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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: June 24, 2003 [eBook #8164]
+Last Updated: February 6, 2024
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+My Man Jeeves
+
+by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+1919
+
+
+Contents
+
+ LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+ JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+ JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+ ABSENT TREATMENT
+ HELPING FREDDIE
+ RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+ DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+ THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So
+capable. Honestly, I shouldn’t know what to do without him. On broader
+lines he’s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble
+battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked
+“Inquiries.” You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say:
+“When’s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?” and they
+reply, without stopping to think, “Two-forty-three, track ten, change
+at San Francisco.” And they’re right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you
+just the same impression of omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng’s.”
+
+“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”
+
+“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”
+
+“Unsuitable for you, sir.”
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and
+that’s all there is to it.
+
+But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.” I
+forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.’”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I’d rather not, sir.”
+
+“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to put my shirt on him.”
+
+“I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after.”
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+“After this,” I said, “not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.”
+
+“Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.”
+
+And he has, by Jove! I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything. And that’s why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+“Leave it to Jeeves,” I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don’t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I’m
+bound to say that New York’s a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I’m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square—artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn’t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting—I’ve looked into the
+thing a bit—is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come
+along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until you’ve
+painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.
+Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
+comic papers—he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
+idea—and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
+His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the
+ear of a rich uncle—one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business.
+I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s apparently something the
+populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently
+large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky’s uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky’s uncle, you see, didn’t want him to be an artist. He didn’t
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn’t know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn’t have got this if his uncle hadn’t had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I’ve observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn’t do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More American
+Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that he would
+begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds gave out.
+Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let him talk
+about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked with old
+Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these
+little chats used to make Corky’s allowance all right for the time
+being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, “Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
+Singer,” the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, “Corky, how about your uncle?”
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can’t think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+“We’re so scared, Mr. Wooster,” said the girl. “We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him.”
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, “Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn’t going to hurt me.” She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, “There, there,
+little one!” or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you’re doing, you’re starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+“I don’t see why your uncle shouldn’t be most awfully bucked,” I said
+to Corky. “He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.”
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+“You don’t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn’t admit it.
+That’s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He’s always done it.”
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+“You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer’s acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along——”
+
+“But how can I work it that way?”
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+“There’s only one thing to do,” I said.
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Leave it to Jeeves.”
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+“Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+“Jeeves, we want your advice.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+I boiled down Corky’s painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+“So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer’s acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?”
+
+“Perfectly, sir.”
+
+“Well, try to think of something.”
+
+“I have thought of something already, sir.”
+
+“You have!”
+
+“The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay.”
+
+“He means,” I translated to Corky, “that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it’s going to cost a bit.”
+
+Naturally the poor chap’s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl’s melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+“You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,” I said. “Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.”
+
+“I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple’s
+attachment to ornithology.”
+
+“How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?”
+
+“It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned.”
+
+“Oh! Well?”
+
+“Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled—let
+us say—_The Children’s Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it to Mr.
+Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense, sir, and
+a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to eulogistic
+remarks concerning Mr. Worple’s own larger treatise on the same
+subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to
+Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable.”
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn’t let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves’s
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+“But I’m sure I couldn’t write a book about anything. I can’t even
+write good letters.”
+
+“Muriel’s talents,” said Corky, with a little cough “lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn’t mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It’s absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander’s natural tendency
+to kick like a steer.”
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha’s attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don’t know why it
+is—one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose—but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don’t seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+“I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady’s name should
+appear on the title page.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Corky. “Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I’ll get after him right away.”
+
+“Fine!”
+
+“Will that be all, sir?” said Jeeves. “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I’ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky’s place when the first copies of _The
+Children’s Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there,
+and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the
+door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl’s name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+“Often of a spring morning,” it said at the top of page twenty-one, “as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple’s wonderful
+book—_American Birds_.”
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the
+yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I
+admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves’s genius in putting us
+on to the wheeze. I didn’t see how the uncle could fail to drop. You
+can’t call a chap the world’s greatest authority on the yellow-billed
+cuckoo without rousing a certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+“It’s a cert!” I said.
+
+“An absolute cinch!” said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn’t known Mr.
+Worple’s handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn’t for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don’t feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+“Well, well, well, what?” I said.
+
+“Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?”
+
+“Corky around?”
+
+“I beg your pardon?”
+
+“You’re waiting for Corky, aren’t you?”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t understand. No, I’m not waiting for him.”
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind
+of thingummy, you know.
+
+“I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?”
+
+“A row?”
+
+“A spat, don’t you know—little misunderstanding—faults on both
+sides—er—and all that sort of thing.”
+
+“Why, whatever makes you think that?”
+
+“Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is—I thought you usually dined
+with him before you went to the theatre.”
+
+“I’ve left the stage now.”
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+“Why, of course, I see now! You’re married!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.”
+
+“Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander,” she said, looking past me, “this is
+a friend of mine—Mr. Wooster.”
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+“I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce’s, Alexander.”
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+“So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster,” I heard him say. “I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?”
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I’ve a bit of
+news for you.”
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+“Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You’ll need it.”
+
+“Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.”
+
+“All right. Please yourself. But you’re going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle’s esteem by
+writing the book on birds?”
+
+“Perfectly, sir.”
+
+“Well, she’s slid. She’s married the uncle.”
+
+He took it without blinking. You can’t rattle Jeeves.
+
+“That was always a development to be feared, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?”
+
+“It crossed my mind as a possibility.”
+
+“Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!”
+
+“I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.”
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn’t my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn’t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I’m bound to admit that I didn’t relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn’t the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn’t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+“Oh, ah!” I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+“Halloa, Bertie. Don’t go. We’re just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon,” he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+“At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?”
+
+“Yes, please.”
+
+“Good afternoon.”
+
+“Good afternoon.”
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn’t as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+“It’s my uncle’s idea,” he said. “Muriel doesn’t know about it yet. The
+portrait’s to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can’t
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid’s vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: ‘Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.’”
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn’t
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie’s sorrow. Besides, I’m
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the ’phone.
+
+“Bertie.”
+
+“Halloa?”
+
+“Are you doing anything this afternoon?”
+
+“Nothing special.”
+
+“You couldn’t come down here, could you?”
+
+“What’s the trouble? Anything up?”
+
+“I’ve finished the portrait.”
+
+“Good boy! Stout work!”
+
+“Yes.” His voice sounded rather doubtful. “The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn’t look quite right to me. There’s something about it—My uncle’s
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and—I don’t know why it is, but I
+kind of feel I’d like your moral support!”
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+“You think he’ll cut up rough?”
+
+“He may.”
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+“I’ll come,” I said.
+
+“Good!”
+
+“But only if I may bring Jeeves!”
+
+“Why Jeeves? What’s Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led——”
+
+“Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves’s support, you’re mistaken. I’d sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.”
+
+“Oh, all right,” said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+That’s the sort of chap he is. You can’t rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+“Stand right where you are, Bertie,” he said, without moving. “Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?”
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn’t seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+“Well?” said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+“Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but—but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn’t it, if I remember
+rightly?”
+
+“As ugly as that?”
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+“I don’t see how it could have been, old chap.”
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+“You’re right quite, Bertie. Something’s gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I’ve worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull—painting the soul of the
+sitter. I’ve got through the mere outward appearance, and have put the
+child’s soul on canvas.”
+
+“But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don’t see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?”
+
+“I doubt it, sir.”
+
+“It—it sorts of leers at you, doesn’t it?”
+
+“You’ve noticed that, too?” said Corky.
+
+“I don’t see how one could help noticing.”
+
+“All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated.”
+
+“Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don’t
+you think so, Jeeves?”
+
+“He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir.”
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn’t
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn’t
+notice him.
+
+“Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it—really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let’s have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let’s——”
+
+And then he got it—suddenly, when he wasn’t set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+“Oosh!” he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I’ve ever run up against.
+
+“Is this a practical joke?” he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+“You want to stand a bit farther away from it,” I said.
+
+“You’re perfectly right!” he snorted. “I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can’t see the thing with a telescope!” He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. “And this—this—is what you have been wasting your time and my
+money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn’t let you paint a house
+of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a competent
+worker, and this—this—this extract from a comic coloured supplement is
+the result!” He swung towards the door, lashing his tail and growling
+to himself. “This ends it! If you wish to continue this foolery of
+pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for idleness,
+please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report at my
+office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and start
+in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should
+have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent—not another cent—not
+another—Boosh!”
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+“Corky, old top!” I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+“Well, that finishes it!” he muttered brokenly.
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“Do? What can I do? I can’t stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.”
+
+I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don’t know when I’ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who’s just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+“If I might make a suggestion, sir!”
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can’t give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky’s uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+“I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted.”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “what on earth are you talking about?”
+
+“I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a
+parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not
+despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o,
+guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was
+advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is
+always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the
+difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an
+extract from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a
+very valuable one, sir. Mr. Corcoran’s portrait may not have pleased
+Mr. Worple as a likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that
+editors would gladly consider it as a foundation for a series of
+humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran will allow me to make the
+suggestion, his talent has always been for the humorous. There is
+something about this picture—something bold and vigorous, which arrests
+the attention. I feel sure it would be highly popular.”
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+“Corky, old man!” I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+“He’s right! The man’s absolutely right! Jeeves, you’re a life-saver!
+You’ve hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I’ll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the _Sunday
+Star_. He’ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the other day how
+hard it was to get a good new series. He’ll give me anything I ask for
+a real winner like this. I’ve got a gold-mine. Where’s my hat? I’ve got
+an income for life! Where’s that confounded hat? Lend me a fiver,
+Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!”
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+“If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran—for a title of the series
+which you have in mind—‘The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.’”
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. “I’m an optimist. I
+always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare
+and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn
+and there’s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up
+on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a
+fellow, one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To
+all appearances he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now.
+Have you seen these pictures?”
+
+“I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting.”
+
+“They have made a big hit, you know.”
+
+“I anticipated it, sir.”
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+“You know, Jeeves, you’re a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things.”
+
+“I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir.”
+
+“No, I think I’ll wear the blue with the faint red stripe.”
+
+“Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.”
+
+“But I rather fancy myself in it.”
+
+“Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.”
+
+“Oh, all right, have it your own way.”
+
+“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”
+
+Of course, I know it’s as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You’ve got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s
+Shakespeare—or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad—who says that it’s
+always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more
+than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind
+him with a bit of lead piping. There’s no doubt the man’s right. It’s
+absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves—absolutely asserted myself, don’t you know.
+You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a
+dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn’t so much mind
+when he made me give up one of my new suits, because Jeeves’s judgment
+about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when he
+wouldn’t let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like a
+couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in the
+matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who was
+who. It’s a long story, and I haven’t time to tell you now, but the
+point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre—as worn by John
+Drew—when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman—as worn by
+another famous actor chappie—and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that’s how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+“What ho without there!”
+
+“Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room.”
+
+“Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man,” I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. “You know perfectly well
+there’s no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it’s barely ten o’clock yet?”
+
+“I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning.”
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+“Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?”
+
+“Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir.”
+
+“Is she alone?”
+
+“Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship’s son.”
+
+“Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I’ll be dressing.”
+
+“Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir.”
+
+“Then lead me to it.”
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn’t till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+“I’ve placed her, Jeeves. She’s a pal of my Aunt Agatha.”
+
+“Indeed, sir?”
+
+“Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left London. A very
+vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on social conditions
+in India when she came back from the Durbar.”
+
+“Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!”
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+“What’s wrong with this tie? I’ve seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What’s the matter with it?”
+
+“Too ornate, sir.”
+
+“Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more.”
+
+“Unsuitable, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+“Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!” I said. “What?”
+
+“Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster.”
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six
+feet from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest
+arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they
+were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had
+bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she
+showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who
+kind of numb a fellow’s faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten
+years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday
+clothes to say how-d’you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a
+chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren’t
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn’t appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+“Awfully glad to see you,” I said. “So you’ve popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?”
+
+“About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you.”
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you’ll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn’t dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn’t want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she’s really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+“Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us.”
+
+“Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!”
+
+“Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while.”
+
+I didn’t get this for a moment.
+
+“Put him up? For my clubs?”
+
+“No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren’t you, Motty
+darling?”
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+“Yes, mother,” he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+“I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away.”
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn’t seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don’t
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn’t on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie’s
+will-power.
+
+“I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write a
+companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_ after a
+stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with me, but
+the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall have to
+pick him up on my return.”
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+“It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble.” She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn’t there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+“He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented.” She got up. “Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don’t know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon.”
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+“Jeeves! What about it?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What’s to be done? You heard it all, didn’t you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here.”
+
+“Pill, sir?”
+
+“The excrescence.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir?”
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn’t like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+“Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves,” I said
+coldly.
+
+“Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir.”
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn’t any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn’t like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn’t like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn’t want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty’s luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty’s existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn’t
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie’s manner that he was still upset.
+
+“Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?” I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+“No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned.”
+
+“Not returned? What do you mean?”
+
+“His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again.”
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+“Better go and see what that is, Jeeves.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+“If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in.”
+
+“Carry him in?”
+
+“His lordship is lying on the mat, sir.”
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+“He’s had some sort of dashed fit,” I said. I took another look.
+“Jeeves! Someone’s been feeding him meat!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“He’s a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!”
+
+“I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship’s legs, while I——”
+
+“Great Scot, Jeeves! You don’t think—he can’t be——”
+
+“I am inclined to think so, sir.”
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn’t
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+“You never can tell, Jeeves!”
+
+“Very seldom, sir.”
+
+“Remove the eye of authority and where are you?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+“Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?”
+
+“It would seem so, sir.”
+
+“Well, we had better bring him in, eh?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty’s room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+“What ho!” I said.
+
+“What ho!” said Motty.
+
+“What ho! What ho!”
+
+“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked.
+
+“Topping!” replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. “I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours—Jeeves, you know—is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!”
+
+I couldn’t believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+“You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn’t you?” I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn’t have it, at any price.
+
+“No!” he replied firmly. “I didn’t do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what’s more, I’m
+going to do it again! I’m going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top,” he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, “tap me on
+the shoulder and say, ‘Tut! Tut!’ and I’ll apologize and remedy the
+defect.”
+
+“But I say, you know, what about me?”
+
+“What about you?”
+
+“Well, I’m, so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I’m apt to get in
+the soup somewhat.”
+
+“I can’t help your troubles,” said Motty firmly. “Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I’ve had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What’s the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don’t yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions.”
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+“I know just how you feel, old dear,” said Motty consolingly. “And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I’ve been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We’re only young once. Why interfere with
+life’s morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!”
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+“All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I’ve got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I’m going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!”
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don’t you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I’m a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can’t stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_ for
+the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie peering
+out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn’t help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn’t wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn’t been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty’s rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn’t get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn’t
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “this is getting a bit thick!”
+
+“Sir?” Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+“You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, I shall get blamed, don’t you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very well, then.”
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn’t unbend.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “haven’t you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don’t you know. It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn’t the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.—artists and writers and what-not, who frolicked
+considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk. That was
+all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The neighbours
+can’t get to sleep unless there’s someone dancing Hawaiian dances over
+their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere wasn’t right,
+and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a collection of
+hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song when they
+started singing “The Old Oaken Bucket,” there was a marked peevishness
+among the old settlers in the flats. The management was extremely terse
+over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I’d chosen because there didn’t seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+“Did you call, sir?”
+
+“Jeeves! There’s something in there that grabs you by the leg!”
+
+“That would be Rollo, sir.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down.”
+
+“Who the deuce is Rollo?”
+
+“His lordship’s bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light.”
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions’ den, without
+a quiver. What’s more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn’t have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life—to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+“Rollo is not used to you yet, sir,” said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. “He is an excellent watchdog.”
+
+“I don’t want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Well, what am I to do?”
+
+“No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent.”
+
+“What do you mean—my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right.” I thought for a bit. “Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I’m going away—to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country.”
+
+“Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“I don’t know when I shall be back. Forward my letters.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can’t
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+“Where’s that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?”
+
+“The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg.”
+
+I don’t think I’ve ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+“Ripping!” I said. “Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Do you expect him back to dinner?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Where is he?”
+
+“In prison, sir.”
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That’s how I felt then.
+
+“In prison!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean—in prison?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+“Why?” I said.
+
+“He assaulted a constable, sir.”
+
+“Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I digested this.
+
+“But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?”
+
+“I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir.”
+
+“But she’ll come back and want to know where he is.”
+
+“I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship’s bit of time will have run out
+by then.”
+
+“But supposing it hasn’t?”
+
+“In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston.”
+
+“Why Boston?”
+
+“Very interesting and respectable centre, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, I believe you’ve hit it.”
+
+“I fancy so, sir.”
+
+“Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn’t turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back.”
+
+“Exactly, sir.”
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn’t have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says—one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I’d almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn’t anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn’t
+been expecting her for days. I’d forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn’t uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+“Good morning,” I said. “So you’ve got back, what?”
+
+“I have got back.”
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn’t breakfasted. It’s only after a bit of breakfast that
+I’m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I’m never much of a lad till I’ve
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+“I suppose you haven’t breakfasted?”
+
+“I have not yet breakfasted.”
+
+“Won’t you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?”
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+“I called on you last night,” she said, “but you were out.”
+
+“Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?”
+
+“Extremely, thank you.”
+
+“See everything? Niag’ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?”
+
+“I saw a great deal.”
+
+There was another slightly _frappé_ silence. Jeeves floated silently
+into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+“I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+“Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly.”
+
+“You were his constant companion, then?”
+
+“Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don’t you
+know. We’d take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston.”
+
+“Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?”
+
+“Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn’t know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe—I mean,
+don’t you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn’t get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston.”
+
+“You’re sure he went to Boston?”
+
+“Oh, absolutely.” I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: “Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn’t
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston.”
+
+“Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell’s Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?”
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn’t have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+“So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!”
+
+I hadn’t any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+“You deliberately——”
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+“If I might explain, your ladyship.”
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can’t
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+“I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship—was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship’s movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him.”
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn’t rattle Jeeves.
+
+“I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand.”
+
+“What!” Lady Malvern goggled at him. “Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?”
+
+“If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship’s
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship’s instructions and collect material for your ladyship’s
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help.”
+
+“Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!” I said.
+
+“The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country—from within—occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him.”
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+“Surely, your ladyship,” said Jeeves, “it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship’s character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?”
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+“Mr. Wooster,” she said, “I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit.”
+
+“Absolutely!” I said.
+
+“Your breakfast is ready, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “you are certainly a life-saver!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn’t lured that
+blighter into riotous living.”
+
+“I fancy you are right, sir.”
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don’t you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+“Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“That pink tie!”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“Burn it!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“And, Jeeves!”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!”
+
+“Thank you very much, sir.”
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “it isn’t enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?”
+
+“Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion—fifty dollars.”
+
+“Fifty dollars?”
+
+“It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship.”
+
+“You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it.”
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+“Take this, Jeeves,” I said; “fifty isn’t enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you’re—well, you absolutely stand alone!”
+
+“I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I’ve sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I’ve wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It’s not so bad
+now I’m in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who’s
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what’s more, he can always be counted on to extend himself on
+behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance, of
+dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out.”
+
+“Oh?” I said.
+
+“Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated.”
+
+“What, pipped?”
+
+“He gave that impression, sir.”
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn’t apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided—rightly or wrongly—to grow a moustache and this had
+cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn’t stick the thing at any price, and
+I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till
+I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while there’s
+no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves’s judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many’s the
+time I’ve given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet’s staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you’ve simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+“He said that he would call again later, sir.”
+
+“Something must be up, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+“I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth’s uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir.”
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky’s uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one’s pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn’t all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most
+extraordinarily gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a
+tree. But, though we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I
+really knew about him was that he was generally hard up, and had an
+uncle who relieved the strain a bit from time to time by sending him
+monthly remittances.
+
+“If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle,” I said, “why hasn’t he a title?
+Why isn’t he Lord What-Not?”
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace’s late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards.”
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+“Is Mr. Bickersteth’s father dead, too?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Leave any money?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky’s people hadn’t left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one’s ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+“Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned,” I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+“Halloa, Bicky!” I said. “Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What’s the
+trouble, Bicky?”
+
+“I’m in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice.”
+
+“Say on, old lad!”
+
+“My uncle’s turning up to-morrow, Bertie.”
+
+“So Jeeves told me.”
+
+“The Duke of Chiswick, you know.”
+
+“So Jeeves told me.”
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+“Jeeves seems to know everything.”
+
+“Rather rummily, that’s exactly what I was thinking just now myself.”
+
+“Well, I wish,” said Bicky gloomily, “that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I’m in.”
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves,” I said, “and wants you
+to rally round.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+“Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that.”
+
+“I shouldn’t worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don’t you, Jeeves?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Eh!” said Bicky, rattled.
+
+“I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?”
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+“How the deuce do you know anything about it?”
+
+“I chanced to meet his grace’s butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door.”
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+“Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there’s no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it’s called. I didn’t
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don’t you know, I had to have that
+remittance.”
+
+“I get you absolutely, dear boy.”
+
+“Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I’ve been ever since. He thinks I’m
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don’t you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?”
+
+“You see,” said Bicky, “I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me—to save hotel bills, I suppose. I’ve always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can’t have him to stay at my boarding-house.”
+
+“Thought of anything, Jeeves?” I said.
+
+“To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?”
+
+“I’ll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man.”
+
+“Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth——”
+
+“No, by Jove!” said Bicky firmly. “I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I’m not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it’s my boast
+that I don’t owe a penny to a single soul—not counting tradesmen, of
+course.”
+
+“I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth’s employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth’s guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir.”
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+“I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace on
+board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+“How does he do it, Bertie?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it’s something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!”
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn’t much
+after nine by the time I’d dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he’d got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn’t seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+“The duke has arrived, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“That’ll be him at the door now.”
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+“How do you do, sir?” I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. “Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name’s Wooster, don’t you know. Great pal of
+Bicky’s, and all that sort of thing. I’m staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea.”
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+“Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“It must be terribly expensive.”
+
+“Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know.”
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+“A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!” He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. “Have you any idea how much
+my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+“About two hundred dollars a month, I believe.”
+
+“What! Forty pounds a month!”
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent’s underwear.
+
+“I suppose it seems rummy to you,” I said, “but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn’t have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don’t you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it’s quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!”
+
+“I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew’s business, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+“Oh, just business, don’t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.” I slid for the door.
+“Awfully sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere.”
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+“Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?”
+
+“He’s upstairs now, having some tea.”
+
+“What does he think of it all?”
+
+“He’s absolutely rattled.”
+
+“Ripping! I’ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later.”
+
+“Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.”
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+“Where’s everybody, Jeeves?” I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. “Gone out?”
+
+“His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant’s Tomb.”
+
+“I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going—what?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans.”
+
+“Not altogether, sir.”
+
+“What’s his trouble now?”
+
+“The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir.”
+
+“Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?”
+
+“Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth’s monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance.”
+
+“Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful.”
+
+“Somewhat disturbing, sir.”
+
+“I never expected anything like this!”
+
+“I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir.”
+
+“I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?”
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir.”
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+“We must do something, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Can you think of anything?”
+
+“Not at the moment, sir.”
+
+“There must be something we can do.”
+
+“It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir—as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before—the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there is
+always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion—he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship’s aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth’s
+difficulty, sir.”
+
+“Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!”
+
+“I will spare no pains, sir.”
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call “some blunt instrument.”
+
+“This is a bit thick, old thing—what!” I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn’t anything in it.
+
+“I’m done, Bertie!” he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn’t seem to do him any good.
+
+“If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month’s money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I’ve been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars and
+start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen—call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every day
+of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen
+costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every seven
+eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of
+the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have more
+chickens. Why, in no time you’d have the place covered knee-deep in
+hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You’d make
+a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!” He had begun to get quite
+worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair at
+this juncture with a good deal of gloom. “But, of course, it’s no
+good,” he said, “because I haven’t the cash.”
+
+“You’ve only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top.”
+
+“Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I’m not going to sponge on you.”
+
+That’s always the way in this world. The chappies you’d like to lend
+money to won’t let you, whereas the chappies you don’t want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I’ve had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many’s the time, back in London, I’ve hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I’ve
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn’t care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+“Well, there’s only one hope, then.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You’re sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I’m used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I’ve bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+“Did you call, sir?”
+
+“Oh, there you are, Jeeves!”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?”
+
+“Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace’s
+potentialities as a source of revenue.”
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+“I do not allude, sir,” explained Jeeves, “to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present—if I may say
+so—useless property, which is capable of being developed.”
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I’m bound to say I didn’t
+get it myself.
+
+“Couldn’t you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!”
+
+“In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee—let us say two
+dollars or three—for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace.”
+
+Bicky didn’t seem to think much of it.
+
+“Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?”
+
+“I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours.”
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+“If you think it could be done——”
+
+“I feel convinced of it, sir.”
+
+“What do you think, Bertie?”
+
+“I’m for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir.”
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a
+money-making proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul
+time those Stock Exchange chappies must have when the public isn’t
+biting freely. Nowadays I read that bit they put in the financial
+reports about “The market opened quietly” with a sympathetic eye, for,
+by Jove, it certainly opened quietly for us! You’d hardly believe how
+difficult it was to interest the public and make them take a flutter on
+the old boy. By the end of the week the only name we had on our list
+was a delicatessen-store keeper down in Bicky’s part of the town, and
+as he wanted us to take it out in sliced ham instead of cash that
+didn’t help much. There was a gleam of light when the brother of
+Bicky’s pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money down, for an introduction
+to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through, owing to its turning out
+that the chap was an anarchist and intended to kick the old boy instead
+of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me the deuce of a time to
+persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things take their course.
+He seemed to regard the pawnbroker’s brother rather as a sportsman and
+benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I’m inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn’t been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don’t think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+“Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?”
+
+“It’s all off. We’ve decided to chuck it.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“It won’t work. We can’t get anybody to come.”
+
+“I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir.”
+
+“Do you mean to say you’ve managed to get anybody?”
+
+“Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir.”
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+“Birdsburg?”
+
+“Birdsburg, Missouri, sir.”
+
+“How did you get them?”
+
+“I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir—a large blue button with the words ‘Boost for
+Birdsburg’ upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman’s evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name of
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+“Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?”
+
+“I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party.”
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+“Payable in advance?”
+
+“No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful.”
+
+“Well, any way, when we get it I’ll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky’ll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?”
+
+“I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright.”
+
+“All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You know, you’re a bit of a marvel, Jeeves.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Right-o!”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+“Uncle,” he said, “are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I’ve asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don’t you
+know.”
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+“There will be no reporters among them?”
+
+“Reporters? Rather not! Why?”
+
+“I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again.”
+
+“That’ll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won’t be a newspaper-man
+in the place.”
+
+“In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends.”
+
+“You’ll shake hands with them and so forth?”
+
+“I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse.”
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town’s new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke’s society by Jeeves’s stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss’s eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction—all except one chappie, who seemed to be brooding
+about something—and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+“What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?” asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+“I have never been to Birdsburg.”
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+“You should pay it a visit,” he said. “The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!”
+
+“Boost for Birdsburg!” said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+“Say!”
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+“As a matter of business,” said the chappie—“mind you, I’m not
+questioning anybody’s good faith, but, as a matter of strict business—I
+think this gentleman here ought to put himself on record before
+witnesses as stating that he really is a duke.”
+
+“What do you mean, sir?” cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+“No offence, simply business. I’m not saying anything, mind you, but
+there’s one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name’s Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you’re
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn’t he Lord Percy Something? I’ve read
+English novels, and I know all about it.”
+
+“This is monstrous!”
+
+“Now don’t get hot under the collar. I’m only asking. I’ve a right to
+know. You’re going to take our money, so it’s only fair that we should
+see that we get our money’s worth.”
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+“You’re quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we’ve a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know——”
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+“I can assure you that I know nothing of this,” he said, quite
+politely. “I should be grateful if you would explain.”
+
+“Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens of
+Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands with
+you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my friend
+Simms here means—and I’m with him—is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth’s word for it—and he is a stranger to us—that you are the
+Duke of Chiswick at all.”
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+“Allow me to assure you, sir,” he said, in a rummy kind of voice, “that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick.”
+
+“Then that’s all right,” said the chappie heartily. “That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on.”
+
+“I am sorry to say,” said old Chiswick, “that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused.”
+
+“But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you.”
+
+“I fear I must disappoint them.”
+
+“But in that case the deal would have to be off.”
+
+“That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss.”
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+“You really won’t meet the rest of them?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Well, then, I guess we’ll be going.”
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+“Well?”
+
+Bicky didn’t seem to have anything to say.
+
+“Was it true what that man said?”
+
+“Yes, uncle.”
+
+“What do you mean by playing this trick?”
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+“I think you’d better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top.”
+
+Bicky’s Adam’s-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+“You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it’s an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+“Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically——”
+
+“What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man.”
+
+“Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir,” I said, helping the chappie out.
+“The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that
+remittance of yours, and when you cut it off, don’t you know, he was
+pretty solidly in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in
+on a bit of the ready pretty quick. That’s why we thought of this
+handshaking scheme.”
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+“So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!”
+
+“Poor old Bicky didn’t want to go to that ranch,” I explained. “He
+doesn’t like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don’t you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to——”
+
+“After what has happened? After this—this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!”
+
+“But——”
+
+“Not a penny!”
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+“If I might make a suggestion, sir?”
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+“Go ahead, Jeeves!” I said.
+
+“I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers.”
+
+“By Jove!” I said.
+
+“By George!” said Bicky.
+
+“Great heavens!” said old Chiswick.
+
+“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+“Jeeves is right. I’ll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it. They
+eat that sort of stuff.”
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+“I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!”
+
+“That’s all very well,” said Bicky, wonderfully braced, “but if I can’t
+get the money any other way——”
+
+“Wait! Er—wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something.”
+
+“I won’t go to that bally ranch.”
+
+“No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I—I think——”
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. “I—I think that, on
+the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I—I
+might—in fact, I think I see my way to doing—to—I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position.”
+
+“I shouldn’t mind that.”
+
+“I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure——”
+
+“The only figure I’ll recognize,” said Bicky firmly, “is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly.”
+
+“My dear boy!”
+
+“Absolutely!”
+
+“But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to—in fact, you
+would be in an exceedingly advantageous position.”
+
+“Five hundred a year!” said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. “Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There’s
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don’t sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don’t think I’m going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o’ goblins a
+year—what?”
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick’s face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. “Very well, my boy,” he said.
+
+“What-o!” said Bicky. “All right, then.”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. “Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“It beats me how you do it.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“The only trouble is you haven’t got much out of it—what!”
+
+“I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends—I judge from his remarks—to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so.”
+
+“It isn’t enough, Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+“Bring my shaving things.”
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie’s eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+“You mean, sir?”
+
+“And shave off my moustache.”
+
+There was a moment’s silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most
+interesting story. I can’t put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don’t have to, don’t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you’re a man you mustn’t miss it, because it’ll be a warning to you;
+and if you’re a woman you won’t want to, because it’s all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you’re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie’s, you’ll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and—half an hour before
+the time we’d fixed—a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to see
+that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct. By
+doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn’t altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that’s what I thought. But there was another way which hadn’t
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn’t know what’s at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married—with a sort of whoop, as
+if it were the greatest fun in the world—and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn’t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don’t know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand’s turn in his life
+there’s undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn’t
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar’s and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I’ve never worked myself—my name’s
+Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My
+uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left
+me a sizable chunk of bullion—I say I’ve never worked myself, but I
+admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don’t now, but we’ll come
+to that later. I’m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn’t noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn’t forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let’s brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn’t
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn’t see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it’s just here
+that love’s young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking—well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d’-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn’t begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+“Here’s old Reggie, dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I’ll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now—what?”
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+“I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Quite a
+jolly little party it was—not. I’m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that
+sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew
+that she was working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself
+in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what’s-its-name in
+her hair and everything else she possessed to have one good scream—just
+one. I’ve sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that
+one had the rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I
+grabbed my hat and got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn’t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+“Do you know how long I’ve been married?” he said.
+
+I didn’t exactly.
+
+“About a year, isn’t it?”
+
+“Not _about_ a year,” he said sadly. “Exactly a year—yesterday!”
+
+Then I understood. I saw light—a regular flash of light.
+
+“Yesterday was——?”
+
+“The anniversary of the wedding. I’d arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I’d
+forgotten, but I couldn’t think what?”
+
+“Till your wife mentioned it?”
+
+He nodded——
+
+“She—mentioned it,” he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn’t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary’s may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren’t half-hearted about it.
+
+“To be absolutely frank, old top,” said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, “my stock’s pretty low at home.”
+
+There didn’t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn’t want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller’s. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie’s married life. Of course, one’s always mildly interested in
+one’s friends’ marriages, hoping they’ll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn’t like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn’t like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn’t be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear
+old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn’t. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn’t nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn’t made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don’t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he’s been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he’s
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can’t
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her—it may have been a
+book.
+
+“It’s such a little thing to make a fuss about,” said Bobbie. “And she
+knows that it’s simply because I’ve got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can’t remember anything. Never could.”
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+“Oh, by the way,” he said.
+
+“What’s this for?” I asked, though I knew.
+
+“I owe it you.”
+
+“How’s that?” I said.
+
+“Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd.”
+
+“So you do remember some things?” I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+“Subside, laddie,” I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+“What you’ve got to do, my old college chum,” I said, “is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you’re
+due for a nasty knock before you know what’s hit you. You’ve got to
+make an effort. Don’t say you can’t. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you’ve
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can’t get out of it.”
+
+“I suppose you’re right,” said Bobbie. “But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What’s it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls.”
+
+“That’s not enough for a woman,” I said. “They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you’re all right. Forget it, and there’ll be
+trouble.”
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+“Women are frightfully rummy,” he said gloomily.
+
+“You should have thought of that before you married one,” I said.
+
+I don’t see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he’d have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by
+argument. If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting
+it, the only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him.
+After that you may get a chance. But till then there’s nothing to be
+done. But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn’t get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he’d come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I’d know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn’t till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it—in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other—most interesting it is; I often do it—when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+“Reggie,” he said. “Reggie, old top, she’s gone!”
+
+“Gone!” I said. “Who?”
+
+“Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!”
+
+“Where?” I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+“Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.”
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+“Go on,” said Bobbie. “Read it.”
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+“MY DEAR BOBBIE,—I am going away. When you care enough about me to
+remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will come
+back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_.”
+
+
+I read it twice, then I said, “Well, why don’t you?”
+
+“Why don’t I what?”
+
+“Why don’t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn’t seem much to
+ask.”
+
+“But she says on her birthday.”
+
+“Well, when is her birthday?”
+
+“Can’t you understand?” said Bobbie. “I’ve forgotten.”
+
+“Forgotten!” I said.
+
+“Yes,” said Bobbie. “Forgotten.”
+
+“How do you mean, forgotten?” I said. “Forgotten whether it’s the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?”
+
+“I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That’s how near I get to it.”
+
+“Think.”
+
+“Think? What’s the use of saying ‘Think’? Think I haven’t thought? I’ve
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter.”
+
+“And you can’t remember?”
+
+“No.”
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+“Well, Bobbie,” I said, “it’s a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, ‘Mr. Holmes, here’s a case for you. When is my wife’s
+birthday?’ Wouldn’t that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can’t shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can’t you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month.”
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+“It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.”
+
+“Warm?”
+
+“Warmish.”
+
+“Or cold?”
+
+“Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can’t remember.”
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective’s Manual. “You’re a great help, Bobbie,” I said. “An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without which
+no home is complete.”
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing’s done.”
+
+“Absolutely. What did you give her?”
+
+He sagged.
+
+“I can’t remember,” he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you’re right off, others it’s as
+easy as falling off a log. I don’t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever had
+two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did it
+without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_? There’s one
+for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong
+points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie’s idea
+was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out
+which month hit off Mary’s character. That would give us the month, and
+narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn’t a single month that didn’t have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, “December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive
+travellers.” Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had
+travelled quite extensively enough for Bobbie’s needs. Then, October
+people were “born with original ideas” and “loved moving.” You couldn’t
+have summed up Mary’s little jaunt more neatly. February people had
+“wonderful memories”—Mary’s speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were “inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life”; but I plumped for February, because February women
+“are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates.” Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, “The Soul’s Awakening”? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, “Surely that
+is George’s step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?” Well, Bobbie had
+a soul’s awakening too. I don’t suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before—not really _think_. But now he was wearing his brain
+to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow human
+being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was all
+for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “I’m on the trail. This time I’m convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I’ve remembered something of vital importance.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that on Mary’s last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?”
+
+“It’s a fine bit of memorizing,” I said; “but how does it help?”
+
+“Why, they change the programme every week there.”
+
+“Ah!” I said. “Now you are talking.”
+
+“And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One’s
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren’t we? Reggie, I’m going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I’m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar.”
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+“I told you it was May,” said Bobbie. “Maybe you’ll listen to me
+another time.”
+
+“If you’ve any sense,” I said, “there won’t be another time.”
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn’t.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing
+it. I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang.
+It was Bobbie, of course. He didn’t apologize.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “I’ve got it now for certain. It’s just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“Well, don’t you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “if they didn’t have daily matinees at the Coliseum.”
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+“Bobbie,” I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I’ve remembered something too. It’s this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque.”
+
+“But I’m always writing cheques.”
+
+“You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth.”
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “you’re a genius. I’ve always said so. I believe
+you’ve got it. Hold the line.”
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+“Halloa!” he said.
+
+“I’m here,” I said.
+
+“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I——”
+
+“Topping,” I said. “Good night.”
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.
+
+“It’s late,” said the man at the other end.
+
+“And getting later every minute,” I said. “Buck along, laddie.”
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+“What is the matter?” said Mary’s voice.
+
+“My feet are cold,” I said. “But I didn’t call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I’ve just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”
+
+“Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?”
+
+“Yes. He’s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.”
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I’ve often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don’t
+you know. Bobbie’s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie’s scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+“He’s remembered it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Well, I hadn’t.
+
+“Mr. Pepper.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+“Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and——”
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don’t you know, and all that. But I’d got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it
+means all the bad words she’d love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can’t——”
+
+“But——”
+
+“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) “It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man.”
+
+“But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly——”
+
+“I thought it hateful, abominable.”
+
+“But you said it was absolutely top——”
+
+“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn’t mean it. I don’t
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony——”
+
+“But——!”
+
+“When one single word would have——”
+
+“But you made me promise not to——” I bleated.
+
+“And if I did, do you suppose I didn’t expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?”
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the
+old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+“He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute.”
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don’t want to bore you, don’t you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I’m not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I’ll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I’ve finished, so that’ll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don’t you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy’s a fellow who writes
+plays—a deuced brainy sort of fellow—and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn’t say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn’t let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn’t stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+“Change of scene is what you want, old scout,” I said. “Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I’ve taken a cottage there. Jimmy’s coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We’ll be a cosy party.”
+
+“He’s absolutely right,” said Jimmy. “Change of scene’s the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, ‘Come back. Muriel.’ Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn’t remember girl’s surname; so never
+answered at all.”
+
+But Freddie wouldn’t be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It’s in Dorsetshire. It isn’t what you’d call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o’clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn’t drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They’d hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn’t anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn’t chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing “The Rosary” with one
+finger. He couldn’t play anything except “The Rosary,” and he couldn’t
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he’d have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, “I’ve seen her.”
+
+“Seen her?” I said. “What, Miss West?”
+
+“I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!”
+
+He started “The Rosary” again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away.”
+
+“Go away?” I said. “Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong.”
+
+“She cut me.”
+
+“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”
+
+“She looked clean through me!”
+
+“Of course she did. But don’t mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I’ll see you through. Now, what you want,” I said, “is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want——”
+
+“But what’s she going to thank me timidly for?”
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+“Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,” I said.
+
+“I can’t swim,” said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don’t you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I’ve heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn’t a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don’t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn’t be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her “aunt.” So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I’m a chump. Well, I
+don’t mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you’d least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that’s what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn’t with him. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don’t you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl’s gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don’t you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn’t absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+“Stop it!” he said. “Do you think nobody’s got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?”
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+“Well?” said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+“You’re not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie,” he said
+handsomely. “I’m bound to say this seems pretty good.”
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don’t know when I’ve felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn’t a friend in the world.
+
+“Hello!” I said. “Couldn’t you find her?”
+
+“Yes, I found her,” he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+“Well, then——?”
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+“This isn’t her cousin, you idiot!” he said.
+
+“He’s no relation at all. He’s just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life.”
+
+“What! Who is he, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Oh, Lord, I’ve had a time! Thank goodness you’ll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That’s my only consolation. I’ll come and jeer at you
+through the bars.”
+
+“Tell me all, old boy,” I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then—well, she didn’t actually call
+him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of way
+that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+“And mind, this is your affair,” he concluded. “I’m not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you’d better go and find
+the kid’s parents and return him before the police come for you.”
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It’s a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You’d have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn’t till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people’s heads that I
+wasn’t standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, “Hi!”
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+“Hi!” it shouted again.
+
+“What the deuce do you mean by ‘Hi’?” I said.
+
+“You can’t come in,” said the face. “Hello, is that Tootles?”
+
+“My name is not Tootles, and I don’t want to come in,” I said. “Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I’ve brought back your son.”
+
+“I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see ’oo!”
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+“Hi!”
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+“Do you live here?” said the face.
+
+“I’m staying here for a few weeks.”
+
+“What’s your name?”
+
+“Pepper. But——”
+
+“Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?”
+
+“My uncle. But——”
+
+“I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now.”
+
+“I wish you were,” I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+“This is most fortunate,” he said. “We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper’s has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days.”
+
+“May!”
+
+“He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles.”
+
+“I haven’t got a wife,” I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don’t you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+“Hi!”
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey’s.”
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the
+situation. Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon’s
+retreat from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie’s Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, “Wah!”
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+“Well, baby?” she said, bending down to him. “So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning,” she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don’t you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant’s father.
+
+I hadn’t expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn’t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+“Well,” he said, when he had finished, “say something! Heavens! man,
+why don’t you say something?”
+
+“You don’t give me a chance, old top,” I said soothingly.
+
+“What are you going to do about it?”
+
+“What can we do about it?”
+
+“We can’t spend our time acting as nurses to this—this exhibit.”
+
+He got up.
+
+“I’m going back to London,” he said.
+
+“Freddie!” I cried. “Freddie, old man!” My voice shook. “Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?”
+
+“I would. This is your business, and you’ve got to manage it.”
+
+“Freddie,” I said, “you’ve got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn’t leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner.”
+
+He sat down again.
+
+“Oh, well,” he said resignedly.
+
+“Besides, old top,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, don’t you
+know?”
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, in a strained voice, “one moment. I’ll stand a good
+deal, but I won’t stand for being expected to be grateful.”
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple—a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+“And after all,” I said, “there’s lots to be said for having a child
+about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic—what!”
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie’s trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+“For me,” he said, “the hotel. I can’t write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?”
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+“I might work this up for the stage,” he said. “It wouldn’t make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce.”
+
+“Farce!” snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+“Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like—that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I’ll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie.”
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story—the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+“What!” he said. “Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It’s the
+old ‘Tiny Hand’ business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It’s big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?”
+
+“He can play a little of ‘The Rosary’ with one finger.”
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+“No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest’s all right.
+Look here.” He squatted in the sand. “This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed’s the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child’s line. Child speaks like, ‘Boofer lady, does i’oo love
+dadda?’ Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment.
+Freddie crosses L., takes girl’s hand. Business of swallowing lump in
+throat. Then big speech. ‘Ah, Marie,’ or whatever her name
+is—Jane—Agnes—Angela? Very well. ‘Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too
+long? A little child rebukes us! Angela!’ And so on. Freddie must work
+up his own part. I’m just giving you the general outline. And we must
+get a good line for the child. ‘Boofer lady, does ’oo love dadda?’
+isn’t definite enough. We want something more—ah! ‘Kiss Freddie,’
+that’s it. Short, crisp, and has the punch.”
+
+“But, Jimmy, old top,” I said, “the only objection is, don’t you know,
+that there’s no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn’t come within a mile of him.”
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+“That’s awkward,” he said. “Well, we shall have to make it an exterior
+set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach
+somewhere, when we’re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid
+letter-perfect. First rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp
+to-morrow.”
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn’t
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+“The chief difficulty,” said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, “is to establish a connection in the kid’s mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success.”
+
+I’ve often thought, don’t you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he’d been an old professional. And then he’d
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+“We must hurry up, Jimmy,” I said. “The kid’s uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away.”
+
+“And we haven’t an understudy,” said Jimmy. “There’s something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid’s a bad study. I’ve known
+deaf-mutes who would have learned the part quicker.”
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn’t
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+“We’re not nearly ready,” said Jimmy. “To-day, for instance, he said
+‘Kick Freddie.’ That’s not going to win any girl’s heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet.”
+
+But, by George, we didn’t. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody’s fault—certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie had
+settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house
+to exercise it, when, just as we’d got out to the veranda, along came
+the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual yell
+at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+“Hello, baby!” she said. “Good morning,” she said to me. “May I come
+up?”
+
+She didn’t wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don’t you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn’t even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+“We were just going down to the beach,” I said.
+
+“Yes?” said the girl. She listened for a moment. “So you’re having your
+piano tuned?” she said. “My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he’s finished here?”
+
+“Er—not yet!” I said. “Not yet, if you don’t mind. He can’t bear to be
+disturbed when he’s working. It’s the artistic temperament. I’ll tell
+him later.”
+
+“Very well,” she said, getting up to go. “Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.”
+
+“Don’t you think—shouldn’t we be going on to the beach?” I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+“The beach,” I babbled.
+
+“See what I’ve brought for you, baby,” she said. And, by George, don’t
+you know, she held up in front of the kid’s bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he yelled. “Kiss Fweddie!”
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called “business of outstretched hands” towards
+it.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he shrieked.
+
+“What does this mean?” said the girl, turning to me.
+
+“You’d better give it to him, don’t you know,” I said. “He’ll go on
+till you do.”
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+“What does it mean?” said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don’t you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn’t any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner’s dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: “_Please_ don’t apologize.
+It’s nothing,” and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Angela looked.
+
+“_Well?_” she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, “Oh, well, it was this way.” And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World’s Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction “exit” was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+“Hello, Reggie!” he said. “I was just coming to you. Where’s the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day.”
+
+“No good,” I said sadly. “It’s all over. The thing’s finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show.”
+
+“Tell me,” said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+“Fluffed in his lines, did he?” said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. “It’s
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late,” he said as we started. “Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and——”
+
+“Great Scot!” I cried. “Look!”
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer’s staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other’s arms.
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people’s business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn’t bore you,
+don’t you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an old
+sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself, my
+man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley’s
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George’s aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income—an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a chunk
+of o’ goblins is a pile. George’s uncle was in Monte Carlo, and had
+written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it struck
+me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at Monte
+Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don’t you know. Fix up
+his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George had
+tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were anchored
+in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the thing
+began at seven o’clock in the morning, when I was aroused from a
+dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: “Oh, Harold!” and a male voice “raised in anger,” as they
+say, which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules’s. I
+hardly recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly
+like you’d expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however,
+he evidently relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing
+going on in my midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+“Voules!” I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn’t have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+“Voules,” I said, “are you under the delusion that I’m going to be
+Queen of the May? You’ve called me early all right. It’s only just
+seven.”
+
+“I understood you to summon me, sir.”
+
+“I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside.”
+
+“I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice.”
+
+“It’s a wonder you didn’t raise the roof. Who was that with you?”
+
+“Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley’s maid.”
+
+“What was all the trouble about?”
+
+“I was breaking our engagement, sir.”
+
+I couldn’t help gaping. Somehow one didn’t associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I’d no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+“I think I’ll get up,” I said.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I can’t wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was a
+lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all the
+rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit pale
+and tired. She said she hadn’t slept well. That accounted for it.
+Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+“Seen George?” I asked.
+
+I couldn’t help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: “I’ve done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!”
+
+“I have not seen Mr. Lattaker,” she said.
+
+I didn’t pursue the subject. George’s stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day’s programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+“The poor, dear Prince!” she said.
+
+“What a shocking thing!” said old Marshall.
+
+“I knew him in Vienna,” said Mrs. Vanderley. “He waltzed divinely.”
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps “Serene”) had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on his
+way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed the
+habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and
+insensible in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken
+back to his yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+“This is going to do somebody no good,” I said. “What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they’ll catch the fellow?”
+
+“‘Later,’” read old Marshall, “‘the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.’ That’s the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can.”
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+“Good morning,” he said. “I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board—Mr. George Lattaker?”
+
+“Yes,” said Marshall. “He’s down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?”
+
+“He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business.”
+
+“Take a seat. He’ll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up.”
+
+I went down to George’s state-room.
+
+“George, old man!” I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What’s
+more, the bunk hadn’t been slept in. I don’t know when I’ve been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+“He isn’t there,” I said.
+
+“Not there!” said old Marshall. “Where is he, then? Perhaps he’s gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he’ll be back soon for breakfast. You’d better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?”
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+“Great Scot!” I cried.
+
+“‘Sh!” he whispered. “Anyone about?”
+
+“They’re all down at breakfast.”
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+“I say!” I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+“Did you do that? What did you do it for? What’s the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!”
+
+“Yes, old boy?”
+
+“I did a murder last night.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“It’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I——”
+
+“Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?”
+
+“About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn’t a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what’s-her-name—Mrs. Vanderley’s
+maid—Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?”
+
+“Never. I’ve been refused dozens——”
+
+“Then you won’t understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn’t wait. It might have been the ship’s cat. It
+wasn’t. It was Pilbeam.”
+
+“You kissed her?”
+
+“I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella.”
+
+“Great Scott!”
+
+“Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn’t care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I—It’s just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don’t remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I’ve lost my
+hat.”
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+“Read,” I said. “It’s all there.”
+
+He read.
+
+“Good heavens!” he said.
+
+“You didn’t do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?”
+
+“Reggie, this is awful.”
+
+“Cheer up. They say he’ll recover.”
+
+“That doesn’t matter.”
+
+“It does to him.”
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+“It says they’ve a clue.”
+
+“They always say that.”
+
+“But—My hat!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!”
+
+“George,” I said, “you mustn’t waste time. Oh!”
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+“Don’t do it!” he said, irritably. “Don’t bark like that. What’s the
+matter?”
+
+“The man!”
+
+“What man?”
+
+“A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He’s down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn’t give his name. I didn’t like the
+look of him from the first. It’s this fellow Sturgis. It must be.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“I feel it. I’m sure of it.”
+
+“Had he a hat?”
+
+“Of course he had a hat.”
+
+“Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?”
+
+“By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must get a
+move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your life
+out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _lèse-majesté_. It’s worse
+than hitting a policeman. You haven’t got a moment to waste.”
+
+“But I haven’t any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I’ll wire
+my uncle to meet me in——”
+
+“Look out,” I cried; “there’s someone coming!”
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+“What’s the matter!” I said. “What do you want?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker’s voice. A
+letter has arrived for him.”
+
+“He isn’t here.”
+
+“No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?”
+
+“No; give it to me. I’ll give it to him when he comes.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?”
+
+“He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir.”
+
+“Ah! That’s all, Voules.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+“Who was it?”
+
+“Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They’re all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth’s eating kippers.”
+
+“That’ll hold him for a bit. Full of bones.” He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+“Well, I’m hanged!” he said, as he finished.
+
+“Reggie, this is a queer thing.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+“My dear George—I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I think it
+is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious situation that
+has arisen in connection with the legacy which your father inherited
+from your Aunt Emily, and which you are expecting me, as trustee, to
+hand over to you, now that you have reached your twenty-fifth birthday.
+You have doubtless heard your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred,
+who was lost or kidnapped—which, was never ascertained—when you were
+both babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it was
+supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a letter
+purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos Ayres as the
+adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has only recently
+discovered his identity. He states that he is on his way to meet me,
+and will arrive any day now. Of course, like other claimants, he may
+prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile his intervention will, I fear,
+cause a certain delay before I can hand over your money to you. It will
+be necessary to go into a thorough examination of credentials, etc.,
+and this will take some time. But I will go fully into the matter with
+you when we meet.—Your affectionate uncle,
+
+
+“AUGUSTUS ARBUTT.”
+
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+“Why, old top,” I said, “this lets you out.”
+
+“Lets me out of half the darned money, if that’s what you mean. If this
+chap’s not an imposter—and there’s no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I’ve never heard my father say a word about him—we shall have to
+split the money. Aunt Emily’s will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his ‘offspring.’ I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.”
+
+“Why, you chump,” I said, “it’s going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you’ve got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash.”
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+“You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie.”
+
+“Ass!” I cried. “Don’t you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren’t exactly alike? Who’s to say you aren’t Alfred
+if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you up that you
+have a brother Alfred.”
+
+“And Alfred will be there to call me a liar.”
+
+“He won’t. It’s not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It’s only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective off
+the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning.”
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+“Why, I really do believe it would work,” he said.
+
+“Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I’ll
+swear George hadn’t one.”
+
+“And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you’re a genius.”
+
+“No, no.”
+
+“You _are_.”
+
+“Well, it’s only sometimes. I can’t keep it up.”
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+“What the devil are you doing here, Voules,” I said.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all.”
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+“Voules is all right,” I said. “Decent Voules! Voules wouldn’t give us
+away, would you, Voules?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You would?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“But, Voules, old man,” I said, “be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?”
+
+“Financially, sir, nothing.”
+
+“Whereas, by keeping quiet”—I tapped him on the chest—“by holding your
+tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum.”
+
+“Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?”
+
+“Oh, come!” I said.
+
+“How much?” said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn’t believe the way the man haggled.
+You’d have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He’d hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+“Did you meet him?” I asked.
+
+“Meet whom?” said old Marshall.
+
+“George’s twin-brother Alfred.”
+
+“I didn’t know George had a brother.”
+
+“Nor did he till yesterday. It’s a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He’s down in George’s state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It’ll amaze you, the likeness between them. You’ll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes.”
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren’t quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+“Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board,” said George.
+
+“It’s an amazing likeness,” said old Marshall.
+
+“Is my brother like me?” asked George amiably.
+
+“No one could tell you apart,” I said.
+
+“I suppose twins always are alike,” said George. “But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?”
+
+“He’s a dear old pal of mine.”
+
+“You’ve been swimming with him perhaps?”
+
+“Every day last August.”
+
+“Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn’t you?” He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+“Has George a mole like that?” he asked.
+
+“No,” I said. “Oh, no.”
+
+“You would have noticed it if he had?”
+
+“Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.”
+
+“I’m glad of that,” said George. “It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one’s own identity.”
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn’t get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn’t a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+“It’s all right,” he said. “What did I tell you?”
+
+“What did you tell me?”
+
+“Why, about Stella. Didn’t I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then——”
+
+“You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours.”
+
+“Perhaps I did,” said George modestly, “I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn’t to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point.”
+
+“And it’s all right?”
+
+“Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root.”
+
+“I fancy he thinks that you’re bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you.”
+
+“He’s an absolute nuisance,” said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+“It’s my uncle,” said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+“Halloa, George!” he said. “Get my letter?”
+
+“I think you are mistaking me for my brother,” said George. “My name is
+Alfred Lattaker.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“I am George’s brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?”
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+“You’re very like George,” he said.
+
+“So everyone tells me.”
+
+“And you’re really Alfred?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“I’d like to talk business with you for a moment.”
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Voules. “If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off.”
+
+I’m bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch—George didn’t show up—and as I was going out I was waylaid
+by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?”
+
+I didn’t see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+“Yes, I have given him the afternoon off.”
+
+She broke down—absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I’m
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I’d said, “There, there!”
+which didn’t seem to help much, I hadn’t any remarks to make.
+
+“He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for.”
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn’t have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was at
+the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview
+George. There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred.
+Voules’s mind had got to be eased as Stella’s had been. I couldn’t
+afford to lose a fellow with his genius for preserving a
+trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow’s face being sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
+care? George’s was like that. He looked green.
+
+“Finished with your uncle?” I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+“There isn’t any uncle,” he said. “There isn’t any Alfred. And there
+isn’t any money.”
+
+“Explain yourself, old top,” I said.
+
+“It won’t take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the trust
+money. He’s been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When the time
+came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he went to the
+tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last remnant of the
+stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while and postponing
+the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he invented this
+twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner or later, but
+meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America, which he has
+done. He’s on his way now.”
+
+“You let him go?”
+
+“What could I do? I can’t afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can’t prove there’s no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred.”
+
+“Well, you’ve made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway,” I said, to cheer him up.
+
+“What’s the good of that now? I’ve hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?”
+
+I pondered.
+
+“It looks to me, old top,” I said at last, “as if things were in a bit
+of a mess.”
+
+“You’ve guessed it,” said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life’s waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can’t tell when you may be going to get it. It’s all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That’s what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don’t you know. That’s all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o’clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening—old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I—when he
+came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was suggesting
+the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was worried. So was
+Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and I, only not for
+the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+“Mr. Marshall?” he said. “I am Count Fritz von Cöslin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness”—he clicked his heels together and saluted—“the Prince
+of Saxburg-Leignitz.”
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+“Why, Count,” she said, “what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?”
+
+“Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?”
+
+“Stella, you remember Count Fritz?”
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+“And how is the poor, dear Prince?” asked Mrs. Vanderley. “What a
+terrible thing to have happened!”
+
+“I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment.”
+
+“That’s good,” said old Marshall.
