I mentioned a point which he appeared to have overlooked.
‘And how about me? I’ve got to be there, too, to pave the way for you with Uncle Percy. A lot of solid talking will be required before it will be any use you approaching him. If I’m not at this East Wibley orgy, you might just as well stay at home.’
My words, as I had anticipated, produced a marked sensation. Nobby gave a sort of distraught hiccough, like a bull-pup choking on a rubber bone, and Boko confessed with a moody oath that he hadn’t thought of that.
‘Think of it now,’ I said. ‘Or, better,’ I went on, as the door opened, ‘ask Jeeves what his views on the matter are. You will probably have something to suggest, eh, Jeeves?’
‘Sir?’
A snag has arisen in our path, an Act of God having left us a costume short,’ I explained, ‘and we are frankly baffled.’
He placed the tea-tray on the table, and listened with respectful interest while we laid the facts before him.
‘Might I take a short walk, sir,’ he said, when we had finished, ‘and think the problem over?’
‘Certainly, Jeeves,’ I replied, concealing a slight pang of disappointment, for I had hoped that he might have come across with an immediate solution. ‘By all means take a short walk. You will find us here on your return.’
He oiled off, and we settled down to an informal debate, in which the note of hope was conspicuous by its a. It could scarcely escape the attention of three keen minds like ours that what looked like dishing us was the matter of time. It was now well past five o’clock, which rendered out of the question the idea of another quick dash to the metropolis and a second visit to the establishment of the Bros. Cohen. Zealous though they are in their self-chosen task of supplying the populace with clothing, there comes a moment when these merchants call it a day and put up the shutters. Not even by exceeding the speed limit all the way could a driver, starting from Steeple Bumpleigh now, reach the emporium in time to do business. Long ere he could arrive, the Bros, and their corps of assistants would have retired to their various residences and be relaxing over good books.
And as for the chance of securing anything in the nature of a costume in Steeple Bumpleigh, that, it seemed to us, could be ruled out altogether. At the beginning of this chronicle, I gave a brief description of this hamlet, showing it to be rich in honeysuckle-covered cottages and apple-cheeked villagers, but that let it out. It had only one shop, that so ably conducted by Mrs Greenless opposite the Jubilee watering-trough: and this, after it had supplied you with string, pink sweets, sides of bacon, tinned goods and
Old Moore’s Almanac,
was a spent force.
Taking it for all in all, accordingly, the situation seemed pretty bleak. When I tell you that the best suggestion was the one advanced by Boko, that I should strip to a loin-cloth and smear myself with boot polish and go to the dance as a Zulu chief, you will see how little constructive progress had been made by the time the door opened and Jeeves was once more in our midst.
There is something about the mere sight of this number-nine-size-hatted man that seldom fails to jerk the beholder from despondency’s depths in times of travail. Although Reason told us that he couldn’t possibly have formulated a scheme for dragging home the gravy, we hailed him eagerly.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Well?’ said Boko.
‘Well?’ said Nobby.
Any luck, Jeeves?’ I asked.
He inclined the coconut.
‘Yes, sir. I am happy to say that I have been successful in finding a solution to the problem confronting you.’
‘Gosh!’ cried Nobby, stunned to the core.
‘Egad!’ cried Boko, the same.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ I ejaculated, ibid. ‘You have? I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Would you, Boko?’
‘I certainly wouldn’t.’
‘Or you, Nobby?’
‘Not in a million years.’
‘Well, there it is. That’s Jeeves. Where others merely smite the brow and clutch the hair, he acts. Napoleon was the same.’
Boko shook his head.
‘You can’t class Napoleon with Jeeves.’
‘Like putting up a fairish selling-plater against a classic yearling,’ agreed Nobby.
‘Napoleon had his moments,’ I urged.
‘On a very limited scale compared with Jeeves,’ said Boko. ‘I have nothing against Napoleon, but I cannot see him sauntering out into Steeple Bumpleigh at half-past five in the afternoon and coming back ten minutes later with a costume for a fancy dress ball. And this, you say, is what you have accomplished, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, I don’t know how you feel about it, Bertie,’ said Boko, ‘but to me the thing looks like a ruddy miracle. Where is this costume, Jeeves?’
