. And if I were to say that I liked the way she sniffed, I would be wilfully deceiving my public. It was the sort of sniff Sherlock Holmes would have sniffed when about to clap the darbies on the chap who had swiped the Maharajah's ruby.

'Honest fellow, did you say? Then how do you account for this? I saw Willie just now, and he tells me that a valuable eighteenth-century cow– creamer which he bought from Mr Travers is missing. And where is it, you ask? At this moment it is tucked away in Swordfish's bedroom in a drawer under his clean shirts.'

In stating that the Woosters never give up, I was in error. These words caught me amidships and took all the fighting spirit out of me, leaving me a spent force.

'Oh, is it?' I said. Not good, but the best I could do.

'Yes, sir, that's where it is. Directly Willie told me the thing had gone, I knew where it had gone to. I went to this man Swordfish's room and searched it, and there it was. I've sent for the police.'

Again I had that feeling of having been spiritually knocked base over apex. I gaped at the woman.

'You've sent for the police?'

'I have, and they're sending a sergeant. He ought to be here at any moment. And shall I tell you something? I'm going now to stand outside Swordfish's door, to see that nobody tampers with the evidence. I'm not going to take any chances. I wouldn't want to say anything to suggest that I don't trust you implicitly, Mr Wooster, but I don't like the way you've been sticking up for this fellow. You've been far too sympathetic with him for my taste.'

'It's just that I think he may have yielded to sudden temptation and all that.'

'Nonsense. He's probably been acting this way all his life. I'll bet he was swiping things as a small boy.'

'Only biscuits.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Or crackers you would call them, wouldn't you? He was telling me he occasionally pinched a cracker or two in his salad days.'

'Well, there you are. You start with crackers and you end up with silver jugs. That's life,' she said, and buzzed off to keep her vigil, leaving me kicking myself because I'd forgotten to say anything about the quality of mercy not being strained. It isn't, as I dare say you know, and a mention of this might just have done the trick.

I was still brooding on this oversight and wondering what was to be done for the best, when Bobbie and Aunt Dahlia came in, looking like a young female and an elderly female who were sitting on top of the world.

'Roberta tells me she has got Upjohn to withdraw the libel suit,' said Aunt Dahlia. 'I couldn't be more pleased, but I'm blowed if I can imagine how she did it.'

'Oh, I just appealed to his better feelings,' said Bobbie, giving me one of those significant glances. I got the message. The ancestor, she was warning me, must never learn that she had achieved her ends by jeopardizing the delivery of the Upjohn speech to the young scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School on the morrow. 'I told him that the quality of mercy … What's the matter, Bertie?'

'Nothing. Just starting.'

'What do you want to start for?'

'I believe Brinkley Court is open for starting in at about this hour, is it not? The quality of mercy, you were saying?'

'Yes. It isn't strained.'

'I believe not.'

'And in case you didn't know, it's twice bless'd and becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. I drove over to the «Bull and Bush» and put this to Upjohn, and he saw my point. So now everything's fine.'

I uttered a hacking laugh.

'No,' I said, in answer to a query from Aunt Dahlia. 'I have not accidentally swallowed my tonsils, I was merely laughing hackingly. Ironical that the young blister should say that everything is fine, for at this very moment disaster stares us in the eyeball. I have a story to relate which I think you will agree falls into the fretful porpentine class,' I said, and without further pourparlers I unshipped my tale.

I had anticipated that it would shake them to their foundation garments, and it did. Aunt Dahlia reeled like an aunt struck behind the ear with a blunt instrument, and Bobbie tottered like a red-haired girl who hadn't known it was loaded.

'You see the set-up,' I continued, not wanting to rub it in but feeling that they should be fully briefed. 'Glossop will return from his afternoon off to find the awful majesty of the Law waiting for him, complete with handcuffs. We can hardly expect him to accept an exemplary sentence without a murmur, so his first move will be to establish his innocence by revealing all. «True,» he will say, «I did pinch this bally cow-creamer, but merely because I thought Wilbert had pinched it and it ought to be returned to store,» and he will go on to explain his position in the house – all this, mind you, in front of Ma Cream. So what ensues? The sergeant removes the gloves from his wrists, and Ma Cream asks you if she may use your telephone for a moment, as she wishes to call her husband on long distance. Pop Cream listens attentively to the tale she tells, and when Uncle Tom looks in on him later, he finds him with folded arms and a forbidding scowl. «Travers,» he says, «the deal's off.» «Off ?» quivers Uncle Tom. «Off,» says Cream. «O-ruddy-double-f. I don't do business with guys whose wives bring in loony-doctors to observe my son.» A short while ago Ma Cream was urging me to try something on for size. I suggest that you do the same for this.'

Aunt Dahlia had sunk into a chair and was starting to turn purple. Strong emotion always has this effect on her.

'The only thing left, it seems to me,' I said, 'is to put our trust in a higher power.'

'You're right,' said the relative, fanning her brow. 'Go and fetch Jeeves, Roberta. And what you do, Bertie, is get out that car of yours and scour the countryside for Glossop. It may be possible to head him off. Come on, come on, let's have some service. What are you waiting for?'

I hadn't exactly been waiting. I'd only been thinking that the enterprise had more than a touch of looking for a needle in a haystack about it. You can't find loony-doctors on their afternoon off just by driving around Worcestershire in a car; you need bloodhounds and handkerchiefs for them to sniff at and all that professional stuff. Still, there it was.

'Right-ho,' I said. 'Anything to oblige.'