+
+“In a spoon only,” sighed the Count. “Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis.”
+
+“Mr. Who?”
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+“I am Denman Sturgis, at your service.”
+
+“The deuce you are! What are you doing here?”
+
+“Mr. Sturgis,” explained the Count, “graciously volunteered his
+services——”
+
+“I know. But what’s he doing here?”
+
+“I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“You have not found him?” asked the Count anxiously.
+
+“Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles.”
+
+“You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?”
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+“Don’t go mixing me up with my brother,” he said. “I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole.”
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said.
+
+George didn’t offer to console him,
+
+“Don’t worry,” said Sturgis. “He won’t escape me. I shall find him.”
+
+“Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man.”
+
+“What?” shouted George.
+
+“That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin.”
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+“I don’t understand,” he said feebly.
+
+“We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis,” went on the Count. “We leaped to the
+conclusion—was it not so?—that the owner of the hat you found was also
+the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard the
+story from His Serene Highness’s own lips. He was passing down a dark
+street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had
+been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My
+high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, ‘Where is my brave preserver?’ His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!”
+
+“Thanks,” said George limply.
+
+“And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker.”
+
+“He needn’t take all that trouble,” said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+“I’ll tell you where to find George Lattaker!” he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+“Yes, look at me,” he yelled. “Look at me. You won’t be the first this
+afternoon who’s stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I’ll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I’ll
+learn you to break a poor man’s heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over’eard ’im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They’d spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he’d swear George hadn’t one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can.”
+
+George got up.
+
+“I haven’t the least desire to deny it, Voules.”
+
+“Mr. Voules, if _you_ please.”
+
+“It’s true,” said George, turning to the Count. “The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness.”
+
+“Then you are really George Lattaker?” asked the Count.
+
+“I am.”
+
+“’Ere, what does all this mean?” demanded Voules.
+
+“Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules.”
+
+“It’s a swindle!” began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall’s
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+“Oh, Harold!” she cried. “I thought you were dead. I thought you’d shot
+yourself.”
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don’t you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+“Voules, you’re sacked,” I said.
+
+“Who cares?” he said. “Think I was going to stop on now I’m a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month’s notice and get
+your ’at, and I’ll take you to dinner at Ciro’s.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Lattaker,” said the Count, “may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver.”
+
+“You may,” said George. “May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?”
+
+There’s just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+“I’m not sure,” she was saying, “that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it.”
+
+“Don’t you?” said George. “Well, as it happens, I’m feeling just that
+way now.”
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+“Halloa, Reggie!” he said.
+
+“Halloa, George!” I said. “Lovely night.”
+
+“Beautiful,” said Stella.
+
+“The moon,” I said.
+
+“Ripping,” said George.
+
+“Lovely,” said Stella.
+
+“And look at the reflection of the stars on the——”
+
+George caught my eye. “Pop off,” he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about—and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of—the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it thrust on my notice, by
+George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows.
+And the limit was reached by that business of the Yeardsley “Venus.”
+
+To make you understand the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+“The Wedding Glide,” I’m hanged if she didn’t break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley—Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I’m bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I’m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,—What ages it seems since I saw anything of you.
+How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old house,
+with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn’t you
+run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so glad to see
+you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you again. He was
+speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come. Wire your train, and I
+will send the car to meet you.
+
+
+—Yours most sincerely,
+ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+
+“P.S.—We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+
+“P.P.S.—Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has ever
+played on.
+
+
+“P.P.S.S.—We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says it is
+better than St. Andrews.
+
+
+“P.P.S.S.S.—You _must_ come!”
+
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, as we drove off. “I was just
+about at my last grip.”
+
+“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.
+
+“If I had the artistic what’s-its-name,” he went on, “if the mere
+mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn’t be
+so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”
+
+“Pictures?”
+
+“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?”
+
+I remembered then—it hadn’t come back to me before—that most of my time
+with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the period
+when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to
+follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures
+are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never
+struck me that she would still be going on in this way after marrying
+an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere sight of a
+picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to old Bill.
+
+“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?”
+
+“A few days.”
+
+“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I
+was to come back after the match. But you couldn’t get me back with a
+lasso.”
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there’s a most corking links
+near here.”
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+“You don’t mean honestly she said that?”
+
+“She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.”
+
+“So I did. Was that all she said I said?”
+
+“Well, wasn’t it enough?”
+
+“She didn’t happen to mention that I added the words, ‘I don’t think’?”
+
+“No, she forgot to tell me that.”
+
+“It’s the worst course in Great Britain.”
+
+I felt rather stunned, don’t you know. Whether it’s a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can’t say, but I simply can’t do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I’m not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m glad the table’s
+good.”
+
+“It depends what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a
+seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence’s cue slipped.
+Elizabeth has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks,
+but it doesn’t improve the thing as a billiard-table.”
+
+“But she said you said——”
+
+“Must have been pulling your leg.”
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which
+brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and
+was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I’ve often heard that
+young married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had
+said there was nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill
+and Clarence’s father, but a woman who could take the name of St.
+Andrews in vain as she had done wouldn’t be likely to stick at a
+trifle.
+
+“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?”
+
+“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman’s figure
+appeared.
+
+“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.
+
+“Do you mean me?” I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea.”
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you’ll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s
+like.” Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She
+can’t have preferred _this_ to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set
+eyes on Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like
+princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?” said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.
+
+“Eh?” I said.
+
+“A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!”
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him, correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing.”
+
+“No,” said the father, shaking his head; “no mewing cat.”
+
+“I can’t bear mewing cats,” said Clarence. “A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!”
+
+“A mewing cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.
+
+“_I_ dislike mewing cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer——”
+
+They all shouted “What!” exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants——’”
+
+“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford——”
+
+“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been
+the ‘Venus’!”
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening’s chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn’t notice it before I don’t know, but it was not till
+Elizabeth showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the
+Yeardsley “Venus.” When she led me up to it, and switched on the light,
+it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without
+noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on
+the foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that
+I was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, “Reggie.”
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d’you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+“What-o?” I said nervously.
+
+“Reggie,” she said, “I want to ask a great favour of you.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?”
+
+There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you’d have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her. I
+admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn’t feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh, yes.”
+
+“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful.”
+
+“Yes,” I said.
+
+“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?”
+
+“Eh! Well, he still seems—er—_interested_ in them, what?”
+
+“Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.”
+
+“Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the——”
+
+“No, that wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something.”
+
+“I don’t quite follow. Get rid of something?”
+
+“The ‘Venus,’” said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+“You saw the ‘Venus,’” she said.
+
+“Not that I remember.”
+
+“Well, come into the dining-room.”
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+“There,” she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door—that may have been why I hadn’t noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it—was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you’d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean
+is—well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it’s funny I
+_hadn’t_ noticed it.
+
+“Is that the ‘Venus’?” I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it would affect me much. I’d worry
+through all right.”
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+“But you’re not an artist,” she said. “Clarence is.”
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn’t
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It’s like the Unwritten Law, don’t you know, which
+you plead in America if you’ve done anything they want to send you to
+chokey for and you don’t want to go. What I mean is, if you’re
+absolutely off your rocker, but don’t find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat’s Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this “Venus” was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a
+wedding present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All
+right so far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being
+a professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the “Venus.” He couldn’t stand it at any price.
+He didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the expression of the face.
+He didn’t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+“Now you see,” she said.
+
+“In a way,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?”
+
+“Oh, can’t you understand? Look!” Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley’s. “There!” she said. “Clarence painted that!”
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence’s effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+“Er—‘Venus’?” I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+“No. ‘Jocund Spring,’” she snapped. She switched off the light. “I see
+you don’t understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club.”
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+“I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t mean to be cross. Only I do want to make
+you understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose—suppose—well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to
+sit and listen to a cheap vulgar tune—the same tune—day after day, day
+after day, wouldn’t you expect his nerves to break! Well, it’s just
+like that with Clarence. Now you see?”
+
+“Yes, but——”
+
+“But what? Surely I’ve put it plainly enough?”
+
+“Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?”
+
+“I want you to steal the ‘Venus.’”
+
+I looked at her.
+
+“You want me to——?”
+
+“Steal it. Reggie!” Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Don’t you
+see? It’s Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it’s the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his ‘Venus.’ It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it
+to-night, Reggie. I’ll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the
+canvas out of the frame, and it’s done.”
+
+“But one moment,” I said. “I’d be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn’t it be better—in fact,
+how about tackling old Bill on the subject?”
+
+“I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.”
+
+“But if I’m caught?”
+
+“You can’t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room.”
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+“And as to the picture itself—when I’ve got it?”
+
+“Burn it. I’ll see that you have a good fire in your room.”
+
+“But——”
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+“Reggie,” she said; nothing more. Just “Reggie.”
+
+She looked at me.
+
+“Well, after all, if you see what I mean—The days that are no more,
+don’t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?”
+
+“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
+
+I don’t know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond
+necklaces. If you’re not, you’ll understand that I felt a lot less keen
+on the job I’d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy,
+than I had done when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On
+paper it all seemed easy enough, but I couldn’t help feeling there was
+a catch somewhere, and I’ve never known time pass slower. The kick-off
+was scheduled for one o’clock in the morning, when the household might
+be expected to be pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn’t
+stand it any longer. I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill’s bicycle,
+took a grip of my knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn’t have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill’s say, “Feeling better now?”
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+“What happened?” I said.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he said. “I hadn’t a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn’t stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you’re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?”
+
+“It was Elizabeth,” I said. “Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you.”
+
+“You don’t mean——”
+
+“The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.”
+
+“Reggie, old man,” he said. “I’ll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It’s a fool’s trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn’t repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to do
+a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn’t have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I’m
+sorry.”
+
+“Me, too,” I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+“Are you feeling better now?”
+
+“Better than I was. But that’s not saying much.”
+
+“Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let’s be quick about it too. You
+made a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it’s
+on the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.”
+
+“Heads.”
+
+“Tails it is,” he said, uncovering the coin. “Up you get. I’ll hold the
+light. Don’t spike yourself on that sword of yours.”
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+“We’ve got a long evening before us,” he said. “You can’t burn a
+picture of that size in one chunk. You’d set the chimney on fire. Let’s
+do the thing comfortably. Clarence can’t grudge us the stuff. We’ve
+done him a bit of good this trip. To-morrow’ll be the maddest, merriest
+day of Clarence’s glad New Year. On we go.”
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don’t know when I’ve had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+“I heard something,” he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+“There’s somebody in the dining-room,” I whispered.
+
+There’s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill’s like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn’t
+really heard anything after all. I’m a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+“Come on,” he said. “Bring the poker.”
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+“We’ll fling the door open and make a rush,” said Bill.
+
+“Supposing they shoot, old scout?”
+
+“Burglars never shoot,” said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence’s “Jocund Spring,”
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+“What on earth?” said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn’t know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+“Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I——”
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+“Clarence?” he said hesitatingly.
+
+“He’s in bed,” I said.
+
+“In bed! Then he doesn’t know? Even now—Young men, I throw myself on
+your mercy. Don’t be hard on me. Listen.” He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. “I can explain everything—everything.”
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+“You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me.” He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. “Young man,”
+he said, “you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?”
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don’t you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+“I won’t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,” I said. “I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean—what? _I_ know. But I’m afraid—Well, look!”
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+“The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have taken
+Clarence’s picture!” He paused. “It might have been mine! My Venus!” he
+whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know, but he had
+to know the truth.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, you know,” I said. “But it _was_.”
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+“Eh? What do you mean?”
+
+“They _did_ take your Venus.”
+
+“But I have it here.”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+“That’s Clarence’s ‘Jocund Spring,’” I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+“What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don’t know my own
+picture—my child—my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can you
+read, boy? Look: ‘Matthew Yeardsley.’ This is _my_ picture!”
+
+And—well, by Jove, it _was_, don’t you know!
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was
+Bill’s fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn’t be
+expected to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty
+massive silence for a bit.
+
+“Reggie,” said Bill at last, “how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?”
+
+“Old scout,” I said. “I was thinking much the same myself.”
+
+“Reggie,” said Bill, “I happen to know there’s a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn’t what you’d call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well—er—in the circumstances, how about
+it?”
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it’s all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages for
+pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he’s more
+like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who was
+apt to rally round him in times of need—a guide, don’t you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and—I rather fancy—friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn’t
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn’t know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don’t shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+Be!
+Be!
+    The past is dead.
+    To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+To-day!
+    Be with every nerve,
+            With every muscle,
+            With every drop of your red blood!
+Be!
+
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+“Read this, Bertie!” I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. “Wake up and read this!”
+
+I can’t read before I’ve had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It’s a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+“Tea, Jeeves.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He flowed silently out of the room—he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+“What is it?” I said. “What on earth’s the matter?”
+
+“Read it!”
+
+“I can’t. I haven’t had my tea.”
+
+“Well, listen then.”
+
+“Who’s it from?”
+
+“My aunt.”
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+“So what on earth am I to do?”
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+“Read it again, Rocky, old top,” I said. “I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd’s aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+“MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.—I have been thinking things over for a long
+while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been very
+thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made up my mind to
+do now.”
+
+
+“What do you make of that, Jeeves?”
+
+“It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication.”
+
+“It becomes as clear as mud!” said Rocky.
+
+“Proceed, old scout,” I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+“You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see for
+myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I fear that
+now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I am old and worn
+out. I seem to have no strength left in me.”
+
+
+“Sad, Jeeves, what?”
+
+“Extremely, sir.”
+
+“Sad nothing!” said Rocky. “It’s sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she’s a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She’s got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it’s
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is.”
+
+“Rather like the chappie whose heart was ‘in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,’ Jeeves?”
+
+“The cases are in some respects parallel, sir.”
+
+“Carry on, Rocky, dear boy.”
+
+“So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the city
+myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly thought of
+this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the Sunday paper about
+a young man who had longed all his life for a certain thing and won it
+in the end only when he was too old to enjoy it. It was very sad, and
+it touched me.”
+
+
+“A thing,” interpolated Rocky bitterly, “that I’ve not been able to do
+in ten years.”
+
+“As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now I
+have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I have
+now decided to do so—on one condition. I have written to a firm of
+lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you quite a
+substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you live in New
+York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do. I want you to be
+my representative, to spend this money for me as I should do myself. I
+want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic life of New York. I want you
+to be the life and soul of brilliant supper parties.
+    “Above all, I want you—indeed, I insist on this—to write me letters
+    at least once a week giving me a full description of all you are
+    doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at
+    second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for
+    myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.—Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+
+“ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER.”
+
+
+“What about it?” said Rocky.
+
+“What about it?” I said.
+
+“Yes. What on earth am I going to do?”
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+“Aren’t you bucked?” I said.
+
+“Bucked!”
+
+“If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you.”
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop!
+
+“Pretty soft!” he cried. “To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus’s dance, and imagine that they’re having a good time because
+they’re making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn’t come near the place if I hadn’t got
+to see editors occasionally. There’s a blight on it. It’s got moral
+delirium tremens. It’s the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!”
+
+I felt rather like Lot’s friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+“It would kill me to have to live in New York,” he went on. “To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To——” He started. “Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!”
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+“My dear chap!” I said reproachfully.
+
+“Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. “How many suits of evening clothes have I?”
+
+“We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets——”
+
+“Three.”
+
+“For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats.”
+
+“And shirts?”
+
+“Four dozen, sir.”
+
+“And white ties?”
+
+“The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir.”
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+“You see?”
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+“I won’t do it! I can’t do it! I’ll be hanged if I’ll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don’t
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?”
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+“Then, what are you going to do about it?” I said.
+
+“That’s what I want to know.”
+
+“You might write and explain to your aunt.”
+
+“I might—if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer’s in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will.”
+
+I saw his point.
+
+“What do you suggest, Jeeves?” I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+“The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence.”
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn’t been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn’t on to his curves.
+
+“Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?” he said. “I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What’s the
+idea?”
+
+“My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you’ve got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That’s it, isn’t it, Jeeves?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky’s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man’s vast intellect.
+
+“But who would do it?” he said. “It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things.”
+
+“Jeeves!” I said. “Let Jeeves do it.”
+
+“But would he?”
+
+“You would do it, wouldn’t you, Jeeves?”
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish’s.
+
+“I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York’s places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.”
+
+“Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer’s. It’s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way.”
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+“Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer’s. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.”
+
+“You see?” I said to Rocky. “Leave it to Jeeves. He knows.”
+
+It isn’t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright
+lights. I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a
+table on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well
+with a fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I’d never imagined he could
+look so nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere
+benevolence, and he was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond of
+old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky’s letters, based on Jeeves’s notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+“DEAR FREDDIE,—Well, here I am in New York. It’s not a bad place. I’m
+not having a bad time. Everything’s pretty all right. The cabarets
+aren’t bad. Don’t know when I shall be back. How’s everybody?
+Cheer-o!—Yours,
+
+
+“BERTIE.
+
+
+“PS.—Seen old Ted lately?”
+
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn’t dragged him in I couldn’t
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here’s old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+“DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,—How can I ever thank you enough for giving me the
+opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems more
+wonderful every day.
+    “Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!”
+
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn’t know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+“I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new place on
+Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie Cohan looked in
+about midnight and got off a good one about Willie Collier. Fred Stone
+could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks did all sorts of stunts
+and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was there, as usual, and Laurette
+Taylor showed up with a party. The show at the Revels is quite good. I
+am enclosing a programme.
+    “Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof——”
+
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it’s the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it’s easier for a chappie
+who’s used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there’s
+no doubt that Rocky’s correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+“Jeeves, you’re a wonder!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn’t tell
+you a thing about them, except that I’ve had a good time.”
+
+“It’s just a knack, sir.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Todd’s letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?”
+
+“Undoubtedly, sir,” agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn’t that he spoke loudly. He has one of those soft, soothing
+voices that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off
+sheep. It was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+“Miss Rockmetteller!”
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I’m not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father’s ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I’d
+come to look on Rocky’s aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn’t seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky’s aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I’ve ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+“Good afternoon,” I managed to say.
+
+“How do you do?” she said. “Mr. Cohan?”
+
+“Er—no.”
+
+“Mr. Fred Stone?”
+
+“Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name’s Wooster—Bertie
+Wooster.”
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+“Isn’t Rockmetteller home?” she said. “Where is he?”
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I
+couldn’t tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+“If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon.”
+
+“So he did, Jeeves; so he did,” I said, looking at my watch. “Did he
+say when he would be back?”
+
+“He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning.”
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I’d forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in
+England, has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it
+never fails to make my spine curl.
+
+“You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller’s?”
+
+“Oh, yes, rather!”
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+“Well, you need to be,” she said, “the way you treat his flat as your
+own!”
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I’d been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn’t,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber’s man come to
+fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her—my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea—the good old
+stand-by.
+
+“Would you care for a cup of tea?” I said.
+
+“Tea?”
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+“Nothing like a cup after a journey,” I said. “Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don’t you
+know. I’ll go and tell Jeeves.”
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves’s lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “we want some tea.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?”
+
+I wanted sympathy, don’t you know—sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+“She’s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?”
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+“No doubt because of Mr. Todd’s letters, sir,” he said. “It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city.”
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+“Well, it’s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I’m someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“It’s pretty rotten, you know.”
+
+“Most disturbing, sir.”
+
+“And there’s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We’ve got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train.”
+
+“I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant.”
+
+“By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!”
+
+“Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you.”
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was
+still bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like
+a hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in.
+There was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to
+me. I suppose because I wasn’t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a
+chap.
+
+“This is a surprise, what?” I said, after about five minutes’ restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+“What is a surprise?”
+
+“Your coming here, don’t you know, and so on.”
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+“Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?” she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+“Oh, rather,” I said. “Of course! Certainly. What I mean is——”
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There’s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn’t certain of one’s lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+“Tea, tea, tea—what? What?” I said.
+
+It wasn’t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+“Do you mean to say, young man,” she said frostily, “that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?”
+
+“Rather! Bucks you up, you know.”
+
+“What do you mean by the expression ‘Bucks you up’?”
+
+“Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.”
+
+“I don’t understand a word you say. You’re English, aren’t you?”
+
+I admitted it. She didn’t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn’t like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she’d have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can’t make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people, especially if
+one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+“Are you comfortable at your hotel?” I said.
+
+“At which hotel?”
+
+“The hotel you’re staying at.”
+
+“I am not staying at an hotel.”
+
+“Stopping with friends—what?”
+
+“I am naturally stopping with my nephew.”
+
+I didn’t get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+“What! Here?” I gurgled.
+
+“Certainly! Where else should I go?”
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn’t
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn’t explain that this wasn’t
+Rocky’s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+“Will you kindly tell my nephew’s man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down.”
+
+“Your nephew’s man-servant?”
+
+“The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns.”
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves’s den.
+
+“Jeeves!” I whispered.
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“She thinks you’re Mr. Todd’s man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don’t see what you’re to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can’t say anything or she’ll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don’t want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed.”
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+“It is hardly my place, sir——”
+
+“I know—I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it’s hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?”
+
+“Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?”
+
+“Good Lord! I hadn’t thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn’t looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?”
+
+“I will endeavour to do so, sir.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think there’s anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+“Good-bye, Jeeves,” I said.
+
+“Good-bye, sir.”
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people’s
+misfortunes if you’ve been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don’t you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I’ve been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn’t forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I’m not sure this didn’t
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn’t the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don’t know when I’ve
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said “Halloa!” five times, thinking he hadn’t got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+“Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I’m having a time!”
+
+“Where are you speaking from?”
+
+“The Midnight Revels. We’ve been here an hour, and I think we’re a
+fixture for the night. I’ve told Aunt Isabel I’ve gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She’s glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I’m nearly crazy.”
+
+“Tell me all, old top,” I said.
+
+“A little more of this,” he said, “and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It’s simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can’t play louder
+than the other. I’m a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours.”
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn’t struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+“You’ll ruin them!”
+
+“I hope so,” said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. “I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they’ve given me a bad enough time. They’re
+about three sizes too small, and something’s apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven’t
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don’t know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It’s taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I’ve hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it’s
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something’s got to be done, Bertie! You’ve got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it.”
+
+“Me! What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, Jeeves, then. It’s all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt’s just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she’s had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can’t stand it, Bertie!
+It’s got to end!”
+
+“Can’t Jeeves think of anything?”
+
+“No. He just hangs round saying: ‘Most disturbing, sir!’ A fat lot of
+help that is!”
+
+“Well, old lad,” I said, “after all, it’s far worse for me than it is
+for you. You’ve got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you’re saving a
+lot of money.”
+
+“Saving money? What do you mean—saving money?”
+
+“Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she’s paying
+all the expenses now, isn’t she?”
+
+“Certainly she is; but she’s stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she’s in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it’s
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I’ve
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it’s got a silver
+lining it’s some little dissembler!”
+
+“But, Rocky, old top, it’s too bally awful! You’ve no notion of what
+I’m going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat.”
+
+“Don’t come near the flat.”
+
+“But it’s my own flat.”
+
+“I can’t help that. Aunt Isabel doesn’t like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn’t do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she’ll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye.”
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+“Good morning, sir,” he said. “I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings.”
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+“Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?”
+
+“It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady.”
+
+“You know, Jeeves, say what you like—this is a bit thick, isn’t it?”
+
+“The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill.”
+
+“It can’t go on—this sort of thing—Jeeves.”
+
+“We must hope for the best, sir.”
+
+“Can’t you think of anything to do?”
+
+“I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts—the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve—in the first long drawer, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say you can’t think of anything, Jeeves?”
+
+“For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left.” He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. “A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.”
+
+“You understate it, Jeeves.”
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+“In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children’s savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire.”
+
+“I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves,” I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. “But I don’t see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.”
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+I’ve often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they’ve been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There’s a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the
+cabarets once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York’s a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn’t long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky’s. I saw him once at Peale’s, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn’t anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn’t difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn’t bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn’t blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: “What’s the use?” and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn’t come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+“Bertie, old scout,” said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+“we’ve always been pals, haven’t we? I mean, you know I’d do you a good
+turn if you asked me?”
+
+“My dear old lad,” I said. The man had moved me.
+
+“Then, for Heaven’s sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening.”
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+“My dear chap,” I said, “you know I’d do anything in reason; but——”
+
+“You must come, Bertie. You’ve got to. Something’s got to be done to
+divert her mind. She’s brooding about something. She’s been like that
+for the last two days. I think she’s beginning to suspect. She can’t
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the
+effect has worn off now, and she’s beginning to wonder again.
+Something’s got to be done, or she will find out everything, and if she
+does I’d take a nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later
+on. So, for the love of Mike, come across to our table and help things
+along.”
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+“You’ve met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?” said Rocky.
+
+“I have.”
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+“Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?”
+
+“Take a seat, Bertie. What’ll you have?” said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+“You’ll come along, won’t you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?”
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn’t in the contract, but there wasn’t
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and, though
+Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his best to
+supply dialogue, we weren’t a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+“Say when, Bertie.”
+
+“Stop!” barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky’s eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+“Leave it there, Rockmetteller!” said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+“The time has come to speak,” she said. “I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!”
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+“Eh?” he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+“The fault,” she said, “was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city.”
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie’s face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+“But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York.”
+
+“Jimmy Mundy!” I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and you
+suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I’d seen it happen before. I
+remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off to a
+meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front of a
+crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+“Yes; Jimmy Mundy!” she said. “I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they
+would have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his
+message. He has come to save New York from itself; to force it—in his
+picturesque phrase—to hit the trail. It was three days ago,
+Rockmetteller, that I first heard him. It was an accident that took me
+to his meeting. How often in this life a mere accident may shape our
+whole future!
+
+“You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained.”
+
+She gulped.
+
+“Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+“He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, ‘This means you!’ I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?”
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+“Y-yes,” he stammered; “I—I thought something was wrong.”
+
+“Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won’t you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won’t you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will——”
+
+I can’t help thinking it must have been that word “will” that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel’s. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+“Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Not to live in the country?”
+
+“Yes, Rockmetteller.”
+
+“Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?”
+
+“Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you—for my sake?”
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+“I will!” he said.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat,
+lying in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had
+just come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an
+hour before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she
+was the curse of; so we were alone at last. “Jeeves, there’s no place
+like home—what?”
+
+“Very true, sir.”
+
+“The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing—what?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+“Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled.”
+
+“Indeed, sir?”
+
+“When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!”
+
+“Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir.”
+
+“Your aunt? The hansom cab one?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller.”
+
+I was stunned by the man’s resource.
+
+“It’s brain,” I said; “pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Oh, well, then, it’s just a gift, I take it; and if you aren’t born
+that way there’s no use worrying.”
+
+“Precisely, sir,” said Jeeves. “If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir.”
+
+“All right, Jeeves.” I said humbly. “You know!”
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
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diff --git a/8164-0.txt~ b/8164-0.txt~
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: June 24, 2003 [eBook #8164]
+Last Updated: February 6, 2024
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+My Man Jeeves
+
+by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+1919
+
+
+Contents
+
+ LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+ JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+ JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+ ABSENT TREATMENT
+ HELPING FREDDIE
+ RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+ DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+ THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So
+capable. Honestly, I shouldn’t know what to do without him. On broader
+lines he’s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble
+battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked
+“Inquiries.” You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say:
+“When’s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?” and they
+reply, without stopping to think, “Two-forty-three, track ten, change
+at San Francisco.” And they’re right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you
+just the same impression of omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng’s.”
+
+“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”
+
+“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”
+
+“Unsuitable for you, sir.”
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and
+that’s all there is to it.
+
+But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.” I
+forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.’”
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I’d rather not, sir.”
+
+“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to put my shirt on him.”
+
+“I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after.”
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+“After this,” I said, “not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.”
+
+“Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.”
+
+And he has, by Jove! I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything. And that’s why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+“Leave it to Jeeves,” I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don’t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I’m
+bound to say that New York’s a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I’m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square—artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn’t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting—I’ve looked into the
+thing a bit—is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come
+along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until you’ve
+painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.
+Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
+comic papers—he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
+idea—and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
+His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the
+ear of a rich uncle—one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business.
+I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s apparently something the
+populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently
+large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky’s uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky’s uncle, you see, didn’t want him to be an artist. He didn’t
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn’t know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn’t have got this if his uncle hadn’t had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I’ve observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn’t do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More American
+Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that he would
+begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds gave out.
+Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let him talk
+about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked with old
+Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these
+little chats used to make Corky’s allowance all right for the time
+being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, “Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
+Singer,” the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, “Corky, how about your uncle?”
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can’t think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+“We’re so scared, Mr. Wooster,” said the girl. “We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him.”
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, “Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn’t going to hurt me.” She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, “There, there,
+little one!” or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you’re doing, you’re starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+“I don’t see why your uncle shouldn’t be most awfully bucked,” I said
+to Corky. “He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.”
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+“You don’t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn’t admit it.
+That’s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He’s always done it.”
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+“You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer’s acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along——”
+
+“But how can I work it that way?”
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+“There’s only one thing to do,” I said.
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Leave it to Jeeves.”
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+“Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+“Jeeves, we want your advice.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+I boiled down Corky’s painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+“So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer’s acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?”
+
+“Perfectly, sir.”
+
+“Well, try to think of something.”
+
+“I have thought of something already, sir.”
+
+“You have!”
+
+“The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay.”
+
+“He means,” I translated to Corky, “that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it’s going to cost a bit.”
+
+Naturally the poor chap’s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl’s melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+“You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,” I said. “Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.”
+
+“I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple’s
+attachment to ornithology.”
+
+“How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?”
+
+“It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned.”
+
+“Oh! Well?”
+
+“Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled—let
+us say—_The Children’s Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it to Mr.
+Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense, sir, and
+a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to eulogistic
+remarks concerning Mr. Worple’s own larger treatise on the same
+subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to
+Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable.”
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn’t let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves’s
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+“But I’m sure I couldn’t write a book about anything. I can’t even
+write good letters.”
+
+“Muriel’s talents,” said Corky, with a little cough “lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn’t mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It’s absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander’s natural tendency
+to kick like a steer.”
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha’s attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don’t know why it
+is—one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose—but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don’t seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+“I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady’s name should
+appear on the title page.”
+
+“That’s true,” said Corky. “Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I’ll get after him right away.”
+
+“Fine!”
+
+“Will that be all, sir?” said Jeeves. “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I’ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky’s place when the first copies of _The
+Children’s Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there,
+and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the
+door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl’s name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+“Often of a spring morning,” it said at the top of page twenty-one, “as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple’s wonderful
+book—_American Birds_.”
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the
+yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I
+admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves’s genius in putting us
+on to the wheeze. I didn’t see how the uncle could fail to drop. You
+can’t call a chap the world’s greatest authority on the yellow-billed
+cuckoo without rousing a certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+“It’s a cert!” I said.
+
+“An absolute cinch!” said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn’t known Mr.
+Worple’s handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn’t for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don’t feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+“Well, well, well, what?” I said.
+
+“Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?”
+
+“Corky around?”
+
+“I beg your pardon?”
+
+“You’re waiting for Corky, aren’t you?”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t understand. No, I’m not waiting for him.”
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind
+of thingummy, you know.
+
+“I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?”
+
+“A row?”
+
+“A spat, don’t you know—little misunderstanding—faults on both
+sides—er—and all that sort of thing.”
+
+“Why, whatever makes you think that?”
+
+“Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is—I thought you usually dined
+with him before you went to the theatre.”
+
+“I’ve left the stage now.”
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+“Why, of course, I see now! You’re married!”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.”
+
+“Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander,” she said, looking past me, “this is
+a friend of mine—Mr. Wooster.”
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+“I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce’s, Alexander.”
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+“So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster,” I heard him say. “I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?”
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I’ve a bit of
+news for you.”
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+“Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You’ll need it.”
+
+“Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.”
+
+“All right. Please yourself. But you’re going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle’s esteem by
+writing the book on birds?”
+
+“Perfectly, sir.”
+
+“Well, she’s slid. She’s married the uncle.”
+
+He took it without blinking. You can’t rattle Jeeves.
+
+“That was always a development to be feared, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?”
+
+“It crossed my mind as a possibility.”
+
+“Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!”
+
+“I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.”
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn’t my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn’t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I’m bound to admit that I didn’t relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn’t the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn’t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+“Oh, ah!” I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+“Halloa, Bertie. Don’t go. We’re just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon,” he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+“At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?”
+
+“Yes, please.”
+
+“Good afternoon.”
+
+“Good afternoon.”
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn’t as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+“It’s my uncle’s idea,” he said. “Muriel doesn’t know about it yet. The
+portrait’s to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can’t
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid’s vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: ‘Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.’”
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn’t
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie’s sorrow. Besides, I’m
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the ’phone.
+
+“Bertie.”
+
+“Halloa?”
+
+“Are you doing anything this afternoon?”
+
+“Nothing special.”
+
+“You couldn’t come down here, could you?”
+
+“What’s the trouble? Anything up?”
+
+“I’ve finished the portrait.”
+
+“Good boy! Stout work!”
+
+“Yes.” His voice sounded rather doubtful. “The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn’t look quite right to me. There’s something about it—My uncle’s
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and—I don’t know why it is, but I
+kind of feel I’d like your moral support!”
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+“You think he’ll cut up rough?”
+
+“He may.”
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+“I’ll come,” I said.
+
+“Good!”
+
+“But only if I may bring Jeeves!”
+
+“Why Jeeves? What’s Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led——”
+
+“Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves’s support, you’re mistaken. I’d sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.”
+
+“Oh, all right,” said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+That’s the sort of chap he is. You can’t rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+“Stand right where you are, Bertie,” he said, without moving. “Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?”
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn’t seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+“Well?” said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+“Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but—but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn’t it, if I remember
+rightly?”
+
+“As ugly as that?”
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+“I don’t see how it could have been, old chap.”
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+“You’re right quite, Bertie. Something’s gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I’ve worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull—painting the soul of the
+sitter. I’ve got through the mere outward appearance, and have put the
+child’s soul on canvas.”
+
+“But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don’t see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?”
+
+“I doubt it, sir.”
+
+“It—it sorts of leers at you, doesn’t it?”
+
+“You’ve noticed that, too?” said Corky.
+
+“I don’t see how one could help noticing.”
+
+“All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated.”
+
+“Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don’t
+you think so, Jeeves?”
+
+“He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir.”
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn’t
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn’t
+notice him.
+
+“Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it—really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let’s have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let’s——”
+
+And then he got it—suddenly, when he wasn’t set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+“Oosh!” he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I’ve ever run up against.
+
+“Is this a practical joke?” he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+“You want to stand a bit farther away from it,” I said.
+
+“You’re perfectly right!” he snorted. “I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can’t see the thing with a telescope!” He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. “And this—this—is what you have been wasting your time and my
+money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn’t let you paint a house
+of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a competent
+worker, and this—this—this extract from a comic coloured supplement is
+the result!” He swung towards the door, lashing his tail and growling
+to himself. “This ends it! If you wish to continue this foolery of
+pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for idleness,
+please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report at my
+office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and start
+in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should
+have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent—not another cent—not
+another—Boosh!”
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+“Corky, old top!” I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+“Well, that finishes it!” he muttered brokenly.
+
+“What are you going to do?”
+
+“Do? What can I do? I can’t stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.”
+
+I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don’t know when I’ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who’s just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+“If I might make a suggestion, sir!”
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can’t give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky’s uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+“I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted.”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “what on earth are you talking about?”
+
+“I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a
+parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not
+despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o,
+guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was
+advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is
+always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the
+difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an
+extract from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a
+very valuable one, sir. Mr. Corcoran’s portrait may not have pleased
+Mr. Worple as a likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that
+editors would gladly consider it as a foundation for a series of
+humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran will allow me to make the
+suggestion, his talent has always been for the humorous. There is
+something about this picture—something bold and vigorous, which arrests
+the attention. I feel sure it would be highly popular.”
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+“Corky, old man!” I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+“He’s right! The man’s absolutely right! Jeeves, you’re a life-saver!
+You’ve hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I’ll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the _Sunday
+Star_. He’ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the other day how
+hard it was to get a good new series. He’ll give me anything I ask for
+a real winner like this. I’ve got a gold-mine. Where’s my hat? I’ve got
+an income for life! Where’s that confounded hat? Lend me a fiver,
+Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!”
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+“If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran—for a title of the series
+which you have in mind—‘The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.’”
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. “I’m an optimist. I
+always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare
+and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn
+and there’s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up
+on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a
+fellow, one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To
+all appearances he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now.
+Have you seen these pictures?”
+
+“I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting.”
+
+“They have made a big hit, you know.”
+
+“I anticipated it, sir.”
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+“You know, Jeeves, you’re a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things.”
+
+“I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir.”
+
+“No, I think I’ll wear the blue with the faint red stripe.”
+
+“Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.”
+
+“But I rather fancy myself in it.”
+
+“Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.”
+
+“Oh, all right, have it your own way.”
+
+“Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”
+
+Of course, I know it’s as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You’ve got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s
+Shakespeare—or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad—who says that it’s
+always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more
+than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind
+him with a bit of lead piping. There’s no doubt the man’s right. It’s
+absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves—absolutely asserted myself, don’t you know.
+You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a
+dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn’t so much mind
+when he made me give up one of my new suits, because Jeeves’s judgment
+about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when he
+wouldn’t let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like a
+couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in the
+matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who was
+who. It’s a long story, and I haven’t time to tell you now, but the
+point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre—as worn by John
+Drew—when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman—as worn by
+another famous actor chappie—and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that’s how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+“What ho without there!”
+
+“Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room.”
+
+“Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man,” I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. “You know perfectly well
+there’s no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it’s barely ten o’clock yet?”
+
+“I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning.”
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+“Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?”
+
+“Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir.”
+
+“Is she alone?”
+
+“Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship’s son.”
+
+“Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I’ll be dressing.”
+
+“Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir.”
+
+“Then lead me to it.”
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn’t till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+“I’ve placed her, Jeeves. She’s a pal of my Aunt Agatha.”
+
+“Indeed, sir?”
+
+“Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left London. A very
+vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on social conditions
+in India when she came back from the Durbar.”
+
+“Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!”
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+“What’s wrong with this tie? I’ve seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What’s the matter with it?”
+
+“Too ornate, sir.”
+
+“Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more.”
+
+“Unsuitable, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+“Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!” I said. “What?”
+
+“Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster.”
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six
+feet from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest
+arm-chair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they
+were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had
+bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she
+showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who
+kind of numb a fellow’s faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten
+years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday
+clothes to say how-d’you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a
+chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren’t
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn’t appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+“Awfully glad to see you,” I said. “So you’ve popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?”
+
+“About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you.”
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you’ll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn’t dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn’t want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she’s really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+“Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us.”
+
+“Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!”
+
+“Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while.”
+
+I didn’t get this for a moment.
+
+“Put him up? For my clubs?”
+
+“No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren’t you, Motty
+darling?”
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+“Yes, mother,” he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+“I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away.”
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn’t seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don’t
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn’t on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie’s
+will-power.
+
+“I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write a
+companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_ after a
+stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with me, but
+the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall have to
+pick him up on my return.”
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+“It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble.” She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn’t there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+“He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented.” She got up. “Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don’t know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon.”
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+“Jeeves! What about it?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What’s to be done? You heard it all, didn’t you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here.”
+
+“Pill, sir?”
+
+“The excrescence.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir?”
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn’t like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+“Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves,” I said
+coldly.
+
+“Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir.”
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn’t any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn’t like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn’t like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn’t want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty’s luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty’s existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn’t
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie’s manner that he was still upset.
+
+“Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?” I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+“No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned.”
+
+“Not returned? What do you mean?”
+
+“His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again.”
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+“Better go and see what that is, Jeeves.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+“If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in.”
+
+“Carry him in?”
+
+“His lordship is lying on the mat, sir.”
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+“He’s had some sort of dashed fit,” I said. I took another look.
+“Jeeves! Someone’s been feeding him meat!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“He’s a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!”
+
+“I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship’s legs, while I——”
+
+“Great Scot, Jeeves! You don’t think—he can’t be——”
+
+“I am inclined to think so, sir.”
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn’t
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+“You never can tell, Jeeves!”
+
+“Very seldom, sir.”
+
+“Remove the eye of authority and where are you?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+“Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?”
+
+“It would seem so, sir.”
+
+“Well, we had better bring him in, eh?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty’s room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+“What ho!” I said.
+
+“What ho!” said Motty.
+
+“What ho! What ho!”
+
+“What ho! What ho! What ho!”
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked.
+
+“Topping!” replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. “I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours—Jeeves, you know—is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!”
+
+I couldn’t believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+“You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn’t you?” I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn’t have it, at any price.
+
+“No!” he replied firmly. “I didn’t do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what’s more, I’m
+going to do it again! I’m going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top,” he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, “tap me on
+the shoulder and say, ‘Tut! Tut!’ and I’ll apologize and remedy the
+defect.”
+
+“But I say, you know, what about me?”
+
+“What about you?”
+
+“Well, I’m, so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I’m apt to get in
+the soup somewhat.”
+
+“I can’t help your troubles,” said Motty firmly. “Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I’ve had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What’s the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don’t yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions.”
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+“I know just how you feel, old dear,” said Motty consolingly. “And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I’ve been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We’re only young once. Why interfere with
+life’s morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!”
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+“All my bally life, dear boy,” Motty went on, “I’ve been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you’ve
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don’t know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I’ve got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I’m going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!”
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don’t you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I’m a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can’t stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I’m all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_ for
+the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie peering
+out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn’t help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn’t wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn’t been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty’s rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn’t get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn’t
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “this is getting a bit thick!”
+
+“Sir?” Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+“You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Well, I shall get blamed, don’t you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very well, then.”
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn’t unbend.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “haven’t you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don’t you know. It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn’t the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.—artists and writers and what-not, who frolicked
+considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk. That was
+all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The neighbours
+can’t get to sleep unless there’s someone dancing Hawaiian dances over
+their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere wasn’t right,
+and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a collection of
+hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song when they
+started singing “The Old Oaken Bucket,” there was a marked peevishness
+among the old settlers in the flats. The management was extremely terse
+over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I’d chosen because there didn’t seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+“Did you call, sir?”
+
+“Jeeves! There’s something in there that grabs you by the leg!”
+
+“That would be Rollo, sir.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down.”
+
+“Who the deuce is Rollo?”
+
+“His lordship’s bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light.”
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions’ den, without
+a quiver. What’s more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn’t have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life—to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+“Rollo is not used to you yet, sir,” said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. “He is an excellent watchdog.”
+
+“I don’t want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms.”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Well, what am I to do?”
+
+“No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent.”
+
+“What do you mean—my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right.” I thought for a bit. “Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I’m going away—to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country.”
+
+“Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“I don’t know when I shall be back. Forward my letters.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can’t
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+“Where’s that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?”
+
+“The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg.”
+
+I don’t think I’ve ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+“Ripping!” I said. “Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Do you expect him back to dinner?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Where is he?”
+
+“In prison, sir.”
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That’s how I felt then.
+
+“In prison!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean—in prison?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+“Why?” I said.
+
+“He assaulted a constable, sir.”
+
+“Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I digested this.
+
+“But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?”
+
+“I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir.”
+
+“But she’ll come back and want to know where he is.”
+
+“I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship’s bit of time will have run out
+by then.”
+
+“But supposing it hasn’t?”
+
+“In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston.”
+
+“Why Boston?”
+
+“Very interesting and respectable centre, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, I believe you’ve hit it.”
+
+“I fancy so, sir.”
+
+“Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn’t turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back.”
+
+“Exactly, sir.”
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn’t have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says—one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I’d almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn’t anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn’t
+been expecting her for days. I’d forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn’t uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+“Good morning,” I said. “So you’ve got back, what?”
+
+“I have got back.”
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn’t breakfasted. It’s only after a bit of breakfast that
+I’m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I’m never much of a lad till I’ve
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+“I suppose you haven’t breakfasted?”
+
+“I have not yet breakfasted.”
+
+“Won’t you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?”
+
+“No, thank you.”
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+“I called on you last night,” she said, “but you were out.”
+
+“Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?”
+
+“Extremely, thank you.”
+
+“See everything? Niag’ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?”
+
+“I saw a great deal.”
+
+There was another slightly _frappé_ silence. Jeeves floated silently
+into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+“I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+“Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly.”
+
+“You were his constant companion, then?”
+
+“Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don’t you
+know. We’d take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston.”
+
+“Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?”
+
+“Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn’t know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe—I mean,
+don’t you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn’t get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston.”
+
+“You’re sure he went to Boston?”
+
+“Oh, absolutely.” I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: “Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn’t
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston.”
+
+“Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell’s Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?”
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn’t have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+“So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!”
+
+I hadn’t any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+“You deliberately——”
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+“If I might explain, your ladyship.”
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can’t
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+“I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship—was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship’s movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him.”
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn’t rattle Jeeves.
+
+“I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand.”
+
+“What!” Lady Malvern goggled at him. “Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?”
+
+“If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship’s
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship’s instructions and collect material for your ladyship’s
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help.”
+
+“Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!” I said.
+
+“The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country—from within—occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him.”
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+“Surely, your ladyship,” said Jeeves, “it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship’s character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?”
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+“Mr. Wooster,” she said, “I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit.”
+
+“Absolutely!” I said.
+
+“Your breakfast is ready, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “you are certainly a life-saver!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn’t lured that
+blighter into riotous living.”
+
+“I fancy you are right, sir.”
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don’t you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+“Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“That pink tie!”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“Burn it!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“And, Jeeves!”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!”
+
+“Thank you very much, sir.”
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “it isn’t enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?”
+
+“Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion—fifty dollars.”
+
+“Fifty dollars?”
+
+“It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship.”
+
+“You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it.”
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+“Take this, Jeeves,” I said; “fifty isn’t enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you’re—well, you absolutely stand alone!”
+
+“I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I’ve sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I’ve wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It’s not so bad
+now I’m in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who’s
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what’s more, he can always be counted on to extend himself on
+behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance, of
+dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out.”
+
+“Oh?” I said.
+
+“Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated.”
+
+“What, pipped?”
+
+“He gave that impression, sir.”
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn’t apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided—rightly or wrongly—to grow a moustache and this had
+cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn’t stick the thing at any price, and
+I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till
+I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while there’s
+no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves’s judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many’s the
+time I’ve given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet’s staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you’ve simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+“He said that he would call again later, sir.”
+
+“Something must be up, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+“I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth’s uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir.”
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky’s uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one’s pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn’t all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most
+extraordinarily gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a
+tree. But, though we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I
+really knew about him was that he was generally hard up, and had an
+uncle who relieved the strain a bit from time to time by sending him
+monthly remittances.
+
+“If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle,” I said, “why hasn’t he a title?
+Why isn’t he Lord What-Not?”
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace’s late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards.”
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+“Is Mr. Bickersteth’s father dead, too?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Leave any money?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky’s people hadn’t left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one’s ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+“Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned,” I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+“Halloa, Bicky!” I said. “Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What’s the
+trouble, Bicky?”
+
+“I’m in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice.”
+
+“Say on, old lad!”
+
+“My uncle’s turning up to-morrow, Bertie.”
+
+“So Jeeves told me.”
+
+“The Duke of Chiswick, you know.”
+
+“So Jeeves told me.”
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+“Jeeves seems to know everything.”
+
+“Rather rummily, that’s exactly what I was thinking just now myself.”
+
+“Well, I wish,” said Bicky gloomily, “that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I’m in.”
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves,” I said, “and wants you
+to rally round.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+“Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that.”
+
+“I shouldn’t worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don’t you, Jeeves?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Eh!” said Bicky, rattled.
+
+“I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?”
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+“How the deuce do you know anything about it?”
+
+“I chanced to meet his grace’s butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door.”
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+“Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there’s no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it’s called. I didn’t
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don’t you know, I had to have that
+remittance.”
+
+“I get you absolutely, dear boy.”
+
+“Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I’ve been ever since. He thinks I’m
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don’t you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?”
+
+“You see,” said Bicky, “I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me—to save hotel bills, I suppose. I’ve always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can’t have him to stay at my boarding-house.”
+
+“Thought of anything, Jeeves?” I said.
+
+“To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?”
+
+“I’ll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man.”
+
+“Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth——”
+
+“No, by Jove!” said Bicky firmly. “I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I’m not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it’s my boast
+that I don’t owe a penny to a single soul—not counting tradesmen, of
+course.”
+
+“I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth’s employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth’s guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir.”
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+“I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace on
+board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+“How does he do it, Bertie?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it’s something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!”
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn’t much
+after nine by the time I’d dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he’d got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn’t seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+“The duke has arrived, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir?”
+
+“That’ll be him at the door now.”
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+“How do you do, sir?” I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. “Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name’s Wooster, don’t you know. Great pal of
+Bicky’s, and all that sort of thing. I’m staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea.”
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+“Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?”
+
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“It must be terribly expensive.”
+
+“Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know.”
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+“A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!” He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. “Have you any idea how much
+my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+“About two hundred dollars a month, I believe.”
+
+“What! Forty pounds a month!”
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent’s underwear.
+
+“I suppose it seems rummy to you,” I said, “but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn’t have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don’t you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it’s quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!”
+
+“I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew’s business, Mr. Wooster?”
+
+“Oh, just business, don’t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.” I slid for the door.
+“Awfully sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere.”
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+“Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?”
+
+“He’s upstairs now, having some tea.”
+
+“What does he think of it all?”
+
+“He’s absolutely rattled.”
+
+“Ripping! I’ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later.”
+
+“Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.”
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+“Where’s everybody, Jeeves?” I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. “Gone out?”
+
+“His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant’s Tomb.”
+
+“I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going—what?”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans.”
+
+“Not altogether, sir.”
+
+“What’s his trouble now?”
+
+“The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir.”
+
+“Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?”
+
+“Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth’s monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance.”
+
+“Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful.”
+
+“Somewhat disturbing, sir.”
+
+“I never expected anything like this!”
+
+“I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir.”
+
+“I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?”
+
+“Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir.”
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+“We must do something, Jeeves.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Can you think of anything?”
+
+“Not at the moment, sir.”
+
+“There must be something we can do.”
+
+“It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir—as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before—the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there is
+always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion—he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship’s aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth’s
+difficulty, sir.”
+
+“Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!”
+
+“I will spare no pains, sir.”
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call “some blunt instrument.”
+
+“This is a bit thick, old thing—what!” I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn’t anything in it.
+
+“I’m done, Bertie!” he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn’t seem to do him any good.
+
+“If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month’s money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I’ve been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars and
+start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen—call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every day
+of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen
+costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every seven
+eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of
+the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have more
+chickens. Why, in no time you’d have the place covered knee-deep in
+hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You’d make
+a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!” He had begun to get quite
+worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair at
+this juncture with a good deal of gloom. “But, of course, it’s no
+good,” he said, “because I haven’t the cash.”
+
+“You’ve only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top.”
+
+“Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I’m not going to sponge on you.”
+
+That’s always the way in this world. The chappies you’d like to lend
+money to won’t let you, whereas the chappies you don’t want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I’ve had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many’s the time, back in London, I’ve hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I’ve
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn’t care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+“Well, there’s only one hope, then.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You’re sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I’m used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I’ve bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+“Did you call, sir?”
+
+“Oh, there you are, Jeeves!”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+“Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?”
+
+“Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace’s
+potentialities as a source of revenue.”
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+“I do not allude, sir,” explained Jeeves, “to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present—if I may say
+so—useless property, which is capable of being developed.”
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I’m bound to say I didn’t
+get it myself.
+
+“Couldn’t you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!”
+
+“In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee—let us say two
+dollars or three—for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace.”
+
+Bicky didn’t seem to think much of it.
+
+“Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?”
+
+“I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours.”
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+“If you think it could be done——”
+
+“I feel convinced of it, sir.”
+
+“What do you think, Bertie?”
+
+“I’m for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze.”
+
+“Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir.”
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a
+money-making proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul
+time those Stock Exchange chappies must have when the public isn’t
+biting freely. Nowadays I read that bit they put in the financial
+reports about “The market opened quietly” with a sympathetic eye, for,
+by Jove, it certainly opened quietly for us! You’d hardly believe how
+difficult it was to interest the public and make them take a flutter on
+the old boy. By the end of the week the only name we had on our list
+was a delicatessen-store keeper down in Bicky’s part of the town, and
+as he wanted us to take it out in sliced ham instead of cash that
+didn’t help much. There was a gleam of light when the brother of
+Bicky’s pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money down, for an introduction
+to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through, owing to its turning out
+that the chap was an anarchist and intended to kick the old boy instead
+of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me the deuce of a time to
+persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things take their course.
+He seemed to regard the pawnbroker’s brother rather as a sportsman and
+benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I’m inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn’t been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don’t think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+“Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?”
+
+“It’s all off. We’ve decided to chuck it.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“It won’t work. We can’t get anybody to come.”
+
+“I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir.”
+
+“Do you mean to say you’ve managed to get anybody?”
+
+“Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir.”
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+“Birdsburg?”
+
+“Birdsburg, Missouri, sir.”
+
+“How did you get them?”
+
+“I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir—a large blue button with the words ‘Boost for
+Birdsburg’ upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman’s evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name of
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon.”
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+“Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?”
+
+“I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party.”
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+“Payable in advance?”
+
+“No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful.”
+
+“Well, any way, when we get it I’ll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky’ll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?”
+
+“I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright.”
+
+“All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You know, you’re a bit of a marvel, Jeeves.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Right-o!”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+“Uncle,” he said, “are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I’ve asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don’t you
+know.”
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+“There will be no reporters among them?”
+
+“Reporters? Rather not! Why?”
+
+“I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again.”
+
+“That’ll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won’t be a newspaper-man
+in the place.”
+
+“In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends.”
+
+“You’ll shake hands with them and so forth?”
+
+“I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse.”
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town’s new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke’s society by Jeeves’s stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss’s eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction—all except one chappie, who seemed to be brooding
+about something—and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+“What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?” asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+“I have never been to Birdsburg.”
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+“You should pay it a visit,” he said. “The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!”
+
+“Boost for Birdsburg!” said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+“Say!”
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+“As a matter of business,” said the chappie—“mind you, I’m not
+questioning anybody’s good faith, but, as a matter of strict business—I
+think this gentleman here ought to put himself on record before
+witnesses as stating that he really is a duke.”
+
+“What do you mean, sir?” cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+“No offence, simply business. I’m not saying anything, mind you, but
+there’s one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name’s Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you’re
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn’t he Lord Percy Something? I’ve read
+English novels, and I know all about it.”
+
+“This is monstrous!”
+
+“Now don’t get hot under the collar. I’m only asking. I’ve a right to
+know. You’re going to take our money, so it’s only fair that we should
+see that we get our money’s worth.”
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+“You’re quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we’ve a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know——”
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+“I can assure you that I know nothing of this,” he said, quite
+politely. “I should be grateful if you would explain.”
+
+“Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens of
+Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands with
+you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my friend
+Simms here means—and I’m with him—is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth’s word for it—and he is a stranger to us—that you are the
+Duke of Chiswick at all.”
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+“Allow me to assure you, sir,” he said, in a rummy kind of voice, “that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick.”
+
+“Then that’s all right,” said the chappie heartily. “That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on.”
+
+“I am sorry to say,” said old Chiswick, “that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused.”
+
+“But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you.”
+
+“I fear I must disappoint them.”
+
+“But in that case the deal would have to be off.”
+
+“That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss.”
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+“You really won’t meet the rest of them?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Well, then, I guess we’ll be going.”
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+“Well?”
+
+Bicky didn’t seem to have anything to say.
+
+“Was it true what that man said?”
+
+“Yes, uncle.”
+
+“What do you mean by playing this trick?”
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+“I think you’d better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top.”
+
+Bicky’s Adam’s-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+“You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it’s an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+“Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically——”
+
+“What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man.”
+
+“Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir,” I said, helping the chappie out.
+“The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that
+remittance of yours, and when you cut it off, don’t you know, he was
+pretty solidly in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in
+on a bit of the ready pretty quick. That’s why we thought of this
+handshaking scheme.”
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+“So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!”
+
+“Poor old Bicky didn’t want to go to that ranch,” I explained. “He
+doesn’t like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don’t you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to——”
+
+“After what has happened? After this—this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!”
+
+“But——”
+
+“Not a penny!”
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+“If I might make a suggestion, sir?”
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+“Go ahead, Jeeves!” I said.
+
+“I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers.”
+
+“By Jove!” I said.
+
+“By George!” said Bicky.
+
+“Great heavens!” said old Chiswick.
+
+“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+“Jeeves is right. I’ll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it. They
+eat that sort of stuff.”
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+“I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!”
+
+“That’s all very well,” said Bicky, wonderfully braced, “but if I can’t
+get the money any other way——”
+
+“Wait! Er—wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something.”
+
+“I won’t go to that bally ranch.”
+
+“No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I—I think——”
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. “I—I think that, on
+the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I—I
+might—in fact, I think I see my way to doing—to—I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position.”
+
+“I shouldn’t mind that.”
+
+“I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure——”
+
+“The only figure I’ll recognize,” said Bicky firmly, “is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly.”
+
+“My dear boy!”
+
+“Absolutely!”
+
+“But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to—in fact, you
+would be in an exceedingly advantageous position.”
+
+“Five hundred a year!” said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. “Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There’s
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don’t sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don’t think I’m going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o’ goblins a
+year—what?”
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick’s face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. “Very well, my boy,” he said.
+
+“What-o!” said Bicky. “All right, then.”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. “Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“It beats me how you do it.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“The only trouble is you haven’t got much out of it—what!”