‘I have placed it on the bed in Mr Wooster’s room, sir.’
‘But where on earth did you get it?’
‘I found it, sir.’
‘Found it? Just lying around, do you mean?’
Yes, sir. On the bank of the river.’
I don’t know why it was, unless possibly because we Woosters are a bit quicker than other men, but at these words a sudden, horrible suspicion shot through me like a dose of salts, numbing the nerve centres and turning the blood to ice.
‘Jeeves,’ I faltered, ‘this thing . . . this what-you-may-call-it . . . this costume of which you speak . . . what is it?’
‘A policeman’s uniform, sir.’
I collapsed into a chair as if the lower limbs had been mown off with a scythe. The s. had been well founded.
‘It has occurred to me since that it may possibly have been the property of Mr Cheesewright, sir. I observed him disporting himself in the water not far away.’
I rose from the chair. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I managed it.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, or perhaps it would be
mot juster
to say I thundered, ‘you will go and restore that dashed uniform to its bally owner instanter!’
Boko and Nobby, who had been slapping each other’s backs in the foreground, halted in mid-slap and stared at me, Boko as if he couldn’t believe his ears, Nobby as if she couldn’t believe hers.
‘Restore it?’ cried Nobby.
‘To its bally owner?’ gasped Boko. ‘I simply fail to follow you, Bertie.’
‘Me, too,’ said Nobby. ‘If you had been a Israelite in the wilderness, you wouldn’t have passed up your plateful of manna, would you?’
‘Exactly,’ said Boko. ‘Here, at the eleventh hour, just when the total downfall of all our hopes and dreams seemed to stare us in the eyeball because we were unable to lay our hooks on a fancy dress costume, an admirable costume has been sent from Heaven, as you might say, and you appear to be suggesting that we shall give it the go-by. You can’t realize what you are saying. Reflect, Bertie. Consider.’
I preserved my iron front.
‘That uniform,’ I said, ‘goes back to its proprietor by special messenger at the earliest possible date. My dear Boko, my good Nobby, have you the slightest conception of the bitterly anti-Wooster sentiments which prevail in Stilton’s bosom? The man specifically stated to me not half an hour ago that his dearest wish was to catch Bertram bending. Let him discover that I have been pinching his uniforms, and I can hope for no mercy. Three months in the second division will be the best I can expect.’
Nobby started to say something about three months soon passing, but Boko shushed her.
‘Why on earth should he discover anything of the sort?’ he said. ‘You aren’t proposing to parade Steeple Bumpleigh day in and day out in this uniform. You’re only going to wear it tonight.’
I corrected this view.
‘I am not going to wear it to-night.’
‘Oh, aren’t you?’ cried Nobby. ‘Well, then, I’m jolly well not going to show that letter of yours to Florence.’
‘Good girl,’ said Boko. ‘Well spoken, young light of my life. Laugh that off, Bertie.’
I made no endeavour to do so. Her words had chilled the spine. I don’t suppose there is a man living who is swifter than Bertram Wooster to perceive when someone has got him by the short hairs, and it was clear to me that this was what had happened now. However fearful the perils that confronted me if I accepted Jeeves’s loathsome gift, they must be faced.
A moment’s struggle for utterance, and I bowed the onion and right-hoed.
‘Splendid fellow!’ said Boko. ‘I knew you would see the light.’
‘Bertie’s always so reasonable,’ said Nobby.
‘Clear-thinking chap. Very level-headed,’ agreed Boko. ‘Then we’re all set, eh? You come to the ball – of which in such a costume you can scarcely fail to be the belle – and you lurk till you have ascertained that old Worplesdon has had a satisfactory conference with Clam. If all has gone well, you buttonhole him and give me a build up. As soon as he is in melting mood, you give me the high sign, and I carry on from there, while you come home and turn in with an easy mind. I doubt if the whole thing – your part of it – will take more than half an hour. And now I think I had better be stepping along and taking Stilton a raincoat. No doubt he has a spare uniform at his residence, but one would like to get him there without causing comment. We can’t have chaps roaming the countryside in the nude. All right for the Riviera, no doubt, but thank God we have a stricter code in Steeple Bumpleigh.’