+
+“I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends—I judge from his remarks—to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so.”
+
+“It isn’t enough, Jeeves!”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+“Bring my shaving things.”
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie’s eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+“You mean, sir?”
+
+“And shave off my moustache.”
+
+There was a moment’s silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+“Thank you very much indeed, sir,” he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most
+interesting story. I can’t put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don’t have to, don’t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you’re a man you mustn’t miss it, because it’ll be a warning to you;
+and if you’re a woman you won’t want to, because it’s all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you’re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie’s, you’ll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and—half an hour before
+the time we’d fixed—a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to see
+that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct. By
+doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn’t altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that’s what I thought. But there was another way which hadn’t
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn’t know what’s at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married—with a sort of whoop, as
+if it were the greatest fun in the world—and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn’t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don’t know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand’s turn in his life
+there’s undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn’t
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar’s and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I’ve never worked myself—my name’s
+Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My
+uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left
+me a sizable chunk of bullion—I say I’ve never worked myself, but I
+admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don’t now, but we’ll come
+to that later. I’m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn’t noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn’t forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let’s brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn’t
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn’t see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it’s just here
+that love’s young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking—well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d’-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn’t begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+“Here’s old Reggie, dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I’ll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now—what?”
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+“I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Quite a
+jolly little party it was—not. I’m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that
+sort of thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew
+that she was working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself
+in hand, and that she would have given that diamond what’s-its-name in
+her hair and everything else she possessed to have one good scream—just
+one. I’ve sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that
+one had the rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I
+grabbed my hat and got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn’t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+“Do you know how long I’ve been married?” he said.
+
+I didn’t exactly.
+
+“About a year, isn’t it?”
+
+“Not _about_ a year,” he said sadly. “Exactly a year—yesterday!”
+
+Then I understood. I saw light—a regular flash of light.
+
+“Yesterday was——?”
+
+“The anniversary of the wedding. I’d arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I’d
+forgotten, but I couldn’t think what?”
+
+“Till your wife mentioned it?”
+
+He nodded——
+
+“She—mentioned it,” he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn’t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary’s may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren’t half-hearted about it.
+
+“To be absolutely frank, old top,” said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, “my stock’s pretty low at home.”
+
+There didn’t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn’t want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller’s. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie’s married life. Of course, one’s always mildly interested in
+one’s friends’ marriages, hoping they’ll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn’t like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn’t like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn’t be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear
+old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn’t. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn’t nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn’t made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don’t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he’s been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he’s
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can’t
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her—it may have been a
+book.
+
+“It’s such a little thing to make a fuss about,” said Bobbie. “And she
+knows that it’s simply because I’ve got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can’t remember anything. Never could.”
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+“Oh, by the way,” he said.
+
+“What’s this for?” I asked, though I knew.
+
+“I owe it you.”
+
+“How’s that?” I said.
+
+“Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd.”
+
+“So you do remember some things?” I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+“Subside, laddie,” I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+“What you’ve got to do, my old college chum,” I said, “is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you’re
+due for a nasty knock before you know what’s hit you. You’ve got to
+make an effort. Don’t say you can’t. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you’ve
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can’t get out of it.”
+
+“I suppose you’re right,” said Bobbie. “But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What’s it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls.”
+
+“That’s not enough for a woman,” I said. “They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you’re all right. Forget it, and there’ll be
+trouble.”
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+“Women are frightfully rummy,” he said gloomily.
+
+“You should have thought of that before you married one,” I said.
+
+I don’t see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he’d have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by
+argument. If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting
+it, the only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him.
+After that you may get a chance. But till then there’s nothing to be
+done. But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn’t get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he’d come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I’d know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn’t till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it—in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other—most interesting it is; I often do it—when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+“Reggie,” he said. “Reggie, old top, she’s gone!”
+
+“Gone!” I said. “Who?”
+
+“Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!”
+
+“Where?” I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+“Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.”
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+“Go on,” said Bobbie. “Read it.”
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+“MY DEAR BOBBIE,—I am going away. When you care enough about me to
+remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will come
+back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_.”
+
+
+I read it twice, then I said, “Well, why don’t you?”
+
+“Why don’t I what?”
+
+“Why don’t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn’t seem much to
+ask.”
+
+“But she says on her birthday.”
+
+“Well, when is her birthday?”
+
+“Can’t you understand?” said Bobbie. “I’ve forgotten.”
+
+“Forgotten!” I said.
+
+“Yes,” said Bobbie. “Forgotten.”
+
+“How do you mean, forgotten?” I said. “Forgotten whether it’s the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?”
+
+“I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That’s how near I get to it.”
+
+“Think.”
+
+“Think? What’s the use of saying ‘Think’? Think I haven’t thought? I’ve
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter.”
+
+“And you can’t remember?”
+
+“No.”
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+“Well, Bobbie,” I said, “it’s a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, ‘Mr. Holmes, here’s a case for you. When is my wife’s
+birthday?’ Wouldn’t that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can’t shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can’t you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month.”
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+“It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.”
+
+“Warm?”
+
+“Warmish.”
+
+“Or cold?”
+
+“Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can’t remember.”
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective’s Manual. “You’re a great help, Bobbie,” I said. “An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without which
+no home is complete.”
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing’s done.”
+
+“Absolutely. What did you give her?”
+
+He sagged.
+
+“I can’t remember,” he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you’re right off, others it’s as
+easy as falling off a log. I don’t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever had
+two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did it
+without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_? There’s one
+for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong
+points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie’s idea
+was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out
+which month hit off Mary’s character. That would give us the month, and
+narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn’t a single month that didn’t have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, “December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive
+travellers.” Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had
+travelled quite extensively enough for Bobbie’s needs. Then, October
+people were “born with original ideas” and “loved moving.” You couldn’t
+have summed up Mary’s little jaunt more neatly. February people had
+“wonderful memories”—Mary’s speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were “inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life”; but I plumped for February, because February women
+“are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates.” Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, “The Soul’s Awakening”? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, “Surely that
+is George’s step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?” Well, Bobbie had
+a soul’s awakening too. I don’t suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before—not really _think_. But now he was wearing his brain
+to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow human
+being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was all
+for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “I’m on the trail. This time I’m convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I’ve remembered something of vital importance.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“I remember distinctly,” he said, “that on Mary’s last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?”
+
+“It’s a fine bit of memorizing,” I said; “but how does it help?”
+
+“Why, they change the programme every week there.”
+
+“Ah!” I said. “Now you are talking.”
+
+“And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One’s
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren’t we? Reggie, I’m going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I’m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar.”
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+“I told you it was May,” said Bobbie. “Maybe you’ll listen to me
+another time.”
+
+“If you’ve any sense,” I said, “there won’t be another time.”
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn’t.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing
+it. I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang.
+It was Bobbie, of course. He didn’t apologize.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “I’ve got it now for certain. It’s just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man.”
+
+“Yes?” I said.
+
+“Well, don’t you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “if they didn’t have daily matinees at the Coliseum.”
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+“Bobbie,” I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I’ve remembered something too. It’s this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque.”
+
+“But I’m always writing cheques.”
+
+“You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth.”
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “you’re a genius. I’ve always said so. I believe
+you’ve got it. Hold the line.”
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+“Halloa!” he said.
+
+“I’m here,” I said.
+
+“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I——”
+
+“Topping,” I said. “Good night.”
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.
+
+“It’s late,” said the man at the other end.
+
+“And getting later every minute,” I said. “Buck along, laddie.”
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+“What is the matter?” said Mary’s voice.
+
+“My feet are cold,” I said. “But I didn’t call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I’ve just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”
+
+“Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?”
+
+“Yes. He’s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.”
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I’ve often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don’t
+you know. Bobbie’s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie’s scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+“He’s remembered it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Well, I hadn’t.
+
+“Mr. Pepper.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+“Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and——”
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don’t you know, and all that. But I’d got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it
+means all the bad words she’d love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can’t——”
+
+“But——”
+
+“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) “It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man.”
+
+“But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly——”
+
+“I thought it hateful, abominable.”
+
+“But you said it was absolutely top——”
+
+“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn’t mean it. I don’t
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony——”
+
+“But——!”
+
+“When one single word would have——”
+
+“But you made me promise not to——” I bleated.
+
+“And if I did, do you suppose I didn’t expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?”
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the
+old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+“He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute.”
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don’t want to bore you, don’t you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I’m not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I’ll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I’ve finished, so that’ll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don’t you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy’s a fellow who writes
+plays—a deuced brainy sort of fellow—and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn’t say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn’t let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn’t stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+“Change of scene is what you want, old scout,” I said. “Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I’ve taken a cottage there. Jimmy’s coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We’ll be a cosy party.”
+
+“He’s absolutely right,” said Jimmy. “Change of scene’s the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, ‘Come back. Muriel.’ Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn’t remember girl’s surname; so never
+answered at all.”
+
+But Freddie wouldn’t be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It’s in Dorsetshire. It isn’t what you’d call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o’clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn’t drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They’d hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn’t anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn’t chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing “The Rosary” with one
+finger. He couldn’t play anything except “The Rosary,” and he couldn’t
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he’d have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, “I’ve seen her.”
+
+“Seen her?” I said. “What, Miss West?”
+
+“I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!”
+
+He started “The Rosary” again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away.”
+
+“Go away?” I said. “Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong.”
+
+“She cut me.”
+
+“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”
+
+“She looked clean through me!”
+
+“Of course she did. But don’t mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I’ll see you through. Now, what you want,” I said, “is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want——”
+
+“But what’s she going to thank me timidly for?”
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+“Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,” I said.
+
+“I can’t swim,” said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don’t you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I’ve heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn’t a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don’t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn’t be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her “aunt.” So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I’m a chump. Well, I
+don’t mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you’d least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that’s what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn’t with him. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don’t you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl’s gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don’t you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn’t absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+“Stop it!” he said. “Do you think nobody’s got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?”
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+“Well?” said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+“You’re not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie,” he said
+handsomely. “I’m bound to say this seems pretty good.”
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don’t know when I’ve felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn’t a friend in the world.
+
+“Hello!” I said. “Couldn’t you find her?”
+
+“Yes, I found her,” he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+“Well, then——?”
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+“This isn’t her cousin, you idiot!” he said.
+
+“He’s no relation at all. He’s just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life.”
+
+“What! Who is he, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Oh, Lord, I’ve had a time! Thank goodness you’ll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That’s my only consolation. I’ll come and jeer at you
+through the bars.”
+
+“Tell me all, old boy,” I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then—well, she didn’t actually call
+him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of way
+that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+“And mind, this is your affair,” he concluded. “I’m not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you’d better go and find
+the kid’s parents and return him before the police come for you.”
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It’s a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You’d have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn’t till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people’s heads that I
+wasn’t standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, “Hi!”
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+“Hi!” it shouted again.
+
+“What the deuce do you mean by ‘Hi’?” I said.
+
+“You can’t come in,” said the face. “Hello, is that Tootles?”
+
+“My name is not Tootles, and I don’t want to come in,” I said. “Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I’ve brought back your son.”
+
+“I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see ’oo!”
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+“Hi!”
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+“Do you live here?” said the face.
+
+“I’m staying here for a few weeks.”
+
+“What’s your name?”
+
+“Pepper. But——”
+
+“Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?”
+
+“My uncle. But——”
+
+“I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now.”
+
+“I wish you were,” I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+“This is most fortunate,” he said. “We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper’s has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days.”
+
+“May!”
+
+“He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles.”
+
+“I haven’t got a wife,” I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don’t you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+“Hi!”
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey’s.”
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the
+situation. Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon’s
+retreat from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie’s Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, “Wah!”
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+“Well, baby?” she said, bending down to him. “So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning,” she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don’t you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant’s father.
+
+I hadn’t expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn’t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+“Well,” he said, when he had finished, “say something! Heavens! man,
+why don’t you say something?”
+
+“You don’t give me a chance, old top,” I said soothingly.
+
+“What are you going to do about it?”
+
+“What can we do about it?”
+
+“We can’t spend our time acting as nurses to this—this exhibit.”
+
+He got up.
+
+“I’m going back to London,” he said.
+
+“Freddie!” I cried. “Freddie, old man!” My voice shook. “Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?”
+
+“I would. This is your business, and you’ve got to manage it.”
+
+“Freddie,” I said, “you’ve got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn’t leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner.”
+
+He sat down again.
+
+“Oh, well,” he said resignedly.
+
+“Besides, old top,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, don’t you
+know?”
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+“Reggie,” he said, in a strained voice, “one moment. I’ll stand a good
+deal, but I won’t stand for being expected to be grateful.”
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple—a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+“And after all,” I said, “there’s lots to be said for having a child
+about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic—what!”
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie’s trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+“For me,” he said, “the hotel. I can’t write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?”
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+“I might work this up for the stage,” he said. “It wouldn’t make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce.”
+
+“Farce!” snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+“Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like—that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I’ll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie.”
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story—the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+“What!” he said. “Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It’s the
+old ‘Tiny Hand’ business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It’s big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?”
+
+“He can play a little of ‘The Rosary’ with one finger.”
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+“No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest’s all right.
+Look here.” He squatted in the sand. “This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed’s the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child’s line. Child speaks like, ‘Boofer lady, does i’oo love
+dadda?’ Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment.
+Freddie crosses L., takes girl’s hand. Business of swallowing lump in
+throat. Then big speech. ‘Ah, Marie,’ or whatever her name
+is—Jane—Agnes—Angela? Very well. ‘Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too
+long? A little child rebukes us! Angela!’ And so on. Freddie must work
+up his own part. I’m just giving you the general outline. And we must
+get a good line for the child. ‘Boofer lady, does ’oo love dadda?’
+isn’t definite enough. We want something more—ah! ‘Kiss Freddie,’
+that’s it. Short, crisp, and has the punch.”
+
+“But, Jimmy, old top,” I said, “the only objection is, don’t you know,
+that there’s no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn’t come within a mile of him.”
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+“That’s awkward,” he said. “Well, we shall have to make it an exterior
+set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach
+somewhere, when we’re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid
+letter-perfect. First rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp
+to-morrow.”
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn’t
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+“The chief difficulty,” said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, “is to establish a connection in the kid’s mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success.”
+
+I’ve often thought, don’t you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he’d been an old professional. And then he’d
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+“We must hurry up, Jimmy,” I said. “The kid’s uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away.”
+
+“And we haven’t an understudy,” said Jimmy. “There’s something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid’s a bad study. I’ve known
+deaf-mutes who would have learned the part quicker.”
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn’t
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+“We’re not nearly ready,” said Jimmy. “To-day, for instance, he said
+‘Kick Freddie.’ That’s not going to win any girl’s heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet.”
+
+But, by George, we didn’t. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody’s fault—certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie had
+settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house
+to exercise it, when, just as we’d got out to the veranda, along came
+the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual yell
+at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+“Hello, baby!” she said. “Good morning,” she said to me. “May I come
+up?”
+
+She didn’t wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don’t you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn’t even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+“We were just going down to the beach,” I said.
+
+“Yes?” said the girl. She listened for a moment. “So you’re having your
+piano tuned?” she said. “My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he’s finished here?”
+
+“Er—not yet!” I said. “Not yet, if you don’t mind. He can’t bear to be
+disturbed when he’s working. It’s the artistic temperament. I’ll tell
+him later.”
+
+“Very well,” she said, getting up to go. “Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.”
+
+“Don’t you think—shouldn’t we be going on to the beach?” I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+“The beach,” I babbled.
+
+“See what I’ve brought for you, baby,” she said. And, by George, don’t
+you know, she held up in front of the kid’s bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he yelled. “Kiss Fweddie!”
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called “business of outstretched hands” towards
+it.
+
+“Kiss Fweddie!” he shrieked.
+
+“What does this mean?” said the girl, turning to me.
+
+“You’d better give it to him, don’t you know,” I said. “He’ll go on
+till you do.”
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+“What does it mean?” said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don’t you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn’t any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner’s dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: “_Please_ don’t apologize.
+It’s nothing,” and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Angela looked.
+
+“_Well?_” she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, “Oh, well, it was this way.” And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World’s Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction “exit” was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+“Hello, Reggie!” he said. “I was just coming to you. Where’s the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day.”
+
+“No good,” I said sadly. “It’s all over. The thing’s finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show.”
+
+“Tell me,” said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+“Fluffed in his lines, did he?” said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. “It’s
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late,” he said as we started. “Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and——”
+
+“Great Scot!” I cried. “Look!”
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer’s staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other’s arms.
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people’s business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn’t bore you,
+don’t you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an old
+sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself, my
+man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley’s
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George’s aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income—an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a chunk
+of o’ goblins is a pile. George’s uncle was in Monte Carlo, and had
+written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it struck
+me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at Monte
+Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don’t you know. Fix up
+his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George had
+tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were anchored
+in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the thing
+began at seven o’clock in the morning, when I was aroused from a
+dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: “Oh, Harold!” and a male voice “raised in anger,” as they
+say, which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules’s. I
+hardly recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly
+like you’d expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however,
+he evidently relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing
+going on in my midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+“Voules!” I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn’t have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+“Voules,” I said, “are you under the delusion that I’m going to be
+Queen of the May? You’ve called me early all right. It’s only just
+seven.”
+
+“I understood you to summon me, sir.”
+
+“I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside.”
+
+“I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice.”
+
+“It’s a wonder you didn’t raise the roof. Who was that with you?”
+
+“Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley’s maid.”
+
+“What was all the trouble about?”
+
+“I was breaking our engagement, sir.”
+
+I couldn’t help gaping. Somehow one didn’t associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I’d no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+“I think I’ll get up,” I said.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I can’t wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was a
+lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all the
+rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit pale
+and tired. She said she hadn’t slept well. That accounted for it.
+Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+“Seen George?” I asked.
+
+I couldn’t help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: “I’ve done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!”
+
+“I have not seen Mr. Lattaker,” she said.
+
+I didn’t pursue the subject. George’s stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day’s programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+“The poor, dear Prince!” she said.
+
+“What a shocking thing!” said old Marshall.
+
+“I knew him in Vienna,” said Mrs. Vanderley. “He waltzed divinely.”
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps “Serene”) had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on his
+way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed the
+habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and
+insensible in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken
+back to his yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+“This is going to do somebody no good,” I said. “What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they’ll catch the fellow?”
+
+“‘Later,’” read old Marshall, “‘the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.’ That’s the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can.”
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+“Good morning,” he said. “I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board—Mr. George Lattaker?”
+
+“Yes,” said Marshall. “He’s down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?”
+
+“He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business.”
+
+“Take a seat. He’ll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up.”
+
+I went down to George’s state-room.
+
+“George, old man!” I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What’s
+more, the bunk hadn’t been slept in. I don’t know when I’ve been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+“He isn’t there,” I said.
+
+“Not there!” said old Marshall. “Where is he, then? Perhaps he’s gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he’ll be back soon for breakfast. You’d better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?”
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+“Great Scot!” I cried.
+
+“‘Sh!” he whispered. “Anyone about?”
+
+“They’re all down at breakfast.”
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+“I say!” I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+“Did you do that? What did you do it for? What’s the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!”
+
+“Yes, old boy?”
+
+“I did a murder last night.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“It’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I——”
+
+“Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?”
+
+“About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn’t a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what’s-her-name—Mrs. Vanderley’s
+maid—Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?”
+
+“Never. I’ve been refused dozens——”
+
+“Then you won’t understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn’t wait. It might have been the ship’s cat. It
+wasn’t. It was Pilbeam.”
+
+“You kissed her?”
+
+“I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella.”
+
+“Great Scott!”
+
+“Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn’t care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I—It’s just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don’t remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I’ve lost my
+hat.”
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+“Read,” I said. “It’s all there.”
+
+He read.
+
+“Good heavens!” he said.
+
+“You didn’t do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?”
+
+“Reggie, this is awful.”
+
+“Cheer up. They say he’ll recover.”
+
+“That doesn’t matter.”
+
+“It does to him.”
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+“It says they’ve a clue.”
+
+“They always say that.”
+
+“But—My hat!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!”
+
+“George,” I said, “you mustn’t waste time. Oh!”
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+“Don’t do it!” he said, irritably. “Don’t bark like that. What’s the
+matter?”
+
+“The man!”
+
+“What man?”
+
+“A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He’s down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn’t give his name. I didn’t like the
+look of him from the first. It’s this fellow Sturgis. It must be.”
+
+“No!”
+
+“I feel it. I’m sure of it.”
+
+“Had he a hat?”
+
+“Of course he had a hat.”
+
+“Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?”
+
+“By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must get a
+move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your life
+out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _lèse-majesté_. It’s worse
+than hitting a policeman. You haven’t got a moment to waste.”
+
+“But I haven’t any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I’ll wire
+my uncle to meet me in——”
+
+“Look out,” I cried; “there’s someone coming!”
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+“What’s the matter!” I said. “What do you want?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker’s voice. A
+letter has arrived for him.”
+
+“He isn’t here.”
+
+“No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?”
+
+“No; give it to me. I’ll give it to him when he comes.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?”
+
+“He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir.”
+
+“Ah! That’s all, Voules.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+“Who was it?”
+
+“Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They’re all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth’s eating kippers.”
+
+“That’ll hold him for a bit. Full of bones.” He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+“Well, I’m hanged!” he said, as he finished.
+
+“Reggie, this is a queer thing.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+“My dear George—I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I think it
+is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious situation that
+has arisen in connection with the legacy which your father inherited
+from your Aunt Emily, and which you are expecting me, as trustee, to
+hand over to you, now that you have reached your twenty-fifth birthday.
+You have doubtless heard your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred,
+who was lost or kidnapped—which, was never ascertained—when you were
+both babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it was
+supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a letter
+purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos Ayres as the
+adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has only recently
+discovered his identity. He states that he is on his way to meet me,
+and will arrive any day now. Of course, like other claimants, he may
+prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile his intervention will, I fear,
+cause a certain delay before I can hand over your money to you. It will
+be necessary to go into a thorough examination of credentials, etc.,
+and this will take some time. But I will go fully into the matter with
+you when we meet.—Your affectionate uncle,
+
+
+“AUGUSTUS ARBUTT.”
+
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+“Why, old top,” I said, “this lets you out.”
+
+“Lets me out of half the darned money, if that’s what you mean. If this
+chap’s not an imposter—and there’s no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I’ve never heard my father say a word about him—we shall have to
+split the money. Aunt Emily’s will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his ‘offspring.’ I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this.”
+
+“Why, you chump,” I said, “it’s going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you’ve got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash.”
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+“You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie.”
+
+“Ass!” I cried. “Don’t you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren’t exactly alike? Who’s to say you aren’t Alfred
+if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you up that you
+have a brother Alfred.”
+
+“And Alfred will be there to call me a liar.”
+
+“He won’t. It’s not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It’s only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective off
+the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning.”
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+“Why, I really do believe it would work,” he said.
+
+“Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I’ll
+swear George hadn’t one.”
+
+“And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you’re a genius.”
+
+“No, no.”
+
+“You _are_.”
+
+“Well, it’s only sometimes. I can’t keep it up.”
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+“What the devil are you doing here, Voules,” I said.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all.”
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+“Voules is all right,” I said. “Decent Voules! Voules wouldn’t give us
+away, would you, Voules?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“You would?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“But, Voules, old man,” I said, “be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?”
+
+“Financially, sir, nothing.”
+
+“Whereas, by keeping quiet”—I tapped him on the chest—“by holding your
+tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum.”
+
+“Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?”
+
+“Oh, come!” I said.
+
+“How much?” said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn’t believe the way the man haggled.
+You’d have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He’d hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+“Did you meet him?” I asked.
+
+“Meet whom?” said old Marshall.
+
+“George’s twin-brother Alfred.”
+
+“I didn’t know George had a brother.”
+
+“Nor did he till yesterday. It’s a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He’s down in George’s state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It’ll amaze you, the likeness between them. You’ll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes.”
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren’t quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+“Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board,” said George.
+
+“It’s an amazing likeness,” said old Marshall.
+
+“Is my brother like me?” asked George amiably.
+
+“No one could tell you apart,” I said.
+
+“I suppose twins always are alike,” said George. “But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?”
+
+“He’s a dear old pal of mine.”
+
+“You’ve been swimming with him perhaps?”
+
+“Every day last August.”
+
+“Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn’t you?” He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+“Has George a mole like that?” he asked.
+
+“No,” I said. “Oh, no.”
+
+“You would have noticed it if he had?”
+
+“Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.”
+
+“I’m glad of that,” said George. “It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one’s own identity.”
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn’t get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn’t a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+“It’s all right,” he said. “What did I tell you?”
+
+“What did you tell me?”
+
+“Why, about Stella. Didn’t I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then——”
+
+“You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours.”
+
+“Perhaps I did,” said George modestly, “I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn’t to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point.”
+
+“And it’s all right?”
+
+“Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root.”
+
+“I fancy he thinks that you’re bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you.”
+
+“He’s an absolute nuisance,” said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+“It’s my uncle,” said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+“Halloa, George!” he said. “Get my letter?”
+
+“I think you are mistaking me for my brother,” said George. “My name is
+Alfred Lattaker.”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“I am George’s brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?”
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+“You’re very like George,” he said.
+
+“So everyone tells me.”
+
+“And you’re really Alfred?”
+
+“I am.”
+
+“I’d like to talk business with you for a moment.”
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Voules. “If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off.”
+
+I’m bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch—George didn’t show up—and as I was going out I was waylaid
+by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?”
+
+I didn’t see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+“Yes, I have given him the afternoon off.”
+
+She broke down—absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I’m
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I’d said, “There, there!”
+which didn’t seem to help much, I hadn’t any remarks to make.
+
+“He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for.”
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn’t have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was at
+the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview
+George. There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred.
+Voules’s mind had got to be eased as Stella’s had been. I couldn’t
+afford to lose a fellow with his genius for preserving a
+trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow’s face being sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
+care? George’s was like that. He looked green.
+
+“Finished with your uncle?” I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+“There isn’t any uncle,” he said. “There isn’t any Alfred. And there
+isn’t any money.”
+
+“Explain yourself, old top,” I said.
+
+“It won’t take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the trust
+money. He’s been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When the time
+came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he went to the
+tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last remnant of the
+stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while and postponing
+the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he invented this
+twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner or later, but
+meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America, which he has
+done. He’s on his way now.”
+
+“You let him go?”
+
+“What could I do? I can’t afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can’t prove there’s no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred.”
+
+“Well, you’ve made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway,” I said, to cheer him up.
+
+“What’s the good of that now? I’ve hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?”
+
+I pondered.
+
+“It looks to me, old top,” I said at last, “as if things were in a bit
+of a mess.”
+
+“You’ve guessed it,” said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life’s waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can’t tell when you may be going to get it. It’s all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That’s what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don’t you know. That’s all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o’clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening—old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I—when he
+came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was suggesting
+the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was worried. So was
+Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and I, only not for
+the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+“Mr. Marshall?” he said. “I am Count Fritz von Cöslin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness”—he clicked his heels together and saluted—“the Prince
+of Saxburg-Leignitz.”
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+“Why, Count,” she said, “what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?”
+
+“Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?”
+
+“Stella, you remember Count Fritz?”
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+“And how is the poor, dear Prince?” asked Mrs. Vanderley. “What a
+terrible thing to have happened!”
+
+“I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment.”
+
+“That’s good,” said old Marshall.
+
+“In a spoon only,” sighed the Count. “Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis.”
+
+“Mr. Who?”
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+“I am Denman Sturgis, at your service.”
+
+“The deuce you are! What are you doing here?”
+
+“Mr. Sturgis,” explained the Count, “graciously volunteered his
+services——”
+
+“I know. But what’s he doing here?”
+
+“I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“You have not found him?” asked the Count anxiously.
+
+“Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles.”
+
+“You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?”
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+“Don’t go mixing me up with my brother,” he said. “I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole.”
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+“I am sorry,” he said.
+
+George didn’t offer to console him,
+
+“Don’t worry,” said Sturgis. “He won’t escape me. I shall find him.”
+
+“Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man.”
+
+“What?” shouted George.
+
+“That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin.”
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+“I don’t understand,” he said feebly.
+
+“We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis,” went on the Count. “We leaped to the
+conclusion—was it not so?—that the owner of the hat you found was also
+the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard the
+story from His Serene Highness’s own lips. He was passing down a dark
+street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had
+been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My
+high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, ‘Where is my brave preserver?’ His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!”
+
+“Thanks,” said George limply.
+
+“And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker.”
+
+“He needn’t take all that trouble,” said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+“I’ll tell you where to find George Lattaker!” he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+“Yes, look at me,” he yelled. “Look at me. You won’t be the first this
+afternoon who’s stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I’ll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I’ll
+learn you to break a poor man’s heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over’eard ’im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They’d spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he’d swear George hadn’t one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can.”
+
+George got up.
+
+“I haven’t the least desire to deny it, Voules.”
+
+“Mr. Voules, if _you_ please.”
+
+“It’s true,” said George, turning to the Count. “The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness.”
+
+“Then you are really George Lattaker?” asked the Count.
+
+“I am.”
+
+“’Ere, what does all this mean?” demanded Voules.
+
+“Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules.”
+
+“It’s a swindle!” began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall’s
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+“Oh, Harold!” she cried. “I thought you were dead. I thought you’d shot
+yourself.”
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don’t you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+“Voules, you’re sacked,” I said.
+
+“Who cares?” he said. “Think I was going to stop on now I’m a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month’s notice and get
+your ’at, and I’ll take you to dinner at Ciro’s.”
+
+“And you, Mr. Lattaker,” said the Count, “may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver.”
+
+“You may,” said George. “May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?”
+
+There’s just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+“I’m not sure,” she was saying, “that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it.”
+
+“Don’t you?” said George. “Well, as it happens, I’m feeling just that
+way now.”
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+“Halloa, Reggie!” he said.
+
+“Halloa, George!” I said. “Lovely night.”
+
+“Beautiful,” said Stella.
+
+“The moon,” I said.
+
+“Ripping,” said George.
+
+“Lovely,” said Stella.
+
+“And look at the reflection of the stars on the——”
+
+George caught my eye. “Pop off,” he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about—and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of—the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it thrust on my notice, by
+George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows.
+And the limit was reached by that business of the Yeardsley “Venus.”
+
+To make you understand the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+“The Wedding Glide,” I’m hanged if she didn’t break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley—Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I’m bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I’m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,—What ages it seems since I saw anything of you.
+How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old house,
+with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn’t you
+run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so glad to see
+you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you again. He was
+speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come. Wire your train, and I
+will send the car to meet you.
+
+
+—Yours most sincerely,
+ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+
+“P.S.—We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+
+“P.P.S.—Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has ever
+played on.
+
+
+“P.P.S.S.—We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says it is
+better than St. Andrews.
+
+
+“P.P.S.S.S.—You _must_ come!”
+
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, as we drove off. “I was just
+about at my last grip.”
+
+“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.
+
+“If I had the artistic what’s-its-name,” he went on, “if the mere
+mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn’t be
+so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”
+
+“Pictures?”
+
+“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?”
+
+I remembered then—it hadn’t come back to me before—that most of my time
+with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the period
+when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to
+follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures
+are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never
+struck me that she would still be going on in this way after marrying
+an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere sight of a
+picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to old Bill.
+
+“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?”
+
+“A few days.”
+
+“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I
+was to come back after the match. But you couldn’t get me back with a
+lasso.”
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there’s a most corking links
+near here.”
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+“You don’t mean honestly she said that?”
+
+“She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.”
+
+“So I did. Was that all she said I said?”
+
+“Well, wasn’t it enough?”
+
+“She didn’t happen to mention that I added the words, ‘I don’t think’?”
+
+“No, she forgot to tell me that.”
+
+“It’s the worst course in Great Britain.”
+
+I felt rather stunned, don’t you know. Whether it’s a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can’t say, but I simply can’t do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I’m not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m glad the table’s
+good.”
+
+“It depends what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a
+seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence’s cue slipped.
+Elizabeth has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks,
+but it doesn’t improve the thing as a billiard-table.”
+
+“But she said you said——”
+
+“Must have been pulling your leg.”
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which
+brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and
+was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I’ve often heard that
+young married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had
+said there was nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill
+and Clarence’s father, but a woman who could take the name of St.
+Andrews in vain as she had done wouldn’t be likely to stick at a
+trifle.
+
+“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?”
+
+“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman’s figure
+appeared.
+
+“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.
+
+“Do you mean me?” I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea.”
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you’ll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s
+like.” Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She
+can’t have preferred _this_ to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set
+eyes on Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like
+princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?” said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.
+
+“Eh?” I said.
+
+“A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!”
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him, correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing.”
+
+“No,” said the father, shaking his head; “no mewing cat.”
+
+“I can’t bear mewing cats,” said Clarence. “A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!”
+
+“A mewing cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.
+
+“_I_ dislike mewing cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer——”
+
+They all shouted “What!” exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants——’”
+
+“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford——”
+
+“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been
+the ‘Venus’!”
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening’s chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn’t notice it before I don’t know, but it was not till
+Elizabeth showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the
+Yeardsley “Venus.” When she led me up to it, and switched on the light,
+it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without
+noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on
+the foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that
+I was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, “Reggie.”
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d’you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+“What-o?” I said nervously.
+
+“Reggie,” she said, “I want to ask a great favour of you.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?”
+
+There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you’d have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her. I
+admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn’t feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh, yes.”
+
+“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful.”
+
+“Yes,” I said.
+
+“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?”
+
+“Eh! Well, he still seems—er—_interested_ in them, what?”
+
+“Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.”
+
+“Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the——”
+
+“No, that wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something.”
+
+“I don’t quite follow. Get rid of something?”
+
+“The ‘Venus,’” said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+“You saw the ‘Venus,’” she said.
+
+“Not that I remember.”
+
+“Well, come into the dining-room.”
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+“There,” she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door—that may have been why I hadn’t noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it—was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you’d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean
+is—well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it’s funny I
+_hadn’t_ noticed it.
+
+“Is that the ‘Venus’?” I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+“How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it would affect me much. I’d worry
+through all right.”
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+“But you’re not an artist,” she said. “Clarence is.”
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn’t
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It’s like the Unwritten Law, don’t you know, which
+you plead in America if you’ve done anything they want to send you to
+chokey for and you don’t want to go. What I mean is, if you’re
+absolutely off your rocker, but don’t find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat’s Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this “Venus” was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a
+wedding present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All
+right so far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being
+a professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the “Venus.” He couldn’t stand it at any price.
+He didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the expression of the face.
+He didn’t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+“Now you see,” she said.
+
+“In a way,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?”
+
+“Oh, can’t you understand? Look!” Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley’s. “There!” she said. “Clarence painted that!”
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence’s effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+“Er—‘Venus’?” I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+“No. ‘Jocund Spring,’” she snapped. She switched off the light. “I see
+you don’t understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club.”
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+“I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t mean to be cross. Only I do want to make
+you understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose—suppose—well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to
+sit and listen to a cheap vulgar tune—the same tune—day after day, day
+after day, wouldn’t you expect his nerves to break! Well, it’s just
+like that with Clarence. Now you see?”
+
+“Yes, but——”
+
+“But what? Surely I’ve put it plainly enough?”
+
+“Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?”
+
+“I want you to steal the ‘Venus.’”
+
+I looked at her.
+
+“You want me to——?”
+
+“Steal it. Reggie!” Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Don’t you
+see? It’s Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it’s the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his ‘Venus.’ It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it
+to-night, Reggie. I’ll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the
+canvas out of the frame, and it’s done.”
+
+“But one moment,” I said. “I’d be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn’t it be better—in fact,
+how about tackling old Bill on the subject?”
+
+“I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.”
+
+“But if I’m caught?”
+
+“You can’t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room.”
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+“And as to the picture itself—when I’ve got it?”
+
+“Burn it. I’ll see that you have a good fire in your room.”
+
+“But——”
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+“Reggie,” she said; nothing more. Just “Reggie.”
+
+She looked at me.
+
+“Well, after all, if you see what I mean—The days that are no more,
+don’t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?”
+
+“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
+
+I don’t know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond
+necklaces. If you’re not, you’ll understand that I felt a lot less keen
+on the job I’d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy,
+than I had done when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On
+paper it all seemed easy enough, but I couldn’t help feeling there was
+a catch somewhere, and I’ve never known time pass slower. The kick-off
+was scheduled for one o’clock in the morning, when the household might
+be expected to be pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn’t
+stand it any longer. I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill’s bicycle,
+took a grip of my knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn’t have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill’s say, “Feeling better now?”
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+“What happened?” I said.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he said. “I hadn’t a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn’t stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you’re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?”
+
+“It was Elizabeth,” I said. “Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you.”
+
+“You don’t mean——”
+
+“The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.”
+
+“Reggie, old man,” he said. “I’ll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It’s a fool’s trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn’t repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to do
+a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn’t have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I’m
+sorry.”
+
+“Me, too,” I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+“Are you feeling better now?”
+
+“Better than I was. But that’s not saying much.”
+
+“Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let’s be quick about it too. You
+made a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it’s
+on the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.”
+
+“Heads.”
+
+“Tails it is,” he said, uncovering the coin. “Up you get. I’ll hold the
+light. Don’t spike yourself on that sword of yours.”
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+“We’ve got a long evening before us,” he said. “You can’t burn a
+picture of that size in one chunk. You’d set the chimney on fire. Let’s
+do the thing comfortably. Clarence can’t grudge us the stuff. We’ve
+done him a bit of good this trip. To-morrow’ll be the maddest, merriest
+day of Clarence’s glad New Year. On we go.”
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don’t know when I’ve had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+“I heard something,” he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+“There’s somebody in the dining-room,” I whispered.
+
+There’s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill’s like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn’t
+really heard anything after all. I’m a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+“Come on,” he said. “Bring the poker.”
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+“We’ll fling the door open and make a rush,” said Bill.
+
+“Supposing they shoot, old scout?”
+
+“Burglars never shoot,” said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence’s “Jocund Spring,”
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+“What on earth?” said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn’t know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+“Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I——”
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+“Clarence?” he said hesitatingly.
+
+“He’s in bed,” I said.
+
+“In bed! Then he doesn’t know? Even now—Young men, I throw myself on
+your mercy. Don’t be hard on me. Listen.” He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. “I can explain everything—everything.”
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+“You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me.” He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. “Young man,”
+he said, “you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?”
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don’t you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+“I won’t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,” I said. “I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean—what? _I_ know. But I’m afraid—Well, look!”
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+“The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have taken
+Clarence’s picture!” He paused. “It might have been mine! My Venus!” he
+whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know, but he had
+to know the truth.
+
+“I’m awfully sorry, you know,” I said. “But it _was_.”
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+“Eh? What do you mean?”
+
+“They _did_ take your Venus.”
+
+“But I have it here.”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+“That’s Clarence’s ‘Jocund Spring,’” I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+“What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don’t know my own
+picture—my child—my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can you
+read, boy? Look: ‘Matthew Yeardsley.’ This is _my_ picture!”
+
+And—well, by Jove, it _was_, don’t you know!
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was
+Bill’s fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn’t be
+expected to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty
+massive silence for a bit.
+
+“Reggie,” said Bill at last, “how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?”
+
+“Old scout,” I said. “I was thinking much the same myself.”
+
+“Reggie,” said Bill, “I happen to know there’s a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn’t what you’d call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well—er—in the circumstances, how about
+it?”
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it’s all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages for
+pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he’s more
+like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who was
+apt to rally round him in times of need—a guide, don’t you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and—I rather fancy—friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn’t
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn’t know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don’t shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+Be!
+Be!
+    The past is dead.
+    To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+To-day!
+    Be with every nerve,
+            With every muscle,
+            With every drop of your red blood!
+Be!
+
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+“Read this, Bertie!” I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. “Wake up and read this!”
+
+I can’t read before I’ve had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It’s a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+“Tea, Jeeves.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He flowed silently out of the room—he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+“What is it?” I said. “What on earth’s the matter?”
+
+“Read it!”
+
+“I can’t. I haven’t had my tea.”
+
+“Well, listen then.”
+
+“Who’s it from?”
+
+“My aunt.”
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+“So what on earth am I to do?”
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+“Read it again, Rocky, old top,” I said. “I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd’s aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+“MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.—I have been thinking things over for a long
+while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been very
+thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made up my mind to
+do now.”
+
+
+“What do you make of that, Jeeves?”
+
+“It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication.”
+
+“It becomes as clear as mud!” said Rocky.
+
+“Proceed, old scout,” I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+“You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see for
+myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I fear that
+now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I am old and worn
+out. I seem to have no strength left in me.”
+
+
+“Sad, Jeeves, what?”
+
+“Extremely, sir.”
+
+“Sad nothing!” said Rocky. “It’s sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she’s a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She’s got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it’s
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is.”
+
+“Rather like the chappie whose heart was ‘in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,’ Jeeves?”
+
+“The cases are in some respects parallel, sir.”
+
+“Carry on, Rocky, dear boy.”
+
+“So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the city
+myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly thought of
+this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the Sunday paper about
+a young man who had longed all his life for a certain thing and won it
+in the end only when he was too old to enjoy it. It was very sad, and
+it touched me.”
+
+
+“A thing,” interpolated Rocky bitterly, “that I’ve not been able to do
+in ten years.”
+
+“As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now I
+have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I have
+now decided to do so—on one condition. I have written to a firm of
+lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you quite a
+substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you live in New
+York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do. I want you to be
+my representative, to spend this money for me as I should do myself. I
+want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic life of New York. I want you
+to be the life and soul of brilliant supper parties.
+    “Above all, I want you—indeed, I insist on this—to write me letters
+    at least once a week giving me a full description of all you are
+    doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at
+    second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for
+    myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.—Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+
+“ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER.”
+
+
+“What about it?” said Rocky.
+
+“What about it?” I said.
+
+“Yes. What on earth am I going to do?”
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+“Aren’t you bucked?” I said.
+
+“Bucked!”
+
+“If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you.”
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop!
+
+“Pretty soft!” he cried. “To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus’s dance, and imagine that they’re having a good time because
+they’re making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn’t come near the place if I hadn’t got
+to see editors occasionally. There’s a blight on it. It’s got moral
+delirium tremens. It’s the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!”
+
+I felt rather like Lot’s friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+“It would kill me to have to live in New York,” he went on. “To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To——” He started. “Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!”
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+“My dear chap!” I said reproachfully.
+
+“Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?”
+
+“Jeeves,” I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. “How many suits of evening clothes have I?”
+
+“We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets——”
+
+“Three.”
+
+“For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats.”
+
+“And shirts?”
+
+“Four dozen, sir.”
+
+“And white ties?”
+
+“The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir.”
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+“You see?”
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+“I won’t do it! I can’t do it! I’ll be hanged if I’ll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don’t
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?”
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+“Then, what are you going to do about it?” I said.
+
+“That’s what I want to know.”
+
+“You might write and explain to your aunt.”
+
+“I might—if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer’s in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will.”
+
+I saw his point.
+
+“What do you suggest, Jeeves?” I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+“The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence.”
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn’t been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn’t on to his curves.
+
+“Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?” he said. “I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What’s the
+idea?”
+
+“My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you’ve got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That’s it, isn’t it, Jeeves?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky’s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man’s vast intellect.
+
+“But who would do it?” he said. “It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things.”
+
+“Jeeves!” I said. “Let Jeeves do it.”
+
+“But would he?”
+
+“You would do it, wouldn’t you, Jeeves?”
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish’s.
+
+“I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York’s places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.”
+
+“Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer’s. It’s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way.”
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+“Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer’s. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.”
+
+“You see?” I said to Rocky. “Leave it to Jeeves. He knows.”
+
+It isn’t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright
+lights. I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a
+table on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well
+with a fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I’d never imagined he could
+look so nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere
+benevolence, and he was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond of
+old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky’s letters, based on Jeeves’s notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+“DEAR FREDDIE,—Well, here I am in New York. It’s not a bad place. I’m
+not having a bad time. Everything’s pretty all right. The cabarets
+aren’t bad. Don’t know when I shall be back. How’s everybody?
+Cheer-o!—Yours,
+
+
+“BERTIE.
+
+
+“PS.—Seen old Ted lately?”
+
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn’t dragged him in I couldn’t
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here’s old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+“DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,—How can I ever thank you enough for giving me the
+opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems more
+wonderful every day.
+    “Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!”
+
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn’t know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+“I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new place on
+Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie Cohan looked in
+about midnight and got off a good one about Willie Collier. Fred Stone
+could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks did all sorts of stunts
+and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was there, as usual, and Laurette
+Taylor showed up with a party. The show at the Revels is quite good. I
+am enclosing a programme.
+    “Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof——”
+
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it’s the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it’s easier for a chappie
+who’s used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there’s
+no doubt that Rocky’s correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+“Jeeves, you’re a wonder!”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn’t tell
+you a thing about them, except that I’ve had a good time.”
+
+“It’s just a knack, sir.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Todd’s letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?”
+
+“Undoubtedly, sir,” agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn’t that he spoke loudly. He has one of those soft, soothing
+voices that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off
+sheep. It was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+“Miss Rockmetteller!”
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I’m not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father’s ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I’d
+come to look on Rocky’s aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn’t seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky’s aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I’ve ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+“Good afternoon,” I managed to say.
+
+“How do you do?” she said. “Mr. Cohan?”
+
+“Er—no.”
+
+“Mr. Fred Stone?”
+
+“Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name’s Wooster—Bertie
+Wooster.”
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+“Isn’t Rockmetteller home?” she said. “Where is he?”
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I
+couldn’t tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+“If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon.”
+
+“So he did, Jeeves; so he did,” I said, looking at my watch. “Did he
+say when he would be back?”
+
+“He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning.”
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I’d forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in
+England, has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it
+never fails to make my spine curl.
+
+“You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller’s?”
+
+“Oh, yes, rather!”
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+“Well, you need to be,” she said, “the way you treat his flat as your
+own!”
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I’d been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn’t,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber’s man come to
+fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her—my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea—the good old
+stand-by.
+
+“Would you care for a cup of tea?” I said.
+
+“Tea?”
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+“Nothing like a cup after a journey,” I said. “Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don’t you
+know. I’ll go and tell Jeeves.”
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves’s lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said, “we want some tea.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?”
+
+I wanted sympathy, don’t you know—sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+“She’s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?”
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+“No doubt because of Mr. Todd’s letters, sir,” he said. “It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city.”
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+“Well, it’s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I’m someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“It’s pretty rotten, you know.”
+
+“Most disturbing, sir.”
+
+“And there’s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We’ve got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train.”
+
+“I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant.”
+
+“By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!”
+
+“Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you.”
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was
+still bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like
+a hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in.
+There was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to
+me. I suppose because I wasn’t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a
+chap.
+
+“This is a surprise, what?” I said, after about five minutes’ restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+“What is a surprise?”
+
+“Your coming here, don’t you know, and so on.”
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+“Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?” she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+“Oh, rather,” I said. “Of course! Certainly. What I mean is——”
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There’s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn’t certain of one’s lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+“Tea, tea, tea—what? What?” I said.
+
+It wasn’t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+“Do you mean to say, young man,” she said frostily, “that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?”
+
+“Rather! Bucks you up, you know.”
+
+“What do you mean by the expression ‘Bucks you up’?”
+
+“Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.”
+
+“I don’t understand a word you say. You’re English, aren’t you?”
+
+I admitted it. She didn’t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn’t like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she’d have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can’t make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people, especially if
+one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+“Are you comfortable at your hotel?” I said.
+
+“At which hotel?”
+
+“The hotel you’re staying at.”
+
+“I am not staying at an hotel.”
+
+“Stopping with friends—what?”
+
+“I am naturally stopping with my nephew.”
+
+I didn’t get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+“What! Here?” I gurgled.
+
+“Certainly! Where else should I go?”
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn’t
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn’t explain that this wasn’t
+Rocky’s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+“Will you kindly tell my nephew’s man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down.”
+
+“Your nephew’s man-servant?”
+
+“The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns.”
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves’s den.
+
+“Jeeves!” I whispered.
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+“This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“She thinks you’re Mr. Todd’s man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don’t see what you’re to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can’t say anything or she’ll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don’t want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed.”
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+“It is hardly my place, sir——”
+
+“I know—I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it’s hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?”
+
+“Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?”
+
+“Good Lord! I hadn’t thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn’t looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?”
+
+“I will endeavour to do so, sir.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think there’s anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+“Good-bye, Jeeves,” I said.
+
+“Good-bye, sir.”
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people’s
+misfortunes if you’ve been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don’t you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I’ve been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn’t forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I’m not sure this didn’t
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn’t the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don’t know when I’ve
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said “Halloa!” five times, thinking he hadn’t got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+“Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I’m having a time!”
+
+“Where are you speaking from?”
+
+“The Midnight Revels. We’ve been here an hour, and I think we’re a
+fixture for the night. I’ve told Aunt Isabel I’ve gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She’s glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I’m nearly crazy.”
+
+“Tell me all, old top,” I said.
+
+“A little more of this,” he said, “and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It’s simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can’t play louder
+than the other. I’m a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours.”
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn’t struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+“You’ll ruin them!”
+
+“I hope so,” said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. “I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they’ve given me a bad enough time. They’re
+about three sizes too small, and something’s apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven’t
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don’t know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It’s taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I’ve hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it’s
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something’s got to be done, Bertie! You’ve got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it.”
+
+“Me! What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, Jeeves, then. It’s all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt’s just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she’s had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can’t stand it, Bertie!
+It’s got to end!”
+
+“Can’t Jeeves think of anything?”
+
+“No. He just hangs round saying: ‘Most disturbing, sir!’ A fat lot of
+help that is!”
+
+“Well, old lad,” I said, “after all, it’s far worse for me than it is
+for you. You’ve got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you’re saving a
+lot of money.”
+
+“Saving money? What do you mean—saving money?”
+
+“Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she’s paying
+all the expenses now, isn’t she?”
+
+“Certainly she is; but she’s stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she’s in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it’s
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I’ve
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it’s got a silver
+lining it’s some little dissembler!”
+
+“But, Rocky, old top, it’s too bally awful! You’ve no notion of what
+I’m going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat.”
+
+“Don’t come near the flat.”
+
+“But it’s my own flat.”
+
+“I can’t help that. Aunt Isabel doesn’t like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn’t do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she’ll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye.”
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+“Good morning, sir,” he said. “I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings.”
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+“Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?”
+
+“It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady.”
+
+“You know, Jeeves, say what you like—this is a bit thick, isn’t it?”
+
+“The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill.”
+
+“It can’t go on—this sort of thing—Jeeves.”
+
+“We must hope for the best, sir.”
+
+“Can’t you think of anything to do?”
+
+“I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts—the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve—in the first long drawer, sir.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say you can’t think of anything, Jeeves?”
+
+“For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left.” He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. “A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.”
+
+“You understate it, Jeeves.”
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+“In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children’s savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire.”
+
+“I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves,” I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. “But I don’t see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.”
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+I’ve often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they’ve been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There’s a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the
+cabarets once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York’s a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn’t long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky’s. I saw him once at Peale’s, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn’t anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn’t difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn’t bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn’t blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: “What’s the use?” and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn’t come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+“Bertie, old scout,” said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+“we’ve always been pals, haven’t we? I mean, you know I’d do you a good
+turn if you asked me?”
+
+“My dear old lad,” I said. The man had moved me.
+
+“Then, for Heaven’s sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening.”
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+“My dear chap,” I said, “you know I’d do anything in reason; but——”
+
+“You must come, Bertie. You’ve got to. Something’s got to be done to
+divert her mind. She’s brooding about something. She’s been like that
+for the last two days. I think she’s beginning to suspect. She can’t
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the
+effect has worn off now, and she’s beginning to wonder again.
+Something’s got to be done, or she will find out everything, and if she
+does I’d take a nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later
+on. So, for the love of Mike, come across to our table and help things
+along.”
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+“You’ve met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?” said Rocky.
+
+“I have.”
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+“Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?”
+
+“Take a seat, Bertie. What’ll you have?” said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+“You’ll come along, won’t you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?”
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn’t in the contract, but there wasn’t
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and, though
+Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his best to
+supply dialogue, we weren’t a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+“Say when, Bertie.”
+
+“Stop!” barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky’s eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+“Leave it there, Rockmetteller!” said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+“The time has come to speak,” she said. “I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!”
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+“Eh?” he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+“The fault,” she said, “was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city.”
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie’s face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+“But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York.”
+
+“Jimmy Mundy!” I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and you
+suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I’d seen it happen before. I
+remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off to a
+meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front of a
+crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+“Yes; Jimmy Mundy!” she said. “I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they
+would have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his
+message. He has come to save New York from itself; to force it—in his
+picturesque phrase—to hit the trail. It was three days ago,
+Rockmetteller, that I first heard him. It was an accident that took me
+to his meeting. How often in this life a mere accident may shape our
+whole future!
+
+“You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained.”
+
+She gulped.
+
+“Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+“He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, ‘This means you!’ I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?”
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+“Y-yes,” he stammered; “I—I thought something was wrong.”
+
+“Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won’t you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won’t you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will——”
+
+I can’t help thinking it must have been that word “will” that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel’s. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+“Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Not to live in the country?”
+
+“Yes, Rockmetteller.”
+
+“Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?”
+
+“Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you—for my sake?”
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+“I will!” he said.
+
+“Jeeves,” I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat,
+lying in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had
+just come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an
+hour before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she
+was the curse of; so we were alone at last. “Jeeves, there’s no place
+like home—what?”
+
+“Very true, sir.”
+
+“The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing—what?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+“Jeeves.”
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled.”
+
+“Indeed, sir?”
+
+“When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!”
+
+“Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir.”
+
+“Your aunt? The hansom cab one?”
+
+“Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller.”
+
+I was stunned by the man’s resource.
+
+“It’s brain,” I said; “pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Oh, well, then, it’s just a gift, I take it; and if you aren’t born
+that way there’s no use worrying.”
+
+“Precisely, sir,” said Jeeves. “If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir.”
+
+“All right, Jeeves.” I said humbly. “You know!”
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
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diff --git a/8164-h/8164-h.htm b/8164-h/8164-h.htm
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      My Man Jeeves | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style> /* <![CDATA[ */
+
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: My Man Jeeves</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: P. G. Wodehouse</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 24, 2003 [eBook #8164]<br>
+[Most recently updated: February 6, 2024]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]">
+</div>
+
+<h1>My Man Jeeves</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by P. G. Wodehouse</h2>
+
+<h3>1919</h3>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">LEAVE IT TO JEEVES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">ABSENT TREATMENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">HELPING FREDDIE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>LEAVE IT TO JEEVES</h2>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves&mdash;my man, you know&mdash;is really a most extraordinary chap. So
+capable. Honestly, I shouldn&rsquo;t know what to do without him. On broader
+lines he&rsquo;s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble
+battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked
+&ldquo;Inquiries.&rdquo; You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and
+say: &ldquo;When&rsquo;s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?&rdquo;
+and they reply, without stopping to think, &ldquo;Two-forty-three, track ten,
+change at San Francisco.&rdquo; And they&rsquo;re right every time. Well,
+Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond Street one
+morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I felt I should never
+be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address of the tailors out of him,
+and had them working on the thing inside the hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said that evening. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting a check
+suit like that one of Mr. Byng&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Injudicious, sir,&rdquo; he said firmly. &ldquo;It will not become
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What absolute rot! It&rsquo;s the soundest thing I&rsquo;ve struck for
+years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unsuitable for you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came home, and
+I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I nearly swooned.
+Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a music-hall comedian and
+a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in absolutely the same stuff. These
+things are just Life&rsquo;s mysteries, and that&rsquo;s all there is to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it isn&rsquo;t only that Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment about clothes is
+infallible, though, of course, that&rsquo;s really the main thing. The man
+knows everything. There was the matter of that tip on the
+&ldquo;Lincolnshire.&rdquo; I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of
+being the real, red-hot tabasco.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, for I&rsquo;m fond of the man, and like to do him
+a good turn when I can, &ldquo;if you want to make a bit of money have
+something on Wonderchild for the &lsquo;Lincolnshire.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather not, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s the straight goods. I&rsquo;m going to put my shirt on
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know anything
+about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till he was breathing
+on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and nosed him out. I went
+straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After this,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;not another step for me without your
+advice. From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he has, by Jove! I&rsquo;m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would
+appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don&rsquo;t you
+know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with Jeeves, and
+I&rsquo;m game to advise any one about anything. And that&rsquo;s why, when
+Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to ring the bell
+and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my cousin
+Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square way. I
+don&rsquo;t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I left England
+was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to stop young Gussie
+marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got the whole thing so mixed up
+that I decided that it would be a sound scheme for me to stop on in America for
+a bit instead of going back and having long cosy chats about the thing with
+aunt. So I sent Jeeves out to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a
+bit of exile. I&rsquo;m bound to say that New York&rsquo;s a topping place to
+be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty
+of things going on, and I&rsquo;m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.
+Chappies introduced me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it
+wasn&rsquo;t long before I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in
+dollars in houses up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down
+mostly around Washington Square&mdash;artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but he
+hadn&rsquo;t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines with a
+blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the game. You see,
+the catch about portrait-painting&mdash;I&rsquo;ve looked into the thing a
+bit&mdash;is that you can&rsquo;t start painting portraits till people come
+along and ask you to, and they won&rsquo;t come and ask you to until
+you&rsquo;ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
+comic papers&mdash;he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
+idea&mdash;and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
+His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the ear of a
+rich uncle&mdash;one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business. I&rsquo;m
+a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it&rsquo;s apparently something the
+populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently large
+stack out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty soft snap:
+but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky&rsquo;s uncle was a robust
+sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was fifty-one, and it seemed
+as if he might go to par. It was not this, however, that distressed poor old
+Corky, for he was not bigoted and had no objection to the man going on living.
+What Corky kicked at was the way the above Worple used to harry him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky&rsquo;s uncle, you see, didn&rsquo;t want him to be an artist. He
+didn&rsquo;t think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging
+him to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and work
+his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with him. He seemed
+to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what Corky said was that,
+while he didn&rsquo;t know what they did at the bottom of the jute business,
+instinct told him that it was something too beastly for words. Corky, moreover,
+believed in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a
+hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing
+his uncle to cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wouldn&rsquo;t have got this if his uncle hadn&rsquo;t had a hobby. Mr.
+Worple was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I&rsquo;ve observed,
+the American captain of industry doesn&rsquo;t do anything out of business
+hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a
+captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was what is known
+as an ornithologist. He had written a book called <i>American Birds</i>, and
+was writing another, to be called <i>More American Birds</i>. When he had
+finished that, the presumption was that he would begin a third, and keep on
+till the supply of American birds gave out. Corky used to go to him about once
+every three months and let him talk about American birds. Apparently you could
+do what you liked with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet
+subject, so these little chats used to make Corky&rsquo;s allowance all right
+for the time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when broiled
+and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of extremely
+uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was a poor
+chump and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account, was
+just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine Jeeves feels very
+much the same about me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl in front
+of him, and said, &ldquo;Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
+Singer,&rdquo; the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke were,
+&ldquo;Corky, how about your uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and
+worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can&rsquo;t think
+what the deuce to do with the body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re so scared, Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;We were
+hoping that you might suggest a way of breaking it to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of
+looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest
+thing on earth and wondered that you hadn&rsquo;t got on to it yet yourself.
+She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me as if she were saying
+to herself, &ldquo;Oh, I do hope this great strong man isn&rsquo;t going to
+hurt me.&rdquo; She gave a fellow a protective kind of feeling, made him want
+to stroke her hand and say, &ldquo;There, there, little one!&rdquo; or words to
+that effect. She made me feel that there was nothing I wouldn&rsquo;t do for
+her. She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which
+creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you&rsquo;re
+doing, you&rsquo;re starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and
+pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at
+you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel
+alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why your uncle shouldn&rsquo;t be most awfully
+bucked,&rdquo; I said to Corky. &ldquo;He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife
+for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn&rsquo;t
+admit it. That&rsquo;s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter
+of principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had gone
+and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he would raise Cain
+automatically. He&rsquo;s always done it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer&rsquo;s acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how can I work it that way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one thing to do,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I rang the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see
+him come into a room. He&rsquo;s like one of those weird chappies in India who
+dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of
+disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them.
+I&rsquo;ve got a cousin who&rsquo;s what they call a Theosophist, and he says
+he&rsquo;s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn&rsquo;t quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of
+animals slain in anger and pie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a
+weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his
+father in the offing. There was something about him that gave me confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye gleams
+with the light of pure intelligence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, we want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I boiled down Corky&rsquo;s painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way by
+which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer&rsquo;s acquaintance without getting on
+to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, try to think of something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have thought of something already, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He means,&rdquo; I translated to Corky, &ldquo;that he has got a pippin
+of an idea, but it&rsquo;s going to cost a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally the poor chap&rsquo;s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the whole
+thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl&rsquo;s melting gaze,
+and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;Only too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr.
+Worple&rsquo;s attachment to ornithology.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the flimsiest
+nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr. Corcoran
+expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I have
+mentioned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be
+entitled&mdash;let us say&mdash;<i>The Children&rsquo;s Book of American
+Birds</i>, and dedicate it to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published
+at your expense, sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given
+over to eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple&rsquo;s own larger treatise on
+the same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to
+Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in which the
+young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one to whom she owes
+so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired result, but as I say, the
+expense involved would be considerable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage when the
+tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had betted on Jeeves all
+along, and I had known that he wouldn&rsquo;t let me down. It beats me
+sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to hang around pressing my
+clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves&rsquo;s brain, I should have a stab
+at being Prime Minister or something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that is absolutely ripping! One of your
+very best efforts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl made an objection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m sure I couldn&rsquo;t write a book about anything. I
+can&rsquo;t even write good letters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Muriel&rsquo;s talents,&rdquo; said Corky, with a little cough
+&ldquo;lie more in the direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn&rsquo;t mention
+it before, but one of our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle
+Alexander will receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show
+<i>Choose your Exit</i> at the Manhattan. It&rsquo;s absurdly unreasonable, but
+we both feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander&rsquo;s natural
+tendency to kick like a steer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family when I
+tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the recollection of my
+Aunt Agatha&rsquo;s attitude in the matter of Gussie and the vaudeville girl
+was still fresh in my mind. I don&rsquo;t know why it is&mdash;one of these
+psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose&mdash;but uncles and aunts, as a
+class, are always dead against the drama, legitimate or otherwise. They
+don&rsquo;t seem able to stick it at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for a small
+fee. It is only necessary that the young lady&rsquo;s name should appear on the
+title page.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said Corky. &ldquo;Sam Patterson would do it
+for a hundred dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten
+thousand words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him. I&rsquo;ll
+get after him right away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will that be all, sir?&rdquo; said Jeeves. &ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank
+you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows,
+loaded down with the grey matter; but I&rsquo;ve got their number now. All a
+publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving
+and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because
+I&rsquo;ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old apartment with a
+fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I happened to be down at Corky&rsquo;s place when the first copies of <i>The
+Children&rsquo;s Book of American Birds</i> bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there,
+and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the door and
+the parcel was delivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some species on
+it, and underneath the girl&rsquo;s name in gold letters. I opened a copy at
+random.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Often of a spring morning,&rdquo; it said at the top of page twenty-one,
+&ldquo;as you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are older you
+must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple&rsquo;s wonderful
+book&mdash;<i>American Birds</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later there he
+was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was
+great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it
+and Jeeves&rsquo;s genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn&rsquo;t see
+how the uncle could fail to drop. You can&rsquo;t call a chap the world&rsquo;s
+greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a certain
+disposition towards chumminess in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a cert!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An absolute cinch!&rdquo; said Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to tell me
+that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so dripping with the
+milk of human kindness that if he hadn&rsquo;t known Mr. Worple&rsquo;s
+handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author of it. Any time
+it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would be delighted to make
+her acquaintance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had invited
+me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn&rsquo;t for several
+months that I settled down in the city again. I had been wondering a lot, of
+course, about Corky, whether it all turned out right, and so forth, and my
+first evening in New York, happening to pop into a quiet sort of little
+restaurant which I go to when I don&rsquo;t feel inclined for the bright
+lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by herself at a table near the
+door. Corky, I took it, was out telephoning. I went up and passed the time of
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well, well, what?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky around?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re waiting for Corky, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t understand. No, I&rsquo;m not waiting for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind of
+thingummy, you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, you haven&rsquo;t had a row with Corky, have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A row?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A spat, don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;little misunderstanding&mdash;faults
+on both sides&mdash;er&mdash;and all that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, whatever makes you think that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is&mdash;I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve left the stage now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time I had
+been away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, of course, I see now! You&rsquo;re married!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander,&rdquo; she said, looking past me,
+&ldquo;this is a friend of mine&mdash;Mr. Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of healthy
+face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he looked, though quite
+peaceful at the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce&rsquo;s, Alexander.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from hitting
+the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; I heard him say. &ldquo;I
+wish you would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I noticed it
+first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be introduced to you.
+He seemed altogether quieter and more serious. Something seemed to have sobered
+him. Perhaps you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night,
+Mr. Wooster? Or have you dined?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I wanted to
+get into the open and think this thing out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I called
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;now is the time for all good men to come
+to the aid of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I&rsquo;ve a
+bit of news for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You&rsquo;ll need it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right. Please yourself. But you&rsquo;re going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle&rsquo;s esteem
+by writing the book on birds?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s slid. She&rsquo;s married the uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took it without blinking. You can&rsquo;t rattle Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was always a development to be feared, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It crossed my mind as a possibility.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer frame of
+mind, what had happened wasn&rsquo;t my fault, if you come down to it. I
+couldn&rsquo;t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the same
+I&rsquo;m bound to admit that I didn&rsquo;t relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of soothing
+work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few months. I gave it
+the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was beginning to think I
+might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so
+to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most
+awful bone and put the lid on it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that
+Mrs. Alexander Worple had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn&rsquo;t the heart to touch
+my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled over. Absolutely.
+It was the limit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington
+Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it
+over, I hadn&rsquo;t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it
+him in waves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it was
+playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this just when he
+probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I pictured him sitting in his
+lonely studio with no company but his bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got
+me to such an extent that I bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to
+go all out for the studio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting away, while
+on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle age, holding a baby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, ah!&rdquo; I said, and started to back out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bertie. Don&rsquo;t go. We&rsquo;re just finishing for the day.
+That will be all this afternoon,&rdquo; he said to the nurse, who got up with
+the baby and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and began to
+get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for granted that I knew
+all about what had happened, so it wasn&rsquo;t as awkward as it might have
+been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my uncle&rsquo;s idea,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Muriel
+doesn&rsquo;t know about it yet. The portrait&rsquo;s to be a surprise for her
+on her birthday. The nurse takes the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and
+they beat it down here. If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie,
+get acquainted with this. Here&rsquo;s the first commission I have ever had to
+paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the
+thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a
+little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a
+blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can&rsquo;t refuse to paint the portrait
+because if I did my uncle would stop my allowance; yet every time I look up and
+catch that kid&rsquo;s vacant eye, I suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie,
+sometimes when he gives me a patronizing glance and then turns away and is
+sick, as if it revolted him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying
+the entire front page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation.
+There are moments when I can almost see the headlines: &lsquo;Promising Young
+Artist Beans Baby With Axe.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was too deep
+for words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn&rsquo;t
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie&rsquo;s sorrow. Besides,
+I&rsquo;m bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the &rsquo;phone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you doing anything this afternoon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing special.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t come down here, could you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble? Anything up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve finished the portrait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good boy! Stout work!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; His voice sounded rather doubtful. &ldquo;The fact is,
+Bertie, it doesn&rsquo;t look quite right to me. There&rsquo;s something about
+it&mdash;My uncle&rsquo;s coming in half an hour to inspect it, and&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know why it is, but I kind of feel I&rsquo;d like your moral
+support!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The sympathetic
+co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think he&rsquo;ll cut up rough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He may.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the restaurant, and
+tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too easy. I spoke to Corky
+firmly on the telephone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But only if I may bring Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why Jeeves? What&rsquo;s Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves?
+Jeeves is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves&rsquo;s support, you&rsquo;re mistaken. I&rsquo;d sooner
+go into a den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, all right,&rdquo; said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I
+rang for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That&rsquo;s the sort of chap he is. You can&rsquo;t rattle him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up in a
+defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stand right where you are, Bertie,&rdquo; he said, without moving.
+&ldquo;Now, tell me honestly, how does it strike you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at
+it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to
+where I had been at first, because it hadn&rsquo;t seemed quite so bad from
+there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Corky, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hesitated a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment,
+but&mdash;but it <i>was</i> an ugly sort of kid, wasn&rsquo;t it, if I remember
+rightly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As ugly as that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how it could have been, old chap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort of way.
+He groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re right quite, Bertie. Something&rsquo;s gone wrong with the
+darned thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I&rsquo;ve
+worked that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull&mdash;painting the soul
+of the sitter. I&rsquo;ve got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child&rsquo;s soul on canvas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don&rsquo;t see
+how he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&mdash;it sorts of leers at you, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve noticed that, too?&rdquo; said Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how one could help noticing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in the
+middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don&rsquo;t you
+think so, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle came
+in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy shook
+hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn&rsquo;t think he
+had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his stick. Jeeves had
+projected himself into the background, and he didn&rsquo;t notice him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is
+it&mdash;really finished? Well, bring it out. Let&rsquo;s have a look at it.
+This will be a wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it?
+Let&rsquo;s&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he got it&mdash;suddenly, when he wasn&rsquo;t set for the punch; and
+he rocked back on his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oosh!&rdquo; he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I&rsquo;ve ever run up against.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is this a practical joke?&rdquo; he said at last, in a way that set
+about sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want to stand a bit farther away from it,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re perfectly right!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I do! I want to
+stand so far away from it that I can&rsquo;t see the thing with a
+telescope!&rdquo; He turned on Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who
+has just located a chunk of meat. &ldquo;And this&mdash;this&mdash;is what you
+have been wasting your time and my money for all these years! A painter! I
+wouldn&rsquo;t let you paint a house of mine! I gave you this commission,
+thinking that you were a competent worker, and this&mdash;this&mdash;this
+extract from a comic coloured supplement is the result!&rdquo; He swung towards
+the door, lashing his tail and growling to himself. &ldquo;This ends it! If you
+wish to continue this foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an
+excuse for idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you
+report at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should have
+done half a dozen years ago, not another cent&mdash;not another cent&mdash;not
+another&mdash;Boosh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out of the
+bombproof shelter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky, old top!&rdquo; I whispered faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was a hunted
+look in his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that finishes it!&rdquo; he muttered brokenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do? What can I do? I can&rsquo;t stick on here if he cuts off supplies.
+You heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about the
+office. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who&rsquo;s just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make a suggestion, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at the
+picture. Upon my word, I can&rsquo;t give you a better idea of the shattering
+effect of Corky&rsquo;s uncle Alexander when in action than by saying that he
+had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves was there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him? He was a
+financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite saying of his that
+there is always a way. The first time I heard him use the expression was after
+the failure of a patent depilatory which he promoted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what on earth are you talking
+about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a
+parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not
+despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o, guaranteed to
+produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was advertised, if you
+remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a billiard-ball, before and after
+taking, and made such a substantial fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon
+afterwards elevated to the peerage for services to his Party. It seems to me
+that, if Mr. Corcoran looks into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton,
+that there is always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the
+difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract
+from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran&rsquo;s portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran
+will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been for the
+humorous. There is something about this picture&mdash;something bold and
+vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking noise with
+his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky, old man!&rdquo; I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s right! The man&rsquo;s absolutely right! Jeeves, you&rsquo;re
+a life-saver! You&rsquo;ve hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the
+office on Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I&rsquo;ll buy the
+business if I feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+<i>Sunday Star</i>. He&rsquo;ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He&rsquo;ll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I&rsquo;ve got a gold-mine.
+Where&rsquo;s my hat? I&rsquo;ve got an income for life! Where&rsquo;s that
+confounded hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park
+Row!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal muscular spasm
+about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran&mdash;for a title of the
+series which you have in mind&mdash;&lsquo;The Adventures of Baby
+Blobbs.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way. Jeeves
+was right. There could be no other title.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the <i>Sunday Star</i>. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the
+dawn and there&rsquo;s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make
+up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a fellow,
+one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances
+he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these
+pictures?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you, sir.
+Extremely diverting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have made a big hit, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I anticipated it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, Jeeves, you&rsquo;re a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I think I&rsquo;ll wear the blue with the faint red stripe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I rather fancy myself in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, all right, have it your own way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, I know it&rsquo;s as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You&rsquo;ve got to consider that, you know. What?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST</h2>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it&rsquo;s
+Shakespeare&mdash;or, if not, it&rsquo;s some equally brainy lad&mdash;who says
+that it&rsquo;s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole,
+and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind
+him with a bit of lead piping. There&rsquo;s no doubt the man&rsquo;s right.
+It&rsquo;s absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned up, I
+was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from under the
+cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of fact, I was especially
+bucked just then because the day before I had asserted myself with
+Jeeves&mdash;absolutely asserted myself, don&rsquo;t you know. You see, the way
+things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a dashed serf. The man had
+jolly well oppressed me. I didn&rsquo;t so much mind when he made me give up
+one of my new suits, because Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment about suits is sound. But
+I as near as a toucher rebelled when he wouldn&rsquo;t let me wear a pair of
+cloth-topped boots which I loved like a couple of brothers. And when he tried
+to tread on me like a worm in the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot
+down and showed him who was who. It&rsquo;s a long story, and I haven&rsquo;t
+time to tell you now, but the point is that he wanted me to wear the
+Longacre&mdash;as worn by John Drew&mdash;when I had set my heart on the
+Country Gentleman&mdash;as worn by another famous actor chappie&mdash;and the
+end of the matter was that, after a rather painful scene, I bought the Country
+Gentleman. So that&rsquo;s how things stood on this particular morning, and I
+was feeling kind of manly and independent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for breakfast
+while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and sang slightly, when
+there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and opened the door an inch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho without there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man,&rdquo; I said, rather severely,
+for I bar practical jokes before breakfast. &ldquo;You know perfectly well
+there&rsquo;s no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it&rsquo;s barely ten o&rsquo;clock yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had arrived
+in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at some ghastly hour
+like six, and that I had been shot out on to a foreign shore considerably
+before eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship&rsquo;s son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I&rsquo;ll be
+dressing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then lead me to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern could be.
+It wasn&rsquo;t till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and was reaching
+out for the studs that I remembered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve placed her, Jeeves. She&rsquo;s a pal of my Aunt
+Agatha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left London. A very vicious
+specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on social conditions in India when she
+came back from the Durbar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather a
+solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work the night
+before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong with this tie? I&rsquo;ve seen you give it a nasty
+look before. Speak out like a man! What&rsquo;s the matter with it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too ornate, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unsuitable, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was firm. I tied
+the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into the sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female,
+not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O.P.
+to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been
+built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about
+the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair,
+and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of
+those women who kind of numb a fellow&rsquo;s faculties. She made me feel as if
+I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday
+clothes to say how-d&rsquo;you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a
+chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking. He had
+the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered down and parted in
+the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren&rsquo;t bright. They were a
+dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the struggle about half-way down,
+and he didn&rsquo;t appear to have any eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish
+sort of blighter, in short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awfully glad to see you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve popped
+over, eh? Making a long stay in America?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure and
+call on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to come
+round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before, when she had
+sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie from the clutches of a
+girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you that by the time I had finished
+my operations, Gussie had not only married the girl but had gone on the stage
+himself, and was doing well, you&rsquo;ll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset
+to no small extent. I simply hadn&rsquo;t dared go back and face her, and it
+was a relief to find that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing
+enough to make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn&rsquo;t want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone to live
+in with Aunt Agatha, if she&rsquo;s really on the warpath. So I braced on
+hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the assemblage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t get this for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put him up? For my clubs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren&rsquo;t you,
+Motty darling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, mother,&rdquo; he said, and corked himself up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn&rsquo;t seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling the stick,
+blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on me for an
+indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don&rsquo;t you know. I
+was just starting to say that the shot wasn&rsquo;t on the board at any price,
+and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle into my little home I
+would yell for the police, when she went on, rolling placidly over me, as it
+were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie&rsquo;s will-power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in America.
+After that I work my way gradually across to the coast, visiting the points of
+interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I am in America principally on
+business. No doubt you read my book, <i>India and the Indians</i>? My
+publishers are anxious for me to write a companion volume on the United States.
+I shall not be able to spend more than a month in the country, as I have to get
+back for the season, but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in
+India, and my dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his <i>America from
+Within</i> after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty
+with me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall have
+to pick him up on my return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I felt
+certain that he would have been able to think of some way of putting a stop to
+this woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear Motty
+has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the country. I
+know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He will give very
+little trouble.&rdquo; She talked about the poor blighter as if he wasn&rsquo;t
+there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped chewing his walking-stick
+and was sitting there with his mouth open. &ldquo;He is a vegetarian and a
+teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give him a nice book and he will be
+quite contented.&rdquo; She got up. &ldquo;Thank you so much, Mr. Wooster! I
+don&rsquo;t know what I should have done without your help. Come, Motty! We
+have just time to see a few of the sights before my train goes. But I shall
+have to rely on you for most of my information about New York, darling. Be sure
+to keep your eyes open and take notes of your impressions! It will be such a
+help. Good-bye, Mr. Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the
+afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves! What about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done? You heard it all, didn&rsquo;t you? You were in
+the dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pill, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The excrescence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn&rsquo;t like him. It was as
+if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I understood. The man
+was really upset about that tie. He was trying to get his own back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said
+coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn&rsquo;t any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a moment I
+almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he didn&rsquo;t like
+them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I was going to let
+Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a pretty
+reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the more blighted it
+became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty out, he would report to
+his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt Agatha, and I didn&rsquo;t like to
+think what would happen then. Sooner or later, I should be wanting to go back
+to England, and I didn&rsquo;t want to get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting
+on the quay for me with a stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it
+but to put the fellow up and make the best of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About midday Motty&rsquo;s luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw it. It was
+one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough in it to keep the
+chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more cheerful, and I got my Country
+Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head, and gave the pink tie a twist, and
+reeled out to take a bite of lunch with one or two of the lads at a
+neighbouring hostelry; and what with excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery
+conversation and what-not, the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I
+had almost forgotten blighted Motty&rsquo;s existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn&rsquo;t till
+fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of Motty, and I
+took it that he had gone to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still there
+with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after seeing mother off
+at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie&rsquo;s manner that he was still upset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?&rdquo; I asked, with reserved hauteur
+and what-not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not returned? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed, went
+out again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of scrabbling
+noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the woodwork. Then a
+sort of thud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better go and see what that is, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went out and came back again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carry him in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship is lying on the mat, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up outside
+on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s had some sort of dashed fit,&rdquo; I said. I took another
+look. &ldquo;Jeeves! Someone&rsquo;s been feeding him meat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a
+steak or something. Call up a doctor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship&rsquo;s legs, while I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot, Jeeves! You don&rsquo;t think&mdash;he can&rsquo;t
+be&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am inclined to think so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn&rsquo;t mistake
+it. Motty was under the surface.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never can tell, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very seldom, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remove the eye of authority and where are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would seem so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we had better bring him in, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette and sat
+down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It seemed to me that
+I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went into
+Motty&rsquo;s room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a wreck, but
+there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading Gingery stories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; said Motty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho! What ho! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How are you feeling this morning?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Topping!&rdquo; replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. &ldquo;I say,
+you know, that fellow of yours&mdash;Jeeves, you know&mdash;is a corker. I had
+a most frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own invention. I
+must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one of the ones!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and sucked
+his stick the day before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo; I said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he
+wanted to. But he wouldn&rsquo;t have it, at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he replied firmly. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do anything of the
+kind. I drank too much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And,
+what&rsquo;s more, I&rsquo;m going to do it again! I&rsquo;m going to do it
+every night. If ever you see me sober, old top,&rdquo; he said, with a kind of
+holy exaltation, &ldquo;tap me on the shoulder and say, &lsquo;Tut! Tut!&rsquo;
+and I&rsquo;ll apologize and remedy the defect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I say, you know, what about me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m, so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you.
+What I mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I&rsquo;m apt to get
+in the soup somewhat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help your troubles,&rdquo; said Motty firmly.
+&ldquo;Listen to me, old thing: this is the first time in my life that
+I&rsquo;ve had a real chance to yield to the temptations of a great city.
+What&rsquo;s the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don&rsquo;t
+yield to them? Makes it so bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother
+told me to keep my eyes open and collect impressions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know just how you feel, old dear,&rdquo; said Motty consolingly.
+&ldquo;And, if my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your
+sake. But duty first! This is the first time I&rsquo;ve been let out alone, and
+I mean to make the most of it. We&rsquo;re only young once. Why interfere with
+life&rsquo;s morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All my bally life, dear boy,&rdquo; Motty went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and
+till you&rsquo;ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don&rsquo;t know what
+cooping is! The only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys
+is caught sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I&rsquo;ve got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up a
+few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only chance to
+collect a past, and I&rsquo;m going to do it. Now tell me, old sport, as man to
+man, how does one get in touch with that very decent chappie Jeeves? Does one
+ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to discuss the subject of a good
+stiff b.-and-s. with him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don&rsquo;t you know, that if I stuck close to
+Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a damper on
+the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was being the life and
+soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye he might ease up a trifle
+on the revelry. So the next night I took him along to supper with me. It was
+the last time. I&rsquo;m a quiet, peaceful sort of chappie who has lived all
+his life in London, and I can&rsquo;t stand the pace these swift sportsmen from
+the rural districts set. What I mean to say is this, I&rsquo;m all for rational
+enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he
+throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort
+of thing are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when you want
+to sit still and digest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made up my
+mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about with Motty. The
+only time I met him late at night after that was once when I passed the door of
+a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had to step aside to dodge him as he
+sailed through the air <i>en route</i> for the opposite pavement, with a
+muscular sort of looking chappie peering out after him with a kind of gloomy
+satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a way, I couldn&rsquo;t help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about four
+weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over about ten
+years, and I didn&rsquo;t wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy. I should
+have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no denying that it was a
+bit thick. If it hadn&rsquo;t been for the thought of Lady Malvern and Aunt
+Agatha in the background, I should have regarded Motty&rsquo;s rapid work with
+an indulgent smile. But I couldn&rsquo;t get rid of the feeling that, sooner or
+later, I was the lad who was scheduled to get it behind the ear. And what with
+brooding on this prospect, and sitting up in the old flat waiting for the
+familiar footstep, and putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into
+the sick-chamber next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to
+lose weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man was
+still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn&rsquo;t rally
+round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the pride of the
+Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;this is getting a bit thick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; Business and cold respectfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the principles
+of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I shall get blamed, don&rsquo;t you know. You know what my Aunt
+Agatha is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn&rsquo;t unbend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you any scheme up your
+sleeve for coping with this blighter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don&rsquo;t you know. It wasn&rsquo;t as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much admired
+by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he left me flat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing pals back
+in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home. This was where I
+began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of town where I was living
+wasn&rsquo;t the right place for that sort of thing. I knew lots of chappies
+down Washington Square way who started the evening at about 2
+a.m.&mdash;artists and writers and what-not, who frolicked considerably till
+checked by the arrival of the morning milk. That was all right. They like that
+sort of thing down there. The neighbours can&rsquo;t get to sleep unless
+there&rsquo;s someone dancing Hawaiian dances over their heads. But on
+Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere wasn&rsquo;t right, and when Motty turned
+up at three in the morning with a collection of hearty lads, who only stopped
+singing their college song when they started singing &ldquo;The Old Oaken
+Bucket,&rdquo; there was a marked peevishness among the old settlers in the
+flats. The management was extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time,
+and took a lot of soothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place which
+I&rsquo;d chosen because there didn&rsquo;t seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch on the
+light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared hold of my
+trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an extent that I was
+simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped backward with a loud yell of
+anguish, and tumbled out into the hall just as Jeeves came out of his den to
+see what the matter was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you call, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves! There&rsquo;s something in there that grabs you by the
+leg!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That would be Rollo, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come in.
+His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet settled
+down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who the deuce is Rollo?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship&rsquo;s bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a
+raffle, and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the sitting-room,
+the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions&rsquo; den, without a quiver.
+What&rsquo;s more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such that the
+dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down as if he had had
+a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his paws in the air. If Jeeves
+had been his rich uncle he couldn&rsquo;t have been more chummy. Yet directly
+he caught sight of me again, he got all worked up and seemed to have only one
+idea in life&mdash;to start chewing me where he had left off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rollo is not used to you yet, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves, regarding the
+bally quadruped in an admiring sort of way. &ldquo;He is an excellent
+watchdog.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean&mdash;my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that one of
+these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all right.&rdquo; I
+thought for a bit. &ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going away&mdash;to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall
+go and stop with Mr. Todd in the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know when I shall be back. Forward my letters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I went to
+stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the wilds of Long
+Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing goes a long way with
+me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a few days in his cottage in
+the woods, miles away from anywhere, New York, even with Motty on the premises,
+began to look pretty good to me. The days down on Long Island have forty-eight
+hours in them; you can&rsquo;t get to sleep at night because of the bellowing
+of the crickets; and you have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an
+evening paper. I thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only
+train they have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about
+dinner-time. I went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I
+looked round cautiously for Rollo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the porter,
+who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal on account of
+being bitten by him in the calf of the leg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I
+had misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a lot
+of intelligence in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you expect him back to dinner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That&rsquo;s how I felt then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;in prison?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He assaulted a constable, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I digested this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she&rsquo;ll come back and want to know where he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship&rsquo;s bit of time will have run
+out by then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But supposing it hasn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very interesting and respectable centre, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, I believe you&rsquo;ve hit it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn&rsquo;t turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze seemed to
+me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what the doctor
+ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have pulled him up. I was
+sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I reflected, a chappie who had
+lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a small village in the interior of
+Shropshire, wouldn&rsquo;t have much to kick at in a prison. Altogether, I
+began to feel absolutely braced again. Life became like what the poet Johnnie
+says&mdash;one grand, sweet song. Things went on so comfortably and peacefully
+for a couple of weeks that I give you my word that I&rsquo;d almost forgotten
+such a person as Motty existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that
+Jeeves was still pained and distant. It wasn&rsquo;t anything he said or did,
+mind you, but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I
+was tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There was a
+kind of grieved look in his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn&rsquo;t
+been expecting her for days. I&rsquo;d forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea and
+thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement that he had
+just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few garments round me and
+went in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as ever. The
+only difference was that she didn&rsquo;t uncover the teeth, as she had done
+the first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve got back,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have got back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably
+hadn&rsquo;t breakfasted. It&rsquo;s only after a bit of breakfast that
+I&rsquo;m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I&rsquo;m never much of a lad till I&rsquo;ve
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you haven&rsquo;t breakfasted?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not yet breakfasted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the
+suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I called on you last night,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you were
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extremely, thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See everything? Niag&rsquo;ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw a great deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was another slightly <i>frappé</i> silence. Jeeves floated silently into
+the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were his constant companion, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don&rsquo;t you
+know. We&rsquo;d take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred concert
+in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually played dominoes after
+dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing sleep. We had a great time. I
+was awfully sorry when he went away to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn&rsquo;t know
+where you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe&mdash;I mean,
+don&rsquo;t you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn&rsquo;t get at
+you. Yes, Motty went off to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure he went to Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, absolutely.&rdquo; I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about
+in the next room with forks and so forth: &ldquo;Jeeves, Lord Pershore
+didn&rsquo;t change his mind about going to Boston, did he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell&rsquo;s Island prison, to secure material for
+my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit, seated
+beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has to be a
+lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like this. I strained
+the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar and the hair parting
+nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky, because I wouldn&rsquo;t have had
+a chance to get any persiflage out of my system. Lady Malvern collared the
+conversation. She had been bottling it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster! So
+this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge, thinking that
+I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to you innocent, unversed
+in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to the temptations of a large city,
+and you led him astray!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hadn&rsquo;t any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the hatchet
+against my return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You deliberately&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might explain, your ladyship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized on the
+rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can&rsquo;t do that
+sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when his
+lordship&mdash;was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that his
+lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had given him of
+his lordship&rsquo;s movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a friend in the
+country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till your ladyship
+informed him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn&rsquo;t rattle Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him, so I
+took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away for a visit. It
+might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that his lordship had gone to
+prison voluntarily and from the best motives, but your ladyship, knowing him
+better, will readily understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; Lady Malvern goggled at him. &ldquo;Did you say that Lord
+Pershore went to prison voluntarily?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship&rsquo;s
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently heard
+him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow your
+ladyship&rsquo;s instructions and collect material for your ladyship&rsquo;s
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his lordship was
+frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was doing so little to
+help.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of the
+country&mdash;from within&mdash;occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I could see
+her struggling with the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely, your ladyship,&rdquo; said Jeeves, &ldquo;it is more reasonable
+to suppose that a gentleman of his lordship&rsquo;s character went to prison of
+his own volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I apologize. I have done you an
+injustice. I should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in
+his pure, fine spirit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your breakfast is ready, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you are certainly a life-saver!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn&rsquo;t lured
+that blighter into riotous living.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy you are right, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don&rsquo;t you know, by
+the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that this was an
+occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I hesitated. Then I made up
+my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That pink tie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burn it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you very much, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was
+as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off
+the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive.
+I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other things to show Jeeves that I
+appreciated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t enough. Is there anything
+else you would like?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion&mdash;fifty dollars.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable method of
+inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship was a little
+over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me for a friend of his. At
+any rate when I took the liberty of wagering him fifty dollars that he would
+not punch a passing policeman in the eye, he accepted the bet very cordially
+and won it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take this, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;fifty isn&rsquo;t enough. Do
+you know, Jeeves, you&rsquo;re&mdash;well, you absolutely stand alone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes of a morning, as I&rsquo;ve sat in bed sucking down the early cup of
+tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting out the
+raiment for the day, I&rsquo;ve wondered what the deuce I should do if the
+fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It&rsquo;s not so bad now
+I&rsquo;m in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There used to
+be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak him away from
+me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered him double what I was
+giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who&rsquo;s got a valet who had been
+known to press his trousers sideways, used to look at him, when he came to see
+me, with a kind of glittering hungry eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally
+pirates!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot it even
+in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down. And,
+what&rsquo;s more, he can always be counted on to extend himself on behalf of
+any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances knee-deep in the bouillon.
+Take the rather rummy case, for instance, of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the
+hard-boiled egg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to the
+flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What, pipped?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He gave that impression, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a matter of
+fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss freely with Jeeves
+just then, because things had been a bit strained between us for some time, and
+it had been rather difficult to hit on anything to talk about that wasn&rsquo;t
+apt to take a personal turn. You see, I had decided&mdash;rightly or
+wrongly&mdash;to grow a moustache and this had cut Jeeves to the quick. He
+couldn&rsquo;t stick the thing at any price, and I had been living ever since
+in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till I was getting jolly well fed up with
+it. What I mean is, while there&rsquo;s no doubt that in certain matters of
+dress Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment is absolutely sound and should be followed, it
+seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my
+face as well as my costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and
+many&rsquo;s the time I&rsquo;ve given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted
+against one of my pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet&rsquo;s
+staking out a claim on your upper lip you&rsquo;ve simply got to have a bit of
+the good old bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said that he would call again later, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something must be up, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a good deal,
+so I chucked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s uncle is arriving
+on the <i>Carmantic</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was news to me, that Bicky&rsquo;s uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one&rsquo;s pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my arrival in
+New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I rather took to
+Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in fact, been up at
+Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so we naturally drifted
+together; and while we were taking a quiet snort in a corner that wasn&rsquo;t
+all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and what-not, he furthermore
+endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily gifted imitation of a
+bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though we had subsequently become
+extremely pally, all I really knew about him was that he was generally hard up,
+and had an uncle who relieved the strain a bit from time to time by sending him
+monthly remittances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;why
+hasn&rsquo;t he a title? Why isn&rsquo;t he Lord What-Not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace&rsquo;s late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves knows everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s father dead, too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave any money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the rocks.
+To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I mean, it may sound
+a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but the trouble about old
+Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy old buster, owning half London
+and about five counties up north, he was notoriously the most prudent spender
+in England. He was what American chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If
+Bicky&rsquo;s people hadn&rsquo;t left him anything and he depended on what he
+could prise out of the old duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that
+explained why he was hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never
+borrowed money. He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any
+one&rsquo;s ear on principle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned,&rdquo; I heard him say. And
+Bicky came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bicky!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Jeeves told me you had been trying
+to get me. Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence.
+What&rsquo;s the trouble, Bicky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say on, old lad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My uncle&rsquo;s turning up to-morrow, Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So Jeeves told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Duke of Chiswick, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So Jeeves told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves seems to know everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather rummily, that&rsquo;s exactly what I was thinking just now
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wish,&rdquo; said Bicky gloomily, &ldquo;that he knew a way to
+get me out of the hole I&rsquo;m in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and
+wants you to rally round.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all
+about it already. Don&rsquo;t you, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Bicky, rattled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York instead
+of in Colorado?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How the deuce do you know anything about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I chanced to meet his grace&rsquo;s butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on the
+matter, sir, as he passed the library door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there&rsquo;s no need to
+try to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I was a
+brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a remittance on
+condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of the name of Colorado
+and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they call it, at some bally ranch
+or farm or whatever it&rsquo;s called. I didn&rsquo;t fancy the idea a bit. I
+should have had to ride horses and pursue cows, and so forth. I hate horses.
+They bite at you. I was all against the scheme. At the same time, don&rsquo;t
+you know, I had to have that remittance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I get you absolutely, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me, so
+I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I cabled to my
+uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business wheeze in the city
+and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back that it was all right, and
+here I&rsquo;ve been ever since. He thinks I&rsquo;m doing well at something or
+other over here. I never dreamed, don&rsquo;t you know, that he would ever come
+out here. What on earth am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Bicky, &ldquo;I had a wireless from him to say that
+he was coming to stay with me&mdash;to save hotel bills, I suppose. I&rsquo;ve
+always given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can&rsquo;t have him to stay at my boarding-house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thought of anything, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, by Jove!&rdquo; said Bicky firmly. &ldquo;I never have touched you,
+Bertie, and I&rsquo;m not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it&rsquo;s
+my boast that I don&rsquo;t owe a penny to a single soul&mdash;not counting
+tradesmen, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was the owner
+of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I was in Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s employment, and not in yours. You would be residing here
+temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s guest. His grace would occupy the second
+spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this answer satisfactorily,
+sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed sort of
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace on
+board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr. Bickersteth could
+meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here. Will that meet the
+situation, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does he do it, Bertie?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you
+what I think it is. I believe it&rsquo;s something to do with the shape of his
+head. Have you ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at
+the back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present when
+the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean liners fetch
+up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn&rsquo;t much after nine by
+the time I&rsquo;d dressed and had my morning tea and was leaning out of the
+window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle. It was one of those jolly,
+peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish he&rsquo;d got a soul or something,
+and I was just brooding on life in general when I became aware of the dickens
+of a spate in progress down below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a
+top hat had got out and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far
+as I could make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New
+York to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of London
+before, and didn&rsquo;t seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy said that
+in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and the cabby said he
+should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The duke has arrived, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll be him at the door now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy crawled in,
+looking licked to a splinter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do, sir?&rdquo; I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. &ldquo;Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name&rsquo;s Wooster, don&rsquo;t you know. Great pal of
+Bicky&rsquo;s, and all that sort of thing. I&rsquo;m staying with him, you
+know. Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be terribly expensive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at it to
+restore his tissues, and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!&rdquo; He took another look round
+the room. It seemed to fascinate him. &ldquo;Have you any idea how much my
+nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About two hundred dollars a month, I believe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Forty pounds a month!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the scheme
+might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was thinking. He was
+trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew of poor old Bicky. And
+one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring, for dear old Bicky, though a
+stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and
+cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on
+a suit of gent&rsquo;s underwear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it seems rummy to you,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but the fact is
+New York often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn&rsquo;t have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don&rsquo;t you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it&rsquo;s quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in commercial
+circles as quite the nib!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew&rsquo;s business, Mr.
+Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, just business, don&rsquo;t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie
+and Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.&rdquo; I slid for the door.
+&ldquo;Awfully sorry to leave you, but I&rsquo;ve got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s upstairs now, having some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does he think of it all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s absolutely rattled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping! I&rsquo;ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man.
+See you later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the club to
+sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and going down the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s everybody, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said, finding no little feet
+pattering about the place. &ldquo;Gone out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective was
+Grant&rsquo;s Tomb.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not altogether, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s his trouble now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth and
+yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in business,
+and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Somewhat disturbing, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never expected anything like this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must do something, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you think of anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at the moment, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must be something we can do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir&mdash;as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before&mdash;the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there is
+always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion&mdash;he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title&mdash;when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed
+to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a
+depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his
+lordship&rsquo;s aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able
+to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s difficulty, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will spare no pains, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was when I
+tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a dinner-jacket. I
+sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time than because I wanted it.
+It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill of fare with poor old Bicky headed
+for the breadline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there, hunched up
+in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette hanging out of the
+corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare in his eyes. He had the
+aspect of one who had been soaked with what the newspaper chappies call
+&ldquo;some blunt instrument.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a bit thick, old thing&mdash;what!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact that it
+hadn&rsquo;t anything in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m done, Bertie!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had another go at the glass. It didn&rsquo;t seem to do him any good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month&rsquo;s
+money was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I&rsquo;ve
+been reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can make a
+dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars and start a
+chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a hen&mdash;call it one
+hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every day of the week. You sell
+the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen costs nothing. Profit
+practically twenty-five cents on every seven eggs. Or look at it another way:
+Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The
+chickens grow up and have more chickens. Why, in no time you&rsquo;d have the
+place covered knee-deep in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for
+every seven. You&rsquo;d make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!&rdquo;
+He had begun to get quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back
+in his chair at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. &ldquo;But, of course,
+it&rsquo;s no good,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because I haven&rsquo;t the
+cash.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I&rsquo;m not going to sponge on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That&rsquo;s always the way in this world. The chappies you&rsquo;d like to
+lend money to won&rsquo;t let you, whereas the chappies you don&rsquo;t want to
+lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled tolerably free
+in the right stuff, I&rsquo;ve had lots of experience of the second class.
+Many&rsquo;s the time, back in London, I&rsquo;ve hurried along Piccadilly and
+felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my neck and heard his sharp,
+excited yapping as he closed in on me. I&rsquo;ve simply spent my life
+scattering largesse to blighters I didn&rsquo;t care a hang for; yet here was I
+now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight and longing to hand them over, and
+Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his uppers, not taking any at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s only one hope, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You&rsquo;re sitting in
+the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up,
+and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly
+fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably. He rose from his seat
+like a rocketing pheasant. I&rsquo;m used to Jeeves now, but often in the days
+when he first came to me I&rsquo;ve bitten my tongue freely on finding him
+unexpectedly in my midst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you call, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, there you are, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have found
+what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a liberty, sir,
+but I think that we have overlooked his grace&rsquo;s potentialities as a
+source of revenue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow, mocking laugh,
+a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat, rather like a gargle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not allude, sir,&rdquo; explained Jeeves, &ldquo;to the possibility
+of inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of regarding
+his grace in the light of an at present&mdash;if I may say so&mdash;useless
+property, which is capable of being developed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I&rsquo;m bound to say I
+didn&rsquo;t get it myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you are
+aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent personages.
+It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might know of persons who
+would be willing to pay a small fee&mdash;let us say two dollars or
+three&mdash;for the privilege of an introduction, including handshake, to his
+grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky didn&rsquo;t seem to think much of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave her
+social standing among the neighbours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky wavered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you think it could be done&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel convinced of it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think, Bertie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn&rsquo;t biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about &ldquo;The market
+opened quietly&rdquo; with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You&rsquo;d hardly believe how difficult it was to interest the
+public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the week the
+only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper down in
+Bicky&rsquo;s part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in sliced
+ham instead of cash that didn&rsquo;t help much. There was a gleam of light
+when the brother of Bicky&rsquo;s pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money down,
+for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through, owing to its
+turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to kick the old boy
+instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me the deuce of a time to
+persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things take their course. He seemed
+to regard the pawnbroker&rsquo;s brother rather as a sportsman and benefactor
+of his species than otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole thing, I&rsquo;m inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn&rsquo;t been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don&rsquo;t think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room one
+morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was something
+doing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace,
+sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all off. We&rsquo;ve decided to chuck it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t work. We can&rsquo;t get anybody to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say you&rsquo;ve managed to get anybody?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Birdsburg?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Birdsburg, Missouri, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you get them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat. I had
+observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his buttonhole,
+sir&mdash;a large blue button with the words &lsquo;Boost for Birdsburg&rsquo;
+upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a gentleman&rsquo;s
+evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the auditorium was full of
+persons similarly decorated. I ventured to inquire the explanation, and was
+informed that these gentlemen, forming a party of eighty-seven, are a
+convention from a town of the name of Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri.
+Their visit, I gathered, was purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my
+informant spoke at some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in
+the city. It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had shaken
+hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to broach the
+subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I have arranged, subject
+to your approval, that the entire convention shall be presented to his grace
+to-morrow afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Payable in advance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, any way, when we get it I&rsquo;ll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky&rsquo;ll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, you&rsquo;re a bit of a marvel, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Right-o!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told him what
+had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the sitting-room and
+buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic section of the morning
+paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are you doing anything special to-morrow
+afternoon? I mean to say, I&rsquo;ve asked a few of my pals in to meet you,
+don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There will be no reporters among them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reporters? Rather not! Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while the boat
+was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this persecution
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won&rsquo;t be a
+newspaper-man in the place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll shake hands with them and so forth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules of
+civilized intercourse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club, where he
+babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg contingent
+on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal round to see us,
+and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very decent chappie, but rather
+inclined to collar the conversation and turn it in the direction of his
+home-town&rsquo;s new water-supply system. We settled that, as an hour was
+about all he would be likely to stand, each gang should consider itself
+entitled to seven minutes of the duke&rsquo;s society by Jeeves&rsquo;s
+stop-watch, and that when their time was up Jeeves should slide into the room
+and cough meaningly. Then we parted with what I believe are called mutual
+expressions of goodwill, the Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation
+to us all to pop out some day and take a look at the new water-supply system,
+for which we thanked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the cove we had
+met and nine others almost exactly like him in every respect. They all looked
+deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth up they had been working in the
+office and catching the boss&rsquo;s eye and what-not. They shook hands with
+the old boy with a good deal of apparent satisfaction&mdash;all except one
+chappie, who seemed to be brooding about something&mdash;and then they stood
+off and became chatty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?&rdquo; asked our pal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have never been to Birdsburg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie seemed pained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should pay it a visit,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The most
+rapidly-growing city in the country. Boost for Birdsburg!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boost for Birdsburg!&rdquo; said the other chappies reverently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins and a
+cold eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The assemblage looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a matter of business,&rdquo; said the chappie&mdash;&ldquo;mind you,
+I&rsquo;m not questioning anybody&rsquo;s good faith, but, as a matter of
+strict business&mdash;I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean, sir?&rdquo; cried the old boy, getting purple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No offence, simply business. I&rsquo;m not saying anything, mind you,
+but there&rsquo;s one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name&rsquo;s Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if
+you&rsquo;re the Duke of Chiswick, why isn&rsquo;t he Lord Percy Something?
+I&rsquo;ve read English novels, and I know all about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is monstrous!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t get hot under the collar. I&rsquo;m only asking.
+I&rsquo;ve a right to know. You&rsquo;re going to take our money, so it&rsquo;s
+only fair that we should see that we get our money&rsquo;s worth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we&rsquo;ve a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here a
+hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want to
+know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the water-supply
+chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can assure you that I know nothing of this,&rdquo; he said, quite
+politely. &ldquo;I should be grateful if you would explain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens of
+Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands with you for a
+financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my friend Simms here
+means&mdash;and I&rsquo;m with him&mdash;is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s word for it&mdash;and he is a stranger to us&mdash;that you
+are the Duke of Chiswick at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Allow me to assure you, sir,&rdquo; he said, in a rummy kind of voice,
+&ldquo;that I am the Duke of Chiswick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said the chappie heartily.
+&ldquo;That was all we wanted to know. Let the thing go on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to say,&rdquo; said old Chiswick, &ldquo;that it cannot go
+on. I am feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at this
+moment, Duke, to be introduced to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear I must disappoint them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But in that case the deal would have to be off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You really won&rsquo;t meet the rest of them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I guess we&rsquo;ll be going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick turned
+to Bicky:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky didn&rsquo;t seem to have anything to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it true what that man said?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean by playing this trick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;d better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old
+top.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky&rsquo;s Adam&rsquo;s-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it&rsquo;s an absolute cert if you
+once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every day of the
+week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five cents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir,&rdquo; I said, helping the chappie
+out. &ldquo;The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that
+remittance of yours, and when you cut it off, don&rsquo;t you know, he was
+pretty solidly in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit
+of the ready pretty quick. That&rsquo;s why we thought of this handshaking
+scheme.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor old Bicky didn&rsquo;t want to go to that ranch,&rdquo; I
+explained. &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t like cows and horses, but he rather thinks
+he would be hot stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital.
+Don&rsquo;t you think it would be rather a wheeze if you were
+to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After what has happened? After this&mdash;this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a penny!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make a suggestion, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go ahead, Jeeves!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might secure
+the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this afternoon for the
+Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and enterprising newspapers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By George!&rdquo; said Bicky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; said old Chiswick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves is right. I&rsquo;ll do it! The <i>Chronicle</i> would jump at
+it. They eat that sort of stuff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all very well,&rdquo; said Bicky, wonderfully braced,
+&ldquo;but if I can&rsquo;t get the money any other way&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait! Er&mdash;wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t go to that bally ranch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a moment
+suggest it. I&mdash;I think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. &ldquo;I&mdash;I think
+that, on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England.
+I&mdash;I might&mdash;in fact, I think I see my way to doing&mdash;to&mdash;I
+might be able to utilize your services in some secretarial position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t mind that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in English
+political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The only figure I&rsquo;ll recognize,&rdquo; said Bicky firmly,
+&ldquo;is five hundred quid a year, paid quarterly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear boy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to accustom
+yourself to the intricacies of political life, to&mdash;in fact, you would be
+in an exceedingly advantageous position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five hundred a year!&rdquo; said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue.
+&ldquo;Why, that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken
+farm. It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens has
+a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen chickens
+each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There&rsquo;s a fortune
+in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America. Chappies keep them on
+ice for years and years, and don&rsquo;t sell them till they fetch about a
+dollar a whirl. You don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m going to chuck a future like
+this for anything under five hundred o&rsquo; goblins a year&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick&rsquo;s face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. &ldquo;Very well, my boy,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What-o!&rdquo; said Bicky. &ldquo;All right, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. &ldquo;Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It beats me how you do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The only trouble is you haven&rsquo;t got much out of
+it&mdash;what!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends&mdash;I judge from his remarks&mdash;to
+signify his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position to do
+so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t enough, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring my shaving things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie&rsquo;s eye, mixed with doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shave off my moustache.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment&rsquo;s silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you very much indeed, sir,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice, and
+popped off.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>ABSENT TREATMENT</h2>
+
+<p>
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It&rsquo;s a most
+interesting story. I can&rsquo;t put in any literary style and all that; but I
+don&rsquo;t have to, don&rsquo;t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you&rsquo;re a man you mustn&rsquo;t miss it, because it&rsquo;ll be a
+warning to you; and if you&rsquo;re a woman you won&rsquo;t want to, because
+it&rsquo;s all about how a girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you&rsquo;re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie&rsquo;s, you&rsquo;ll probably
+be surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for the
+weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met
+Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised when I told them that.
+Yet it&rsquo;s true. Believe <i>me</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most pronounced
+young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called me a silly ass,
+but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it came to being a silly
+ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap was about six. Why, if I wanted
+him to dine with me, I used to post him a letter at the beginning of the week,
+and then the day before send him a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself,
+and&mdash;half an hour before the time we&rsquo;d fixed&mdash;a messenger in a
+taxi, whose business it was to see that he got in and that the chauffeur had
+the address all correct. By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless
+he had left town before my messenger arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The funny thing was that he wasn&rsquo;t altogether a fool in other ways. Deep
+down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or
+twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you,
+you needed dynamite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At least, that&rsquo;s what I thought. But there was another way which
+hadn&rsquo;t occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the
+soul; that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s at the end of it till he gets there. It was
+like that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married&mdash;with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world&mdash;and then began to find out
+things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wasn&rsquo;t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave about.
+And yet, I don&rsquo;t know. What I mean is, she worked for her living; and to
+a fellow who has never done a hand&rsquo;s turn in his life there&rsquo;s
+undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a girl who works
+for her living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she had a ton
+and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those determined chins. She
+was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself up at polo, she was told off
+by the authorities to smooth his brow and rally round with cooling unguents and
+all that; and the old boy hadn&rsquo;t been up and about again for more than a
+week before they popped off to the registrar&rsquo;s and fixed it up. Quite the
+romance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he introduced
+me to her. I admired her. I&rsquo;ve never worked myself&mdash;my name&rsquo;s
+Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My uncle Edward
+was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left me a sizable chunk of
+bullion&mdash;I say I&rsquo;ve never worked myself, but I admire any one who
+earns a living under difficulties, especially a girl. And this girl had had a
+rather unusually tough time of it, being an orphan and all that, and having had
+to do everything off her own bat for years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don&rsquo;t now, but we&rsquo;ll
+come to that later. I&rsquo;m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie
+the greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn&rsquo;t noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about her.
+So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie didn&rsquo;t
+forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being quite happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, let&rsquo;s brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn&rsquo;t
+really start till then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite a good
+deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be running along as
+smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I thought, I couldn&rsquo;t
+see why fellows were so frightened of it. There were a lot of worse things that
+could happen to a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it&rsquo;s just here
+that love&rsquo;s young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back to dinner
+at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting myself under
+police protection, I went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking&mdash;well, I tell you,
+it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and crinkles and
+things, with a what-d&rsquo;-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And she was wearing
+the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn&rsquo;t begin to describe it. I can
+only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this was how she was in the
+habit of looking every night when they were dining quietly at home together, it
+was no wonder that Bobbie liked domesticity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s old Reggie, dear,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+brought him home to have a bit of dinner. I&rsquo;ll phone down to the kitchen
+and ask them to send it up now&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned scarlet.
+Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most
+interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles
+away. Then she recovered herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,&rdquo; she said, smiling
+at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked
+a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on the piano
+afterwards, as if she hadn&rsquo;t a care in the world. Quite a jolly little
+party it was&mdash;not. I&rsquo;m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she
+would have given that diamond what&rsquo;s-its-name in her hair and everything
+else she possessed to have one good scream&mdash;just one. I&rsquo;ve sat
+through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the rest beaten
+in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and got away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having seen what I did, I wasn&rsquo;t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie at
+the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely gum-drop at an
+Eskimo tea-party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know how long I&rsquo;ve been married?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t exactly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About a year, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not <i>about</i> a year,&rdquo; he said sadly. &ldquo;Exactly a
+year&mdash;yesterday!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I understood. I saw light&mdash;a regular flash of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday was&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The anniversary of the wedding. I&rsquo;d arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso. I had
+the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through dinner I had a
+kind of rummy idea that there was something I&rsquo;d forgotten, but I
+couldn&rsquo;t think what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till your wife mentioned it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&mdash;mentioned it,&rdquo; he said thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary&rsquo;s may
+be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit, they
+aren&rsquo;t half-hearted about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be absolutely frank, old top,&rdquo; said poor old Bobbie, in a
+broken sort of way, &ldquo;my stock&rsquo;s pretty low at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There didn&rsquo;t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat there.
+He didn&rsquo;t want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the window of
+our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and watched him. He
+walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then walked on again, and finally
+turned into a jeweller&rsquo;s. Which was an instance of what I meant when I
+said that deep down in him there was a certain stratum of sense.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem of
+Bobbie&rsquo;s married life. Of course, one&rsquo;s always mildly interested in
+one&rsquo;s friends&rsquo; marriages, hoping they&rsquo;ll turn out well and
+all that; but this was different. The average man isn&rsquo;t like Bobbie, and
+the average girl isn&rsquo;t like Mary. It was that old business of the
+immovable mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a chump of the
+first water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn&rsquo;t be a chump. And Nature,
+mind you, on Bobbie&rsquo;s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear old
+Bobbie, she&rsquo;s proud of him, and doesn&rsquo;t want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against
+outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of
+memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one. Take my
+case, for instance. I&rsquo;m a chump. Well, if I had remembered half the
+things people have tried to teach me during my life, my size in hats would be
+about number nine. But I didn&rsquo;t. I forgot them. And it was just the same
+with Bobbie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet little
+domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read somewhere, are
+champions at the memory business, but they were fools to Bobbie during that
+week. But, bless you, the shock wasn&rsquo;t nearly big enough. It had dinted
+the armour, but it hadn&rsquo;t made a hole in it. Pretty soon he was back at
+the old game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was pathetic, don&rsquo;t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man
+who forgets what day he was married, when he&rsquo;s been married one year,
+will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he&rsquo;s married at all. If
+she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, before he began
+to drift away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he was by
+way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can&rsquo;t remember
+what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was something she had
+asked him to bring home for her&mdash;it may have been a book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a little thing to make a fuss about,&rdquo; said Bobbie.