He pushed off, taking Nobby with him, and I turned to Jeeves, who during these exchanges had been standing completely motionless, looking like a stuffed owl, his habit on occasions when he is among those present but has not been invited to join in the chit-chat.
‘Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Sir?’ he responded, coming to life in a deferential sort of way.
I did not mince my words.
‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said, and my face was hard and cold, ‘you appreciate the set-up, I trust? Thanks to you, I am as properly up against it as I can remember being in the course of a not uneventful career. My position, as I see it, is roughly that of one who has removed a favourite cub from the custody of a rather more than usually short-tempered tigress, and is obliged to carry it on his person in the animal’s immediate neighbourhood. I am not a weak man, Jeeves, but when I think of what will happen if Stilton cops me while I am draped in that uniform, it makes my knotted and combined locks . . . what was that gag of yours?’
‘Part, sir, and each particular hair—’
‘Stand on end, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.’
‘That’s right. And that brings me back to it. What the dickens is a porpentine?’
‘A porcupine, sir.’
‘Oh, a
porcupine
? Why didn’t you say that at first? It’s been worrying me all day. Well, that, as I say, is the posish, Jeeves, and it is you who have brought it about.’
‘I acted from the best motives, sir. It seemed to me that at all costs it was essential that you take part in to-night’s festivities.’
I saw his point. If there’s one thing the Woosters are, it’s fairminded. We writhe, but we are just.
‘Yes,’ I assented with a moody nod, ‘I suppose you meant well. And no doubt, in a sense, you did the right and judicious thing. But you can’t get away from it that mine is a fearful predicament. One false step, and Stilton will be on the back of my neck, shouting for Justices of the Peace to come and sentence me to a long spell in the cooler. And, apart from that, has it occurred to you that this Cheesewright is about forty inches more round the chest and eight inches more round the head than me? Clad in his uniform, and especially wearing his helmet, I shall look like a Keystone Kop. Why, dash it, I’d rather go to this binge as the meanest Pierrot. Still, I suppose my bally preferences don’t count.’
‘I fear not, sir. For know, rash youth – if you will pardon me, sir – the expression is Mr Bernard Shaw’s, not my own . . . For know, rash youth, that in this star crost world Fate drives us all to find our chiefest good in what we can, and not in what we would.’
Again, I saw his point.
‘Quite,’ I responded. ‘Yes, I suppose the bullet must be bitten. Right ho, Jeeves,’ I said, summoning to my aid all the splendid Wooster fortitude, ‘lead me to it.’
CHAPTER 26
I
t had been Boko’s idea that he and I should make the journey to East Wibley in his car, he at the wheel, I at his side, so that if there were any minor details to be settled which we had overlooked, we could get them ironed out before arrival, thus achieving a perfect preparedness and avoiding any chance of last minute stymies.
To this suggestion, though admitting its basic soundness, I demurred. In fact, when I say I demurred, I ought to put it stronger. I more or less recoiled in horror. I had been Boko’s passenger on a previous occasion, and it was not an experience one would wish to repeat. Put an author in the driver’s seat of a car, and his natural goofiness seems to become intensified. Not only did Boko persistently overtake on blind corners, but he did it with a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes, telling one the plot of his next novel the while and not infrequently removing both hands from the wheel in order to drive home some dramatic point with gestures.
Another reason why I preferred to travel in the Wooster two-seater was that I was naturally anxious to get home and out of that uniform as speedily as possible. And, of course, it would be necessary, if all went well, for Boko to linger on and talk turkey to Uncle Percy.
My qualms regarding spending the evening in Stilton’s plumage had in no way diminished with the passage of time. I still viewed the ordeal with concern.
Boko, returning from his errand of mercy to the zealous officer, had reported that the latter had seemed a bit upset about it all and inclined to suspect me of being the motivating force behind the outrage. To this, Boko had rather cleverly replied by saying that it was far more likely to have been young Edwin who had done the horrid deed. There comes a moment, he had pointed out, in the life of every Boy Scout when he suddenly feels fed up with doing acts of kindness and allows his human side to get uppermost. On such occasions, the sight of a policeman’s uniform lying on the river bank would, he maintained, call to such a Scout like deep calling to deep and prove practically irresistible. He told me he thought he had lulled Stilton’s suspicions, all right.