+&ldquo;And she knows that it&rsquo;s simply because I&rsquo;ve got such an
+infernal memory about everything. I can&rsquo;t remember anything. Never
+could.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a couple of
+sovereigns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, by the way,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s this for?&rdquo; I asked, though I knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I owe it you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win, and
+Murray beat him by twenty odd.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you do remember some things?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter who
+forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after knowing him
+all these years, and a lot more like that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Subside, laddie,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve got to do, my old college chum,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;is to pull yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are
+shaping, you&rsquo;re due for a nasty knock before you know what&rsquo;s hit
+you. You&rsquo;ve got to make an effort. Don&rsquo;t say you can&rsquo;t. This
+two quid business shows that, even if your memory is rocky, you can remember
+some things. What you&rsquo;ve got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries
+and so on are included in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you
+can&rsquo;t get out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;But it beats me
+why she thinks such a lot of these rotten little dates. What&rsquo;s it matter
+if I forgot what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day
+the cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not enough for a woman,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;They want to
+be shown. Bear that in mind, and you&rsquo;re all right. Forget it, and
+there&rsquo;ll be trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Women are frightfully rummy,&rdquo; he said gloomily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should have thought of that before you married one,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I don&rsquo;t see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing in
+a nutshell for him. You would have thought he&rsquo;d have seen the point, and
+that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But no. Off he
+went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him. I had a good deal
+of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to anything when it was a
+question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument. If you see a man asking for
+trouble, and insisting on getting it, the only thing to do is to stand by and
+wait till it comes to him. After that you may get a chance. But till then
+there&rsquo;s nothing to be done. But I thought a lot about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie didn&rsquo;t get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he&rsquo;d come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I&rsquo;d know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn&rsquo;t till well on in the spring that he
+got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it&mdash;in the thorax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out over
+Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and down the
+other&mdash;most interesting it is; I often do it&mdash;when in rushed Bobbie,
+with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster, waving a piece of
+paper in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Reggie, old top, she&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silly question? Perhaps you&rsquo;re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Read it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it, but it was
+all to the point. This is what it said:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;M<small>Y DEAR</small> B<small>OBBIE,</small>&mdash;I am going away.
+When you care enough about me to remember to wish me many happy returns on my
+birthday, I will come back. My address will be Box 341, <i>London Morning
+News</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read it twice, then I said, &ldquo;Well, why don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t I what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn&rsquo;t seem
+much to ask.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she says on her birthday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, when is her birthday?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you understand?&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+forgotten.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgotten!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Forgotten.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you mean, forgotten?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Forgotten whether
+it&rsquo;s the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That&rsquo;s how near I get to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think? What&rsquo;s the use of saying &lsquo;Think&rsquo;? Think I
+haven&rsquo;t thought? I&rsquo;ve been knocking sparks out of my brain ever
+since I opened that letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can&rsquo;t remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Bobbie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a pretty hard case to
+spring on an untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock
+Holmes and said, &lsquo;Mr. Holmes, here&rsquo;s a case for you. When is my
+wife&rsquo;s birthday?&rsquo; Wouldn&rsquo;t that have given Sherlock a jolt?
+However, I know enough about the game to understand that a fellow can&rsquo;t
+shoot off his deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse
+yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can&rsquo;t you remember the last time she had a birthday? What sort
+of weather was it? That might fix the month.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Warm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Warmish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or cold?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can&rsquo;t remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective&rsquo;s Manual. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a great help, Bobbie,&rdquo; I
+said. &ldquo;An invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts
+without which no home is complete.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it,&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;Look here. I gave her
+a present on her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up
+the date when it was bought, and the thing&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely. What did you give her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sagged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t remember,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you&rsquo;re right off, others it&rsquo;s
+as easy as falling off a log. I don&rsquo;t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did it without
+an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the undergrowth, and before
+you could turn round it had flushed quite a brain-wave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know those little books called <i>When were you Born</i>? There&rsquo;s
+one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong
+points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie&rsquo;s idea
+was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out which month
+hit off Mary&rsquo;s character. That would give us the month, and narrow it
+down a whole lot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied out at
+once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work. As I say, it
+sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we saw that there was a
+flaw. There was plenty of information all right, but there wasn&rsquo;t a
+single month that didn&rsquo;t have something that exactly hit off Mary. For
+instance, in the December book it said, &ldquo;December people are apt to keep
+their own secrets. They are extensive travellers.&rdquo; Well, Mary had
+certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite extensively enough for
+Bobbie&rsquo;s needs. Then, October people were &ldquo;born with original
+ideas&rdquo; and &ldquo;loved moving.&rdquo; You couldn&rsquo;t have summed up
+Mary&rsquo;s little jaunt more neatly. February people had &ldquo;wonderful
+memories&rdquo;&mdash;Mary&rsquo;s speciality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that month
+were &ldquo;inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a happy
+married life&rdquo;; but I plumped for February, because February women
+&ldquo;are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates.&rdquo; Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old Bobbie. Have
+you ever seen that picture, &ldquo;The Soul&rsquo;s Awakening&rdquo;? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the middle
+distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, &ldquo;Surely that is
+George&rsquo;s step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?&rdquo; Well, Bobbie
+had a soul&rsquo;s awakening too. I don&rsquo;t suppose he had ever troubled to
+think in his life before&mdash;not really <i>think</i>. But now he was wearing
+his brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was all for
+the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these brainstorms were
+improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all over he might possibly
+become a rotter again of a sort, but it would only be a pale reflection of the
+rotter he had been. It bore out the idea I had always had that what he needed
+was a real good jolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he came to me
+for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I never failed to hand
+him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see that he had
+had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m on the trail. This time
+I&rsquo;m convinced that I shall pull it off. I&rsquo;ve remembered something
+of vital importance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember distinctly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that on Mary&rsquo;s last
+birthday we went together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fine bit of memorizing,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but how does
+it help?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, they change the programme every week there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Now you are talking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One&rsquo;s
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing it down,
+or aren&rsquo;t we? Reggie, I&rsquo;m going round to the Coliseum this minute,
+and I&rsquo;m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if
+I have to use a crowbar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like brothers;
+brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the pages till they treed
+the cats in the middle of May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you it was May,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Maybe you&rsquo;ll
+listen to me another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve any sense,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there won&rsquo;t be
+another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it. I had
+just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It was Bobbie, of
+course. He didn&rsquo;t apologize.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it now for certain.
+It&rsquo;s just come to me. We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old
+man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you see that that brings it down to two days? It must
+have been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if they didn&rsquo;t have daily matinees at
+the Coliseum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bobbie,&rdquo; I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve remembered something too. It&rsquo;s this. The day you went
+to the Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to bring
+any money with you, so you wrote a cheque.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m always writing cheques.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the Ritz
+Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re a genius. I&rsquo;ve always
+said so. I believe you&rsquo;ve got it. Hold the line.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently he came back again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m here,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Topping,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as well
+make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel near the
+Strand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s late,&rdquo; said the man at the other end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And getting later every minute,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Buck along,
+laddie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had frozen hard,
+but I was past regrets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; said Mary&rsquo;s voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My feet are cold,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t call you up
+to tell you that particularly. I&rsquo;ve just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs.
+Cardew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. He&rsquo;s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a sort of scream. I&rsquo;ve often thought how interesting it must be
+to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don&rsquo;t you
+know. Bobbie&rsquo;s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie&rsquo;s scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s remembered it!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Did you tell
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I hadn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Pepper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he&mdash;has he been&mdash;was he very worried?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started
+out to worry after breakfast, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the
+rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the wire, and telling
+each other what bally brainy conspirators we were, don&rsquo;t you know, and
+all that. But I&rsquo;d got just as far as this, when she bit at me.
+Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; in that
+choked kind of way. And when a woman says &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; like that, it means
+all the bad words she&rsquo;d love to say if she only knew them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and see
+poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from you would have
+put everything right, I can&rsquo;t&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you call yourself his friend! His friend!&rdquo; (Metallic laugh,
+most unpleasant.) &ldquo;It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you
+a kind-hearted man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it
+perfectly&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it hateful, abominable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you said it was absolutely top&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn&rsquo;t mean it. I
+don&rsquo;t wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there
+seems to be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by gloating
+over his agony&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When one single word would have&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you made me promise not to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; I bleated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if I did, do you suppose I didn&rsquo;t expect you to have the sense
+to break your promise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the receiver,
+and crawled into bed.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the old
+homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing invitations. I ran
+across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes went through me like a
+couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And as they came out the other side,
+and I limped off to piece myself together again, there occurred to me the
+simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my
+tombstone. It was this: &ldquo;He was a man who acted from the best motives.
+There is one born every minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>HELPING FREDDIE</h2>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t want to bore you, don&rsquo;t you know, and all that sort of rot,
+but I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I&rsquo;m not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I&rsquo;ll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I&rsquo;ve finished, so that&rsquo;ll be all
+right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear old Freddie, don&rsquo;t you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him sitting
+alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and generally looking like
+the last rose of summer, you can understand I was quite disturbed about it. As
+a rule, the old rotter is the life and soul of our set. Quite the little lump
+of fun, and all that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy&rsquo;s a fellow who writes
+plays&mdash;a deuced brainy sort of fellow&mdash;and between us we set to work
+to question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the matter
+was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with Angela West,
+the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the engagement. What the row
+had been about he didn&rsquo;t say, but apparently she was pretty well fed up.
+She wouldn&rsquo;t let him come near her, refused to talk on the phone, and
+sent back his letters unopened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once in love
+myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact that she
+couldn&rsquo;t stand me at any price will be recorded in my autobiography. I
+knew the thing for Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Change of scene is what you want, old scout,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Come
+with me to Marvis Bay. I&rsquo;ve taken a cottage there. Jimmy&rsquo;s coming
+down on the twenty-fourth. We&rsquo;ll be a cosy party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s absolutely right,&rdquo; said Jimmy. &ldquo;Change of
+scene&rsquo;s the thing. I knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two
+months later girl wired him, &lsquo;Come back. Muriel.&rsquo; Man started to
+write out a reply; suddenly found that he couldn&rsquo;t remember girl&rsquo;s
+surname; so never answered at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Freddie wouldn&rsquo;t be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to Marvis
+Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It&rsquo;s in Dorsetshire. It isn&rsquo;t what
+you&rsquo;d call a fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You
+spend the day there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you
+stroll out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o&rsquo;clock you rub ointment
+on the wounds and go to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze sighing
+in the trees, you couldn&rsquo;t drag him from that beach with a rope. He
+became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They&rsquo;d hang round waiting for
+him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers the miss-in-baulk just
+so as to be in good condition for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I began
+to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier: for as a
+companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn&rsquo;t anything to write home to mother
+about. When he wasn&rsquo;t chewing a pipe and scowling at the carpet, he was
+sitting at the piano, playing &ldquo;The Rosary&rdquo; with one finger. He
+couldn&rsquo;t play anything except &ldquo;The Rosary,&rdquo; and he
+couldn&rsquo;t play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse
+would blow out, and he&rsquo;d have to start all over again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+seen her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seen her?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What, Miss West?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started &ldquo;The Rosary&rdquo; again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you ought never to have brought me here.
+I must go away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go away?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk such rot. This is the
+best thing that could have happened. This is where you come out strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She cut me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She looked clean through me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course she did. But don&rsquo;t mind that. Put this thing in my
+hands. I&rsquo;ll see you through. Now, what you want,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is
+to place her under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s she going to thank me timidly for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t swim,&rdquo; said Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was Freddie all over, don&rsquo;t you know. A dear old chap in a thousand
+ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over. There was no
+doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear old Freddie had his
+strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in happier days I&rsquo;ve heard
+him give an imitation of cats fighting in a backyard that would have surprised
+you. But apart from that he wasn&rsquo;t a man of enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, don&rsquo;t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it was the
+girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs of her sprinkled
+round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn&rsquo;t be mistaken. She was sitting on
+the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle. On a chair close by was an
+elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the girl call her &ldquo;aunt.&rdquo; So,
+doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced that the fat child was her
+cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had been there he would probably have
+tried to work up some sentiment about the kid on the strength of it. Personally
+I couldn&rsquo;t manage it. I don&rsquo;t think I ever saw a child who made me
+feel less sentimental. He was one of those round, bulging kids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and began to
+whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling sweets at a stall.
+And I walked on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I&rsquo;m a chump. Well, I
+don&rsquo;t mind. I admit it. I <i>am</i> a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you&rsquo;d least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that&rsquo;s what happened now. I
+doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a single one of
+any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore, when I
+saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl
+wasn&rsquo;t with him. In fact, there didn&rsquo;t seem to be any one in sight.
+I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought the whole
+thing out in a flash, don&rsquo;t you know. From what I had seen of the two,
+the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so
+what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young heavy-weight for the
+moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully anxious about where he can
+have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly appears leading the infant by the hand
+and telling a story to the effect that he has found him wandering at large
+about the country and practically saved his life, why, the girl&rsquo;s
+gratitude is bound to make her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I
+gathered in the kid and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that
+scene of reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don&rsquo;t you know, that,
+by George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine points of the
+idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him down in our
+sitting-room, he didn&rsquo;t absolutely effervesce with joy, if you know what
+I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and poor old Freddie seemed
+to find it rather trying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop it!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you think nobody&rsquo;s got any
+troubles except you? What the deuce is all this, Reggie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I raced to
+the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right stuff. The kid stopped
+bellowing and began to smear his face with the stuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the
+idea. After a while it began to strike him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie,&rdquo; he
+said handsomely. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say this seems pretty good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to scour the
+beach for Angela.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old
+Freddie that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was leaning
+back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down the road I saw
+the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still with him. And Freddie
+looked as if he hadn&rsquo;t a friend in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you find her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I found her,&rdquo; he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t her cousin, you idiot!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s no relation at all. He&rsquo;s just a kid she happened to
+meet on the beach. She had never seen him before in her life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Who is he, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Oh, Lord, I&rsquo;ve had a time! Thank goodness
+you&rsquo;ll probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That&rsquo;s my only consolation. I&rsquo;ll come and jeer at you
+through the bars.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me all, old boy,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the middle
+of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered gradually what had
+happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he told the story he had
+prepared, and then&mdash;well, she didn&rsquo;t actually call him a liar, but
+she gave him to understand in a general sort of way that if he and Dr. Cook
+ever happened to meet, and started swapping stories, it would be about the
+biggest duel on record. And then he had crawled away with the kid, licked to a
+splinter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And mind, this is your affair,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+mixed up in it at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you&rsquo;d better
+go and find the kid&rsquo;s parents and return him before the police come for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal kid, I
+never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to restore a child to
+its anxious parents. It&rsquo;s a mystery to me how kidnappers ever get caught.
+I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came forward to claim the
+infant. You&rsquo;d have thought, from the lack of interest in him, that he was
+stopping there all by himself in a cottage of his own. It wasn&rsquo;t till, by
+an inspiration, I thought to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his
+name was Medwin, and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in
+Beach Road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody answered. I
+knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody came. I was just going
+to get to work on that knocker in such a way that the idea would filter through
+into these people&rsquo;s heads that I wasn&rsquo;t standing there just for the
+fun of the thing, when a voice from somewhere above shouted, &ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and west of it,
+staring down from an upper window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo; it shouted again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the deuce do you mean by &lsquo;Hi&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t come in,&rdquo; said the face. &ldquo;Hello, is that
+Tootles?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My name is not Tootles, and I don&rsquo;t want to come in,&rdquo; I
+said. &ldquo;Are you Mr. Medwin? I&rsquo;ve brought back your son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see &rsquo;oo!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face reappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I churned the gravel madly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you live here?&rdquo; said the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m staying here for a few weeks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pepper. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My uncle. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you were,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He beamed down at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is most fortunate,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We were wondering what we
+were to do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of infection.
+We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most fortunate your
+finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate to trust him to the
+care of a stranger, but you are different. Any nephew of Edward Pepper&rsquo;s
+has my implicit confidence. You must take Tootles to your house. It will be an
+ideal arrangement. I have written to my brother in London to come and fetch
+him. He may be here in a few days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan. Very much
+obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got a wife,&rdquo; I yelled; but the window had closed
+with a bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to escape,
+don&rsquo;t you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The window flew up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a bomb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you catch it?&rdquo; said the face, reappearing. &ldquo;Dear me, you
+missed it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer&rsquo;s. Ask for
+Bailey&rsquo;s Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast
+with a little milk. Be certain to get Bailey&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation. Taking
+Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon&rsquo;s retreat from Moscow
+was a picnic by the side of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie&rsquo;s Angela.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at her and
+said, &ldquo;Wah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, baby?&rdquo; she said, bending down to him. &ldquo;So father found
+you again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning,&rdquo; she said to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered lunatic
+it so utterly unnerved me, don&rsquo;t you know, that she had nodded good-bye
+and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my breath enough to deny
+the charge of being the infant&rsquo;s father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hadn&rsquo;t expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more manly
+fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his head. He
+didn&rsquo;t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he began he
+did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional, dear old boy. It
+beat me where he could have picked up such expressions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, when he had finished, &ldquo;say something!
+Heavens! man, why don&rsquo;t you say something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t give me a chance, old top,&rdquo; I said soothingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can we do about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t spend our time acting as nurses to this&mdash;this
+exhibit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going back to London,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Freddie!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Freddie, old man!&rdquo; My voice shook.
+&ldquo;Would you desert a pal at a time like this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would. This is your business, and you&rsquo;ve got to manage
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Freddie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve got to stand by me. You
+must. Do you realize that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and
+dressed again? You wouldn&rsquo;t leave me to do all that single-handed?
+Freddie, old scout, we were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe
+me a tenner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; he said resignedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I did it all for your sake,
+don&rsquo;t you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, in a strained voice, &ldquo;one moment.
+I&rsquo;ll stand a good deal, but I won&rsquo;t stand for being expected to be
+grateful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that crisis
+was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the local sweet-shop.
+By serving out sweets to the kid practically incessantly we managed to get
+through the rest of that day pretty satisfactorily. At eight o&rsquo;clock he
+fell asleep in a chair, and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button
+in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we
+carried him up to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew what he
+was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple&mdash;a mere matter of
+muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the pile
+with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which might have been
+anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like nothing on earth. We
+looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next bungalow
+but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their nurse. Women are
+wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid dressed and looking fit for
+anything in about eight minutes. I showered wealth on her, and she promised to
+come in morning and evening. I sat down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It
+was the first bit of silver lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after all,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s lots to be said for
+having a child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic&mdash;what!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie&rsquo;s trousers, and when he had
+come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said, the less
+he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the kid, who
+happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his portmanteau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the hotel. I can&rsquo;t write dialogue
+with that sort of thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this
+little treasure?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I might work this up for the stage,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It
+wouldn&rsquo;t make a bad situation for act two of a farce.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Farce!&rdquo; snarled poor old Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like&mdash;that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of idiot,
+kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I&rsquo;ll rough it
+out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we went I told him the rest of the story&mdash;the Angela part. He laid down
+his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made.
+It&rsquo;s the old &lsquo;Tiny Hand&rsquo; business. Always safe stuff. Parted
+lovers. Lisping child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It&rsquo;s big.
+Child, centre. Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can play a little of &lsquo;The Rosary&rsquo; with one finger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest&rsquo;s all
+right. Look here.&rdquo; He squatted in the sand. &ldquo;This stone is the
+girl. This bit of seaweed&rsquo;s the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue
+leading up to child&rsquo;s line. Child speaks like, &lsquo;Boofer lady, does
+i&rsquo;oo love dadda?&rsquo; Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for
+a moment. Freddie crosses L., takes girl&rsquo;s hand. Business of swallowing
+lump in throat. Then big speech. &lsquo;Ah, Marie,&rsquo; or whatever her name
+is&mdash;Jane&mdash;Agnes&mdash;Angela? Very well. &lsquo;Ah, Angela, has not
+this gone on too long? A little child rebukes us! Angela!&rsquo; And so on.
+Freddie must work up his own part. I&rsquo;m just giving you the general
+outline. And we must get a good line for the child. &lsquo;Boofer lady, does
+&rsquo;oo love dadda?&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t definite enough. We want something
+more&mdash;ah! &lsquo;Kiss Freddie,&rsquo; that&rsquo;s it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Jimmy, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the only objection is,
+don&rsquo;t you know, that there&rsquo;s no way of getting the girl to the
+cottage. She cuts Freddie. She wouldn&rsquo;t come within a mile of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy frowned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s awkward,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Well, we shall have to make
+it an exterior set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the
+beach somewhere, when we&rsquo;re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid
+letter-perfect. First rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp
+to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not to tell
+him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn&rsquo;t in the mood
+to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we concentrated on Tootles. And
+pretty early in the proceedings we saw that the only way to get Tootles worked
+up to the spirit of the thing was to introduce sweets of some sort as a
+sub-motive, so to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The chief difficulty,&rdquo; said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the
+first rehearsal, &ldquo;is to establish a connection in the kid&rsquo;s mind
+between his line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those
+two words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got a
+success.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;ve often thought, don&rsquo;t you know, how interesting it must be to
+be one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning intelligence,
+and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as exciting. Some days success
+seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the kid got the line out as if
+he&rsquo;d been an old professional. And then he&rsquo;d go all to pieces
+again. And time was flying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must hurry up, Jimmy,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The kid&rsquo;s uncle may
+arrive any day now and take him away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we haven&rsquo;t an understudy,&rdquo; said Jimmy.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something in that. We must work! My goodness, that
+kid&rsquo;s a bad study. I&rsquo;ve known deaf-mutes who would have learned the
+part quicker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn&rsquo;t
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash at his
+line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was after. His only
+fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have been prepared to risk it,
+and start the performance at the first opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not nearly ready,&rdquo; said Jimmy. &ldquo;To-day, for
+instance, he said &lsquo;Kick Freddie.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s not going to win any
+girl&rsquo;s heart. And she might do it, too. No; we must postpone production
+awhile yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, by George, we didn&rsquo;t. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nobody&rsquo;s fault&mdash;certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house to
+exercise it, when, just as we&rsquo;d got out to the veranda, along came the
+girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual yell at the sight
+of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello, baby!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; she said to
+me. &ldquo;May I come up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She didn&rsquo;t wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that sort
+of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the kid. And six
+feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the sitting-room. It was a
+dash disturbing situation, don&rsquo;t you know. At any minute Freddie might
+take it into his head to come out on to the veranda, and we hadn&rsquo;t even
+begun to rehearse him in his part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to break up the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were just going down to the beach,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the girl. She listened for a moment. &ldquo;So
+you&rsquo;re having your piano tuned?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My aunt has been
+trying to find a tuner for ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to
+come on to us when he&rsquo;s finished here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;not yet!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Not yet, if you don&rsquo;t
+mind. He can&rsquo;t bear to be disturbed when he&rsquo;s working. It&rsquo;s
+the artistic temperament. I&rsquo;ll tell him later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said, getting up to go. &ldquo;Ask him to call at
+Pine Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I&rsquo;ll wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think&mdash;shouldn&rsquo;t we be going on to the
+beach?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had started talking to the kid and didn&rsquo;t hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The beach,&rdquo; I babbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See what I&rsquo;ve brought for you, baby,&rdquo; she said. And, by
+George, don&rsquo;t you know, she held up in front of the kid&rsquo;s bulging
+eyes a chunk of toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid was all
+worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for all the
+world as if he had been taking a cue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the ground, and
+the kid looked at the toffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy Pinkerton
+would have called &ldquo;business of outstretched hands&rdquo; towards it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he shrieked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; said the girl, turning to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better give it to him, don&rsquo;t you know,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll go on till you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still stood
+there gaping, without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; said the girl again. Her face was pink, and
+her eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don&rsquo;t you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn&rsquo;t any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner&rsquo;s dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: &ldquo;<i>Please</i> don&rsquo;t
+apologize. It&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; and then suddenly meet her clear blue
+eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle
+jump up and hit you in the face? Well, that&rsquo;s how Freddie&rsquo;s Angela
+looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Well?</i>&rdquo; she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I
+said, &ldquo;Oh, well, it was this way.&rdquo; And, after a few brief remarks
+about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the girl didn&rsquo;t speak, either. She just stood listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She leaned
+against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while Freddie, the
+World&rsquo;s Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it seemed to
+me that about here the stage-direction &ldquo;exit&rdquo; was written in my
+part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a word, it
+might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless. What can a fellow do
+with a fellow like that?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello, Reggie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was just coming to you.
+Where&rsquo;s the kid? We must have a big rehearsal to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No good,&rdquo; I said sadly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all over. The
+thing&rsquo;s finished. Poor dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and
+killed the whole show.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Jimmy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fluffed in his lines, did he?&rdquo; said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once.
+Things look bad, but it may not be too late,&rdquo; he said as we started.
+&ldquo;Even now a few well-chosen words from a man of the world,
+and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow from the
+grocer&rsquo;s staring. From the windows of the houses opposite projected about
+four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the road came galloping five
+more children, a dog, three men, and a boy, about to stare. And on our porch,
+as unconscious of the spectators as if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood
+Freddie and Angela, clasped in each other&rsquo;s arms.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE</h2>
+
+<p>
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the course of
+a lifetime devoted to butting into other people&rsquo;s business, was that
+affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn&rsquo;t bore you,
+don&rsquo;t you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht <i>Circe</i>, belonging to an old
+sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself, my man
+Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s maid
+Pilbeam and George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him into
+the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who was
+scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to hand over
+to him a legacy left by one of George&rsquo;s aunts, for which he had been
+trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was a date that
+George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a sort of
+income&mdash;an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a chunk of
+o&rsquo; goblins is a pile. George&rsquo;s uncle was in Monte Carlo, and had
+written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it struck me that a
+far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at Monte Carlo instead. Kill
+two birds with one stone, don&rsquo;t you know. Fix up his affairs and have a
+pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George had tagged along, and at the time
+when the trouble started we were anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus
+was due next day.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the thing began
+at seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning, when I was aroused from a dreamless
+sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my state-room door. The
+chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed and said: &ldquo;Oh,
+Harold!&rdquo; and a male voice &ldquo;raised in anger,&rdquo; as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules&rsquo;s. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you&rsquo;d
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently relaxed
+to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my midst at that
+hour was too much for me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules!&rdquo; I yelled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing in the
+distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with that impressive,
+my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay him for. You wouldn&rsquo;t
+have believed he had a drop of any sort of emotion in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;are you under the delusion that I&rsquo;m
+going to be Queen of the May? You&rsquo;ve called me early all right.
+It&rsquo;s only just seven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understood you to summon me, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment I
+raised my voice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a wonder you didn&rsquo;t raise the roof. Who was that with
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s maid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was all the trouble about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was breaking our engagement, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t help gaping. Somehow one didn&rsquo;t associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I&rsquo;d no right to butt in on his secret
+sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll get up,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was a lovely
+morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all the rest of the
+hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up. Stella Vanderley was one
+of the first. I thought she looked a bit pale and tired. She said she
+hadn&rsquo;t slept well. That accounted for it. Unless you get your eight
+hours, where are you?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seen George?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly close pals.
+In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and slip his little hand
+in mine, and whisper: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done it, old scout; she loves
+muh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not seen Mr. Lattaker,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t pursue the subject. George&rsquo;s stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next item in the day&rsquo;s programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The poor, dear Prince!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a shocking thing!&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew him in Vienna,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vanderley. &ldquo;He waltzed
+divinely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was full of
+it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these chaps
+&ldquo;Serene&rdquo;) had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on his
+way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed the habit of
+going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking advantage of this,
+had laid for him and slugged him with considerable vim. The Prince had been
+found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible in the street by a passing
+pedestrian, and had been taken back to his yacht, where he still lay
+unconscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is going to do somebody no good,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you
+get for slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they&rsquo;ll catch the
+fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Later,&rsquo;&rdquo; read old Marshall, &ldquo;&lsquo;the
+pedestrian who discovered His Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman
+Sturgis, the eminent private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services
+to the police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move off to
+breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man came up the
+gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old Marshall as the probable
+owner of the yacht.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker
+on board&mdash;Mr. George Lattaker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marshall. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s down below. Want to see
+him? Whom shall I say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a seat. He&rsquo;ll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry
+him up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went down to George&rsquo;s state-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George, old man!&rdquo; I shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What&rsquo;s
+more, the bunk hadn&rsquo;t been slept in. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve
+been more surprised. I went on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t there,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not there!&rdquo; said old Marshall. &ldquo;Where is he, then? Perhaps
+he&rsquo;s gone for a stroll ashore. But he&rsquo;ll be back soon for
+breakfast. You&rsquo;d better wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will
+you join us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped down,
+leaving me alone on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought I heard
+somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked over my shoulder,
+and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in evening dress, dusty to the
+eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot!&rdquo; I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Sh!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Anyone about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re all down at breakfast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I regarded
+him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say!&rdquo; I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you do that? What did you do it for? What&rsquo;s the sense of it?
+How do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about touching
+people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of my body this
+morning, Reggie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, old boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did a murder last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly
+Stella Vanderley broke off our engagement I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn&rsquo;t a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was just
+going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming along the
+corridor was that infernal what&rsquo;s-her-name&mdash;Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s
+maid&mdash;Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never. I&rsquo;ve been refused dozens&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you won&rsquo;t understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy.
+I hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest thing
+handy. I couldn&rsquo;t wait. It might have been the ship&rsquo;s cat. It
+wasn&rsquo;t. It was Pilbeam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You kissed her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened and
+out came Stella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl, not
+knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It did. She broke
+off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed off. I was mad. I
+didn&rsquo;t care what became of me. I simply wanted to forget. I went ashore.
+I&mdash;It&rsquo;s just on the cards that I may have drowned my sorrows a bit.
+Anyhow, I don&rsquo;t remember a thing, except that I can recollect having the
+deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street and somebody falling, and
+myself falling, and myself legging it for all I was worth. I woke up this
+morning in the Casino gardens. I&rsquo;ve lost my hat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dived for the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, this is awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cheer up. They say he&rsquo;ll recover.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read the paper again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It says they&rsquo;ve a clue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They always say that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;My hat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you mustn&rsquo;t waste time. Oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo; he said, irritably. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t bark
+like that. What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He&rsquo;s down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted to
+see you on business, and wouldn&rsquo;t give his name. I didn&rsquo;t like the
+look of him from the first. It&rsquo;s this fellow Sturgis. It must be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel it. I&rsquo;m sure of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had he a hat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course he had a hat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, he <i>was</i> carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your life
+out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is <i>lèse-majesté</i>. It&rsquo;s
+worse than hitting a policeman. You haven&rsquo;t got a moment to waste.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I&rsquo;ll wire my
+uncle to meet me in&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look out,&rdquo; I cried; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s someone coming!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way, carrying a
+letter on a tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker&rsquo;s voice. A
+letter has arrived for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; give it to me. I&rsquo;ll give it to him when he comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! That&rsquo;s all, Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They&rsquo;re all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth&rsquo;s eating kippers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll hold him for a bit. Full of bones.&rdquo; He began to read
+his letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m hanged!&rdquo; he said, as he finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, this is a queer thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he had
+grunted. This is how it ran:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;My dear George&mdash;I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious situation that
+has arisen in connection with the legacy which your father inherited from your
+Aunt Emily, and which you are expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you,
+now that you have reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+kidnapped&mdash;which, was never ascertained&mdash;when you were both babies.
+When no news was received of him for so many years, it was supposed that he was
+dead. Yesterday, however, I received a letter purporting that he had been
+living all this time in Buenos Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South
+American, and has only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is
+on his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like other
+claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile his intervention will,
+I fear, cause a certain delay before I can hand over your money to you. It will
+be necessary to go into a thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this
+will take some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+meet.&mdash;Your affectionate uncle,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;A<small>UGUSTUS</small> A<small>RBUTT</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I do
+sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I have seldom
+had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;this lets you out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lets me out of half the darned money, if that&rsquo;s what you mean. If
+this chap&rsquo;s not an imposter&mdash;and there&rsquo;s no earthly reason to
+suppose he is, though I&rsquo;ve never heard my father say a word about
+him&mdash;we shall have to split the money. Aunt Emily&rsquo;s will left the
+money to my father, or, failing him, his &lsquo;offspring.&rsquo; I thought
+that meant me, but apparently there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work,
+springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like
+this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you chump,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s going to save you. This
+lets you out of your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you&rsquo;ve got
+to do is to stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a
+flash.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ass!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand? Have you ever
+heard of twin-brothers who weren&rsquo;t exactly alike? Who&rsquo;s to say you
+aren&rsquo;t Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Alfred will be there to call me a liar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s not as if you had to keep it up for the rest
+of your life. It&rsquo;s only for an hour or two, till we can get this
+detective off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I really do believe it would work,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole.
+I&rsquo;ll swear George hadn&rsquo;t one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you&rsquo;re a genius.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>are</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s only sometimes. I can&rsquo;t keep it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the devil are you doing here, Voules,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules is all right,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Decent Voules! Voules
+wouldn&rsquo;t give us away, would you, Voules?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Voules, old man,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;be sensible. What would you
+gain by it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Financially, sir, nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whereas, by keeping quiet&rdquo;&mdash;I tapped him on the
+chest&mdash;&ldquo;by holding your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it
+to anybody, Voules, old fellow, you might gain a considerable sum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much?&rdquo; said Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn&rsquo;t believe the way the man haggled.
+You&rsquo;d have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules. By no
+means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred when we had
+got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it up at last, and poor
+old George got down to his state-room and changed his clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He&rsquo;d hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you meet him?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meet whom?&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George&rsquo;s twin-brother Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know George had a brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor did he till yesterday. It&rsquo;s a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his uncle
+about him yesterday. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if that&rsquo;s where George has
+gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime, Alfred has
+arrived. He&rsquo;s down in George&rsquo;s state-room now, having a brush-up.
+It&rsquo;ll amaze you, the likeness between them. You&rsquo;ll think it
+<i>is</i> George at first. Look! Here he comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at him, as
+if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren&rsquo;t quite certain
+where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an amazing likeness,&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is my brother like me?&rdquo; asked George amiably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one could tell you apart,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose twins always are alike,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;But if it
+ever came to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a dear old pal of mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been swimming with him perhaps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every day last August.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this on
+the back of his neck, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it often
+when we were bathing together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has George a mole like that?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Oh, no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have noticed it if he had?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;It would be a
+nuisance not to be able to prove one&rsquo;s own identity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn&rsquo;t get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think George
+felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had breakfast, he
+said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he hadn&rsquo;t a care in the
+world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the foredeck
+talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the rest had started
+to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you tell me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, about Stella. Didn&rsquo;t I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the trouble
+was. And then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I did,&rdquo; said George modestly, &ldquo;I had no notion, till
+I became him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a pretty
+good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn&rsquo;t to be turned down for what
+was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s all right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy he thinks that you&rsquo;re bound to come back sooner or later,
+and is waiting for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s an absolute nuisance,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a boat
+hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my uncle,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, George!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Get my letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you are mistaking me for my brother,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;My name is Alfred Lattaker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am George&rsquo;s brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stout man stared at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very like George,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So everyone tells me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re really Alfred?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to talk business with you for a moment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir,&rdquo; said Voules. &ldquo;If it would be
+convenient I should be glad to have the afternoon off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;m bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had lunch&mdash;George didn&rsquo;t show up&mdash;and as I was going out I
+was waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the
+afternoon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I have given him the afternoon off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke down&mdash;absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was.
+I&rsquo;m hopeless in a situation like this. After I&rsquo;d said,
+&ldquo;There, there!&rdquo; which didn&rsquo;t seem to help much, I
+hadn&rsquo;t any remarks to make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings and
+then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my state-room door.
+I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of this. I couldn&rsquo;t have a
+really first-class valet like Voules going about the place shooting himself up.
+Evidently the girl Pilbeam was at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her.
+She sobbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the facts.
+Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George. There
+was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules&rsquo;s mind had got
+to be eased as Stella&rsquo;s had been. I couldn&rsquo;t afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says about
+some fellow&rsquo;s face being sicklied o&rsquo;er with the pale cast of care?
+George&rsquo;s was like that. He looked green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Finished with your uncle?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t any uncle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t
+any Alfred. And there isn&rsquo;t any money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Explain yourself, old top,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He&rsquo;s been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When the
+time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he went to the
+tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last remnant of the stuff. He
+had to find a way of holding me for a while and postponing the squaring of
+accounts while he got away, and he invented this twin-brother business. He knew
+I should find out sooner or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to
+South America, which he has done. He&rsquo;s on his way now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You let him go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What could I do? I can&rsquo;t afford to make a fuss with that man
+Sturgis around. I can&rsquo;t prove there&rsquo;s no Alfred when my only chance
+of avoiding prison is to be Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway,&rdquo; I said, to cheer him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of that now? I&rsquo;ve hardly any money and no
+prospects. How can I marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pondered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks to me, old top,&rdquo; I said at last, &ldquo;as if things were
+in a bit of a mess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve guessed it,&rdquo; said poor old George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer
+thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don&rsquo;t you know, if you see what I
+mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time
+Life&rsquo;s waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can&rsquo;t tell
+when you may be going to get it. It&rsquo;s all dashed puzzling. Here was poor
+old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped, getting swatted all over
+the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That&rsquo;s what I asked myself. Just Life,
+don&rsquo;t you know. That&rsquo;s all there was about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was close on six o&rsquo;clock when our third visitor of the day arrived. We
+were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening&mdash;old Marshall,
+Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I&mdash;when he came up. We
+had been talking of George, and old Marshall was suggesting the advisability of
+sending out search-parties. He was worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for
+that matter, were George and I, only not for the same reason.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Marshall?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am Count Fritz von Cöslin,
+equerry to His Serene Highness&rdquo;&mdash;he clicked his heels together and
+saluted&mdash;&ldquo;the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Count,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what ages since we met in Vienna!
+You remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stella, you remember Count Fritz?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stella shook hands with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how is the poor, dear Prince?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Vanderley.
+&ldquo;What a terrible thing to have happened!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s good,&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a spoon only,&rdquo; sighed the Count. &ldquo;Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Denman Sturgis, at your service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce you are! What are you doing here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Sturgis,&rdquo; explained the Count, &ldquo;graciously volunteered
+his services&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. But what&rsquo;s he doing here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have not found him?&rdquo; asked the Count anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go mixing me up with my brother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am
+Alfred. You can tell me by my mole.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George didn&rsquo;t offer to console him,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry,&rdquo; said Sturgis. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t escape me.
+I shall find him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young
+man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; shouted George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George sat down suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; he said feebly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis,&rdquo; went on the Count. &ldquo;We leaped
+to the conclusion&mdash;was it not so?&mdash;that the owner of the hat you
+found was also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have
+heard the story from His Serene Highness&rsquo;s own lips. He was passing down
+a dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had
+been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My high-born
+master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he lost consciousness
+he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing the hat you found, running
+swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the assassin in combat, and my high-born
+master remembers no more. His Serene Highness asks repeatedly, &lsquo;Where is
+my brave preserver?&rsquo; His gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young
+man to reward him. Ah, you should be proud of your brother, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said George limply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t take all that trouble,&rdquo; said a voice from the
+gangway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his head, and
+he was smoking a fat cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you where to find George Lattaker!&rdquo; he shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, look at me,&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Look at me. You won&rsquo;t be
+the first this afternoon who&rsquo;s stared at the mysterious stranger who won
+for two hours without a break. I&rsquo;ll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming
+Lattaker. I&rsquo;ll learn you to break a poor man&rsquo;s heart. Mr. Marshall
+and gents, this morning I was on deck, and I over&rsquo;eard &rsquo;im plotting
+to put up a game on you. They&rsquo;d spotted that gent there as a detective,
+and they arranged that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own
+twin-brother. And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them
+his mole and he&rsquo;d swear George hadn&rsquo;t one. Those were his very
+words. That man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he
+can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least desire to deny it, Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Voules, if <i>you</i> please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said George, turning to the Count. &ldquo;The
+fact is, I had rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the conclusion
+that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you are really George Lattaker?&rdquo; asked the Count.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Ere, what does all this mean?&rdquo; demanded Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a swindle!&rdquo; began Voules, when there was a sudden rush
+and the girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old
+Marshall&rsquo;s chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Harold!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I thought you were dead. I thought
+you&rsquo;d shot yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed to
+think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all dashed romantic, don&rsquo;t you know, but there <i>are</i> limits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules, you&rsquo;re sacked,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who cares?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Think I was going to stop on now
+I&rsquo;m a gentleman of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a
+month&rsquo;s notice and get your &rsquo;at, and I&rsquo;ll take you to dinner
+at Ciro&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you, Mr. Lattaker,&rdquo; said the Count, &ldquo;may I conduct you
+to the presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;May I have my hat, Mr.
+Sturgis?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There&rsquo;s just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a smoke,
+and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and Stella. They
+seemed to be having an argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;that I believe that a
+man can be so happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you
+put it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Well, as it happens,
+I&rsquo;m feeling just that way now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I coughed and he turned round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Reggie!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, George!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Lovely night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beautiful,&rdquo; said Stella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The moon,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lovely,&rdquo; said Stella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And look at the reflection of the stars on the&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George caught my eye. &ldquo;Pop off,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I popped.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD</h2>
+
+<p>
+Have you ever thought about&mdash;and, when I say thought about, I mean really
+carefully considered the question of&mdash;the coolness, the cheek, or, if you
+prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly bursts? <i>I</i> have,
+by Jove! But then I&rsquo;ve had it thrust on my notice, by George, in a way I
+should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows. And the limit was reached by
+that business of the Yeardsley &ldquo;Venus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To make you understand the full what-d&rsquo;you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire family;
+pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at Oxford with me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don&rsquo;t you know. And there was a
+time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just as I was
+beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture catalogues and
+feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played &ldquo;The Wedding
+Glide,&rdquo; I&rsquo;m hanged if she didn&rsquo;t break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley&mdash;Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the club
+rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I got over it,
+and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the book of my life, if you
+know what I mean. It didn&rsquo;t seem likely to me that we should meet again,
+as she and Clarence had settled down in the country somewhere and never came to
+London, and I&rsquo;m bound to own that, by the time I got her letter, the
+wound had pretty well healed, and I was to a certain extent sitting up and
+taking nourishment. In fact, to be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the
+thing had ended as it had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter I&rsquo;m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue sky,
+as it were. It ran like this:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,&mdash;What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old house, with
+a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn&rsquo;t you run
+down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so glad to see you. Bill is
+here, and is most anxious to meet you again. He was speaking of you only this
+morning. <i>Do</i> come. Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&mdash;Yours most sincerely,<br>
+E<small>LIZABETH</small> Y<small>EARDSLEY.</small>
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.S.&mdash;We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.&mdash;Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has ever
+played on.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.S.&mdash;We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says it
+is better than St. Andrews.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.S.S.&mdash;You <i>must</i> come!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a head on,
+and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite easily have blighted
+his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he was
+talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must be something
+special. So I went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn&rsquo;t come across him for
+some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was glad to see
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank goodness you&rsquo;ve come,&rdquo; he said, as we drove off.
+&ldquo;I was just about at my last grip.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble, old scout?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I had the artistic what&rsquo;s-its-name,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;if the mere mention of pictures didn&rsquo;t give me the pip, I dare say
+it wouldn&rsquo;t be so bad. As it is, it&rsquo;s rotten!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pictures?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like when one
+gives her her head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remembered then&mdash;it hadn&rsquo;t come back to me before&mdash;that most
+of my time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to
+follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures are poison
+to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never struck me that she
+would still be going on in this way after marrying an artist. I should have
+thought that by this time the mere sight of a picture would have fed her up.
+Not so, however, according to old Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They talk pictures at every meal,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I tell you, it
+makes a chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A few days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I was to
+come back after the match. But you couldn&rsquo;t get me back with a
+lasso.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there&rsquo;s a most corking
+links near here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean honestly she said that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I did. Was that all she said I said?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, wasn&rsquo;t it enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t happen to mention that I added the words, &lsquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, she forgot to tell me that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the worst course in Great Britain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt rather stunned, don&rsquo;t you know. Whether it&rsquo;s a bad habit to
+have got into or not, I can&rsquo;t say, but I simply can&rsquo;t do without my
+daily allowance of golf when I&rsquo;m not in London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have to take it out in billiards,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad the table&rsquo;s good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It depends what you call good. It&rsquo;s half-size, and there&rsquo;s a
+seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence&rsquo;s cue slipped. Elizabeth
+has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it
+doesn&rsquo;t improve the thing as a billiard-table.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she said you said&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Must have been pulling your leg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well back from
+the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I couldn&rsquo;t help
+feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read about in stories who are
+lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and hear a shriek just as they get
+there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to know that a specially good golf course
+was a safe draw to me. And she had deliberately played on her knowledge. What
+was the game? That was what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck
+me which brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and
+was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I&rsquo;ve often heard that young
+married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence&rsquo;s
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as she had
+done wouldn&rsquo;t be likely to stick at a trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bill, old scout,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there aren&rsquo;t any frightful
+girls or any rot of that sort stopping here, are there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wish there were,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No such luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman&rsquo;s figure
+appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you got him, Bill?&rdquo; she said, which in my present frame of
+mind struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don&rsquo;t you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean me?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same as in the
+old days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that you, Reggie? I&rsquo;m so glad you were able to come. I was
+afraid you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come along
+in and have some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been
+introduced to her husband? If so you&rsquo;ll understand how I felt when
+Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about
+the marriage, you say to yourself, &ldquo;I wonder what he&rsquo;s like.&rdquo;
+Then you meet him, and think, &ldquo;There must be some mistake. She
+can&rsquo;t have preferred <i>this</i> to me!&rdquo; That&rsquo;s what I
+thought, when I set eyes on Clarence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His hair
+was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore pince-nez, and he
+had a drooping moustache. I&rsquo;m no Bombardier Wells myself, but in front of
+Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth, mind you, is one of those tall,
+splendid girls who look like princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of
+pure cussedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?&rdquo; said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don&rsquo;t you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old gentleman came
+in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was an earlier model. I
+took him, correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior. Elizabeth introduced us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Clarence, &ldquo;did you meet a mewing cat outside?
+I feel positive I heard a cat mewing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the father, shaking his head; &ldquo;no mewing
+cat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t bear mewing cats,&rdquo; said Clarence. &ldquo;A mewing
+cat gets on my nerves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A mewing cat is so trying,&rdquo; said Elizabeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> dislike mewing cats,&rdquo; said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think they had
+covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to pictures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At least,
+they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of picture-robberies
+came up. Somebody mentioned the &ldquo;Monna Lisa,&rdquo; and then I happened
+to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I was coming down in the
+train, about some fellow somewhere having had a valuable painting pinched by
+burglars the night before. It was the first time I had had a chance of breaking
+into the conversation with any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The
+paper was in the pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy
+Palmer&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all shouted &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me look! Yes. &lsquo;Late last night burglars entered the residence
+of Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s near here,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I passed through
+Midford&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,&rdquo; said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only two miles!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It might have been us! It might
+have been the &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening&rsquo;s chat had made quite a hit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why I didn&rsquo;t notice it before I don&rsquo;t know, but it was not till
+Elizabeth showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the
+Yeardsley &ldquo;Venus.&rdquo; When she led me up to it, and switched on the
+light, it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without
+noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I was aware
+of its existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley was
+writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were rollicking on
+the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry effects. All, in fact,
+was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when Elizabeth, who had been sitting
+wrapped in thought for a bit, bent towards me and said, &ldquo;Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You know that
+pre-what-d&rsquo;you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What-o?&rdquo; I said nervously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I want to ask a great favour of
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back to me:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the world
+for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There! That&rsquo;s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a
+sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you&rsquo;d have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of
+thing, what?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mind you, I <i>had</i> said I would do anything in the world for her. I admit
+that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn&rsquo;t appeared on
+the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who may have been a
+perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to her, doesn&rsquo;t feel
+nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction when she has given him
+the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man who reason and instinct both tell
+him is a decided blighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t think of anything to say but &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know, Reggie,&rdquo; she said suddenly, &ldquo;that only a few
+months ago Clarence was very fond of cats?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! Well, he still seems&mdash;er&mdash;<i>interested</i> in them,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over
+the&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, that wouldn&rsquo;t help him. He doesn&rsquo;t need to take
+anything. He wants to get rid of something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite follow. Get rid of something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;Venus,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Elizabeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You saw the &lsquo;Venus,&rsquo;&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that I remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, come into the dining-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the wall close to the door&mdash;that may have been why I hadn&rsquo;t
+noticed it before; I had sat with my back to it&mdash;was a large oil-painting.
+It was what you&rsquo;d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean
+is&mdash;well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it&rsquo;s funny I
+<i>hadn&rsquo;t</i> noticed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to a
+meal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. I don&rsquo;t think it would affect me much.
+I&rsquo;d worry through all right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not an artist,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Clarence
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn&rsquo;t
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old Artistic
+Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It explains everything.
+It&rsquo;s like the Unwritten Law, don&rsquo;t you know, which you plead in
+America if you&rsquo;ve done anything they want to send you to chokey for and
+you don&rsquo;t want to go. What I mean is, if you&rsquo;re absolutely off your
+rocker, but don&rsquo;t find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you
+simply explain that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic
+Temperament, and they apologize and go away. So I stood by to hear just how the
+A.T. had affected Clarence, the Cat&rsquo;s Friend, ready for anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and that
+this &ldquo;Venus&rdquo; was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so far,
+what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a professional artist
+and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at the game, saw flaws in the
+&ldquo;Venus.&rdquo; He couldn&rsquo;t stand it at any price. He didn&rsquo;t
+like the drawing. He didn&rsquo;t like the expression of the face. He
+didn&rsquo;t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to look at
+it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything rather than
+give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to store the thing in the
+cellar, and the strain of confronting the picture three times a day had begun
+to tell on him to such an extent that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now you see,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a way,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think it&rsquo;s
+making rather heavy weather over a trifle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, can&rsquo;t you understand? Look!&rdquo; Her voice dropped as if she
+was in church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley&rsquo;s. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Clarence
+painted that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon, or yell,
+or something. I took a steady look at Clarence&rsquo;s effort. It was another
+Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a dash at
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;&lsquo;Venus&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the evidence, I
+mean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. &lsquo;Jocund Spring,&rsquo;&rdquo; she snapped. She switched off
+the light. &ldquo;I see you don&rsquo;t understand even now. You never had any
+taste about pictures. When we used to go to the galleries together, you would
+far rather have been at your club.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up to me,
+and put her hand on my arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, Reggie. I didn&rsquo;t mean to be cross. Only I do want
+to make you understand that Clarence is <i>suffering</i>.
+Suppose&mdash;suppose&mdash;well, let us take the case of a great musician.
+Suppose a great musician had to sit and listen to a cheap vulgar tune&mdash;the
+same tune&mdash;day after day, day after day, wouldn&rsquo;t you expect his
+nerves to break! Well, it&rsquo;s just like that with Clarence. Now you
+see?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what? Surely I&rsquo;ve put it plainly enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you to steal the &lsquo;Venus.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want me to&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Steal it. Reggie!&rdquo; Her eyes were shining with excitement.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see? It&rsquo;s Providence. When I asked you to come
+here, I had just got the idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a
+miracle this robbery of the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away.
+It removes the last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having
+his feelings hurt. Why, it&rsquo;s the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take his
+&lsquo;Venus.&rsquo; It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it
+to-night, Reggie. I&rsquo;ll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas
+out of the frame, and it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But one moment,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d be delighted to be of
+any use to you, but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn&rsquo;t it be
+better&mdash;in fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if I&rsquo;m caught?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one
+of the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It sounded simple enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as to the picture itself&mdash;when I&rsquo;ve got it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burn it. I&rsquo;ll see that you have a good fire in your room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; she said; nothing more. Just &ldquo;Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, after all, if you see what I mean&mdash;The days that are no more,
+don&rsquo;t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped in
+crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces. If
+you&rsquo;re not, you&rsquo;ll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the
+job I&rsquo;d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had
+done when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn&rsquo;t help feeling there was a catch somewhere, and
+I&rsquo;ve never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for one
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be pretty
+sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn&rsquo;t stand it any longer. I lit
+the lantern I had taken from Bill&rsquo;s bicycle, took a grip of my knife, and
+slunk downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the window. I
+had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of local colour to the
+affair, but decided not to on account of the noise. I had put my lantern on the
+table, and was just reaching out for it, when something happened. What it was
+for the moment I couldn&rsquo;t have said. It might have been an explosion of
+some sort or an earthquake. Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on
+the chin. Sparks and things occurred inside my head and the next thing I
+remember is feeling something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a
+voice that sounded like old Bill&rsquo;s say, &ldquo;Feeling better now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill kneeling
+beside me with a soda siphon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, old man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t
+a notion it was you. I came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the
+window open and a chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn&rsquo;t stop to make
+inquiries. I just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you
+think you&rsquo;re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was Elizabeth,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Why, you know all about it. She
+said she had told you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, old man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never believe what
+they say about repentance again. It&rsquo;s a fool&rsquo;s trick and upsets
+everything. If I hadn&rsquo;t repented, and thought it was rather rough on
+Elizabeth not to do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do
+it after all, you wouldn&rsquo;t have stopped that sleep-producer with your
+chin. I&rsquo;m sorry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me, too,&rdquo; I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it
+was still on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you feeling better now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better than I was. But that&rsquo;s not saying much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let&rsquo;s be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it&rsquo;s on the
+cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heads.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tails it is,&rdquo; he said, uncovering the coin. &ldquo;Up you get.
+I&rsquo;ll hold the light. Don&rsquo;t spike yourself on that sword of
+yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and the thing
+came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old Bill had put the
+lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard, collecting whisky, soda, and
+glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a long evening before us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You
+can&rsquo;t burn a picture of that size in one chunk. You&rsquo;d set the
+chimney on fire. Let&rsquo;s do the thing comfortably. Clarence can&rsquo;t
+grudge us the stuff. We&rsquo;ve done him a bit of good this trip.
+To-morrow&rsquo;ll be the maddest, merriest day of Clarence&rsquo;s glad New
+Year. On we go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our drinks,
+and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and shoving it in the
+fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness of it and the cheerful
+blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good by stealth, I don&rsquo;t know
+when I&rsquo;ve had a jollier time since the days when we used to brew in my
+study at school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and gripped my
+arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard something,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over the
+dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy footsteps,
+by George! And then a chair falling over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s somebody in the dining-room,&rdquo; I whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There&rsquo;s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill&rsquo;s like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn&rsquo;t really
+heard anything after all. I&rsquo;m a peaceful sort of cove, and believe in
+living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however, a visit from
+burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one jump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bring the poker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the knife. We
+crept downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll fling the door open and make a rush,&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Supposing they shoot, old scout?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burglars never shoot,&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went. And then
+we pulled up sharp, staring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the near end.
+Standing on a chair in front of Clarence&rsquo;s &ldquo;Jocund Spring,&rdquo;
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other, was old
+Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He had made a
+final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he stopped, and he and
+the chair and the candle and the picture came down in a heap together. The
+candle went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What on earth?&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most fearful
+thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly collapsed into a
+chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I could see it was only the
+Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me, it was devilish unpleasant. I
+looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at me. We shut the door quick, and after
+that we didn&rsquo;t know what to do. I saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I
+knew what he was looking for. But we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his
+ideas of first-aid stopped short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and
+presently old Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park. It
+tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down to the same
+gang, Clarence, my boy. I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among those
+present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clarence?&rdquo; he said hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s in bed,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In bed! Then he doesn&rsquo;t know? Even now&mdash;Young men, I throw
+myself on your mercy. Don&rsquo;t be hard on me. Listen.&rdquo; He grabbed at
+Bill, who sidestepped. &ldquo;I can explain everything&mdash;everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a gulp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two years
+painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It was part of my
+life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then Clarence married, and
+in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You cannot understand, you two young
+men, what agonies I suffered. The thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how
+Clarence valued the picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him
+for it back. And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening
+I could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from a
+house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never suspect. He
+would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals who stole the Romney.
+Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out. I fought against it, but to
+no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down here to carry out my plan. You
+found me.&rdquo; He grabbed again, at me this time, and got me by the arm. He
+had a grip like a lobster. &ldquo;Young man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you would
+not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this time,
+don&rsquo;t you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him straight
+instead of breaking it by degrees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;I quite understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that
+sort of thing. I mean&mdash;what? <i>I</i> know. But I&rsquo;m
+afraid&mdash;Well, look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there, staring him
+in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling at them in silence.
+Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gang! The burglars! They <i>have</i> been here, and they have taken
+Clarence&rsquo;s picture!&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;It might have been mine! My
+Venus!&rdquo; he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know, but
+he had to know the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, you know,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But it
+<i>was</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started, poor old chap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They <i>did</i> take your Venus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I have it here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shook my head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Clarence&rsquo;s &lsquo;Jocund Spring,&rsquo;&rdquo; I
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don&rsquo;t know my own
+picture&mdash;my child&mdash;my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: &lsquo;Matthew Yeardsley.&rsquo; This is <i>my</i>
+picture!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And&mdash;well, by Jove, it <i>was</i>, don&rsquo;t you know!
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled down to
+take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was my fault for
+getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill&rsquo;s fault for
+fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn&rsquo;t be expected to see
+what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive silence for a
+bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; said Bill at last, &ldquo;how exactly do you feel about
+facing Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old scout,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I was thinking much the same
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; said Bill, &ldquo;I happen to know there&rsquo;s a
+milk-train leaving Midford at three-fifteen. It isn&rsquo;t what you&rsquo;d
+call a flier. It gets to London at about half-past nine. Well&mdash;er&mdash;in
+the circumstances, how about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD</h2>
+
+<p>
+Now that it&rsquo;s all over, I may as well admit that there was a time during
+the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought that Jeeves was
+going to let me down. The man had the appearance of being baffled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages for
+pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he&rsquo;s more
+like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who was apt to
+rally round him in times of need&mdash;a guide, don&rsquo;t you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and&mdash;I rather fancy&mdash;friend. I
+rely on him at every turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn&rsquo;t hesitate.
+Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was in bed,
+restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the dreamless, when the
+door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower ribs and began to shake the
+bedclothes. After blinking a bit and generally pulling myself together, I
+located Rocky, and my first impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from New York;
+and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once that he never got
+up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one. Constitutionally the laziest
+young devil in America, he had hit on a walk in life which enabled him to go
+the limit in that direction. He was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he
+did anything; but most of his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a
+sort of trance. He told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm
+and wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a month he
+would take three days writing a few poems; the other three hundred and
+twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn&rsquo;t know there was enough
+money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but
+it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to young men to lead the strenuous
+life and don&rsquo;t shove in any rhymes, American editors fight for the stuff.
+Rocky showed me one of his things once. It began:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Be!<br>
+Be!<br>
+    The past is dead.<br>
+    To-morrow is not born.<br>
+        Be to-day!<br>
+To-day!<br>
+    Be with every nerve,<br>
+            With every muscle,<br>
+            With every drop of your red blood!<br>
+Be!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of scroll
+round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie, with bulging
+muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said they gave him a hundred
+dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four in the afternoon for over a
+month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he had a
+moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had been named
+Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his position was pretty
+sound. He told me that when he did come into the money he meant to do no work
+at all, except perhaps an occasional poem recommending the young man with life
+opening out before him, with all its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe
+and shove his feet upon the mantelpiece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read this, Bertie!&rdquo; I could just see that he was waving a letter
+or something equally foul in my face. &ldquo;Wake up and read this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can&rsquo;t read before I&rsquo;ve had my morning tea and a cigarette. I
+groped for the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It&rsquo;s a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He flowed silently out of the room&mdash;he always gives you the impression of
+being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky was surging
+round with his beastly letter again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What on earth&rsquo;s the
+matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t had my tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, listen then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s it from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So what on earth am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering over its
+mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read it again, Rocky, old top,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I want Jeeves to
+hear it. Mr. Todd&rsquo;s aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves,
+and we want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause, and
+Rocky started again:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;M<small>Y DEAR</small> R<small>OCKMETTELLER</small>.&mdash;I have been
+thinking things over for a long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I
+have been very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made up my
+mind to do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you make of that, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It becomes as clear as mud!&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Proceed, old scout,&rdquo; I said, champing my bread and butter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see for
+myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I fear that now it
+will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I am old and worn out. I seem to
+have no strength left in me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sad, Jeeves, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extremely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sad nothing!&rdquo; said Rocky. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sheer laziness. I went
+to see her last Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me
+himself that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she&rsquo;s a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She&rsquo;s
+got a fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though
+it&rsquo;s been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather like the chappie whose heart was &lsquo;in the Highlands
+a-chasing of the deer,&rsquo; Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cases are in some respects parallel, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carry on, Rocky, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the city
+myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly thought of this
+yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the Sunday paper about a young man
+who had longed all his life for a certain thing and won it in the end only when
+he was too old to enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thing,&rdquo; interpolated Rocky bitterly, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;ve not
+been able to do in ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now I have
+never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I have now decided to
+do so&mdash;on one condition. I have written to a firm of lawyers in New York,
+giving them instructions to pay you quite a substantial sum each month. My one
+condition is that you live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always
+wished to do. I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic life of New
+York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant supper parties.<br>
+    &ldquo;Above all, I want you&mdash;indeed, I insist on this&mdash;to write
+me letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all you are
+doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at second-hand
+what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for myself. Remember that I shall
+expect full details, and that no detail is too trivial to interest.&mdash;Your
+affectionate Aunt,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;I<small>SABEL</small> R<small>OCKMETTELLER</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. What on earth am I going to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude of the
+chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the right stuff
+had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind it was an occasion
+for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here the man was, looking and
+talking as if Fate had swung on his solar plexus. It amazed me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you bucked?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bucked!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider this
+pretty soft for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to talk of
+New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer chappie. Jimmy
+had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign, and I had popped in at
+the Garden a couple of days before, for half an hour or so, to hear him. He had
+certainly told New York some pretty straight things about itself, having
+apparently taken a dislike to the place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky
+made him look like a publicity agent for the old metrop!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty soft!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;To have to come and live in New
+York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated
+hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix
+night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St. Vitus&rsquo;s
+dance, and imagine that they&rsquo;re having a good time because they&rsquo;re
+making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York,
+Bertie. I wouldn&rsquo;t come near the place if I hadn&rsquo;t got to see
+editors occasionally. There&rsquo;s a blight on it. It&rsquo;s got moral
+delirium tremens. It&rsquo;s the limit. The very thought of staying more than a
+day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt rather like Lot&rsquo;s friends must have done when they dropped in for
+a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain.
+I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would kill me to have to live in New York,&rdquo; he went on.
+&ldquo;To have to share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff
+collars and decent clothes all the time! To&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He started.
+&ldquo;Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings.
+What a ghastly notion!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear chap!&rdquo; I said reproachfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue
+by the door. &ldquo;How many suits of evening clothes have I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner
+jackets&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear the
+third. We have also seven white waistcoats.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shirts?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Four dozen, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And white ties?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned to Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t do it! I can&rsquo;t do it! I&rsquo;ll be hanged if
+I&rsquo;ll do it! How on earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that
+most days I don&rsquo;t get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and
+then I just put on an old sweater?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his finest
+feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, what are you going to do about it?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might write and explain to your aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I might&mdash;if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer&rsquo;s in two
+rapid leaps and cut me out of her will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you suggest, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is obliged
+by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his possession to
+write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters relating to his movements,
+and the only method by which this can be accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to
+his expressed intention of remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce
+some second party to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller
+wishes reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his imagination,
+to base the suggested correspondence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked at me
+in a helpless sort of way. He hasn&rsquo;t been brought up on Jeeves as I have,
+and he isn&rsquo;t on to his curves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+thought at the start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered.
+What&rsquo;s the idea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves. All
+you&rsquo;ve got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you and take
+a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters. That&rsquo;s it,
+isn&rsquo;t it, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky&rsquo;s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man&rsquo;s vast intellect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But who would do it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It would have to be a pretty
+smart sort of man, a man who would notice things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Let Jeeves do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But would he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would do it, wouldn&rsquo;t you, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost smile. The
+corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and for a moment his eye
+ceased to look like a meditative fish&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York&rsquo;s places of interest on my evening out,
+and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first, Jeeves,
+is Reigelheimer&rsquo;s. It&rsquo;s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will show
+you the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer&rsquo;s. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see?&rdquo; I said to Rocky. &ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves. He
+knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It isn&rsquo;t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans happy
+in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of the fact that
+it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything went absolutely right
+from the start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain, and
+partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights. I saw him
+one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table on the edge of the
+dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a fat cigar and a bottle of
+the best. I&rsquo;d never imagined he could look so nearly human. His face wore
+an expression of austere benevolence, and he was making notes in a small book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond of old
+Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was perfectly contented,
+because he was still able to sit on fences in his pyjamas and watch worms. And,
+as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to death. She was getting Broadway at
+pretty long range, but it seemed to be hitting her just right. I read one of
+her letters to Rocky, and it was full of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then Rocky&rsquo;s letters, based on Jeeves&rsquo;s notes, were enough to
+buck anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I, loving
+the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired feeling; yet here is
+a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;DEAR FREDDIE,&mdash;Well, here I am in New York. It&rsquo;s not a bad
+place. I&rsquo;m not having a bad time. Everything&rsquo;s pretty all right.
+The cabarets aren&rsquo;t bad. Don&rsquo;t know when I shall be back.
+How&rsquo;s everybody? Cheer-o!&mdash;Yours,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;B<small>ERTIE</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;PS.&mdash;Seen old Ted lately?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn&rsquo;t dragged him in I
+couldn&rsquo;t have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now here&rsquo;s old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;D<small>EAREST AUNT</small> I<small>SABEL</small>,&mdash;How can I ever
+thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to live in this astounding city!
+New York seems more wonderful every day.<br>
+    &ldquo;Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+magnificent!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn&rsquo;t know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other night.
+We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new place on Forty-third
+Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie Cohan looked in about midnight and
+got off a good one about Willie Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute,
+but Doug. Fairbanks did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady
+was there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The show at
+the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.<br>
+    &ldquo;Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the
+Roof&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it&rsquo;s the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it&rsquo;s easier for a chappie
+who&rsquo;s used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a punch
+into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there&rsquo;s no doubt
+that Rocky&rsquo;s correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in and
+congratulated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, you&rsquo;re a wonder!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn&rsquo;t
+tell you a thing about them, except that I&rsquo;ve had a good time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just a knack, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Mr. Todd&rsquo;s letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all
+right, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Undoubtedly, sir,&rdquo; agreed Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to say is, I
+was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month after the thing had
+started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old bean, when the door opened and
+the voice of Jeeves burst the silence like a bomb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t that he spoke loudly. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It was what
+he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Rockmetteller!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in came a large, solid female.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The situation floored me. I&rsquo;m not denying it. Hamlet must have felt much
+as I did when his father&rsquo;s ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I&rsquo;d come
+to look on Rocky&rsquo;s aunt as such a permanency at her own home that it
+didn&rsquo;t seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I stared
+at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an attitude of
+dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should have been rallying
+round the young master, it was now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky&rsquo;s aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I&rsquo;ve ever
+seen, except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as a
+matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if put upon;
+and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly regard herself as put
+upon if she ever found out the game which poor old Rocky had been pulling on
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon,&rdquo; I managed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mr. Cohan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Fred Stone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name&rsquo;s
+Wooster&mdash;Bertie Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean nothing
+in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t Rockmetteller home?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Where is
+he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn&rsquo;t think of anything to say. I
+couldn&rsquo;t tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak without
+having been spoken to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he did, Jeeves; so he did,&rdquo; I said, looking at my watch.
+&ldquo;Did he say when he would be back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I&rsquo;d forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me
+feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later
+on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England, has looked at me in
+exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails to make my spine curl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes, rather!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you need to be,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the way you treat his flat
+as your own!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the power of
+speech. I&rsquo;d been looking on myself in the light of the dashing host, and
+suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn&rsquo;t, mark you, as
+if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered my presence in the
+place as an ordinary social call. She obviously looked on me as a cross between
+a burglar and the plumber&rsquo;s man come to fix the leak in the bathroom. It
+hurt her&mdash;my being there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being about to
+die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea&mdash;the good old stand-by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you care for a cup of tea?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing like a cup after a journey,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Bucks you up!
+Puts a bit of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on,
+don&rsquo;t you know. I&rsquo;ll go and tell Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves&rsquo;s lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn&rsquo;t a care in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we want some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wanted sympathy, don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;sympathy and kindness. The old
+nerve centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth
+put that into her head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt because of Mr. Todd&rsquo;s letters, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It was my suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be
+addressed from this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a
+good central residence in the city.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I&rsquo;m someone who hangs about here,
+touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty rotten, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Most disturbing, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd?
+We&rsquo;ve got to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have
+brought the tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to
+come up by the next train.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn&rsquo;t moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There was no
+doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I suppose
+because I wasn&rsquo;t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a surprise, what?&rdquo; I said, after about five minutes&rsquo;
+restful silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is a surprise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your coming here, don&rsquo;t you know, and so on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, rather,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Of course! Certainly. What I mean
+is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad to see
+him. There&rsquo;s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for one when
+one isn&rsquo;t certain of one&rsquo;s lines. With the teapot to fool about
+with I felt happier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea, tea, tea&mdash;what? What?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her out a
+cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say, young man,&rdquo; she said frostily, &ldquo;that you
+expect me to drink this stuff?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather! Bucks you up, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean by the expression &lsquo;Bucks you up&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand a word you say. You&rsquo;re English,
+aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I admitted it. She didn&rsquo;t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought
+home to me that she didn&rsquo;t like Englishmen, and that if she had had to
+meet an Englishman, I was the one she&rsquo;d have chosen last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conversation languished again after that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can&rsquo;t make a real lively <i>salon</i> with a couple of people, especially
+if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you comfortable at your hotel?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At which hotel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The hotel you&rsquo;re staying at.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not staying at an hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stopping with friends&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am naturally stopping with my nephew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Here?&rdquo; I gurgled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly! Where else should I go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn&rsquo;t
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn&rsquo;t explain that this wasn&rsquo;t
+Rocky&rsquo;s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in the
+soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock and produce
+some results when she spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you kindly tell my nephew&rsquo;s man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your nephew&rsquo;s man-servant?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish to be
+alone with me when he returns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for me. I
+crept into Jeeves&rsquo;s den.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo; I whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks you&rsquo;re Mr. Todd&rsquo;s man. She thinks the whole place
+is his, and everything in it. I don&rsquo;t see what you&rsquo;re to do, except
+stay on and keep it up. We can&rsquo;t say anything or she&rsquo;ll get on to
+the whole thing, and I don&rsquo;t want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way,
+Jeeves, she wants you to prepare her bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked wounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is hardly my place, sir&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know&mdash;I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come
+to that, it&rsquo;s hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good Lord! I hadn&rsquo;t thought of that. Can you put a few things in a
+bag when she isn&rsquo;t looking, and sneak them down to me at the St.
+Aurea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will endeavour to do so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anything more, is there? Tell
+Mr. Todd where I am when he gets here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad. The whole
+thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive chappies out of
+the old homestead into the snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I staggered out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher Johnnies who
+insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he has a bit of trouble.
+All that stuff about being refined by suffering, you know. Suffering does give
+a chap a sort of broader and more sympathetic outlook. It helps you to
+understand other people&rsquo;s misfortunes if you&rsquo;ve been through the
+same thing yourself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie
+myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of
+chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them.
+I&rsquo;d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by
+Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of
+fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven&rsquo;t got
+anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn
+thought, don&rsquo;t you know. I mean to say, ever since then I&rsquo;ve been
+able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn&rsquo;t forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I&rsquo;m not sure this
+didn&rsquo;t make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like
+what somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but nothing
+seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn&rsquo;t the heart to go on to
+supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the hotel smoking-room
+and went straight up to bed. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve felt so rotten.
+Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as if there had been a
+death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I should have talked in a
+whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang I answered in such a sad, hushed
+voice that the fellow at the other end of the wire said &ldquo;Halloa!&rdquo;
+five times, thinking he hadn&rsquo;t got me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I&rsquo;m having a time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you speaking from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Midnight Revels. We&rsquo;ve been here an hour, and I think
+we&rsquo;re a fixture for the night. I&rsquo;ve told Aunt Isabel I&rsquo;ve
+gone out to call up a friend to join us. She&rsquo;s glued to a chair, with
+this-is-the-life written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She
+loves it, and I&rsquo;m nearly crazy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me all, old top,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little more of this,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I shall sneak quietly
+off to the river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It&rsquo;s simply infernal! I was just
+snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when about a million
+yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There are two orchestras here,
+each trying to see if it can&rsquo;t play louder than the other. I&rsquo;m a
+mental and physical wreck. When your telegram arrived I was just lying down for
+a quiet pipe, with a sense of absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get
+dressed and sprint two miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me
+heart-failure; and on top of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to
+tell Aunt Isabel. And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening
+clothes of yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn&rsquo;t struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll ruin them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. &ldquo;I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they&rsquo;ve given me a bad enough time.
+They&rsquo;re about three sizes too small, and something&rsquo;s apt to give at
+any moment. I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I
+haven&rsquo;t breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to
+get out and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure Hades! Aunt
+Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I dance when I don&rsquo;t
+know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could I, even if I knew every girl
+in the place? It&rsquo;s taking big chances even to move in these trousers. I
+had to tell her I&rsquo;ve hurt my ankle. She keeps asking me when Cohan and
+Stone are going to turn up; and it&rsquo;s simply a question of time before she
+discovers that Stone is sitting two tables away. Something&rsquo;s got to be
+done, Bertie! You&rsquo;ve got to think up some way of getting me out of this
+mess. It was you who got me into it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Jeeves, then. It&rsquo;s all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that did the
+mischief. I made them too good! My aunt&rsquo;s just been telling me about it.
+She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where she was, and then my
+letters began to arrive, describing the joys of New York; and they stimulated
+her to such an extent that she pulled herself together and made the trip. She
+seems to think she&rsquo;s had some miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I
+can&rsquo;t stand it, Bertie! It&rsquo;s got to end!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t Jeeves think of anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. He just hangs round saying: &lsquo;Most disturbing, sir!&rsquo; A
+fat lot of help that is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, old lad,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;after all, it&rsquo;s far worse for
+me than it is for you. You&rsquo;ve got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And
+you&rsquo;re saving a lot of money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Saving money? What do you mean&mdash;saving money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she&rsquo;s
+paying all the expenses now, isn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly she is; but she&rsquo;s stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she&rsquo;s in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it&rsquo;s
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I&rsquo;ve
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it&rsquo;s got a silver
+lining it&rsquo;s some little dissembler!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Rocky, old top, it&rsquo;s too bally awful! You&rsquo;ve no notion
+of what I&rsquo;m going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must
+get back to the flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come near the flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s my own flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help that. Aunt Isabel doesn&rsquo;t like you. She asked
+me what you did for a living. And when I told her you didn&rsquo;t do anything
+she said she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget it. Now I
+must be going back, or she&rsquo;ll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have brought a few more of
+your personal belongings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is a
+remarkably alert lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, Jeeves, say what you like&mdash;this is a bit thick,
+isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour to add
+the brown lounge with the faint green twill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It can&rsquo;t go on&mdash;this sort of thing&mdash;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must hope for the best, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you think of anything to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts&mdash;the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve&mdash;in the first long drawer, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you can&rsquo;t think of anything,
+Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the tan
+socks in the upper drawer on the left.&rdquo; He strapped the suit-case and put
+it on a chair. &ldquo;A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You understate it, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine who
+resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are much alike.
+My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great city. It is a passion
+with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever the family take their eyes off
+her she escapes from the house and spends the day riding about in cabs. On
+several occasions she has broken into the children&rsquo;s savings bank to
+secure the means to enable her to gratify this desire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love to have these little chats with you about your female relatives,
+Jeeves,&rdquo; I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me down, and I
+was fed up with him. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t see what all this has got to do
+with my trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I should
+recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I&rsquo;ve often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they&rsquo;ve been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and sort of
+taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer, and Nature,
+adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There&rsquo;s a lot in it. I know,
+because in my own case, after a day or two of what you might call prostration,
+I began to recover. The frightful loss of Jeeves made any thought of pleasure
+more or less a mockery, but at least I found that I was able to have a dash at
+enjoying life again. What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going
+round the cabarets once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New York&rsquo;s a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn&rsquo;t long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky&rsquo;s. I saw him once at Peale&rsquo;s, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn&rsquo;t anybody with him either time except the
+aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the ideal life, it
+wasn&rsquo;t difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to see that beneath
+the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled for the fellow. At least,
+what there was of it that wasn&rsquo;t bleeding for myself bled for him. He had
+the air of one who was about to crack under the strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took it that
+she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to surge round, and
+what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless spirits Rocky used to mix
+with in his letters. I didn&rsquo;t blame her. I had only read a couple of his
+letters, but they certainly gave the impression that poor old Rocky was by way
+of being the hub of New York night life, and that, if by any chance he failed
+to show up at a cabaret, the management said: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the
+use?&rdquo; and put up the shutters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next two nights I didn&rsquo;t come across them, but the night after that I
+was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on the
+shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort of mixed
+expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the chappie had
+contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without disaster was a
+mystery to me. He confided later that early in the proceedings he had slit the
+waistcoat up the back and that that had helped a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his aunt for
+the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in again. She was at a
+table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were something the management
+ought to be complained to about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie, old scout,&rdquo; said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+&ldquo;we&rsquo;ve always been pals, haven&rsquo;t we? I mean, you know
+I&rsquo;d do you a good turn if you asked me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old lad,&rdquo; I said. The man had moved me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake, come over and sit at our table for the
+rest of the evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear chap,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you know I&rsquo;d do anything in
+reason; but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must come, Bertie. You&rsquo;ve got to. Something&rsquo;s got to be
+done to divert her mind. She&rsquo;s brooding about something. She&rsquo;s been
+like that for the last two days. I think she&rsquo;s beginning to suspect. She
+can&rsquo;t understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints.
+A few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know fairly
+well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt Isabel as David
+Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect has worn off now, and
+she&rsquo;s beginning to wonder again. Something&rsquo;s got to be done, or she
+will find out everything, and if she does I&rsquo;d take a nickel for my chance
+of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the love of Mike, come across to
+our table and help things along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was sitting
+bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had lost a bit of the
+zest with which she had started out to explore Broadway. She looked as if she
+had been thinking a good deal about rather unpleasant things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a seat, Bertie. What&rsquo;ll you have?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling
+parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it
+after all. After we had had an hour of this wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said
+she wanted to go home. In the light of what Rocky had been telling me, this
+struck me as sinister. I had gathered that at the beginning of her visit she
+had had to be dragged home with ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come along, won&rsquo;t you, Bertie, and have a drink at
+the flat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a feeling that this wasn&rsquo;t in the contract, but there wasn&rsquo;t
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with the
+woman, so I went along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the feeling
+began to grow that something was about to break loose. A massive silence
+prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and, though Rocky, balancing
+himself on the little seat in front, did his best to supply dialogue, we
+weren&rsquo;t a chatty party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his lair, and I
+wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something told me that I was
+about to need him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the decanter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say when, Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I caught Rocky&rsquo;s eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it there, Rockmetteller!&rdquo; said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left
+it there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The time has come to speak,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I cannot stand idly
+by and see a young man going to perdition!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the whisky
+had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; he said, blinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aunt proceeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The fault,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;was mine. I had not then seen the
+light. But now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I
+shudder at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a look of
+relief came into the poor chappie&rsquo;s face. I understood his feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing Mr. Mundy
+speak on the subject of New York.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jimmy Mundy!&rdquo; I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and you
+suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to understand more
+or less what had happened. I&rsquo;d seen it happen before. I remember, back in
+England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off to a meeting on his evening
+out and came back and denounced me in front of a crowd of chappies I was giving
+a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; Jimmy Mundy!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am surprised at a man of
+your stamp having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken,
+dancing men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they
+would have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it&mdash;in his picturesque
+phrase&mdash;to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How often in
+this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco; so
+you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked your
+man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little intelligence. He
+seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he did. He took me to what I
+subsequently learned was Madison Square Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his
+meetings. He escorted me to a seat and then left me. And it was not till the
+meeting had begun that I discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat
+was in the middle of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great
+many people, so I remained.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gulped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the sins of the
+people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I feared he would do
+himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in a somewhat odd manner, but
+every word carried conviction. He showed me New York in its true colours. He
+showed me the vanity and wickedness of sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating
+lobster when decent people should be in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more sin in
+ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient revels of
+Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed right at where I
+was sitting and shouted, &lsquo;This means you!&rsquo; I could have sunk
+through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you must have noticed
+the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen that I was no longer the
+careless, thoughtless person who had urged you to dance in those places of
+wickedness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Y-yes,&rdquo; he stammered; &ldquo;I&mdash;I thought something was
+wrong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup. You
+have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find that you can
+do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour and fascination of
+this dreadful city. Won&rsquo;t you, for my sake, try, Rockmetteller?
+Won&rsquo;t you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the struggle? Little
+by little, if you use your will&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can&rsquo;t help thinking it must have been that word &ldquo;will&rdquo; that
+roused dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him the
+realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being cut out of
+Aunt Isabel&rsquo;s. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let go of the
+table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to live in the country?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rockmetteller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there can
+you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will you&mdash;for
+my sake?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement from
+that table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat,
+lying in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour before
+he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was the curse of;
+so we were alone at last. &ldquo;Jeeves, there&rsquo;s no place like
+home&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lit another cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I was
+thinking of my aunt, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your aunt? The hansom cab one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always found
+that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her mind from
+hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might prove efficacious
+in the case of Miss Rockmetteller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was stunned by the man&rsquo;s resource.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s brain,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;pure brain! What do you do to
+get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do
+you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, then, it&rsquo;s just a gift, I take it; and if you
+aren&rsquo;t born that way there&rsquo;s no use worrying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves. &ldquo;If I might make the
+suggestion, sir, I should not continue to wear your present tie. The green
+shade gives you a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue
+with the red domino pattern instead, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right, Jeeves.&rdquo; I said humbly. &ldquo;You know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***</div>
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      My Man Jeeves | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style> /* <![CDATA[ */
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: My Man Jeeves</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: P. G. Wodehouse</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 24, 2003 [eBook #8164]<br>
+[Most recently updated: February 6, 2024]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***</div>
+
+<div class="fig" style="width:55%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]">
+</div>
+
+<h1>My Man Jeeves</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by P. G. Wodehouse</h2>
+
+<h3>1919</h3>
+
+<hr>
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">LEAVE IT TO JEEVES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">ABSENT TREATMENT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">HELPING FREDDIE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>LEAVE IT TO JEEVES</h2>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves&mdash;my man, you know&mdash;is really a most extraordinary chap. So
+capable. Honestly, I shouldn&rsquo;t know what to do without him. On broader
+lines he&rsquo;s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble
+battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked
+&ldquo;Inquiries.&rdquo; You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and
+say: &ldquo;When&rsquo;s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?&rdquo;
+and they reply, without stopping to think, &ldquo;Two-forty-three, track ten,
+change at San Francisco.&rdquo; And they&rsquo;re right every time. Well,
+Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond Street one
+morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I felt I should never
+be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address of the tailors out of him,
+and had them working on the thing inside the hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said that evening. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting a check
+suit like that one of Mr. Byng&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Injudicious, sir,&rdquo; he said firmly. &ldquo;It will not become
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What absolute rot! It&rsquo;s the soundest thing I&rsquo;ve struck for
+years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unsuitable for you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came home, and
+I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I nearly swooned.
+Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a music-hall comedian and
+a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in absolutely the same stuff. These
+things are just Life&rsquo;s mysteries, and that&rsquo;s all there is to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it isn&rsquo;t only that Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment about clothes is
+infallible, though, of course, that&rsquo;s really the main thing. The man
+knows everything. There was the matter of that tip on the
+&ldquo;Lincolnshire.&rdquo; I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of
+being the real, red-hot tabasco.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, for I&rsquo;m fond of the man, and like to do him
+a good turn when I can, &ldquo;if you want to make a bit of money have
+something on Wonderchild for the &lsquo;Lincolnshire.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather not, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s the straight goods. I&rsquo;m going to put my shirt on
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know anything
+about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till he was breathing
+on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and nosed him out. I went
+straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After this,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;not another step for me without your
+advice. From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he has, by Jove! I&rsquo;m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would
+appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don&rsquo;t you
+know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with Jeeves, and
+I&rsquo;m game to advise any one about anything. And that&rsquo;s why, when
+Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to ring the bell
+and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my cousin
+Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square way. I
+don&rsquo;t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I left England
+was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to stop young Gussie
+marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got the whole thing so mixed up
+that I decided that it would be a sound scheme for me to stop on in America for
+a bit instead of going back and having long cosy chats about the thing with
+aunt. So I sent Jeeves out to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a
+bit of exile. I&rsquo;m bound to say that New York&rsquo;s a topping place to
+be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty
+of things going on, and I&rsquo;m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine.
+Chappies introduced me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it
+wasn&rsquo;t long before I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in
+dollars in houses up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down
+mostly around Washington Square&mdash;artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but he
+hadn&rsquo;t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines with a
+blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the game. You see,
+the catch about portrait-painting&mdash;I&rsquo;ve looked into the thing a
+bit&mdash;is that you can&rsquo;t start painting portraits till people come
+along and ask you to, and they won&rsquo;t come and ask you to until
+you&rsquo;ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
+comic papers&mdash;he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
+idea&mdash;and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
+His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the ear of a
+rich uncle&mdash;one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business. I&rsquo;m
+a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it&rsquo;s apparently something the
+populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently large
+stack out of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty soft snap:
+but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky&rsquo;s uncle was a robust
+sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was fifty-one, and it seemed
+as if he might go to par. It was not this, however, that distressed poor old
+Corky, for he was not bigoted and had no objection to the man going on living.
+What Corky kicked at was the way the above Worple used to harry him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky&rsquo;s uncle, you see, didn&rsquo;t want him to be an artist. He
+didn&rsquo;t think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging
+him to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and work
+his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with him. He seemed
+to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what Corky said was that,
+while he didn&rsquo;t know what they did at the bottom of the jute business,
+instinct told him that it was something too beastly for words. Corky, moreover,
+believed in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a
+hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing
+his uncle to cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wouldn&rsquo;t have got this if his uncle hadn&rsquo;t had a hobby. Mr.
+Worple was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I&rsquo;ve observed,
+the American captain of industry doesn&rsquo;t do anything out of business
+hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a
+captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was what is known
+as an ornithologist. He had written a book called <i>American Birds</i>, and
+was writing another, to be called <i>More American Birds</i>. When he had
+finished that, the presumption was that he would begin a third, and keep on
+till the supply of American birds gave out. Corky used to go to him about once
+every three months and let him talk about American birds. Apparently you could
+do what you liked with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet
+subject, so these little chats used to make Corky&rsquo;s allowance all right
+for the time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when broiled
+and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of extremely
+uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was a poor
+chump and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account, was
+just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine Jeeves feels very
+much the same about me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl in front
+of him, and said, &ldquo;Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
+Singer,&rdquo; the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke were,
+&ldquo;Corky, how about your uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and
+worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can&rsquo;t think
+what the deuce to do with the body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re so scared, Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; said the girl. &ldquo;We were
+hoping that you might suggest a way of breaking it to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of
+looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest
+thing on earth and wondered that you hadn&rsquo;t got on to it yet yourself.
+She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me as if she were saying
+to herself, &ldquo;Oh, I do hope this great strong man isn&rsquo;t going to
+hurt me.&rdquo; She gave a fellow a protective kind of feeling, made him want
+to stroke her hand and say, &ldquo;There, there, little one!&rdquo; or words to
+that effect. She made me feel that there was nothing I wouldn&rsquo;t do for
+her. She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which
+creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you&rsquo;re
+doing, you&rsquo;re starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and
+pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at
+you like that, you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel
+alert and dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see why your uncle shouldn&rsquo;t be most awfully
+bucked,&rdquo; I said to Corky. &ldquo;He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife
+for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn&rsquo;t
+admit it. That&rsquo;s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter
+of principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had gone
+and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he would raise Cain
+automatically. He&rsquo;s always done it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer&rsquo;s acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how can I work it that way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one thing to do,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I rang the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see
+him come into a room. He&rsquo;s like one of those weird chappies in India who
+dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of
+disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them.
+I&rsquo;ve got a cousin who&rsquo;s what they call a Theosophist, and he says
+he&rsquo;s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn&rsquo;t quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh of
+animals slain in anger and pie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a
+weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his
+father in the offing. There was something about him that gave me confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye gleams
+with the light of pure intelligence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, we want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I boiled down Corky&rsquo;s painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way by
+which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer&rsquo;s acquaintance without getting on
+to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, try to think of something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have thought of something already, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He means,&rdquo; I translated to Corky, &ldquo;that he has got a pippin
+of an idea, but it&rsquo;s going to cost a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Naturally the poor chap&rsquo;s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the whole
+thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl&rsquo;s melting gaze,
+and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;Only too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr.
+Worple&rsquo;s attachment to ornithology.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the flimsiest
+nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr. Corcoran
+expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I have
+mentioned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be
+entitled&mdash;let us say&mdash;<i>The Children&rsquo;s Book of American
+Birds</i>, and dedicate it to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published
+at your expense, sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given
+over to eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple&rsquo;s own larger treatise on
+the same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to
+Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in which the
+young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one to whom she owes
+so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired result, but as I say, the
+expense involved would be considerable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage when the
+tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had betted on Jeeves all
+along, and I had known that he wouldn&rsquo;t let me down. It beats me
+sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to hang around pressing my
+clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves&rsquo;s brain, I should have a stab
+at being Prime Minister or something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;that is absolutely ripping! One of your
+very best efforts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl made an objection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m sure I couldn&rsquo;t write a book about anything. I
+can&rsquo;t even write good letters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Muriel&rsquo;s talents,&rdquo; said Corky, with a little cough
+&ldquo;lie more in the direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn&rsquo;t mention
+it before, but one of our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle
+Alexander will receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show
+<i>Choose your Exit</i> at the Manhattan. It&rsquo;s absurdly unreasonable, but
+we both feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander&rsquo;s natural
+tendency to kick like a steer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family when I
+tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the recollection of my
+Aunt Agatha&rsquo;s attitude in the matter of Gussie and the vaudeville girl
+was still fresh in my mind. I don&rsquo;t know why it is&mdash;one of these
+psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose&mdash;but uncles and aunts, as a
+class, are always dead against the drama, legitimate or otherwise. They
+don&rsquo;t seem able to stick it at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for a small
+fee. It is only necessary that the young lady&rsquo;s name should appear on the
+title page.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said Corky. &ldquo;Sam Patterson would do it
+for a hundred dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten
+thousand words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him. I&rsquo;ll
+get after him right away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will that be all, sir?&rdquo; said Jeeves. &ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank
+you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent fellows,
+loaded down with the grey matter; but I&rsquo;ve got their number now. All a
+publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving
+and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because
+I&rsquo;ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old apartment with a
+fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I happened to be down at Corky&rsquo;s place when the first copies of <i>The
+Children&rsquo;s Book of American Birds</i> bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there,
+and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the door and
+the parcel was delivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some species on
+it, and underneath the girl&rsquo;s name in gold letters. I opened a copy at
+random.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Often of a spring morning,&rdquo; it said at the top of page twenty-one,
+&ldquo;as you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are older you
+must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple&rsquo;s wonderful
+book&mdash;<i>American Birds</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later there he
+was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was
+great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it
+and Jeeves&rsquo;s genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn&rsquo;t see
+how the uncle could fail to drop. You can&rsquo;t call a chap the world&rsquo;s
+greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a certain
+disposition towards chumminess in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a cert!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An absolute cinch!&rdquo; said Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to tell me
+that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so dripping with the
+milk of human kindness that if he hadn&rsquo;t known Mr. Worple&rsquo;s
+handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author of it. Any time
+it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would be delighted to make
+her acquaintance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had invited
+me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn&rsquo;t for several
+months that I settled down in the city again. I had been wondering a lot, of
+course, about Corky, whether it all turned out right, and so forth, and my
+first evening in New York, happening to pop into a quiet sort of little
+restaurant which I go to when I don&rsquo;t feel inclined for the bright
+lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by herself at a table near the
+door. Corky, I took it, was out telephoning. I went up and passed the time of
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well, well, what?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky around?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re waiting for Corky, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t understand. No, I&rsquo;m not waiting for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind of
+thingummy, you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, you haven&rsquo;t had a row with Corky, have you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A row?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A spat, don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;little misunderstanding&mdash;faults
+on both sides&mdash;er&mdash;and all that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, whatever makes you think that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is&mdash;I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve left the stage now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time I had
+been away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, of course, I see now! You&rsquo;re married!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander,&rdquo; she said, looking past me,
+&ldquo;this is a friend of mine&mdash;Mr. Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of healthy
+face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he looked, though quite
+peaceful at the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce&rsquo;s, Alexander.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from hitting
+the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; I heard him say. &ldquo;I
+wish you would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I noticed it
+first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be introduced to you.
+He seemed altogether quieter and more serious. Something seemed to have sobered
+him. Perhaps you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night,
+Mr. Wooster? Or have you dined?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I wanted to
+get into the open and think this thing out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I called
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;now is the time for all good men to come
+to the aid of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I&rsquo;ve a
+bit of news for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You&rsquo;ll need it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right. Please yourself. But you&rsquo;re going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle&rsquo;s esteem
+by writing the book on birds?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perfectly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, she&rsquo;s slid. She&rsquo;s married the uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took it without blinking. You can&rsquo;t rattle Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was always a development to be feared, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It crossed my mind as a possibility.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer frame of
+mind, what had happened wasn&rsquo;t my fault, if you come down to it. I
+couldn&rsquo;t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the same
+I&rsquo;m bound to admit that I didn&rsquo;t relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of soothing
+work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few months. I gave it
+the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was beginning to think I
+might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so
+to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most
+awful bone and put the lid on it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that
+Mrs. Alexander Worple had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn&rsquo;t the heart to touch
+my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled over. Absolutely.
+It was the limit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington
+Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it
+over, I hadn&rsquo;t the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it
+him in waves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it was
+playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this just when he
+probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I pictured him sitting in his
+lonely studio with no company but his bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got
+me to such an extent that I bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to
+go all out for the studio.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting away, while
+on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle age, holding a baby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, ah!&rdquo; I said, and started to back out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bertie. Don&rsquo;t go. We&rsquo;re just finishing for the day.
+That will be all this afternoon,&rdquo; he said to the nurse, who got up with
+the baby and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and began to
+get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for granted that I knew
+all about what had happened, so it wasn&rsquo;t as awkward as it might have
+been.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my uncle&rsquo;s idea,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Muriel
+doesn&rsquo;t know about it yet. The portrait&rsquo;s to be a surprise for her
+on her birthday. The nurse takes the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and
+they beat it down here. If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie,
+get acquainted with this. Here&rsquo;s the first commission I have ever had to
+paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the
+thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a
+little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a
+blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can&rsquo;t refuse to paint the portrait
+because if I did my uncle would stop my allowance; yet every time I look up and
+catch that kid&rsquo;s vacant eye, I suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie,
+sometimes when he gives me a patronizing glance and then turns away and is
+sick, as if it revolted him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying
+the entire front page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation.
+There are moments when I can almost see the headlines: &lsquo;Promising Young
+Artist Beans Baby With Axe.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was too deep
+for words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn&rsquo;t
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie&rsquo;s sorrow. Besides,
+I&rsquo;m bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the &rsquo;phone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you doing anything this afternoon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing special.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You couldn&rsquo;t come down here, could you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble? Anything up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve finished the portrait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good boy! Stout work!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; His voice sounded rather doubtful. &ldquo;The fact is,
+Bertie, it doesn&rsquo;t look quite right to me. There&rsquo;s something about
+it&mdash;My uncle&rsquo;s coming in half an hour to inspect it, and&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know why it is, but I kind of feel I&rsquo;d like your moral
+support!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The sympathetic
+co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think he&rsquo;ll cut up rough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He may.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the restaurant, and
+tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too easy. I spoke to Corky
+firmly on the telephone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But only if I may bring Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why Jeeves? What&rsquo;s Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves?
+Jeeves is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves&rsquo;s support, you&rsquo;re mistaken. I&rsquo;d sooner
+go into a den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, all right,&rdquo; said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I
+rang for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That&rsquo;s the sort of chap he is. You can&rsquo;t rattle him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up in a
+defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stand right where you are, Bertie,&rdquo; he said, without moving.
+&ldquo;Now, tell me honestly, how does it strike you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at
+it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to
+where I had been at first, because it hadn&rsquo;t seemed quite so bad from
+there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Corky, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hesitated a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment,
+but&mdash;but it <i>was</i> an ugly sort of kid, wasn&rsquo;t it, if I remember
+rightly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As ugly as that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how it could have been, old chap.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort of way.
+He groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re right quite, Bertie. Something&rsquo;s gone wrong with the
+darned thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I&rsquo;ve
+worked that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull&mdash;painting the soul
+of the sitter. I&rsquo;ve got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child&rsquo;s soul on canvas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don&rsquo;t see
+how he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I doubt it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&mdash;it sorts of leers at you, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve noticed that, too?&rdquo; said Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see how one could help noticing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in the
+middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don&rsquo;t you
+think so, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle came
+in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy shook
+hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn&rsquo;t think he
+had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his stick. Jeeves had
+projected himself into the background, and he didn&rsquo;t notice him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is
+it&mdash;really finished? Well, bring it out. Let&rsquo;s have a look at it.
+This will be a wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it?
+Let&rsquo;s&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then he got it&mdash;suddenly, when he wasn&rsquo;t set for the punch; and
+he rocked back on his heels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oosh!&rdquo; he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I&rsquo;ve ever run up against.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is this a practical joke?&rdquo; he said at last, in a way that set
+about sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want to stand a bit farther away from it,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re perfectly right!&rdquo; he snorted. &ldquo;I do! I want to
+stand so far away from it that I can&rsquo;t see the thing with a
+telescope!&rdquo; He turned on Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who
+has just located a chunk of meat. &ldquo;And this&mdash;this&mdash;is what you
+have been wasting your time and my money for all these years! A painter! I
+wouldn&rsquo;t let you paint a house of mine! I gave you this commission,
+thinking that you were a competent worker, and this&mdash;this&mdash;this
+extract from a comic coloured supplement is the result!&rdquo; He swung towards
+the door, lashing his tail and growling to himself. &ldquo;This ends it! If you
+wish to continue this foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an
+excuse for idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you
+report at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should have
+done half a dozen years ago, not another cent&mdash;not another cent&mdash;not
+another&mdash;Boosh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out of the
+bombproof shelter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky, old top!&rdquo; I whispered faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was a hunted
+look in his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that finishes it!&rdquo; he muttered brokenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do? What can I do? I can&rsquo;t stick on here if he cuts off supplies.
+You heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about the
+office. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who&rsquo;s just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make a suggestion, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at the
+picture. Upon my word, I can&rsquo;t give you a better idea of the shattering
+effect of Corky&rsquo;s uncle Alexander when in action than by saying that he
+had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves was there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him? He was a
+financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite saying of his that
+there is always a way. The first time I heard him use the expression was after
+the failure of a patent depilatory which he promoted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what on earth are you talking
+about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a
+parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not
+despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o, guaranteed to
+produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was advertised, if you
+remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a billiard-ball, before and after
+taking, and made such a substantial fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon
+afterwards elevated to the peerage for services to his Party. It seems to me
+that, if Mr. Corcoran looks into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton,
+that there is always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the
+difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract
+from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran&rsquo;s portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran
+will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been for the
+humorous. There is something about this picture&mdash;something bold and
+vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking noise with
+his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Corky, old man!&rdquo; I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s right! The man&rsquo;s absolutely right! Jeeves, you&rsquo;re
+a life-saver! You&rsquo;ve hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the
+office on Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I&rsquo;ll buy the
+business if I feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+<i>Sunday Star</i>. He&rsquo;ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He&rsquo;ll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I&rsquo;ve got a gold-mine.
+Where&rsquo;s my hat? I&rsquo;ve got an income for life! Where&rsquo;s that
+confounded hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park
+Row!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal muscular spasm
+about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran&mdash;for a title of the
+series which you have in mind&mdash;&lsquo;The Adventures of Baby
+Blobbs.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way. Jeeves
+was right. There could be no other title.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the <i>Sunday Star</i>. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the
+dawn and there&rsquo;s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make
+up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a fellow,
+one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances
+he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these
+pictures?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you, sir.
+Extremely diverting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They have made a big hit, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I anticipated it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, Jeeves, you&rsquo;re a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I think I&rsquo;ll wear the blue with the faint red stripe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I rather fancy myself in it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, all right, have it your own way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course, I know it&rsquo;s as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You&rsquo;ve got to consider that, you know. What?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST</h2>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it&rsquo;s
+Shakespeare&mdash;or, if not, it&rsquo;s some equally brainy lad&mdash;who says
+that it&rsquo;s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole,
+and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind
+him with a bit of lead piping. There&rsquo;s no doubt the man&rsquo;s right.
+It&rsquo;s absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned up, I
+was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from under the
+cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of fact, I was especially
+bucked just then because the day before I had asserted myself with
+Jeeves&mdash;absolutely asserted myself, don&rsquo;t you know. You see, the way
+things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a dashed serf. The man had
+jolly well oppressed me. I didn&rsquo;t so much mind when he made me give up
+one of my new suits, because Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment about suits is sound. But
+I as near as a toucher rebelled when he wouldn&rsquo;t let me wear a pair of
+cloth-topped boots which I loved like a couple of brothers. And when he tried
+to tread on me like a worm in the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot
+down and showed him who was who. It&rsquo;s a long story, and I haven&rsquo;t
+time to tell you now, but the point is that he wanted me to wear the
+Longacre&mdash;as worn by John Drew&mdash;when I had set my heart on the
+Country Gentleman&mdash;as worn by another famous actor chappie&mdash;and the
+end of the matter was that, after a rather painful scene, I bought the Country
+Gentleman. So that&rsquo;s how things stood on this particular morning, and I
+was feeling kind of manly and independent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for breakfast
+while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and sang slightly, when
+there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and opened the door an inch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho without there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man,&rdquo; I said, rather severely,
+for I bar practical jokes before breakfast. &ldquo;You know perfectly well
+there&rsquo;s no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it&rsquo;s barely ten o&rsquo;clock yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had arrived
+in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at some ghastly hour
+like six, and that I had been shot out on to a foreign shore considerably
+before eight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is she alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship&rsquo;s son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I&rsquo;ll be
+dressing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then lead me to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern could be.
+It wasn&rsquo;t till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and was reaching
+out for the studs that I remembered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve placed her, Jeeves. She&rsquo;s a pal of my Aunt
+Agatha.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left London. A very vicious
+specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on social conditions in India when she
+came back from the Durbar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather a
+solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work the night
+before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s wrong with this tie? I&rsquo;ve seen you give it a nasty
+look before. Speak out like a man! What&rsquo;s the matter with it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too ornate, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unsuitable, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was firm. I tied
+the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into the sitting-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female,
+not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O.P.
+to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as if it had been
+built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about
+the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair,
+and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of
+those women who kind of numb a fellow&rsquo;s faculties. She made me feel as if
+I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday
+clothes to say how-d&rsquo;you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a
+chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking. He had
+the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered down and parted in
+the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren&rsquo;t bright. They were a
+dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the struggle about half-way down,
+and he didn&rsquo;t appear to have any eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish
+sort of blighter, in short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awfully glad to see you,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve popped
+over, eh? Making a long stay in America?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure and
+call on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to come
+round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before, when she had
+sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie from the clutches of a
+girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you that by the time I had finished
+my operations, Gussie had not only married the girl but had gone on the stage
+himself, and was doing well, you&rsquo;ll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset
+to no small extent. I simply hadn&rsquo;t dared go back and face her, and it
+was a relief to find that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing
+enough to make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn&rsquo;t want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone to live
+in with Aunt Agatha, if she&rsquo;s really on the warpath. So I braced on
+hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the assemblage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t get this for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put him up? For my clubs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren&rsquo;t you,
+Motty darling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, mother,&rdquo; he said, and corked himself up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn&rsquo;t seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling the stick,
+blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on me for an
+indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don&rsquo;t you know. I
+was just starting to say that the shot wasn&rsquo;t on the board at any price,
+and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle into my little home I
+would yell for the police, when she went on, rolling placidly over me, as it
+were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie&rsquo;s will-power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in America.
+After that I work my way gradually across to the coast, visiting the points of
+interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I am in America principally on
+business. No doubt you read my book, <i>India and the Indians</i>? My
+publishers are anxious for me to write a companion volume on the United States.
+I shall not be able to spend more than a month in the country, as I have to get
+back for the season, but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in
+India, and my dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his <i>America from
+Within</i> after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty
+with me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall have
+to pick him up on my return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I felt
+certain that he would have been able to think of some way of putting a stop to
+this woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear Motty
+has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the country. I
+know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He will give very
+little trouble.&rdquo; She talked about the poor blighter as if he wasn&rsquo;t
+there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped chewing his walking-stick
+and was sitting there with his mouth open. &ldquo;He is a vegetarian and a
+teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give him a nice book and he will be
+quite contented.&rdquo; She got up. &ldquo;Thank you so much, Mr. Wooster! I
+don&rsquo;t know what I should have done without your help. Come, Motty! We
+have just time to see a few of the sights before my train goes. But I shall
+have to rely on you for most of my information about New York, darling. Be sure
+to keep your eyes open and take notes of your impressions! It will be such a
+help. Good-bye, Mr. Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the
+afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves! What about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s to be done? You heard it all, didn&rsquo;t you? You were in
+the dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pill, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The excrescence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn&rsquo;t like him. It was as
+if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I understood. The man
+was really upset about that tie. He was trying to get his own back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said
+coldly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn&rsquo;t any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a moment I
+almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he didn&rsquo;t like
+them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I was going to let
+Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a pretty
+reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the more blighted it
+became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty out, he would report to
+his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt Agatha, and I didn&rsquo;t like to
+think what would happen then. Sooner or later, I should be wanting to go back
+to England, and I didn&rsquo;t want to get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting
+on the quay for me with a stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it
+but to put the fellow up and make the best of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About midday Motty&rsquo;s luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw it. It was
+one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough in it to keep the
+chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more cheerful, and I got my Country
+Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head, and gave the pink tie a twist, and
+reeled out to take a bite of lunch with one or two of the lads at a
+neighbouring hostelry; and what with excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery
+conversation and what-not, the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I
+had almost forgotten blighted Motty&rsquo;s existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn&rsquo;t till
+fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of Motty, and I
+took it that he had gone to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still there
+with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after seeing mother off
+at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie&rsquo;s manner that he was still upset.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?&rdquo; I asked, with reserved hauteur
+and what-not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not returned? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed, went
+out again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of scrabbling
+noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the woodwork. Then a
+sort of thud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better go and see what that is, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went out and came back again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carry him in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship is lying on the mat, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up outside
+on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s had some sort of dashed fit,&rdquo; I said. I took another
+look. &ldquo;Jeeves! Someone&rsquo;s been feeding him meat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a
+steak or something. Call up a doctor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship&rsquo;s legs, while I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot, Jeeves! You don&rsquo;t think&mdash;he can&rsquo;t
+be&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am inclined to think so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn&rsquo;t mistake
+it. Motty was under the surface.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never can tell, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very seldom, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remove the eye of authority and where are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would seem so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we had better bring him in, eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette and sat
+down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It seemed to me that
+I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went into
+Motty&rsquo;s room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a wreck, but
+there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading Gingery stories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho!&rdquo; said Motty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What ho! What ho! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How are you feeling this morning?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Topping!&rdquo; replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. &ldquo;I say,
+you know, that fellow of yours&mdash;Jeeves, you know&mdash;is a corker. I had
+a most frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own invention. I
+must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one of the ones!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and sucked
+his stick the day before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo; I said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he
+wanted to. But he wouldn&rsquo;t have it, at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; he replied firmly. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t do anything of the
+kind. I drank too much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And,
+what&rsquo;s more, I&rsquo;m going to do it again! I&rsquo;m going to do it
+every night. If ever you see me sober, old top,&rdquo; he said, with a kind of
+holy exaltation, &ldquo;tap me on the shoulder and say, &lsquo;Tut! Tut!&rsquo;
+and I&rsquo;ll apologize and remedy the defect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I say, you know, what about me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m, so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you.
+What I mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I&rsquo;m apt to get
+in the soup somewhat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help your troubles,&rdquo; said Motty firmly.
+&ldquo;Listen to me, old thing: this is the first time in my life that
+I&rsquo;ve had a real chance to yield to the temptations of a great city.
+What&rsquo;s the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don&rsquo;t
+yield to them? Makes it so bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother
+told me to keep my eyes open and collect impressions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know just how you feel, old dear,&rdquo; said Motty consolingly.
+&ldquo;And, if my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your
+sake. But duty first! This is the first time I&rsquo;ve been let out alone, and
+I mean to make the most of it. We&rsquo;re only young once. Why interfere with
+life&rsquo;s morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All my bally life, dear boy,&rdquo; Motty went on, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and
+till you&rsquo;ve been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don&rsquo;t know what
+cooping is! The only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys
+is caught sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I&rsquo;ve got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up a
+few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only chance to
+collect a past, and I&rsquo;m going to do it. Now tell me, old sport, as man to
+man, how does one get in touch with that very decent chappie Jeeves? Does one
+ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to discuss the subject of a good
+stiff b.-and-s. with him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don&rsquo;t you know, that if I stuck close to
+Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a damper on
+the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was being the life and
+soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye he might ease up a trifle
+on the revelry. So the next night I took him along to supper with me. It was
+the last time. I&rsquo;m a quiet, peaceful sort of chappie who has lived all
+his life in London, and I can&rsquo;t stand the pace these swift sportsmen from
+the rural districts set. What I mean to say is this, I&rsquo;m all for rational
+enjoyment and so forth, but I think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he
+throws soft-boiled eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort
+of thing are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when you want
+to sit still and digest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made up my
+mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about with Motty. The
+only time I met him late at night after that was once when I passed the door of
+a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had to step aside to dodge him as he
+sailed through the air <i>en route</i> for the opposite pavement, with a
+muscular sort of looking chappie peering out after him with a kind of gloomy
+satisfaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a way, I couldn&rsquo;t help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about four
+weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over about ten
+years, and I didn&rsquo;t wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy. I should
+have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no denying that it was a
+bit thick. If it hadn&rsquo;t been for the thought of Lady Malvern and Aunt
+Agatha in the background, I should have regarded Motty&rsquo;s rapid work with
+an indulgent smile. But I couldn&rsquo;t get rid of the feeling that, sooner or
+later, I was the lad who was scheduled to get it behind the ear. And what with
+brooding on this prospect, and sitting up in the old flat waiting for the
+familiar footstep, and putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into
+the sick-chamber next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to
+lose weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man was
+still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn&rsquo;t rally
+round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the pride of the
+Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;this is getting a bit thick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo; Business and cold respectfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the principles
+of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I shall get blamed, don&rsquo;t you know. You know what my Aunt
+Agatha is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn&rsquo;t unbend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;haven&rsquo;t you any scheme up your
+sleeve for coping with this blighter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don&rsquo;t you know. It wasn&rsquo;t as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much admired
+by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he left me flat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing pals back
+in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home. This was where I
+began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of town where I was living
+wasn&rsquo;t the right place for that sort of thing. I knew lots of chappies
+down Washington Square way who started the evening at about 2
+a.m.&mdash;artists and writers and what-not, who frolicked considerably till
+checked by the arrival of the morning milk. That was all right. They like that
+sort of thing down there. The neighbours can&rsquo;t get to sleep unless
+there&rsquo;s someone dancing Hawaiian dances over their heads. But on
+Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere wasn&rsquo;t right, and when Motty turned
+up at three in the morning with a collection of hearty lads, who only stopped
+singing their college song when they started singing &ldquo;The Old Oaken
+Bucket,&rdquo; there was a marked peevishness among the old settlers in the
+flats. The management was extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time,
+and took a lot of soothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place which
+I&rsquo;d chosen because there didn&rsquo;t seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch on the
+light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared hold of my
+trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an extent that I was
+simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped backward with a loud yell of
+anguish, and tumbled out into the hall just as Jeeves came out of his den to
+see what the matter was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you call, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves! There&rsquo;s something in there that grabs you by the
+leg!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That would be Rollo, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come in.
+His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet settled
+down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who the deuce is Rollo?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His lordship&rsquo;s bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a
+raffle, and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the sitting-room,
+the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions&rsquo; den, without a quiver.
+What&rsquo;s more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such that the
+dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down as if he had had
+a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his paws in the air. If Jeeves
+had been his rich uncle he couldn&rsquo;t have been more chummy. Yet directly
+he caught sight of me again, he got all worked up and seemed to have only one
+idea in life&mdash;to start chewing me where he had left off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rollo is not used to you yet, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves, regarding the
+bally quadruped in an admiring sort of way. &ldquo;He is an excellent
+watchdog.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, what am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean&mdash;my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that one of
+these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all right.&rdquo; I
+thought for a bit. &ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going away&mdash;to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall
+go and stop with Mr. Todd in the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know when I shall be back. Forward my letters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I went to
+stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the wilds of Long
+Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing goes a long way with
+me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a few days in his cottage in
+the woods, miles away from anywhere, New York, even with Motty on the premises,
+began to look pretty good to me. The days down on Long Island have forty-eight
+hours in them; you can&rsquo;t get to sleep at night because of the bellowing
+of the crickets; and you have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an
+evening paper. I thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only
+train they have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about
+dinner-time. I went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I
+looked round cautiously for Rollo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the porter,
+who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal on account of
+being bitten by him in the calf of the leg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;ve ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I
+had misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a lot
+of intelligence in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you expect him back to dinner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That&rsquo;s how I felt then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In prison!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;in prison?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He assaulted a constable, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I digested this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she&rsquo;ll come back and want to know where he is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship&rsquo;s bit of time will have run
+out by then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But supposing it hasn&rsquo;t?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very interesting and respectable centre, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, I believe you&rsquo;ve hit it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn&rsquo;t turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze seemed to
+me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what the doctor
+ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have pulled him up. I was
+sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I reflected, a chappie who had
+lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a small village in the interior of
+Shropshire, wouldn&rsquo;t have much to kick at in a prison. Altogether, I
+began to feel absolutely braced again. Life became like what the poet Johnnie
+says&mdash;one grand, sweet song. Things went on so comfortably and peacefully
+for a couple of weeks that I give you my word that I&rsquo;d almost forgotten
+such a person as Motty existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that
+Jeeves was still pained and distant. It wasn&rsquo;t anything he said or did,
+mind you, but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I
+was tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There was a
+kind of grieved look in his eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn&rsquo;t
+been expecting her for days. I&rsquo;d forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea and
+thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement that he had
+just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few garments round me and
+went in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as ever. The
+only difference was that she didn&rsquo;t uncover the teeth, as she had done
+the first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;ve got back,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have got back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably
+hadn&rsquo;t breakfasted. It&rsquo;s only after a bit of breakfast that
+I&rsquo;m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I&rsquo;m never much of a lad till I&rsquo;ve
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you haven&rsquo;t breakfasted?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not yet breakfasted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the
+suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I called on you last night,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you were
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extremely, thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See everything? Niag&rsquo;ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw a great deal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was another slightly <i>frappé</i> silence. Jeeves floated silently into
+the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were his constant companion, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don&rsquo;t you
+know. We&rsquo;d take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred concert
+in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually played dominoes after
+dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing sleep. We had a great time. I
+was awfully sorry when he went away to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn&rsquo;t know
+where you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe&mdash;I mean,
+don&rsquo;t you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn&rsquo;t get at
+you. Yes, Motty went off to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re sure he went to Boston?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, absolutely.&rdquo; I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about
+in the next room with forks and so forth: &ldquo;Jeeves, Lord Pershore
+didn&rsquo;t change his mind about going to Boston, did he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell&rsquo;s Island prison, to secure material for
+my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit, seated
+beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has to be a
+lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like this. I strained
+the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar and the hair parting
+nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky, because I wouldn&rsquo;t have had
+a chance to get any persiflage out of my system. Lady Malvern collared the
+conversation. She had been bottling it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster! So
+this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge, thinking that
+I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to you innocent, unversed
+in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to the temptations of a large city,
+and you led him astray!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hadn&rsquo;t any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the hatchet
+against my return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You deliberately&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might explain, your ladyship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized on the
+rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can&rsquo;t do that
+sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when his
+lordship&mdash;was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that his
+lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had given him of
+his lordship&rsquo;s movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a friend in the
+country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till your ladyship
+informed him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn&rsquo;t rattle Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him, so I
+took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away for a visit. It
+might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that his lordship had gone to
+prison voluntarily and from the best motives, but your ladyship, knowing him
+better, will readily understand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; Lady Malvern goggled at him. &ldquo;Did you say that Lord
+Pershore went to prison voluntarily?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship&rsquo;s
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently heard
+him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow your
+ladyship&rsquo;s instructions and collect material for your ladyship&rsquo;s
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his lordship was
+frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was doing so little to
+help.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of the
+country&mdash;from within&mdash;occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I could see
+her struggling with the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely, your ladyship,&rdquo; said Jeeves, &ldquo;it is more reasonable
+to suppose that a gentleman of his lordship&rsquo;s character went to prison of
+his own volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Wooster,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I apologize. I have done you an
+injustice. I should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in
+his pure, fine spirit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your breakfast is ready, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you are certainly a life-saver!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn&rsquo;t lured
+that blighter into riotous living.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy you are right, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don&rsquo;t you know, by
+the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that this was an
+occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I hesitated. Then I made up
+my mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That pink tie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burn it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you very much, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and all was
+as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the novels who calls off
+the fight with his wife in the last chapter and decides to forget and forgive.
+I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other things to show Jeeves that I
+appreciated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it isn&rsquo;t enough. Is there anything
+else you would like?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion&mdash;fifty dollars.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable method of
+inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship was a little
+over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me for a friend of his. At
+any rate when I took the liberty of wagering him fifty dollars that he would
+not punch a passing policeman in the eye, he accepted the bet very cordially
+and won it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take this, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;fifty isn&rsquo;t enough. Do
+you know, Jeeves, you&rsquo;re&mdash;well, you absolutely stand alone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes of a morning, as I&rsquo;ve sat in bed sucking down the early cup of
+tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting out the
+raiment for the day, I&rsquo;ve wondered what the deuce I should do if the
+fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It&rsquo;s not so bad now
+I&rsquo;m in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There used to
+be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak him away from
+me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered him double what I was
+giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who&rsquo;s got a valet who had been
+known to press his trousers sideways, used to look at him, when he came to see
+me, with a kind of glittering hungry eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally
+pirates!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot it even
+in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down. And,
+what&rsquo;s more, he can always be counted on to extend himself on behalf of
+any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances knee-deep in the bouillon.
+Take the rather rummy case, for instance, of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the
+hard-boiled egg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to the
+flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What, pipped?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He gave that impression, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a matter of
+fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss freely with Jeeves
+just then, because things had been a bit strained between us for some time, and
+it had been rather difficult to hit on anything to talk about that wasn&rsquo;t
+apt to take a personal turn. You see, I had decided&mdash;rightly or
+wrongly&mdash;to grow a moustache and this had cut Jeeves to the quick. He
+couldn&rsquo;t stick the thing at any price, and I had been living ever since
+in an atmosphere of bally disapproval till I was getting jolly well fed up with
+it. What I mean is, while there&rsquo;s no doubt that in certain matters of
+dress Jeeves&rsquo;s judgment is absolutely sound and should be followed, it
+seemed to me that it was getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my
+face as well as my costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and
+many&rsquo;s the time I&rsquo;ve given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted
+against one of my pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet&rsquo;s
+staking out a claim on your upper lip you&rsquo;ve simply got to have a bit of
+the good old bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said that he would call again later, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something must be up, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a good deal,
+so I chucked it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s uncle is arriving
+on the <i>Carmantic</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was news to me, that Bicky&rsquo;s uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one&rsquo;s pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my arrival in
+New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I rather took to
+Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in fact, been up at
+Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so we naturally drifted
+together; and while we were taking a quiet snort in a corner that wasn&rsquo;t
+all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and what-not, he furthermore
+endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily gifted imitation of a
+bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though we had subsequently become
+extremely pally, all I really knew about him was that he was generally hard up,
+and had an uncle who relieved the strain a bit from time to time by sending him
+monthly remittances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;why
+hasn&rsquo;t he a title? Why isn&rsquo;t he Lord What-Not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace&rsquo;s late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves knows everything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s father dead, too?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave any money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the rocks.
+To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I mean, it may sound
+a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but the trouble about old
+Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy old buster, owning half London
+and about five counties up north, he was notoriously the most prudent spender
+in England. He was what American chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If
+Bicky&rsquo;s people hadn&rsquo;t left him anything and he depended on what he
+could prise out of the old duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that
+explained why he was hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never
+borrowed money. He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any
+one&rsquo;s ear on principle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned,&rdquo; I heard him say. And
+Bicky came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bicky!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Jeeves told me you had been trying
+to get me. Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence.
+What&rsquo;s the trouble, Bicky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say on, old lad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My uncle&rsquo;s turning up to-morrow, Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So Jeeves told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Duke of Chiswick, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So Jeeves told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves seems to know everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather rummily, that&rsquo;s exactly what I was thinking just now
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wish,&rdquo; said Bicky gloomily, &ldquo;that he knew a way to
+get me out of the hole I&rsquo;m in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;and
+wants you to rally round.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all
+about it already. Don&rsquo;t you, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Bicky, rattled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York instead
+of in Colorado?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How the deuce do you know anything about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I chanced to meet his grace&rsquo;s butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on the
+matter, sir, as he passed the library door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there&rsquo;s no need to
+try to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I was a
+brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a remittance on
+condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of the name of Colorado
+and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they call it, at some bally ranch
+or farm or whatever it&rsquo;s called. I didn&rsquo;t fancy the idea a bit. I
+should have had to ride horses and pursue cows, and so forth. I hate horses.
+They bite at you. I was all against the scheme. At the same time, don&rsquo;t
+you know, I had to have that remittance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I get you absolutely, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me, so
+I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I cabled to my
+uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business wheeze in the city
+and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back that it was all right, and
+here I&rsquo;ve been ever since. He thinks I&rsquo;m doing well at something or
+other over here. I never dreamed, don&rsquo;t you know, that he would ever come
+out here. What on earth am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Bicky, &ldquo;I had a wireless from him to say that
+he was coming to stay with me&mdash;to save hotel bills, I suppose. I&rsquo;ve
+always given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can&rsquo;t have him to stay at my boarding-house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thought of anything, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, by Jove!&rdquo; said Bicky firmly. &ldquo;I never have touched you,
+Bertie, and I&rsquo;m not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it&rsquo;s
+my boast that I don&rsquo;t owe a penny to a single soul&mdash;not counting
+tradesmen, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was the owner
+of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I was in Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s employment, and not in yours. You would be residing here
+temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s guest. His grace would occupy the second
+spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this answer satisfactorily,
+sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed sort of
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace on
+board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr. Bickersteth could
+meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here. Will that meet the
+situation, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How does he do it, Bertie?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you
+what I think it is. I believe it&rsquo;s something to do with the shape of his
+head. Have you ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at
+the back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present when
+the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean liners fetch
+up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn&rsquo;t much after nine by
+the time I&rsquo;d dressed and had my morning tea and was leaning out of the
+window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle. It was one of those jolly,
+peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish he&rsquo;d got a soul or something,
+and I was just brooding on life in general when I became aware of the dickens
+of a spate in progress down below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a
+top hat had got out and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far
+as I could make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New
+York to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of London
+before, and didn&rsquo;t seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy said that
+in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and the cabby said he
+should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The duke has arrived, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll be him at the door now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy crawled in,
+looking licked to a splinter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do, sir?&rdquo; I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. &ldquo;Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name&rsquo;s Wooster, don&rsquo;t you know. Great pal of
+Bicky&rsquo;s, and all that sort of thing. I&rsquo;m staying with him, you
+know. Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It must be terribly expensive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at it to
+restore his tissues, and nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!&rdquo; He took another look round
+the room. It seemed to fascinate him. &ldquo;Have you any idea how much my
+nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About two hundred dollars a month, I believe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Forty pounds a month!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the scheme
+might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was thinking. He was
+trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew of poor old Bicky. And
+one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring, for dear old Bicky, though a
+stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and
+cats, was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on
+a suit of gent&rsquo;s underwear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it seems rummy to you,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;but the fact is
+New York often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn&rsquo;t have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don&rsquo;t you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it&rsquo;s quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in commercial
+circles as quite the nib!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew&rsquo;s business, Mr.
+Wooster?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, just business, don&rsquo;t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie
+and Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.&rdquo; I slid for the door.
+&ldquo;Awfully sorry to leave you, but I&rsquo;ve got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s upstairs now, having some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does he think of it all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s absolutely rattled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping! I&rsquo;ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man.
+See you later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the club to
+sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and going down the
+other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s everybody, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said, finding no little feet
+pattering about the place. &ldquo;Gone out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective was
+Grant&rsquo;s Tomb.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not altogether, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s his trouble now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth and
+yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in business,
+and all that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Somewhat disturbing, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never expected anything like this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must do something, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you think of anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at the moment, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There must be something we can do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir&mdash;as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before&mdash;the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there is
+always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion&mdash;he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title&mdash;when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed
+to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a
+depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his
+lordship&rsquo;s aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able
+to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth&rsquo;s difficulty, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will spare no pains, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was when I
+tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a dinner-jacket. I
+sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time than because I wanted it.
+It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill of fare with poor old Bicky headed
+for the breadline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there, hunched up
+in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette hanging out of the
+corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare in his eyes. He had the
+aspect of one who had been soaked with what the newspaper chappies call
+&ldquo;some blunt instrument.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a bit thick, old thing&mdash;what!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact that it
+hadn&rsquo;t anything in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m done, Bertie!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had another go at the glass. It didn&rsquo;t seem to do him any good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month&rsquo;s
+money was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I&rsquo;ve
+been reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can make a
+dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars and start a
+chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a hen&mdash;call it one
+hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every day of the week. You sell
+the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen costs nothing. Profit
+practically twenty-five cents on every seven eggs. Or look at it another way:
+Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The
+chickens grow up and have more chickens. Why, in no time you&rsquo;d have the
+place covered knee-deep in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for
+every seven. You&rsquo;d make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!&rdquo;
+He had begun to get quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back
+in his chair at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. &ldquo;But, of course,
+it&rsquo;s no good,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;because I haven&rsquo;t the
+cash.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I&rsquo;m not going to sponge on you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That&rsquo;s always the way in this world. The chappies you&rsquo;d like to
+lend money to won&rsquo;t let you, whereas the chappies you don&rsquo;t want to
+lend it to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled tolerably free
+in the right stuff, I&rsquo;ve had lots of experience of the second class.
+Many&rsquo;s the time, back in London, I&rsquo;ve hurried along Piccadilly and
+felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my neck and heard his sharp,
+excited yapping as he closed in on me. I&rsquo;ve simply spent my life
+scattering largesse to blighters I didn&rsquo;t care a hang for; yet here was I
+now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight and longing to hand them over, and
+Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his uppers, not taking any at any price.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, there&rsquo;s only one hope, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You&rsquo;re sitting in
+the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you look up,
+and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little uproar as a jelly
+fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably. He rose from his seat
+like a rocketing pheasant. I&rsquo;m used to Jeeves now, but often in the days
+when he first came to me I&rsquo;ve bitten my tongue freely on finding him
+unexpectedly in my midst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you call, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, there you are, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have found
+what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a liberty, sir,
+but I think that we have overlooked his grace&rsquo;s potentialities as a
+source of revenue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow, mocking laugh,
+a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat, rather like a gargle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not allude, sir,&rdquo; explained Jeeves, &ldquo;to the possibility
+of inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of regarding
+his grace in the light of an at present&mdash;if I may say so&mdash;useless
+property, which is capable of being developed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I&rsquo;m bound to say I
+didn&rsquo;t get it myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you are
+aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent personages.
+It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might know of persons who
+would be willing to pay a small fee&mdash;let us say two dollars or
+three&mdash;for the privilege of an introduction, including handshake, to his
+grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky didn&rsquo;t seem to think much of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave her
+social standing among the neighbours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky wavered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you think it could be done&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel convinced of it, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think, Bertie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn&rsquo;t biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about &ldquo;The market
+opened quietly&rdquo; with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You&rsquo;d hardly believe how difficult it was to interest the
+public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the week the
+only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper down in
+Bicky&rsquo;s part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in sliced
+ham instead of cash that didn&rsquo;t help much. There was a gleam of light
+when the brother of Bicky&rsquo;s pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money down,
+for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through, owing to its
+turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to kick the old boy
+instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me the deuce of a time to
+persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things take their course. He seemed
+to regard the pawnbroker&rsquo;s brother rather as a sportsman and benefactor
+of his species than otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The whole thing, I&rsquo;m inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn&rsquo;t been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don&rsquo;t think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room one
+morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was something
+doing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace,
+sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all off. We&rsquo;ve decided to chuck it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t work. We can&rsquo;t get anybody to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say you&rsquo;ve managed to get anybody?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Birdsburg?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Birdsburg, Missouri, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you get them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat. I had
+observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his buttonhole,
+sir&mdash;a large blue button with the words &lsquo;Boost for Birdsburg&rsquo;
+upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a gentleman&rsquo;s
+evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the auditorium was full of
+persons similarly decorated. I ventured to inquire the explanation, and was
+informed that these gentlemen, forming a party of eighty-seven, are a
+convention from a town of the name of Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri.
+Their visit, I gathered, was purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my
+informant spoke at some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in
+the city. It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had shaken
+hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to broach the
+subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I have arranged, subject
+to your approval, that the entire convention shall be presented to his grace
+to-morrow afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Payable in advance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, any way, when we get it I&rsquo;ll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky&rsquo;ll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, you&rsquo;re a bit of a marvel, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Right-o!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told him what
+had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the sitting-room and
+buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic section of the morning
+paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Uncle,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;are you doing anything special to-morrow
+afternoon? I mean to say, I&rsquo;ve asked a few of my pals in to meet you,
+don&rsquo;t you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There will be no reporters among them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reporters? Rather not! Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while the boat
+was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this persecution
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won&rsquo;t be a
+newspaper-man in the place.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll shake hands with them and so forth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules of
+civilized intercourse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club, where he
+babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg contingent
+on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal round to see us,
+and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very decent chappie, but rather
+inclined to collar the conversation and turn it in the direction of his
+home-town&rsquo;s new water-supply system. We settled that, as an hour was
+about all he would be likely to stand, each gang should consider itself
+entitled to seven minutes of the duke&rsquo;s society by Jeeves&rsquo;s
+stop-watch, and that when their time was up Jeeves should slide into the room
+and cough meaningly. Then we parted with what I believe are called mutual
+expressions of goodwill, the Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation
+to us all to pop out some day and take a look at the new water-supply system,
+for which we thanked him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the cove we had
+met and nine others almost exactly like him in every respect. They all looked
+deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth up they had been working in the
+office and catching the boss&rsquo;s eye and what-not. They shook hands with
+the old boy with a good deal of apparent satisfaction&mdash;all except one
+chappie, who seemed to be brooding about something&mdash;and then they stood
+off and became chatty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?&rdquo; asked our pal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have never been to Birdsburg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie seemed pained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should pay it a visit,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;The most
+rapidly-growing city in the country. Boost for Birdsburg!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boost for Birdsburg!&rdquo; said the other chappies reverently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins and a
+cold eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The assemblage looked at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As a matter of business,&rdquo; said the chappie&mdash;&ldquo;mind you,
+I&rsquo;m not questioning anybody&rsquo;s good faith, but, as a matter of
+strict business&mdash;I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean, sir?&rdquo; cried the old boy, getting purple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No offence, simply business. I&rsquo;m not saying anything, mind you,
+but there&rsquo;s one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name&rsquo;s Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if
+you&rsquo;re the Duke of Chiswick, why isn&rsquo;t he Lord Percy Something?
+I&rsquo;ve read English novels, and I know all about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is monstrous!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now don&rsquo;t get hot under the collar. I&rsquo;m only asking.
+I&rsquo;ve a right to know. You&rsquo;re going to take our money, so it&rsquo;s
+only fair that we should see that we get our money&rsquo;s worth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we&rsquo;ve a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here a
+hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want to
+know&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the water-supply
+chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can assure you that I know nothing of this,&rdquo; he said, quite
+politely. &ldquo;I should be grateful if you would explain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens of
+Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands with you for a
+financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my friend Simms here
+means&mdash;and I&rsquo;m with him&mdash;is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth&rsquo;s word for it&mdash;and he is a stranger to us&mdash;that you
+are the Duke of Chiswick at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Allow me to assure you, sir,&rdquo; he said, in a rummy kind of voice,
+&ldquo;that I am the Duke of Chiswick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then that&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; said the chappie heartily.
+&ldquo;That was all we wanted to know. Let the thing go on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to say,&rdquo; said old Chiswick, &ldquo;that it cannot go
+on. I am feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at this
+moment, Duke, to be introduced to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear I must disappoint them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But in that case the deal would have to be off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You really won&rsquo;t meet the rest of them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I guess we&rsquo;ll be going.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick turned
+to Bicky:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky didn&rsquo;t seem to have anything to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it true what that man said?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean by playing this trick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you&rsquo;d better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old
+top.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky&rsquo;s Adam&rsquo;s-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it&rsquo;s an absolute cert if you
+once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every day of the
+week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five cents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir,&rdquo; I said, helping the chappie
+out. &ldquo;The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that
+remittance of yours, and when you cut it off, don&rsquo;t you know, he was
+pretty solidly in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit
+of the ready pretty quick. That&rsquo;s why we thought of this handshaking
+scheme.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor old Bicky didn&rsquo;t want to go to that ranch,&rdquo; I
+explained. &ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t like cows and horses, but he rather thinks
+he would be hot stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital.
+Don&rsquo;t you think it would be rather a wheeze if you were
+to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After what has happened? After this&mdash;this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a penny!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I might make a suggestion, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go ahead, Jeeves!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might secure
+the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this afternoon for the
+Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and enterprising newspapers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By George!&rdquo; said Bicky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great heavens!&rdquo; said old Chiswick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves is right. I&rsquo;ll do it! The <i>Chronicle</i> would jump at
+it. They eat that sort of stuff.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all very well,&rdquo; said Bicky, wonderfully braced,
+&ldquo;but if I can&rsquo;t get the money any other way&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wait! Er&mdash;wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t go to that bally ranch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a moment
+suggest it. I&mdash;I think&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. &ldquo;I&mdash;I think
+that, on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England.
+I&mdash;I might&mdash;in fact, I think I see my way to doing&mdash;to&mdash;I
+might be able to utilize your services in some secretarial position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shouldn&rsquo;t mind that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in English
+political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The only figure I&rsquo;ll recognize,&rdquo; said Bicky firmly,
+&ldquo;is five hundred quid a year, paid quarterly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear boy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to accustom
+yourself to the intricacies of political life, to&mdash;in fact, you would be
+in an exceedingly advantageous position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five hundred a year!&rdquo; said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue.
+&ldquo;Why, that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken
+farm. It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens has
+a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen chickens
+each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There&rsquo;s a fortune
+in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America. Chappies keep them on
+ice for years and years, and don&rsquo;t sell them till they fetch about a
+dollar a whirl. You don&rsquo;t think I&rsquo;m going to chuck a future like
+this for anything under five hundred o&rsquo; goblins a year&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick&rsquo;s face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. &ldquo;Very well, my boy,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What-o!&rdquo; said Bicky. &ldquo;All right, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. &ldquo;Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It beats me how you do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The only trouble is you haven&rsquo;t got much out of
+it&mdash;what!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends&mdash;I judge from his remarks&mdash;to
+signify his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position to do
+so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t enough, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bring my shaving things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie&rsquo;s eye, mixed with doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shave off my moustache.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a moment&rsquo;s silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you very much indeed, sir,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice, and
+popped off.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>ABSENT TREATMENT</h2>
+
+<p>
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It&rsquo;s a most
+interesting story. I can&rsquo;t put in any literary style and all that; but I
+don&rsquo;t have to, don&rsquo;t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you&rsquo;re a man you mustn&rsquo;t miss it, because it&rsquo;ll be a
+warning to you; and if you&rsquo;re a woman you won&rsquo;t want to, because
+it&rsquo;s all about how a girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If you&rsquo;re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie&rsquo;s, you&rsquo;ll probably
+be surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for the
+weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met
+Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised when I told them that.
+Yet it&rsquo;s true. Believe <i>me</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most pronounced
+young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called me a silly ass,
+but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it came to being a silly
+ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap was about six. Why, if I wanted
+him to dine with me, I used to post him a letter at the beginning of the week,
+and then the day before send him a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself,
+and&mdash;half an hour before the time we&rsquo;d fixed&mdash;a messenger in a
+taxi, whose business it was to see that he got in and that the chauffeur had
+the address all correct. By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless
+he had left town before my messenger arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The funny thing was that he wasn&rsquo;t altogether a fool in other ways. Deep
+down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him, once or
+twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that stratum, mind you,
+you needed dynamite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At least, that&rsquo;s what I thought. But there was another way which
+hadn&rsquo;t occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the
+soul; that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s at the end of it till he gets there. It was
+like that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married&mdash;with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world&mdash;and then began to find out
+things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wasn&rsquo;t the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave about.
+And yet, I don&rsquo;t know. What I mean is, she worked for her living; and to
+a fellow who has never done a hand&rsquo;s turn in his life there&rsquo;s
+undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a girl who works
+for her living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she had a ton
+and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those determined chins. She
+was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself up at polo, she was told off
+by the authorities to smooth his brow and rally round with cooling unguents and
+all that; and the old boy hadn&rsquo;t been up and about again for more than a
+week before they popped off to the registrar&rsquo;s and fixed it up. Quite the
+romance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he introduced
+me to her. I admired her. I&rsquo;ve never worked myself&mdash;my name&rsquo;s
+Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My uncle Edward
+was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left me a sizable chunk of
+bullion&mdash;I say I&rsquo;ve never worked myself, but I admire any one who
+earns a living under difficulties, especially a girl. And this girl had had a
+rather unusually tough time of it, being an orphan and all that, and having had
+to do everything off her own bat for years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don&rsquo;t now, but we&rsquo;ll
+come to that later. I&rsquo;m speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie
+the greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn&rsquo;t noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about her.
+So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie didn&rsquo;t
+forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being quite happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, let&rsquo;s brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn&rsquo;t
+really start till then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite a good
+deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be running along as
+smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I thought, I couldn&rsquo;t
+see why fellows were so frightened of it. There were a lot of worse things that
+could happen to a man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it&rsquo;s just here
+that love&rsquo;s young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back to dinner
+at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting myself under
+police protection, I went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking&mdash;well, I tell you,
+it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and crinkles and
+things, with a what-d&rsquo;-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And she was wearing
+the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn&rsquo;t begin to describe it. I can
+only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this was how she was in the
+habit of looking every night when they were dining quietly at home together, it
+was no wonder that Bobbie liked domesticity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s old Reggie, dear,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+brought him home to have a bit of dinner. I&rsquo;ll phone down to the kitchen
+and ask them to send it up now&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned scarlet.
+Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most
+interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles
+away. Then she recovered herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,&rdquo; she said, smiling
+at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked
+a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on the piano
+afterwards, as if she hadn&rsquo;t a care in the world. Quite a jolly little
+party it was&mdash;not. I&rsquo;m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she
+would have given that diamond what&rsquo;s-its-name in her hair and everything
+else she possessed to have one good scream&mdash;just one. I&rsquo;ve sat
+through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the rest beaten
+in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and got away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having seen what I did, I wasn&rsquo;t particularly surprised to meet Bobbie at
+the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely gum-drop at an
+Eskimo tea-party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know how long I&rsquo;ve been married?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t exactly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About a year, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not <i>about</i> a year,&rdquo; he said sadly. &ldquo;Exactly a
+year&mdash;yesterday!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I understood. I saw light&mdash;a regular flash of light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday was&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The anniversary of the wedding. I&rsquo;d arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso. I had
+the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through dinner I had a
+kind of rummy idea that there was something I&rsquo;d forgotten, but I
+couldn&rsquo;t think what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till your wife mentioned it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He nodded&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&mdash;mentioned it,&rdquo; he said thoughtfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary&rsquo;s may
+be angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit, they
+aren&rsquo;t half-hearted about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To be absolutely frank, old top,&rdquo; said poor old Bobbie, in a
+broken sort of way, &ldquo;my stock&rsquo;s pretty low at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There didn&rsquo;t seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat there.
+He didn&rsquo;t want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the window of
+our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and watched him. He
+walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then walked on again, and finally
+turned into a jeweller&rsquo;s. Which was an instance of what I meant when I
+said that deep down in him there was a certain stratum of sense.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem of
+Bobbie&rsquo;s married life. Of course, one&rsquo;s always mildly interested in
+one&rsquo;s friends&rsquo; marriages, hoping they&rsquo;ll turn out well and
+all that; but this was different. The average man isn&rsquo;t like Bobbie, and
+the average girl isn&rsquo;t like Mary. It was that old business of the
+immovable mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a chump of the
+first water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn&rsquo;t be a chump. And Nature,
+mind you, on Bobbie&rsquo;s side. When Nature makes a chump like dear old
+Bobbie, she&rsquo;s proud of him, and doesn&rsquo;t want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him against
+outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory. Shortness of
+memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might cease to be one. Take my
+case, for instance. I&rsquo;m a chump. Well, if I had remembered half the
+things people have tried to teach me during my life, my size in hats would be
+about number nine. But I didn&rsquo;t. I forgot them. And it was just the same
+with Bobbie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet little
+domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read somewhere, are
+champions at the memory business, but they were fools to Bobbie during that
+week. But, bless you, the shock wasn&rsquo;t nearly big enough. It had dinted
+the armour, but it hadn&rsquo;t made a hole in it. Pretty soon he was back at
+the old game.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was pathetic, don&rsquo;t you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew it. A man
+who forgets what day he was married, when he&rsquo;s been married one year,
+will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he&rsquo;s married at all. If
+she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, before he began
+to drift away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he was by
+way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can&rsquo;t remember
+what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was something she had
+asked him to bring home for her&mdash;it may have been a book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s such a little thing to make a fuss about,&rdquo; said Bobbie.
+&ldquo;And she knows that it&rsquo;s simply because I&rsquo;ve got such an
+infernal memory about everything. I can&rsquo;t remember anything. Never
+could.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a couple of
+sovereigns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, by the way,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s this for?&rdquo; I asked, though I knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I owe it you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win, and
+Murray beat him by twenty odd.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you do remember some things?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter who
+forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after knowing him
+all these years, and a lot more like that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Subside, laddie,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you&rsquo;ve got to do, my old college chum,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;is to pull yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are
+shaping, you&rsquo;re due for a nasty knock before you know what&rsquo;s hit
+you. You&rsquo;ve got to make an effort. Don&rsquo;t say you can&rsquo;t. This
+two quid business shows that, even if your memory is rocky, you can remember
+some things. What you&rsquo;ve got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries
+and so on are included in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you
+can&rsquo;t get out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;re right,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;But it beats me
+why she thinks such a lot of these rotten little dates. What&rsquo;s it matter
+if I forgot what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day
+the cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not enough for a woman,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;They want to
+be shown. Bear that in mind, and you&rsquo;re all right. Forget it, and
+there&rsquo;ll be trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Women are frightfully rummy,&rdquo; he said gloomily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should have thought of that before you married one,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I don&rsquo;t see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing in
+a nutshell for him. You would have thought he&rsquo;d have seen the point, and
+that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But no. Off he
+went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him. I had a good deal
+of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to anything when it was a
+question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument. If you see a man asking for
+trouble, and insisting on getting it, the only thing to do is to stand by and
+wait till it comes to him. After that you may get a chance. But till then
+there&rsquo;s nothing to be done. But I thought a lot about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie didn&rsquo;t get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he&rsquo;d come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I&rsquo;d know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn&rsquo;t till well on in the spring that he
+got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it&mdash;in the thorax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out over
+Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and down the
+other&mdash;most interesting it is; I often do it&mdash;when in rushed Bobbie,
+with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster, waving a piece of
+paper in his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Reggie, old top, she&rsquo;s gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silly question? Perhaps you&rsquo;re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Read it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it, but it was
+all to the point. This is what it said:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;M<small>Y DEAR</small> B<small>OBBIE,</small>&mdash;I am going away.
+When you care enough about me to remember to wish me many happy returns on my
+birthday, I will come back. My address will be Box 341, <i>London Morning
+News</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read it twice, then I said, &ldquo;Well, why don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t I what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn&rsquo;t seem
+much to ask.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she says on her birthday.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, when is her birthday?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you understand?&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+forgotten.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgotten!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Forgotten.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you mean, forgotten?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Forgotten whether
+it&rsquo;s the twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to
+it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That&rsquo;s how near I get to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think? What&rsquo;s the use of saying &lsquo;Think&rsquo;? Think I
+haven&rsquo;t thought? I&rsquo;ve been knocking sparks out of my brain ever
+since I opened that letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can&rsquo;t remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Bobbie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a pretty hard case to
+spring on an untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock
+Holmes and said, &lsquo;Mr. Holmes, here&rsquo;s a case for you. When is my
+wife&rsquo;s birthday?&rsquo; Wouldn&rsquo;t that have given Sherlock a jolt?
+However, I know enough about the game to understand that a fellow can&rsquo;t
+shoot off his deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse
+yourself out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can&rsquo;t you remember the last time she had a birthday? What sort
+of weather was it? That might fix the month.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Warm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Warmish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or cold?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can&rsquo;t remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective&rsquo;s Manual. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a great help, Bobbie,&rdquo; I
+said. &ldquo;An invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts
+without which no home is complete.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it,&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;Look here. I gave her
+a present on her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up
+the date when it was bought, and the thing&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely. What did you give her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sagged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t remember,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you&rsquo;re right off, others it&rsquo;s
+as easy as falling off a log. I don&rsquo;t suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did it without
+an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the undergrowth, and before
+you could turn round it had flushed quite a brain-wave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know those little books called <i>When were you Born</i>? There&rsquo;s
+one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your strong
+points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go. Bobbie&rsquo;s idea
+was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we found out which month
+hit off Mary&rsquo;s character. That would give us the month, and narrow it
+down a whole lot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied out at
+once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work. As I say, it
+sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we saw that there was a
+flaw. There was plenty of information all right, but there wasn&rsquo;t a
+single month that didn&rsquo;t have something that exactly hit off Mary. For
+instance, in the December book it said, &ldquo;December people are apt to keep
+their own secrets. They are extensive travellers.&rdquo; Well, Mary had
+certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite extensively enough for
+Bobbie&rsquo;s needs. Then, October people were &ldquo;born with original
+ideas&rdquo; and &ldquo;loved moving.&rdquo; You couldn&rsquo;t have summed up
+Mary&rsquo;s little jaunt more neatly. February people had &ldquo;wonderful
+memories&rdquo;&mdash;Mary&rsquo;s speciality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that month
+were &ldquo;inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a happy
+married life&rdquo;; but I plumped for February, because February women
+&ldquo;are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates.&rdquo; Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old Bobbie. Have
+you ever seen that picture, &ldquo;The Soul&rsquo;s Awakening&rdquo;? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the middle
+distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, &ldquo;Surely that is
+George&rsquo;s step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?&rdquo; Well, Bobbie
+had a soul&rsquo;s awakening too. I don&rsquo;t suppose he had ever troubled to
+think in his life before&mdash;not really <i>think</i>. But now he was wearing
+his brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was all for
+the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these brainstorms were
+improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all over he might possibly
+become a rotter again of a sort, but it would only be a pale reflection of the
+rotter he had been. It bore out the idea I had always had that what he needed
+was a real good jolt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he came to me
+for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I never failed to hand
+him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see that he had
+had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m on the trail. This time
+I&rsquo;m convinced that I shall pull it off. I&rsquo;ve remembered something
+of vital importance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember distinctly,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that on Mary&rsquo;s last
+birthday we went together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fine bit of memorizing,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;but how does
+it help?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, they change the programme every week there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Now you are talking.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One&rsquo;s
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing it down,
+or aren&rsquo;t we? Reggie, I&rsquo;m going round to the Coliseum this minute,
+and I&rsquo;m going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if
+I have to use a crowbar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like brothers;
+brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the pages till they treed
+the cats in the middle of May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you it was May,&rdquo; said Bobbie. &ldquo;Maybe you&rsquo;ll
+listen to me another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you&rsquo;ve any sense,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there won&rsquo;t be
+another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it. I had
+just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It was Bobbie, of
+course. He didn&rsquo;t apologize.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it now for certain.
+It&rsquo;s just come to me. We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old
+man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t you see that that brings it down to two days? It must
+have been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if they didn&rsquo;t have daily matinees at
+the Coliseum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bobbie,&rdquo; I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve remembered something too. It&rsquo;s this. The day you went
+to the Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to bring
+any money with you, so you wrote a cheque.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;m always writing cheques.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the Ritz
+Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re a genius. I&rsquo;ve always
+said so. I believe you&rsquo;ve got it. Hold the line.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently he came back again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m here,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Topping,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as well
+make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel near the
+Strand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s late,&rdquo; said the man at the other end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And getting later every minute,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Buck along,
+laddie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had frozen hard,
+but I was past regrets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the matter?&rdquo; said Mary&rsquo;s voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My feet are cold,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But I didn&rsquo;t call you up
+to tell you that particularly. I&rsquo;ve just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs.
+Cardew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. He&rsquo;s remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave a sort of scream. I&rsquo;ve often thought how interesting it must be
+to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don&rsquo;t you
+know. Bobbie&rsquo;s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie&rsquo;s scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s remembered it!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Did you tell
+him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, I hadn&rsquo;t.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Pepper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he&mdash;has he been&mdash;was he very worried?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started
+out to worry after breakfast, and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the
+rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the wire, and telling
+each other what bally brainy conspirators we were, don&rsquo;t you know, and
+all that. But I&rsquo;d got just as far as this, when she bit at me.
+Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; in that
+choked kind of way. And when a woman says &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; like that, it means
+all the bad words she&rsquo;d love to say if she only knew them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and see
+poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from you would have
+put everything right, I can&rsquo;t&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you call yourself his friend! His friend!&rdquo; (Metallic laugh,
+most unpleasant.) &ldquo;It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you
+a kind-hearted man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it
+perfectly&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it hateful, abominable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you said it was absolutely top&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn&rsquo;t mean it. I
+don&rsquo;t wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there
+seems to be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by gloating
+over his agony&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When one single word would have&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you made me promise not to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; I bleated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if I did, do you suppose I didn&rsquo;t expect you to have the sense
+to break your promise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the receiver,
+and crawled into bed.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the old
+homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing invitations. I ran
+across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes went through me like a
+couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And as they came out the other side,
+and I limped off to piece myself together again, there occurred to me the
+simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my
+tombstone. It was this: &ldquo;He was a man who acted from the best motives.
+There is one born every minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>HELPING FREDDIE</h2>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t want to bore you, don&rsquo;t you know, and all that sort of rot,
+but I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I&rsquo;m not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I&rsquo;ll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I&rsquo;ve finished, so that&rsquo;ll be all
+right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear old Freddie, don&rsquo;t you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him sitting
+alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and generally looking like
+the last rose of summer, you can understand I was quite disturbed about it. As
+a rule, the old rotter is the life and soul of our set. Quite the little lump
+of fun, and all that sort of thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy&rsquo;s a fellow who writes
+plays&mdash;a deuced brainy sort of fellow&mdash;and between us we set to work
+to question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the matter
+was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with Angela West,
+the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the engagement. What the row
+had been about he didn&rsquo;t say, but apparently she was pretty well fed up.
+She wouldn&rsquo;t let him come near her, refused to talk on the phone, and
+sent back his letters unopened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once in love
+myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact that she
+couldn&rsquo;t stand me at any price will be recorded in my autobiography. I
+knew the thing for Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Change of scene is what you want, old scout,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Come
+with me to Marvis Bay. I&rsquo;ve taken a cottage there. Jimmy&rsquo;s coming
+down on the twenty-fourth. We&rsquo;ll be a cosy party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s absolutely right,&rdquo; said Jimmy. &ldquo;Change of
+scene&rsquo;s the thing. I knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two
+months later girl wired him, &lsquo;Come back. Muriel.&rsquo; Man started to
+write out a reply; suddenly found that he couldn&rsquo;t remember girl&rsquo;s
+surname; so never answered at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Freddie wouldn&rsquo;t be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to Marvis
+Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It&rsquo;s in Dorsetshire. It isn&rsquo;t what
+you&rsquo;d call a fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You
+spend the day there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you
+stroll out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o&rsquo;clock you rub ointment
+on the wounds and go to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze sighing
+in the trees, you couldn&rsquo;t drag him from that beach with a rope. He
+became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They&rsquo;d hang round waiting for
+him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers the miss-in-baulk just
+so as to be in good condition for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I began
+to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier: for as a
+companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn&rsquo;t anything to write home to mother
+about. When he wasn&rsquo;t chewing a pipe and scowling at the carpet, he was
+sitting at the piano, playing &ldquo;The Rosary&rdquo; with one finger. He
+couldn&rsquo;t play anything except &ldquo;The Rosary,&rdquo; and he
+couldn&rsquo;t play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse
+would blow out, and he&rsquo;d have to start all over again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+seen her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seen her?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What, Miss West?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started &ldquo;The Rosary&rdquo; again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you ought never to have brought me here.
+I must go away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go away?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk such rot. This is the
+best thing that could have happened. This is where you come out strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She cut me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She looked clean through me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course she did. But don&rsquo;t mind that. Put this thing in my
+hands. I&rsquo;ll see you through. Now, what you want,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is
+to place her under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what&rsquo;s she going to thank me timidly for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I thought for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t swim,&rdquo; said Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was Freddie all over, don&rsquo;t you know. A dear old chap in a thousand
+ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over. There was no
+doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear old Freddie had his
+strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in happier days I&rsquo;ve heard
+him give an imitation of cats fighting in a backyard that would have surprised
+you. But apart from that he wasn&rsquo;t a man of enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, don&rsquo;t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it was the
+girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs of her sprinkled
+round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn&rsquo;t be mistaken. She was sitting on
+the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle. On a chair close by was an
+elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the girl call her &ldquo;aunt.&rdquo; So,
+doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced that the fat child was her
+cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had been there he would probably have
+tried to work up some sentiment about the kid on the strength of it. Personally
+I couldn&rsquo;t manage it. I don&rsquo;t think I ever saw a child who made me
+feel less sentimental. He was one of those round, bulging kids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and began to
+whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling sweets at a stall.
+And I walked on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I&rsquo;m a chump. Well, I
+don&rsquo;t mind. I admit it. I <i>am</i> a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you&rsquo;d least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that&rsquo;s what happened now. I
+doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a single one of
+any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore, when I
+saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl
+wasn&rsquo;t with him. In fact, there didn&rsquo;t seem to be any one in sight.
+I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought the whole
+thing out in a flash, don&rsquo;t you know. From what I had seen of the two,
+the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so
+what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young heavy-weight for the
+moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully anxious about where he can
+have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly appears leading the infant by the hand
+and telling a story to the effect that he has found him wandering at large
+about the country and practically saved his life, why, the girl&rsquo;s
+gratitude is bound to make her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I
+gathered in the kid and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that
+scene of reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don&rsquo;t you know, that,
+by George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine points of the
+idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him down in our
+sitting-room, he didn&rsquo;t absolutely effervesce with joy, if you know what
+I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and poor old Freddie seemed
+to find it rather trying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop it!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Do you think nobody&rsquo;s got any
+troubles except you? What the deuce is all this, Reggie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I raced to
+the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right stuff. The kid stopped
+bellowing and began to smear his face with the stuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the
+idea. After a while it began to strike him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie,&rdquo; he
+said handsomely. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m bound to say this seems pretty good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to scour the
+beach for Angela.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old
+Freddie that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was leaning
+back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down the road I saw
+the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still with him. And Freddie
+looked as if he hadn&rsquo;t a friend in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t you find her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I found her,&rdquo; he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This isn&rsquo;t her cousin, you idiot!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s no relation at all. He&rsquo;s just a kid she happened to
+meet on the beach. She had never seen him before in her life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Who is he, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Oh, Lord, I&rsquo;ve had a time! Thank goodness
+you&rsquo;ll probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That&rsquo;s my only consolation. I&rsquo;ll come and jeer at you
+through the bars.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me all, old boy,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the middle
+of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered gradually what had
+happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he told the story he had
+prepared, and then&mdash;well, she didn&rsquo;t actually call him a liar, but
+she gave him to understand in a general sort of way that if he and Dr. Cook
+ever happened to meet, and started swapping stories, it would be about the
+biggest duel on record. And then he had crawled away with the kid, licked to a
+splinter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And mind, this is your affair,&rdquo; he concluded. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not
+mixed up in it at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you&rsquo;d better
+go and find the kid&rsquo;s parents and return him before the police come for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal kid, I
+never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to restore a child to
+its anxious parents. It&rsquo;s a mystery to me how kidnappers ever get caught.
+I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came forward to claim the
+infant. You&rsquo;d have thought, from the lack of interest in him, that he was
+stopping there all by himself in a cottage of his own. It wasn&rsquo;t till, by
+an inspiration, I thought to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his
+name was Medwin, and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in
+Beach Road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody answered. I
+knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody came. I was just going
+to get to work on that knocker in such a way that the idea would filter through
+into these people&rsquo;s heads that I wasn&rsquo;t standing there just for the
+fun of the thing, when a voice from somewhere above shouted, &ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and west of it,
+staring down from an upper window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo; it shouted again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the deuce do you mean by &lsquo;Hi&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t come in,&rdquo; said the face. &ldquo;Hello, is that
+Tootles?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My name is not Tootles, and I don&rsquo;t want to come in,&rdquo; I
+said. &ldquo;Are you Mr. Medwin? I&rsquo;ve brought back your son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see &rsquo;oo!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face reappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I churned the gravel madly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you live here?&rdquo; said the face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m staying here for a few weeks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s your name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pepper. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My uncle. But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish you were,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He beamed down at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is most fortunate,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We were wondering what we
+were to do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of infection.
+We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most fortunate your
+finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate to trust him to the
+care of a stranger, but you are different. Any nephew of Edward Pepper&rsquo;s
+has my implicit confidence. You must take Tootles to your house. It will be an
+ideal arrangement. I have written to my brother in London to come and fetch
+him. He may be here in a few days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan. Very much
+obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t got a wife,&rdquo; I yelled; but the window had closed
+with a bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to escape,
+don&rsquo;t you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The window flew up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a bomb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you catch it?&rdquo; said the face, reappearing. &ldquo;Dear me, you
+missed it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer&rsquo;s. Ask for
+Bailey&rsquo;s Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast
+with a little milk. Be certain to get Bailey&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation. Taking
+Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon&rsquo;s retreat from Moscow
+was a picnic by the side of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie&rsquo;s Angela.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at her and
+said, &ldquo;Wah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, baby?&rdquo; she said, bending down to him. &ldquo;So father found
+you again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning,&rdquo; she said to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered lunatic
+it so utterly unnerved me, don&rsquo;t you know, that she had nodded good-bye
+and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my breath enough to deny
+the charge of being the infant&rsquo;s father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hadn&rsquo;t expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more manly
+fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his head. He
+didn&rsquo;t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he began he
+did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional, dear old boy. It
+beat me where he could have picked up such expressions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, when he had finished, &ldquo;say something!
+Heavens! man, why don&rsquo;t you say something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t give me a chance, old top,&rdquo; I said soothingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you going to do about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can we do about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t spend our time acting as nurses to this&mdash;this
+exhibit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going back to London,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Freddie!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Freddie, old man!&rdquo; My voice shook.
+&ldquo;Would you desert a pal at a time like this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would. This is your business, and you&rsquo;ve got to manage
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Freddie,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve got to stand by me. You
+must. Do you realize that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and
+dressed again? You wouldn&rsquo;t leave me to do all that single-handed?
+Freddie, old scout, we were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe
+me a tenner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat down again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; he said resignedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;I did it all for your sake,
+don&rsquo;t you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; he said, in a strained voice, &ldquo;one moment.
+I&rsquo;ll stand a good deal, but I won&rsquo;t stand for being expected to be
+grateful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that crisis
+was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the local sweet-shop.
+By serving out sweets to the kid practically incessantly we managed to get
+through the rest of that day pretty satisfactorily. At eight o&rsquo;clock he
+fell asleep in a chair, and, having undressed him by unbuttoning every button
+in sight and, where there were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we
+carried him up to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew what he
+was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple&mdash;a mere matter of
+muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I stirred the pile
+with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which might have been
+anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like nothing on earth. We
+looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next bungalow
+but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their nurse. Women are
+wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid dressed and looking fit for
+anything in about eight minutes. I showered wealth on her, and she promised to
+come in morning and evening. I sat down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It
+was the first bit of silver lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And after all,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s lots to be said for
+having a child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic&mdash;what!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie&rsquo;s trousers, and when he had
+come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said, the less
+he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the kid, who
+happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his portmanteau.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;the hotel. I can&rsquo;t write dialogue
+with that sort of thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this
+little treasure?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I might work this up for the stage,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It
+wouldn&rsquo;t make a bad situation for act two of a farce.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Farce!&rdquo; snarled poor old Freddie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like&mdash;that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of idiot,
+kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I&rsquo;ll rough it
+out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we went I told him the rest of the story&mdash;the Angela part. He laid down
+his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made.
+It&rsquo;s the old &lsquo;Tiny Hand&rsquo; business. Always safe stuff. Parted
+lovers. Lisping child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It&rsquo;s big.
+Child, centre. Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can play a little of &lsquo;The Rosary&rsquo; with one finger.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest&rsquo;s all
+right. Look here.&rdquo; He squatted in the sand. &ldquo;This stone is the
+girl. This bit of seaweed&rsquo;s the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue
+leading up to child&rsquo;s line. Child speaks like, &lsquo;Boofer lady, does
+i&rsquo;oo love dadda?&rsquo; Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for
+a moment. Freddie crosses L., takes girl&rsquo;s hand. Business of swallowing
+lump in throat. Then big speech. &lsquo;Ah, Marie,&rsquo; or whatever her name
+is&mdash;Jane&mdash;Agnes&mdash;Angela? Very well. &lsquo;Ah, Angela, has not
+this gone on too long? A little child rebukes us! Angela!&rsquo; And so on.
+Freddie must work up his own part. I&rsquo;m just giving you the general
+outline. And we must get a good line for the child. &lsquo;Boofer lady, does
+&rsquo;oo love dadda?&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t definite enough. We want something
+more&mdash;ah! &lsquo;Kiss Freddie,&rsquo; that&rsquo;s it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Jimmy, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the only objection is,
+don&rsquo;t you know, that there&rsquo;s no way of getting the girl to the
+cottage. She cuts Freddie. She wouldn&rsquo;t come within a mile of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy frowned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s awkward,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Well, we shall have to make
+it an exterior set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the
+beach somewhere, when we&rsquo;re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid
+letter-perfect. First rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp
+to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not to tell
+him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn&rsquo;t in the mood
+to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we concentrated on Tootles. And
+pretty early in the proceedings we saw that the only way to get Tootles worked
+up to the spirit of the thing was to introduce sweets of some sort as a
+sub-motive, so to speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The chief difficulty,&rdquo; said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the
+first rehearsal, &ldquo;is to establish a connection in the kid&rsquo;s mind
+between his line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those
+two words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got a
+success.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;ve often thought, don&rsquo;t you know, how interesting it must be to
+be one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning intelligence,
+and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as exciting. Some days success
+seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the kid got the line out as if
+he&rsquo;d been an old professional. And then he&rsquo;d go all to pieces
+again. And time was flying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must hurry up, Jimmy,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The kid&rsquo;s uncle may
+arrive any day now and take him away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we haven&rsquo;t an understudy,&rdquo; said Jimmy.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something in that. We must work! My goodness, that
+kid&rsquo;s a bad study. I&rsquo;ve known deaf-mutes who would have learned the
+part quicker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn&rsquo;t
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash at his
+line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was after. His only
+fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have been prepared to risk it,
+and start the performance at the first opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re not nearly ready,&rdquo; said Jimmy. &ldquo;To-day, for
+instance, he said &lsquo;Kick Freddie.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s not going to win any
+girl&rsquo;s heart. And she might do it, too. No; we must postpone production
+awhile yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, by George, we didn&rsquo;t. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nobody&rsquo;s fault&mdash;certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house to
+exercise it, when, just as we&rsquo;d got out to the veranda, along came the
+girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual yell at the sight
+of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello, baby!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; she said to
+me. &ldquo;May I come up?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She didn&rsquo;t wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that sort
+of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the kid. And six
+feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the sitting-room. It was a
+dash disturbing situation, don&rsquo;t you know. At any minute Freddie might
+take it into his head to come out on to the veranda, and we hadn&rsquo;t even
+begun to rehearse him in his part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to break up the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were just going down to the beach,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; said the girl. She listened for a moment. &ldquo;So
+you&rsquo;re having your piano tuned?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My aunt has been
+trying to find a tuner for ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to
+come on to us when he&rsquo;s finished here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;not yet!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Not yet, if you don&rsquo;t
+mind. He can&rsquo;t bear to be disturbed when he&rsquo;s working. It&rsquo;s
+the artistic temperament. I&rsquo;ll tell him later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she said, getting up to go. &ldquo;Ask him to call at
+Pine Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I&rsquo;ll wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think&mdash;shouldn&rsquo;t we be going on to the
+beach?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had started talking to the kid and didn&rsquo;t hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The beach,&rdquo; I babbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See what I&rsquo;ve brought for you, baby,&rdquo; she said. And, by
+George, don&rsquo;t you know, she held up in front of the kid&rsquo;s bulging
+eyes a chunk of toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid was all
+worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for all the
+world as if he had been taking a cue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the ground, and
+the kid looked at the toffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy Pinkerton
+would have called &ldquo;business of outstretched hands&rdquo; towards it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss Fweddie!&rdquo; he shrieked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does this mean?&rdquo; said the girl, turning to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better give it to him, don&rsquo;t you know,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll go on till you do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still stood
+there gaping, without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it mean?&rdquo; said the girl again. Her face was pink, and
+her eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don&rsquo;t you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn&rsquo;t any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner&rsquo;s dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: &ldquo;<i>Please</i> don&rsquo;t
+apologize. It&rsquo;s nothing,&rdquo; and then suddenly meet her clear blue
+eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle
+jump up and hit you in the face? Well, that&rsquo;s how Freddie&rsquo;s Angela
+looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Well?</i>&rdquo; she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I
+said, &ldquo;Oh, well, it was this way.&rdquo; And, after a few brief remarks
+about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the girl didn&rsquo;t speak, either. She just stood listening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She leaned
+against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while Freddie, the
+World&rsquo;s Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it seemed to
+me that about here the stage-direction &ldquo;exit&rdquo; was written in my
+part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a word, it
+might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless. What can a fellow do
+with a fellow like that?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hello, Reggie!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I was just coming to you.
+Where&rsquo;s the kid? We must have a big rehearsal to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No good,&rdquo; I said sadly. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all over. The
+thing&rsquo;s finished. Poor dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and
+killed the whole show.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said Jimmy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I told him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fluffed in his lines, did he?&rdquo; said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once.
+Things look bad, but it may not be too late,&rdquo; he said as we started.
+&ldquo;Even now a few well-chosen words from a man of the world,
+and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow from the
+grocer&rsquo;s staring. From the windows of the houses opposite projected about
+four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the road came galloping five
+more children, a dog, three men, and a boy, about to stare. And on our porch,
+as unconscious of the spectators as if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood
+Freddie and Angela, clasped in each other&rsquo;s arms.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE</h2>
+
+<p>
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the course of
+a lifetime devoted to butting into other people&rsquo;s business, was that
+affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn&rsquo;t bore you,
+don&rsquo;t you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht <i>Circe</i>, belonging to an old
+sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself, my man
+Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s maid
+Pilbeam and George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him into
+the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who was
+scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to hand over
+to him a legacy left by one of George&rsquo;s aunts, for which he had been
+trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was a date that
+George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a sort of
+income&mdash;an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a chunk of
+o&rsquo; goblins is a pile. George&rsquo;s uncle was in Monte Carlo, and had
+written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it struck me that a
+far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at Monte Carlo instead. Kill
+two birds with one stone, don&rsquo;t you know. Fix up his affairs and have a
+pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George had tagged along, and at the time
+when the trouble started we were anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus
+was due next day.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the thing began
+at seven o&rsquo;clock in the morning, when I was aroused from a dreamless
+sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my state-room door. The
+chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed and said: &ldquo;Oh,
+Harold!&rdquo; and a male voice &ldquo;raised in anger,&rdquo; as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules&rsquo;s. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you&rsquo;d
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently relaxed
+to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my midst at that
+hour was too much for me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules!&rdquo; I yelled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing in the
+distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with that impressive,
+my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay him for. You wouldn&rsquo;t
+have believed he had a drop of any sort of emotion in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;are you under the delusion that I&rsquo;m
+going to be Queen of the May? You&rsquo;ve called me early all right.
+It&rsquo;s only just seven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understood you to summon me, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment I
+raised my voice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a wonder you didn&rsquo;t raise the roof. Who was that with
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s maid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was all the trouble about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was breaking our engagement, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t help gaping. Somehow one didn&rsquo;t associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I&rsquo;d no right to butt in on his secret
+sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll get up,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was a lovely
+morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all the rest of the
+hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up. Stella Vanderley was one
+of the first. I thought she looked a bit pale and tired. She said she
+hadn&rsquo;t slept well. That accounted for it. Unless you get your eight
+hours, where are you?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seen George?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly close pals.
+In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and slip his little hand
+in mine, and whisper: &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done it, old scout; she loves
+muh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not seen Mr. Lattaker,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t pursue the subject. George&rsquo;s stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next item in the day&rsquo;s programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The poor, dear Prince!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a shocking thing!&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew him in Vienna,&rdquo; said Mrs. Vanderley. &ldquo;He waltzed
+divinely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was full of
+it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these chaps
+&ldquo;Serene&rdquo;) had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on his
+way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed the habit of
+going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking advantage of this,
+had laid for him and slugged him with considerable vim. The Prince had been
+found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible in the street by a passing
+pedestrian, and had been taken back to his yacht, where he still lay
+unconscious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is going to do somebody no good,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you
+get for slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they&rsquo;ll catch the
+fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Later,&rsquo;&rdquo; read old Marshall, &ldquo;&lsquo;the
+pedestrian who discovered His Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman
+Sturgis, the eminent private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services
+to the police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move off to
+breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man came up the
+gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old Marshall as the probable
+owner of the yacht.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker
+on board&mdash;Mr. George Lattaker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Marshall. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s down below. Want to see
+him? Whom shall I say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a seat. He&rsquo;ll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry
+him up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went down to George&rsquo;s state-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George, old man!&rdquo; I shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What&rsquo;s
+more, the bunk hadn&rsquo;t been slept in. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve
+been more surprised. I went on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t there,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not there!&rdquo; said old Marshall. &ldquo;Where is he, then? Perhaps
+he&rsquo;s gone for a stroll ashore. But he&rsquo;ll be back soon for
+breakfast. You&rsquo;d better wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will
+you join us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped down,
+leaving me alone on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought I heard
+somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked over my shoulder,
+and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in evening dress, dusty to the
+eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scot!&rdquo; I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Sh!&rdquo; he whispered. &ldquo;Anyone about?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re all down at breakfast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I regarded
+him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say!&rdquo; I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you do that? What did you do it for? What&rsquo;s the sense of it?
+How do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about touching
+people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of my body this
+morning, Reggie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, old boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did a murder last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly
+Stella Vanderley broke off our engagement I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn&rsquo;t a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was just
+going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming along the
+corridor was that infernal what&rsquo;s-her-name&mdash;Mrs. Vanderley&rsquo;s
+maid&mdash;Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never. I&rsquo;ve been refused dozens&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you won&rsquo;t understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy.
+I hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest thing
+handy. I couldn&rsquo;t wait. It might have been the ship&rsquo;s cat. It
+wasn&rsquo;t. It was Pilbeam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You kissed her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened and
+out came Stella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl, not
+knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It did. She broke
+off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed off. I was mad. I
+didn&rsquo;t care what became of me. I simply wanted to forget. I went ashore.
+I&mdash;It&rsquo;s just on the cards that I may have drowned my sorrows a bit.
+Anyhow, I don&rsquo;t remember a thing, except that I can recollect having the
+deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street and somebody falling, and
+myself falling, and myself legging it for all I was worth. I woke up this
+morning in the Casino gardens. I&rsquo;ve lost my hat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I dived for the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, this is awful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cheer up. They say he&rsquo;ll recover.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That doesn&rsquo;t matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He read the paper again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It says they&rsquo;ve a clue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They always say that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;My hat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you mustn&rsquo;t waste time. Oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo; he said, irritably. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t bark
+like that. What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He&rsquo;s down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted to
+see you on business, and wouldn&rsquo;t give his name. I didn&rsquo;t like the
+look of him from the first. It&rsquo;s this fellow Sturgis. It must be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel it. I&rsquo;m sure of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Had he a hat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course he had a hat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, he <i>was</i> carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your life
+out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is <i>lèse-majesté</i>. It&rsquo;s
+worse than hitting a policeman. You haven&rsquo;t got a moment to waste.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I haven&rsquo;t any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I&rsquo;ll wire my
+uncle to meet me in&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look out,&rdquo; I cried; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s someone coming!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way, carrying a
+letter on a tray.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker&rsquo;s voice. A
+letter has arrived for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He isn&rsquo;t here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; give it to me. I&rsquo;ll give it to him when he comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! That&rsquo;s all, Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who was it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They&rsquo;re all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth&rsquo;s eating kippers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;ll hold him for a bit. Full of bones.&rdquo; He began to read
+his letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m hanged!&rdquo; he said, as he finished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, this is a queer thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he had
+grunted. This is how it ran:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;My dear George&mdash;I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious situation that
+has arisen in connection with the legacy which your father inherited from your
+Aunt Emily, and which you are expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you,
+now that you have reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+kidnapped&mdash;which, was never ascertained&mdash;when you were both babies.
+When no news was received of him for so many years, it was supposed that he was
+dead. Yesterday, however, I received a letter purporting that he had been
+living all this time in Buenos Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South
+American, and has only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is
+on his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like other
+claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile his intervention will,
+I fear, cause a certain delay before I can hand over your money to you. It will
+be necessary to go into a thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this
+will take some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+meet.&mdash;Your affectionate uncle,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;A<small>UGUSTUS</small> A<small>RBUTT</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I do
+sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I have seldom
+had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, old top,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;this lets you out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lets me out of half the darned money, if that&rsquo;s what you mean. If
+this chap&rsquo;s not an imposter&mdash;and there&rsquo;s no earthly reason to
+suppose he is, though I&rsquo;ve never heard my father say a word about
+him&mdash;we shall have to split the money. Aunt Emily&rsquo;s will left the
+money to my father, or, failing him, his &lsquo;offspring.&rsquo; I thought
+that meant me, but apparently there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work,
+springing unexpected offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like
+this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you chump,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s going to save you. This
+lets you out of your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you&rsquo;ve got
+to do is to stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a
+flash.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ass!&rdquo; I cried. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you understand? Have you ever
+heard of twin-brothers who weren&rsquo;t exactly alike? Who&rsquo;s to say you
+aren&rsquo;t Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Alfred will be there to call me a liar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;s not as if you had to keep it up for the rest
+of your life. It&rsquo;s only for an hour or two, till we can get this
+detective off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I really do believe it would work,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole.
+I&rsquo;ll swear George hadn&rsquo;t one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you&rsquo;re a genius.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>are</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s only sometimes. I can&rsquo;t keep it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What the devil are you doing here, Voules,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules is all right,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Decent Voules! Voules
+wouldn&rsquo;t give us away, would you, Voules?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Voules, old man,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;be sensible. What would you
+gain by it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Financially, sir, nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whereas, by keeping quiet&rdquo;&mdash;I tapped him on the
+chest&mdash;&ldquo;by holding your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it
+to anybody, Voules, old fellow, you might gain a considerable sum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, come!&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much?&rdquo; said Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn&rsquo;t believe the way the man haggled.
+You&rsquo;d have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules. By no
+means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred when we had
+got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it up at last, and poor
+old George got down to his state-room and changed his clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He&rsquo;d hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you meet him?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Meet whom?&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;George&rsquo;s twin-brother Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know George had a brother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor did he till yesterday. It&rsquo;s a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his uncle
+about him yesterday. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if that&rsquo;s where George has
+gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime, Alfred has
+arrived. He&rsquo;s down in George&rsquo;s state-room now, having a brush-up.
+It&rsquo;ll amaze you, the likeness between them. You&rsquo;ll think it
+<i>is</i> George at first. Look! Here he comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at him, as
+if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren&rsquo;t quite certain
+where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s an amazing likeness,&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is my brother like me?&rdquo; asked George amiably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one could tell you apart,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose twins always are alike,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;But if it
+ever came to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a dear old pal of mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been swimming with him perhaps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every day last August.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this on
+the back of his neck, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it often
+when we were bathing together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has George a mole like that?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Oh, no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would have noticed it if he had?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of that,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;It would be a
+nuisance not to be able to prove one&rsquo;s own identity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn&rsquo;t get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think George
+felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had breakfast, he
+said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he hadn&rsquo;t a care in the
+world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the foredeck
+talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the rest had started
+to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What did I tell you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you tell me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, about Stella. Didn&rsquo;t I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the trouble
+was. And then&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I did,&rdquo; said George modestly, &ldquo;I had no notion, till
+I became him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a pretty
+good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn&rsquo;t to be turned down for what
+was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s all right?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy he thinks that you&rsquo;re bound to come back sooner or later,
+and is waiting for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s an absolute nuisance,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a boat
+hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s my uncle,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, George!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Get my letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you are mistaking me for my brother,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;My name is Alfred Lattaker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am George&rsquo;s brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stout man stared at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very like George,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So everyone tells me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re really Alfred?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to talk business with you for a moment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir,&rdquo; said Voules. &ldquo;If it would be
+convenient I should be glad to have the afternoon off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I&rsquo;m bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had lunch&mdash;George didn&rsquo;t show up&mdash;and as I was going out I
+was waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the
+afternoon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I have given him the afternoon off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke down&mdash;absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was.
+I&rsquo;m hopeless in a situation like this. After I&rsquo;d said,
+&ldquo;There, there!&rdquo; which didn&rsquo;t seem to help much, I
+hadn&rsquo;t any remarks to make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings and
+then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my state-room door.
+I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of this. I couldn&rsquo;t have a
+really first-class valet like Voules going about the place shooting himself up.
+Evidently the girl Pilbeam was at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her.
+She sobbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the facts.
+Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George. There
+was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules&rsquo;s mind had got
+to be eased as Stella&rsquo;s had been. I couldn&rsquo;t afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says about
+some fellow&rsquo;s face being sicklied o&rsquo;er with the pale cast of care?
+George&rsquo;s was like that. He looked green.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Finished with your uncle?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t any uncle,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There isn&rsquo;t
+any Alfred. And there isn&rsquo;t any money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Explain yourself, old top,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He&rsquo;s been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When the
+time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he went to the
+tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last remnant of the stuff. He
+had to find a way of holding me for a while and postponing the squaring of
+accounts while he got away, and he invented this twin-brother business. He knew
+I should find out sooner or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to
+South America, which he has done. He&rsquo;s on his way now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You let him go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What could I do? I can&rsquo;t afford to make a fuss with that man
+Sturgis around. I can&rsquo;t prove there&rsquo;s no Alfred when my only chance
+of avoiding prison is to be Alfred.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway,&rdquo; I said, to cheer him up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the good of that now? I&rsquo;ve hardly any money and no
+prospects. How can I marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I pondered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It looks to me, old top,&rdquo; I said at last, &ldquo;as if things were
+in a bit of a mess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve guessed it,&rdquo; said poor old George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer
+thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don&rsquo;t you know, if you see what I
+mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time
+Life&rsquo;s waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can&rsquo;t tell
+when you may be going to get it. It&rsquo;s all dashed puzzling. Here was poor
+old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped, getting swatted all over
+the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That&rsquo;s what I asked myself. Just Life,
+don&rsquo;t you know. That&rsquo;s all there was about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was close on six o&rsquo;clock when our third visitor of the day arrived. We
+were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening&mdash;old Marshall,
+Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I&mdash;when he came up. We
+had been talking of George, and old Marshall was suggesting the advisability of
+sending out search-parties. He was worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for
+that matter, were George and I, only not for the same reason.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Marshall?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am Count Fritz von Cöslin,
+equerry to His Serene Highness&rdquo;&mdash;he clicked his heels together and
+saluted&mdash;&ldquo;the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Count,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what ages since we met in Vienna!
+You remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stella, you remember Count Fritz?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Stella shook hands with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how is the poor, dear Prince?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Vanderley.
+&ldquo;What a terrible thing to have happened!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s good,&rdquo; said old Marshall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a spoon only,&rdquo; sighed the Count. &ldquo;Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Who?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Denman Sturgis, at your service.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce you are! What are you doing here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Sturgis,&rdquo; explained the Count, &ldquo;graciously volunteered
+his services&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know. But what&rsquo;s he doing here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have not found him?&rdquo; asked the Count anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t go mixing me up with my brother,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am
+Alfred. You can tell me by my mole.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George didn&rsquo;t offer to console him,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry,&rdquo; said Sturgis. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t escape me.
+I shall find him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young
+man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; shouted George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George sat down suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; he said feebly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis,&rdquo; went on the Count. &ldquo;We leaped
+to the conclusion&mdash;was it not so?&mdash;that the owner of the hat you
+found was also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have
+heard the story from His Serene Highness&rsquo;s own lips. He was passing down
+a dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he had
+been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily. My high-born
+master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he lost consciousness
+he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing the hat you found, running
+swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the assassin in combat, and my high-born
+master remembers no more. His Serene Highness asks repeatedly, &lsquo;Where is
+my brave preserver?&rsquo; His gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young
+man to reward him. Ah, you should be proud of your brother, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; said George limply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He needn&rsquo;t take all that trouble,&rdquo; said a voice from the
+gangway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his head, and
+he was smoking a fat cigar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you where to find George Lattaker!&rdquo; he shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, look at me,&rdquo; he yelled. &ldquo;Look at me. You won&rsquo;t be
+the first this afternoon who&rsquo;s stared at the mysterious stranger who won
+for two hours without a break. I&rsquo;ll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming
+Lattaker. I&rsquo;ll learn you to break a poor man&rsquo;s heart. Mr. Marshall
+and gents, this morning I was on deck, and I over&rsquo;eard &rsquo;im plotting
+to put up a game on you. They&rsquo;d spotted that gent there as a detective,
+and they arranged that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own
+twin-brother. And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them
+his mole and he&rsquo;d swear George hadn&rsquo;t one. Those were his very
+words. That man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he
+can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George got up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t the least desire to deny it, Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Voules, if <i>you</i> please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said George, turning to the Count. &ldquo;The
+fact is, I had rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the conclusion
+that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you are really George Lattaker?&rdquo; asked the Count.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Ere, what does all this mean?&rdquo; demanded Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a swindle!&rdquo; began Voules, when there was a sudden rush
+and the girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old
+Marshall&rsquo;s chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Harold!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I thought you were dead. I thought
+you&rsquo;d shot yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed to
+think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all dashed romantic, don&rsquo;t you know, but there <i>are</i> limits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Voules, you&rsquo;re sacked,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who cares?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Think I was going to stop on now
+I&rsquo;m a gentleman of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a
+month&rsquo;s notice and get your &rsquo;at, and I&rsquo;ll take you to dinner
+at Ciro&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you, Mr. Lattaker,&rdquo; said the Count, &ldquo;may I conduct you
+to the presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;May I have my hat, Mr.
+Sturgis?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There&rsquo;s just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a smoke,
+and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and Stella. They
+seemed to be having an argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure,&rdquo; she was saying, &ldquo;that I believe that a
+man can be so happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you
+put it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Well, as it happens,
+I&rsquo;m feeling just that way now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I coughed and he turned round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, Reggie!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Halloa, George!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Lovely night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beautiful,&rdquo; said Stella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The moon,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ripping,&rdquo; said George.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lovely,&rdquo; said Stella.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And look at the reflection of the stars on the&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George caught my eye. &ldquo;Pop off,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I popped.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD</h2>
+
+<p>
+Have you ever thought about&mdash;and, when I say thought about, I mean really
+carefully considered the question of&mdash;the coolness, the cheek, or, if you
+prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly bursts? <i>I</i> have,
+by Jove! But then I&rsquo;ve had it thrust on my notice, by George, in a way I
+should imagine has happened to pretty few fellows. And the limit was reached by
+that business of the Yeardsley &ldquo;Venus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To make you understand the full what-d&rsquo;you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire family;
+pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at Oxford with me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don&rsquo;t you know. And there was a
+time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just as I was
+beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture catalogues and
+feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played &ldquo;The Wedding
+Glide,&rdquo; I&rsquo;m hanged if she didn&rsquo;t break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley&mdash;Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the club
+rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I got over it,
+and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the book of my life, if you
+know what I mean. It didn&rsquo;t seem likely to me that we should meet again,
+as she and Clarence had settled down in the country somewhere and never came to
+London, and I&rsquo;m bound to own that, by the time I got her letter, the
+wound had pretty well healed, and I was to a certain extent sitting up and
+taking nourishment. In fact, to be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the
+thing had ended as it had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter I&rsquo;m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue sky,
+as it were. It ran like this:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,&mdash;What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old house, with
+a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country. Couldn&rsquo;t you run
+down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be so glad to see you. Bill is
+here, and is most anxious to meet you again. He was speaking of you only this
+morning. <i>Do</i> come. Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&mdash;Yours most sincerely,<br>
+E<small>LIZABETH</small> Y<small>EARDSLEY.</small>
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.S.&mdash;We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.&mdash;Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has ever
+played on.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.S.&mdash;We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says it
+is better than St. Andrews.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;P.P.S.S.S.&mdash;You <i>must</i> come!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a head on,
+and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite easily have blighted
+his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he was
+talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must be something
+special. So I went.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn&rsquo;t come across him for
+some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was glad to see
+me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank goodness you&rsquo;ve come,&rdquo; he said, as we drove off.
+&ldquo;I was just about at my last grip.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble, old scout?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I had the artistic what&rsquo;s-its-name,&rdquo; he went on,
+&ldquo;if the mere mention of pictures didn&rsquo;t give me the pip, I dare say
+it wouldn&rsquo;t be so bad. As it is, it&rsquo;s rotten!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pictures?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like when one
+gives her her head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remembered then&mdash;it hadn&rsquo;t come back to me before&mdash;that most
+of my time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had had to
+follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though pictures are poison
+to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had never struck me that she
+would still be going on in this way after marrying an artist. I should have
+thought that by this time the mere sight of a picture would have fed her up.
+Not so, however, according to old Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They talk pictures at every meal,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I tell you, it
+makes a chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A few days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was that I was to
+come back after the match. But you couldn&rsquo;t get me back with a
+lasso.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there&rsquo;s a most corking
+links near here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean honestly she said that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I did. Was that all she said I said?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, wasn&rsquo;t it enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She didn&rsquo;t happen to mention that I added the words, &lsquo;I
+don&rsquo;t think&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, she forgot to tell me that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the worst course in Great Britain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt rather stunned, don&rsquo;t you know. Whether it&rsquo;s a bad habit to
+have got into or not, I can&rsquo;t say, but I simply can&rsquo;t do without my
+daily allowance of golf when I&rsquo;m not in London.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll have to take it out in billiards,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad the table&rsquo;s good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It depends what you call good. It&rsquo;s half-size, and there&rsquo;s a
+seven-inch cut just out of baulk where Clarence&rsquo;s cue slipped. Elizabeth
+has mended it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it
+doesn&rsquo;t improve the thing as a billiard-table.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she said you said&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Must have been pulling your leg.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well back from
+the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I couldn&rsquo;t help
+feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read about in stories who are
+lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and hear a shriek just as they get
+there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to know that a specially good golf course
+was a safe draw to me. And she had deliberately played on her knowledge. What
+was the game? That was what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck
+me which brought me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and
+was going to have a stab at marrying me off. I&rsquo;ve often heard that young
+married women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence&rsquo;s
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as she had
+done wouldn&rsquo;t be likely to stick at a trifle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bill, old scout,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;there aren&rsquo;t any frightful
+girls or any rot of that sort stopping here, are there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wish there were,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No such luck.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman&rsquo;s figure
+appeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you got him, Bill?&rdquo; she said, which in my present frame of
+mind struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don&rsquo;t you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean me?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same as in the
+old days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that you, Reggie? I&rsquo;m so glad you were able to come. I was
+afraid you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come along
+in and have some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and then been
+introduced to her husband? If so you&rsquo;ll understand how I felt when
+Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you hear about
+the marriage, you say to yourself, &ldquo;I wonder what he&rsquo;s like.&rdquo;
+Then you meet him, and think, &ldquo;There must be some mistake. She
+can&rsquo;t have preferred <i>this</i> to me!&rdquo; That&rsquo;s what I
+thought, when I set eyes on Clarence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His hair
+was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore pince-nez, and he
+had a drooping moustache. I&rsquo;m no Bombardier Wells myself, but in front of
+Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth, mind you, is one of those tall,
+splendid girls who look like princesses. Honestly, I believe women do it out of
+pure cussedness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?&rdquo; said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don&rsquo;t you know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old gentleman came
+in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was an earlier model. I
+took him, correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior. Elizabeth introduced us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father,&rdquo; said Clarence, &ldquo;did you meet a mewing cat outside?
+I feel positive I heard a cat mewing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the father, shaking his head; &ldquo;no mewing
+cat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t bear mewing cats,&rdquo; said Clarence. &ldquo;A mewing
+cat gets on my nerves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A mewing cat is so trying,&rdquo; said Elizabeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>I</i> dislike mewing cats,&rdquo; said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think they had
+covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to pictures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At least,
+they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of picture-robberies
+came up. Somebody mentioned the &ldquo;Monna Lisa,&rdquo; and then I happened
+to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I was coming down in the
+train, about some fellow somewhere having had a valuable painting pinched by
+burglars the night before. It was the first time I had had a chance of breaking
+into the conversation with any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The
+paper was in the pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy
+Palmer&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all shouted &ldquo;What!&rdquo; exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me look! Yes. &lsquo;Late last night burglars entered the residence
+of Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants&mdash;&mdash;&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s near here,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I passed through
+Midford&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,&rdquo; said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only two miles!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It might have been us! It might
+have been the &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;!&rdquo; he cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening&rsquo;s chat had made quite a hit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why I didn&rsquo;t notice it before I don&rsquo;t know, but it was not till
+Elizabeth showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the
+Yeardsley &ldquo;Venus.&rdquo; When she led me up to it, and switched on the
+light, it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without
+noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I was aware
+of its existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley was
+writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were rollicking on
+the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry effects. All, in fact,
+was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when Elizabeth, who had been sitting
+wrapped in thought for a bit, bent towards me and said, &ldquo;Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You know that
+pre-what-d&rsquo;you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What-o?&rdquo; I said nervously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I want to ask a great favour of
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back to me:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the world
+for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There! That&rsquo;s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as a
+sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you&rsquo;d have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that sort of
+thing, what?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mind you, I <i>had</i> said I would do anything in the world for her. I admit
+that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn&rsquo;t appeared on
+the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who may have been a
+perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to her, doesn&rsquo;t feel
+nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction when she has given him
+the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man who reason and instinct both tell
+him is a decided blighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I couldn&rsquo;t think of anything to say but &ldquo;Oh, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know, Reggie,&rdquo; she said suddenly, &ldquo;that only a few
+months ago Clarence was very fond of cats?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh! Well, he still seems&mdash;er&mdash;<i>interested</i> in them,
+what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over
+the&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, that wouldn&rsquo;t help him. He doesn&rsquo;t need to take
+anything. He wants to get rid of something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite follow. Get rid of something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The &lsquo;Venus,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Elizabeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You saw the &lsquo;Venus,&rsquo;&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that I remember.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, come into the dining-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the wall close to the door&mdash;that may have been why I hadn&rsquo;t
+noticed it before; I had sat with my back to it&mdash;was a large oil-painting.
+It was what you&rsquo;d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean
+is&mdash;well, you know what I mean. All I can say is that it&rsquo;s funny I
+<i>hadn&rsquo;t</i> noticed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the &lsquo;Venus&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to a
+meal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know. I don&rsquo;t think it would affect me much.
+I&rsquo;d worry through all right.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you&rsquo;re not an artist,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Clarence
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn&rsquo;t
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old Artistic
+Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It explains everything.
+It&rsquo;s like the Unwritten Law, don&rsquo;t you know, which you plead in
+America if you&rsquo;ve done anything they want to send you to chokey for and
+you don&rsquo;t want to go. What I mean is, if you&rsquo;re absolutely off your
+rocker, but don&rsquo;t find it convenient to be scooped into the luny-bin, you
+simply explain that, when you said you were a teapot, it was just your Artistic
+Temperament, and they apologize and go away. So I stood by to hear just how the
+A.T. had affected Clarence, the Cat&rsquo;s Friend, ready for anything.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and that
+this &ldquo;Venus&rdquo; was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so far,
+what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a professional artist
+and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at the game, saw flaws in the
+&ldquo;Venus.&rdquo; He couldn&rsquo;t stand it at any price. He didn&rsquo;t
+like the drawing. He didn&rsquo;t like the expression of the face. He
+didn&rsquo;t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to look at
+it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything rather than
+give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to store the thing in the
+cellar, and the strain of confronting the picture three times a day had begun
+to tell on him to such an extent that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now you see,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a way,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you think it&rsquo;s
+making rather heavy weather over a trifle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, can&rsquo;t you understand? Look!&rdquo; Her voice dropped as if she
+was in church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley&rsquo;s. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Clarence
+painted that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon, or yell,
+or something. I took a steady look at Clarence&rsquo;s effort. It was another
+Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a dash at
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;&lsquo;Venus&rsquo;?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the evidence, I
+mean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. &lsquo;Jocund Spring,&rsquo;&rdquo; she snapped. She switched off
+the light. &ldquo;I see you don&rsquo;t understand even now. You never had any
+taste about pictures. When we used to go to the galleries together, you would
+far rather have been at your club.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up to me,
+and put her hand on my arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, Reggie. I didn&rsquo;t mean to be cross. Only I do want
+to make you understand that Clarence is <i>suffering</i>.
+Suppose&mdash;suppose&mdash;well, let us take the case of a great musician.
+Suppose a great musician had to sit and listen to a cheap vulgar tune&mdash;the
+same tune&mdash;day after day, day after day, wouldn&rsquo;t you expect his
+nerves to break! Well, it&rsquo;s just like that with Clarence. Now you
+see?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what? Surely I&rsquo;ve put it plainly enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you to steal the &lsquo;Venus.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You want me to&mdash;&mdash;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Steal it. Reggie!&rdquo; Her eyes were shining with excitement.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you see? It&rsquo;s Providence. When I asked you to come
+here, I had just got the idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a
+miracle this robbery of the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away.
+It removes the last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having
+his feelings hurt. Why, it&rsquo;s the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take his
+&lsquo;Venus.&rsquo; It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it
+to-night, Reggie. I&rsquo;ll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas
+out of the frame, and it&rsquo;s done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But one moment,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d be delighted to be of
+any use to you, but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn&rsquo;t it be
+better&mdash;in fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if I&rsquo;m caught?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one
+of the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It sounded simple enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as to the picture itself&mdash;when I&rsquo;ve got it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burn it. I&rsquo;ll see that you have a good fire in your room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; she said; nothing more. Just &ldquo;Reggie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, after all, if you see what I mean&mdash;The days that are no more,
+don&rsquo;t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don&rsquo;t know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped in
+crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces. If
+you&rsquo;re not, you&rsquo;ll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the
+job I&rsquo;d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had
+done when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn&rsquo;t help feeling there was a catch somewhere, and
+I&rsquo;ve never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for one
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be pretty
+sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn&rsquo;t stand it any longer. I lit
+the lantern I had taken from Bill&rsquo;s bicycle, took a grip of my knife, and
+slunk downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the window. I
+had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of local colour to the
+affair, but decided not to on account of the noise. I had put my lantern on the
+table, and was just reaching out for it, when something happened. What it was
+for the moment I couldn&rsquo;t have said. It might have been an explosion of
+some sort or an earthquake. Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on
+the chin. Sparks and things occurred inside my head and the next thing I
+remember is feeling something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a
+voice that sounded like old Bill&rsquo;s say, &ldquo;Feeling better now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill kneeling
+beside me with a soda siphon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What happened?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, old man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t
+a notion it was you. I came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the
+window open and a chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn&rsquo;t stop to make
+inquiries. I just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you
+think you&rsquo;re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was Elizabeth,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Why, you know all about it. She
+said she had told you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie, old man,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never believe what
+they say about repentance again. It&rsquo;s a fool&rsquo;s trick and upsets
+everything. If I hadn&rsquo;t repented, and thought it was rather rough on
+Elizabeth not to do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do
+it after all, you wouldn&rsquo;t have stopped that sleep-producer with your
+chin. I&rsquo;m sorry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me, too,&rdquo; I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it
+was still on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you feeling better now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better than I was. But that&rsquo;s not saying much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let&rsquo;s be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it&rsquo;s on the
+cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heads.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tails it is,&rdquo; he said, uncovering the coin. &ldquo;Up you get.
+I&rsquo;ll hold the light. Don&rsquo;t spike yourself on that sword of
+yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and the thing
+came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old Bill had put the
+lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard, collecting whisky, soda, and
+glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve got a long evening before us,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You
+can&rsquo;t burn a picture of that size in one chunk. You&rsquo;d set the
+chimney on fire. Let&rsquo;s do the thing comfortably. Clarence can&rsquo;t
+grudge us the stuff. We&rsquo;ve done him a bit of good this trip.
+To-morrow&rsquo;ll be the maddest, merriest day of Clarence&rsquo;s glad New
+Year. On we go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our drinks,
+and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and shoving it in the
+fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness of it and the cheerful
+blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good by stealth, I don&rsquo;t know
+when I&rsquo;ve had a jollier time since the days when we used to brew in my
+study at school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and gripped my
+arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard something,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over the
+dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy footsteps,
+by George! And then a chair falling over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s somebody in the dining-room,&rdquo; I whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There&rsquo;s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill&rsquo;s like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn&rsquo;t really
+heard anything after all. I&rsquo;m a peaceful sort of cove, and believe in
+living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however, a visit from
+burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one jump.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bring the poker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the knife. We
+crept downstairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll fling the door open and make a rush,&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Supposing they shoot, old scout?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Burglars never shoot,&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went. And then
+we pulled up sharp, staring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the near end.
+Standing on a chair in front of Clarence&rsquo;s &ldquo;Jocund Spring,&rdquo;
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other, was old
+Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He had made a
+final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he stopped, and he and
+the chair and the candle and the picture came down in a heap together. The
+candle went out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What on earth?&rdquo; said Bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most fearful
+thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly collapsed into a
+chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I could see it was only the
+Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me, it was devilish unpleasant. I
+looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at me. We shut the door quick, and after
+that we didn&rsquo;t know what to do. I saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I
+knew what he was looking for. But we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his
+ideas of first-aid stopped short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and
+presently old Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park. It
+tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down to the same
+gang, Clarence, my boy. I&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among those
+present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clarence?&rdquo; he said hesitatingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s in bed,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In bed! Then he doesn&rsquo;t know? Even now&mdash;Young men, I throw
+myself on your mercy. Don&rsquo;t be hard on me. Listen.&rdquo; He grabbed at
+Bill, who sidestepped. &ldquo;I can explain everything&mdash;everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a gulp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two years
+painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It was part of my
+life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then Clarence married, and
+in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You cannot understand, you two young
+men, what agonies I suffered. The thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how
+Clarence valued the picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him
+for it back. And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening
+I could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from a
+house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never suspect. He
+would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals who stole the Romney.
+Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out. I fought against it, but to
+no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down here to carry out my plan. You
+found me.&rdquo; He grabbed again, at me this time, and got me by the arm. He
+had a grip like a lobster. &ldquo;Young man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you would
+not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this time,
+don&rsquo;t you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him straight
+instead of breaking it by degrees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,&rdquo; I said.
+&ldquo;I quite understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that
+sort of thing. I mean&mdash;what? <i>I</i> know. But I&rsquo;m
+afraid&mdash;Well, look!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there, staring him
+in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling at them in silence.
+Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The gang! The burglars! They <i>have</i> been here, and they have taken
+Clarence&rsquo;s picture!&rdquo; He paused. &ldquo;It might have been mine! My
+Venus!&rdquo; he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know, but
+he had to know the truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m awfully sorry, you know,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But it
+<i>was</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He started, poor old chap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They <i>did</i> take your Venus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I have it here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shook my head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Clarence&rsquo;s &lsquo;Jocund Spring,&rsquo;&rdquo; I
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don&rsquo;t know my own
+picture&mdash;my child&mdash;my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: &lsquo;Matthew Yeardsley.&rsquo; This is <i>my</i>
+picture!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And&mdash;well, by Jove, it <i>was</i>, don&rsquo;t you know!
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled down to
+take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was my fault for
+getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill&rsquo;s fault for
+fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn&rsquo;t be expected to see
+what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive silence for a
+bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; said Bill at last, &ldquo;how exactly do you feel about
+facing Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old scout,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I was thinking much the same
+myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Reggie,&rdquo; said Bill, &ldquo;I happen to know there&rsquo;s a
+milk-train leaving Midford at three-fifteen. It isn&rsquo;t what you&rsquo;d
+call a flier. It gets to London at about half-past nine. Well&mdash;er&mdash;in
+the circumstances, how about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD</h2>
+
+<p>
+Now that it&rsquo;s all over, I may as well admit that there was a time during
+the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought that Jeeves was
+going to let me down. The man had the appearance of being baffled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages for
+pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he&rsquo;s more
+like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who was apt to
+rally round him in times of need&mdash;a guide, don&rsquo;t you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and&mdash;I rather fancy&mdash;friend. I
+rely on him at every turn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn&rsquo;t hesitate.
+Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was in bed,
+restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the dreamless, when the
+door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower ribs and began to shake the
+bedclothes. After blinking a bit and generally pulling myself together, I
+located Rocky, and my first impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from New York;
+and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once that he never got
+up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one. Constitutionally the laziest
+young devil in America, he had hit on a walk in life which enabled him to go
+the limit in that direction. He was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he
+did anything; but most of his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a
+sort of trance. He told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm
+and wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a month he
+would take three days writing a few poems; the other three hundred and
+twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn&rsquo;t know there was enough
+money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but
+it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to young men to lead the strenuous
+life and don&rsquo;t shove in any rhymes, American editors fight for the stuff.
+Rocky showed me one of his things once. It began:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Be!<br>
+Be!<br>
+    The past is dead.<br>
+    To-morrow is not born.<br>
+        Be to-day!<br>
+To-day!<br>
+    Be with every nerve,<br>
+            With every muscle,<br>
+            With every drop of your red blood!<br>
+Be!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of scroll
+round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie, with bulging
+muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said they gave him a hundred
+dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four in the afternoon for over a
+month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he had a
+moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had been named
+Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his position was pretty
+sound. He told me that when he did come into the money he meant to do no work
+at all, except perhaps an occasional poem recommending the young man with life
+opening out before him, with all its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe
+and shove his feet upon the mantelpiece.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read this, Bertie!&rdquo; I could just see that he was waving a letter
+or something equally foul in my face. &ldquo;Wake up and read this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can&rsquo;t read before I&rsquo;ve had my morning tea and a cigarette. I
+groped for the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It&rsquo;s a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He flowed silently out of the room&mdash;he always gives you the impression of
+being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky was surging
+round with his beastly letter again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;What on earth&rsquo;s the
+matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t. I haven&rsquo;t had my tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, listen then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s it from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So what on earth am I to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering over its
+mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read it again, Rocky, old top,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I want Jeeves to
+hear it. Mr. Todd&rsquo;s aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves,
+and we want your advice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause, and
+Rocky started again:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;M<small>Y DEAR</small> R<small>OCKMETTELLER</small>.&mdash;I have been
+thinking things over for a long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I
+have been very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made up my
+mind to do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you make of that, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It becomes as clear as mud!&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Proceed, old scout,&rdquo; I said, champing my bread and butter.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see for
+myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I fear that now it
+will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I am old and worn out. I seem to
+have no strength left in me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sad, Jeeves, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extremely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sad nothing!&rdquo; said Rocky. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sheer laziness. I went
+to see her last Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me
+himself that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she&rsquo;s a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She&rsquo;s
+got a fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though
+it&rsquo;s been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she
+is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather like the chappie whose heart was &lsquo;in the Highlands
+a-chasing of the deer,&rsquo; Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cases are in some respects parallel, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Carry on, Rocky, dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the city
+myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly thought of this
+yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the Sunday paper about a young man
+who had longed all his life for a certain thing and won it in the end only when
+he was too old to enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thing,&rdquo; interpolated Rocky bitterly, &ldquo;that I&rsquo;ve not
+been able to do in ten years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now I have
+never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I have now decided to
+do so&mdash;on one condition. I have written to a firm of lawyers in New York,
+giving them instructions to pay you quite a substantial sum each month. My one
+condition is that you live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always
+wished to do. I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic life of New
+York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant supper parties.<br>
+    &ldquo;Above all, I want you&mdash;indeed, I insist on this&mdash;to write
+me letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all you are
+doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at second-hand
+what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for myself. Remember that I shall
+expect full details, and that no detail is too trivial to interest.&mdash;Your
+affectionate Aunt,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;I<small>SABEL</small> R<small>OCKMETTELLER</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What about it?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. What on earth am I going to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude of the
+chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the right stuff
+had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind it was an occasion
+for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here the man was, looking and
+talking as if Fate had swung on his solar plexus. It amazed me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you bucked?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bucked!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider this
+pretty soft for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to talk of
+New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer chappie. Jimmy
+had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign, and I had popped in at
+the Garden a couple of days before, for half an hour or so, to hear him. He had
+certainly told New York some pretty straight things about itself, having
+apparently taken a dislike to the place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky
+made him look like a publicity agent for the old metrop!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty soft!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;To have to come and live in New
+York! To have to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated
+hole of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to mix
+night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St. Vitus&rsquo;s
+dance, and imagine that they&rsquo;re having a good time because they&rsquo;re
+making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I loathe New York,
+Bertie. I wouldn&rsquo;t come near the place if I hadn&rsquo;t got to see
+editors occasionally. There&rsquo;s a blight on it. It&rsquo;s got moral
+delirium tremens. It&rsquo;s the limit. The very thought of staying more than a
+day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt rather like Lot&rsquo;s friends must have done when they dropped in for
+a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of the Plain.
+I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would kill me to have to live in New York,&rdquo; he went on.
+&ldquo;To have to share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff
+collars and decent clothes all the time! To&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He started.
+&ldquo;Good Lord! I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings.
+What a ghastly notion!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear chap!&rdquo; I said reproachfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue
+by the door. &ldquo;How many suits of evening clothes have I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner
+jackets&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear the
+third. We have also seven white waistcoats.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shirts?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Four dozen, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And white ties?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I turned to Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t do it! I can&rsquo;t do it! I&rsquo;ll be hanged if
+I&rsquo;ll do it! How on earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that
+most days I don&rsquo;t get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and
+then I just put on an old sweater?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his finest
+feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, what are you going to do about it?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want to know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might write and explain to your aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I might&mdash;if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer&rsquo;s in two
+rapid leaps and cut me out of her will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw his point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you suggest, Jeeves?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is obliged
+by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his possession to
+write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters relating to his movements,
+and the only method by which this can be accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to
+his expressed intention of remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce
+some second party to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller
+wishes reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his imagination,
+to base the suggested correspondence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked at me
+in a helpless sort of way. He hasn&rsquo;t been brought up on Jeeves as I have,
+and he isn&rsquo;t on to his curves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+thought at the start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered.
+What&rsquo;s the idea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves. All
+you&rsquo;ve got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you and take
+a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters. That&rsquo;s it,
+isn&rsquo;t it, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky&rsquo;s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man&rsquo;s vast intellect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But who would do it?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It would have to be a pretty
+smart sort of man, a man who would notice things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Let Jeeves do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But would he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would do it, wouldn&rsquo;t you, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost smile. The
+corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and for a moment his eye
+ceased to look like a meditative fish&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York&rsquo;s places of interest on my evening out,
+and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first, Jeeves,
+is Reigelheimer&rsquo;s. It&rsquo;s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will show
+you the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer&rsquo;s. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see?&rdquo; I said to Rocky. &ldquo;Leave it to Jeeves. He
+knows.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It isn&rsquo;t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans happy
+in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of the fact that
+it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything went absolutely right
+from the start.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain, and
+partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights. I saw him
+one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table on the edge of the
+dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a fat cigar and a bottle of
+the best. I&rsquo;d never imagined he could look so nearly human. His face wore
+an expression of austere benevolence, and he was making notes in a small book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond of old
+Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was perfectly contented,
+because he was still able to sit on fences in his pyjamas and watch worms. And,
+as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to death. She was getting Broadway at
+pretty long range, but it seemed to be hitting her just right. I read one of
+her letters to Rocky, and it was full of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But then Rocky&rsquo;s letters, based on Jeeves&rsquo;s notes, were enough to
+buck anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I, loving
+the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired feeling; yet here is
+a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;DEAR FREDDIE,&mdash;Well, here I am in New York. It&rsquo;s not a bad
+place. I&rsquo;m not having a bad time. Everything&rsquo;s pretty all right.
+The cabarets aren&rsquo;t bad. Don&rsquo;t know when I shall be back.
+How&rsquo;s everybody? Cheer-o!&mdash;Yours,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;B<small>ERTIE</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;PS.&mdash;Seen old Ted lately?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn&rsquo;t dragged him in I
+couldn&rsquo;t have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now here&rsquo;s old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;D<small>EAREST AUNT</small> I<small>SABEL</small>,&mdash;How can I ever
+thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to live in this astounding city!
+New York seems more wonderful every day.<br>
+    &ldquo;Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+magnificent!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn&rsquo;t know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other night.
+We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new place on Forty-third
+Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie Cohan looked in about midnight and
+got off a good one about Willie Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute,
+but Doug. Fairbanks did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady
+was there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The show at
+the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.<br>
+    &ldquo;Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the
+Roof&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it&rsquo;s the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it&rsquo;s easier for a chappie
+who&rsquo;s used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a punch
+into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there&rsquo;s no doubt
+that Rocky&rsquo;s correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in and
+congratulated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves, you&rsquo;re a wonder!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn&rsquo;t
+tell you a thing about them, except that I&rsquo;ve had a good time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just a knack, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Mr. Todd&rsquo;s letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all
+right, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Undoubtedly, sir,&rdquo; agreed Jeeves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to say is, I
+was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month after the thing had
+started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old bean, when the door opened and
+the voice of Jeeves burst the silence like a bomb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t that he spoke loudly. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It was what
+he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Rockmetteller!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And in came a large, solid female.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The situation floored me. I&rsquo;m not denying it. Hamlet must have felt much
+as I did when his father&rsquo;s ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I&rsquo;d come
+to look on Rocky&rsquo;s aunt as such a permanency at her own home that it
+didn&rsquo;t seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I stared
+at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an attitude of
+dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should have been rallying
+round the young master, it was now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky&rsquo;s aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I&rsquo;ve ever
+seen, except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as a
+matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if put upon;
+and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly regard herself as put
+upon if she ever found out the game which poor old Rocky had been pulling on
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good afternoon,&rdquo; I managed to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Mr. Cohan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Er&mdash;no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Fred Stone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name&rsquo;s
+Wooster&mdash;Bertie Wooster.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean nothing
+in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t Rockmetteller home?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Where is
+he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn&rsquo;t think of anything to say. I
+couldn&rsquo;t tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak without
+having been spoken to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he did, Jeeves; so he did,&rdquo; I said, looking at my watch.
+&ldquo;Did he say when he would be back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I&rsquo;d forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It made me
+feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later
+on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England, has looked at me in
+exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails to make my spine curl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes, rather!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you need to be,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the way you treat his flat
+as your own!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the power of
+speech. I&rsquo;d been looking on myself in the light of the dashing host, and
+suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn&rsquo;t, mark you, as
+if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered my presence in the
+place as an ordinary social call. She obviously looked on me as a cross between
+a burglar and the plumber&rsquo;s man come to fix the leak in the bathroom. It
+hurt her&mdash;my being there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being about to
+die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea&mdash;the good old stand-by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you care for a cup of tea?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing like a cup after a journey,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Bucks you up!
+Puts a bit of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on,
+don&rsquo;t you know. I&rsquo;ll go and tell Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves&rsquo;s lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn&rsquo;t a care in the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we want some tea.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wanted sympathy, don&rsquo;t you know&mdash;sympathy and kindness. The old
+nerve centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth
+put that into her head?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No doubt because of Mr. Todd&rsquo;s letters, sir,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It was my suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be
+addressed from this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a
+good central residence in the city.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I&rsquo;m someone who hangs about here,
+touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty rotten, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Most disturbing, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And there&rsquo;s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd?
+We&rsquo;ve got to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have
+brought the tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to
+come up by the next train.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn&rsquo;t moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There was no
+doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I suppose
+because I wasn&rsquo;t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is a surprise, what?&rdquo; I said, after about five minutes&rsquo;
+restful silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is a surprise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your coming here, don&rsquo;t you know, and so on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, rather,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Of course! Certainly. What I mean
+is&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad to see
+him. There&rsquo;s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for one when
+one isn&rsquo;t certain of one&rsquo;s lines. With the teapot to fool about
+with I felt happier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tea, tea, tea&mdash;what? What?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It wasn&rsquo;t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her out a
+cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say, young man,&rdquo; she said frostily, &ldquo;that you
+expect me to drink this stuff?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather! Bucks you up, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean by the expression &lsquo;Bucks you up&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand a word you say. You&rsquo;re English,
+aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I admitted it. She didn&rsquo;t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought
+home to me that she didn&rsquo;t like Englishmen, and that if she had had to
+meet an Englishman, I was the one she&rsquo;d have chosen last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conversation languished again after that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can&rsquo;t make a real lively <i>salon</i> with a couple of people, especially
+if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you comfortable at your hotel?&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At which hotel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The hotel you&rsquo;re staying at.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not staying at an hotel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stopping with friends&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am naturally stopping with my nephew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I didn&rsquo;t get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! Here?&rdquo; I gurgled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly! Where else should I go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn&rsquo;t
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn&rsquo;t explain that this wasn&rsquo;t
+Rocky&rsquo;s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in the
+soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock and produce
+some results when she spoke again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you kindly tell my nephew&rsquo;s man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your nephew&rsquo;s man-servant?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish to be
+alone with me when he returns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for me. I
+crept into Jeeves&rsquo;s den.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves!&rdquo; I whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks you&rsquo;re Mr. Todd&rsquo;s man. She thinks the whole place
+is his, and everything in it. I don&rsquo;t see what you&rsquo;re to do, except
+stay on and keep it up. We can&rsquo;t say anything or she&rsquo;ll get on to
+the whole thing, and I don&rsquo;t want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way,
+Jeeves, she wants you to prepare her bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked wounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is hardly my place, sir&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know&mdash;I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come
+to that, it&rsquo;s hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good Lord! I hadn&rsquo;t thought of that. Can you put a few things in a
+bag when she isn&rsquo;t looking, and sneak them down to me at the St.
+Aurea?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will endeavour to do so, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s anything more, is there? Tell
+Mr. Todd where I am when he gets here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad. The whole
+thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive chappies out of
+the old homestead into the snow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, Jeeves,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And I staggered out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher Johnnies who
+insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he has a bit of trouble.
+All that stuff about being refined by suffering, you know. Suffering does give
+a chap a sort of broader and more sympathetic outlook. It helps you to
+understand other people&rsquo;s misfortunes if you&rsquo;ve been through the
+same thing yourself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie
+myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of
+chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them.
+I&rsquo;d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by
+Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of
+fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven&rsquo;t got
+anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn
+thought, don&rsquo;t you know. I mean to say, ever since then I&rsquo;ve been
+able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn&rsquo;t forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I&rsquo;m not sure this
+didn&rsquo;t make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like
+what somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but nothing
+seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn&rsquo;t the heart to go on to
+supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the hotel smoking-room
+and went straight up to bed. I don&rsquo;t know when I&rsquo;ve felt so rotten.
+Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as if there had been a
+death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I should have talked in a
+whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang I answered in such a sad, hushed
+voice that the fellow at the other end of the wire said &ldquo;Halloa!&rdquo;
+five times, thinking he hadn&rsquo;t got me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I&rsquo;m having a time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you speaking from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Midnight Revels. We&rsquo;ve been here an hour, and I think
+we&rsquo;re a fixture for the night. I&rsquo;ve told Aunt Isabel I&rsquo;ve
+gone out to call up a friend to join us. She&rsquo;s glued to a chair, with
+this-is-the-life written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She
+loves it, and I&rsquo;m nearly crazy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me all, old top,&rdquo; I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little more of this,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I shall sneak quietly
+off to the river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It&rsquo;s simply infernal! I was just
+snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when about a million
+yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There are two orchestras here,
+each trying to see if it can&rsquo;t play louder than the other. I&rsquo;m a
+mental and physical wreck. When your telegram arrived I was just lying down for
+a quiet pipe, with a sense of absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get
+dressed and sprint two miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me
+heart-failure; and on top of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to
+tell Aunt Isabel. And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening
+clothes of yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn&rsquo;t struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll ruin them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. &ldquo;I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they&rsquo;ve given me a bad enough time.
+They&rsquo;re about three sizes too small, and something&rsquo;s apt to give at
+any moment. I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I
+haven&rsquo;t breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to
+get out and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure Hades! Aunt
+Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I dance when I don&rsquo;t
+know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could I, even if I knew every girl
+in the place? It&rsquo;s taking big chances even to move in these trousers. I
+had to tell her I&rsquo;ve hurt my ankle. She keeps asking me when Cohan and
+Stone are going to turn up; and it&rsquo;s simply a question of time before she
+discovers that Stone is sitting two tables away. Something&rsquo;s got to be
+done, Bertie! You&rsquo;ve got to think up some way of getting me out of this
+mess. It was you who got me into it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me! What do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Jeeves, then. It&rsquo;s all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that did the
+mischief. I made them too good! My aunt&rsquo;s just been telling me about it.
+She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where she was, and then my
+letters began to arrive, describing the joys of New York; and they stimulated
+her to such an extent that she pulled herself together and made the trip. She
+seems to think she&rsquo;s had some miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I
+can&rsquo;t stand it, Bertie! It&rsquo;s got to end!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t Jeeves think of anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. He just hangs round saying: &lsquo;Most disturbing, sir!&rsquo; A
+fat lot of help that is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, old lad,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;after all, it&rsquo;s far worse for
+me than it is for you. You&rsquo;ve got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And
+you&rsquo;re saving a lot of money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Saving money? What do you mean&mdash;saving money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she&rsquo;s
+paying all the expenses now, isn&rsquo;t she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly she is; but she&rsquo;s stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she&rsquo;s in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it&rsquo;s
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I&rsquo;ve
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it&rsquo;s got a silver
+lining it&rsquo;s some little dissembler!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Rocky, old top, it&rsquo;s too bally awful! You&rsquo;ve no notion
+of what I&rsquo;m going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must
+get back to the flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t come near the flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s my own flat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help that. Aunt Isabel doesn&rsquo;t like you. She asked
+me what you did for a living. And when I told her you didn&rsquo;t do anything
+she said she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget it. Now I
+must be going back, or she&rsquo;ll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good morning, sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have brought a few more of
+your personal belongings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is a
+remarkably alert lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, Jeeves, say what you like&mdash;this is a bit thick,
+isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour to add
+the brown lounge with the faint green twill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It can&rsquo;t go on&mdash;this sort of thing&mdash;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must hope for the best, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you think of anything to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts&mdash;the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve&mdash;in the first long drawer, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean to say you can&rsquo;t think of anything,
+Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the tan
+socks in the upper drawer on the left.&rdquo; He strapped the suit-case and put
+it on a chair. &ldquo;A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You understate it, Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine who
+resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are much alike.
+My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great city. It is a passion
+with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever the family take their eyes off
+her she escapes from the house and spends the day riding about in cabs. On
+several occasions she has broken into the children&rsquo;s savings bank to
+secure the means to enable her to gratify this desire.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love to have these little chats with you about your female relatives,
+Jeeves,&rdquo; I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me down, and I
+was fed up with him. &ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t see what all this has got to do
+with my trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I should
+recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+I&rsquo;ve often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they&rsquo;ve been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and sort of
+taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer, and Nature,
+adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There&rsquo;s a lot in it. I know,
+because in my own case, after a day or two of what you might call prostration,
+I began to recover. The frightful loss of Jeeves made any thought of pleasure
+more or less a mockery, but at least I found that I was able to have a dash at
+enjoying life again. What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going
+round the cabarets once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New York&rsquo;s a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn&rsquo;t long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky&rsquo;s. I saw him once at Peale&rsquo;s, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn&rsquo;t anybody with him either time except the
+aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the ideal life, it
+wasn&rsquo;t difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to see that beneath
+the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled for the fellow. At least,
+what there was of it that wasn&rsquo;t bleeding for myself bled for him. He had
+the air of one who was about to crack under the strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took it that
+she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to surge round, and
+what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless spirits Rocky used to mix
+with in his letters. I didn&rsquo;t blame her. I had only read a couple of his
+letters, but they certainly gave the impression that poor old Rocky was by way
+of being the hub of New York night life, and that, if by any chance he failed
+to show up at a cabaret, the management said: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the
+use?&rdquo; and put up the shutters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next two nights I didn&rsquo;t come across them, but the night after that I
+was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on the
+shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort of mixed
+expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the chappie had
+contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without disaster was a
+mystery to me. He confided later that early in the proceedings he had slit the
+waistcoat up the back and that that had helped a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his aunt for
+the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in again. She was at a
+table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were something the management
+ought to be complained to about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bertie, old scout,&rdquo; said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+&ldquo;we&rsquo;ve always been pals, haven&rsquo;t we? I mean, you know
+I&rsquo;d do you a good turn if you asked me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old lad,&rdquo; I said. The man had moved me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake, come over and sit at our table for the
+rest of the evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear chap,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;you know I&rsquo;d do anything in
+reason; but&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must come, Bertie. You&rsquo;ve got to. Something&rsquo;s got to be
+done to divert her mind. She&rsquo;s brooding about something. She&rsquo;s been
+like that for the last two days. I think she&rsquo;s beginning to suspect. She
+can&rsquo;t understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints.
+A few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know fairly
+well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt Isabel as David
+Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect has worn off now, and
+she&rsquo;s beginning to wonder again. Something&rsquo;s got to be done, or she
+will find out everything, and if she does I&rsquo;d take a nickel for my chance
+of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the love of Mike, come across to
+our table and help things along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was sitting
+bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had lost a bit of the
+zest with which she had started out to explore Broadway. She looked as if she
+had been thinking a good deal about rather unpleasant things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take a seat, Bertie. What&rsquo;ll you have?&rdquo; said Rocky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling
+parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it
+after all. After we had had an hour of this wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said
+she wanted to go home. In the light of what Rocky had been telling me, this
+struck me as sinister. I had gathered that at the beginning of her visit she
+had had to be dragged home with ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come along, won&rsquo;t you, Bertie, and have a drink at
+the flat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a feeling that this wasn&rsquo;t in the contract, but there wasn&rsquo;t
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with the
+woman, so I went along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the feeling
+began to grow that something was about to break loose. A massive silence
+prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and, though Rocky, balancing
+himself on the little seat in front, did his best to supply dialogue, we
+weren&rsquo;t a chatty party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his lair, and I
+wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something told me that I was
+about to need him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the decanter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say when, Bertie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I caught Rocky&rsquo;s eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave it there, Rockmetteller!&rdquo; said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left
+it there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The time has come to speak,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I cannot stand idly
+by and see a young man going to perdition!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the whisky
+had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; he said, blinking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aunt proceeded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The fault,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;was mine. I had not then seen the
+light. But now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I
+shudder at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a look of
+relief came into the poor chappie&rsquo;s face. I understood his feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing Mr. Mundy
+speak on the subject of New York.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jimmy Mundy!&rdquo; I cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and you
+suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to understand more
+or less what had happened. I&rsquo;d seen it happen before. I remember, back in
+England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off to a meeting on his evening
+out and came back and denounced me in front of a crowd of chappies I was giving
+a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; Jimmy Mundy!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am surprised at a man of
+your stamp having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken,
+dancing men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they
+would have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it&mdash;in his picturesque
+phrase&mdash;to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How often in
+this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco; so
+you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked your
+man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little intelligence. He
+seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he did. He took me to what I
+subsequently learned was Madison Square Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his
+meetings. He escorted me to a seat and then left me. And it was not till the
+meeting had begun that I discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat
+was in the middle of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great
+many people, so I remained.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gulped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the sins of the
+people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I feared he would do
+himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in a somewhat odd manner, but
+every word carried conviction. He showed me New York in its true colours. He
+showed me the vanity and wickedness of sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating
+lobster when decent people should be in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more sin in
+ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient revels of
+Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed right at where I
+was sitting and shouted, &lsquo;This means you!&rsquo; I could have sunk
+through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you must have noticed
+the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen that I was no longer the
+careless, thoughtless person who had urged you to dance in those places of
+wickedness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Y-yes,&rdquo; he stammered; &ldquo;I&mdash;I thought something was
+wrong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup. You
+have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find that you can
+do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour and fascination of
+this dreadful city. Won&rsquo;t you, for my sake, try, Rockmetteller?
+Won&rsquo;t you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the struggle? Little
+by little, if you use your will&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I can&rsquo;t help thinking it must have been that word &ldquo;will&rdquo; that
+roused dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him the
+realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being cut out of
+Aunt Isabel&rsquo;s. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let go of the
+table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to live in the country?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rockmetteller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there can
+you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will you&mdash;for
+my sake?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement from
+that table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;Jeeves,&rdquo; I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat,
+lying in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour before
+he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was the curse of;
+so we were alone at last. &ldquo;Jeeves, there&rsquo;s no place like
+home&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very true, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lit another cigarette.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jeeves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I was
+thinking of my aunt, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your aunt? The hansom cab one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always found
+that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her mind from
+hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might prove efficacious
+in the case of Miss Rockmetteller.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was stunned by the man&rsquo;s resource.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s brain,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;pure brain! What do you do to
+get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do
+you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well, then, it&rsquo;s just a gift, I take it; and if you
+aren&rsquo;t born that way there&rsquo;s no use worrying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Precisely, sir,&rdquo; said Jeeves. &ldquo;If I might make the
+suggestion, sir, I should not continue to wear your present tie. The green
+shade gives you a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue
+with the red domino pattern instead, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All right, Jeeves.&rdquo; I said humbly. &ldquo;You know!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #8164 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8164)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #8164]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2003]
+Last updated: August 30, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY MAN JEEVES
+
+
+
+
+BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable.
+Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's
+like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements
+at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know
+the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train
+for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to
+think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're
+right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of
+omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+"Jeeves," I said that evening. "I'm getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng's."
+
+"Injudicious, sir," he said firmly. "It will not become you."
+
+"What absolute rot! It's the soundest thing I've struck for years."
+
+"Unsuitable for you, sir."
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life's mysteries, and
+that's all there is to it.
+
+But it isn't only that Jeeves's judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that's really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the "Lincolnshire."
+I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, for I'm fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, "if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the 'Lincolnshire.'"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'd rather not, sir."
+
+"But it's the straight goods. I'm going to put my shirt on him."
+
+"I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after."
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+"After this," I said, "not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment."
+
+"Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction."
+
+And he has, by Jove! I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don't you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I'm game to advise any one about anything. And that's why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves," I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don't know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I'm
+bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn't long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square--artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn't painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting--I've looked into the
+thing a bit--is that you can't start painting portraits till people
+come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until
+you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture
+for the comic papers--he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got
+a good idea--and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the
+advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived
+from biting the ear of a rich uncle--one Alexander Worple, who was in
+the jute business. I'm a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it's
+apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had
+made quite an indecently large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
+American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
+he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
+gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
+him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked
+with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
+these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
+time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fianc�e, Miss
+Singer," the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, "Corky, how about your uncle?"
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can't think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him."
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn't going to hurt me." She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, "There, there,
+little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked," I said
+to Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it.
+That's the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it."
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along----"
+
+"But how can I work it that way?"
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+"There's only one thing to do," I said.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves."
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+"Jeeves, we want your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I boiled down Corky's painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+"So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, try to think of something."
+
+"I have thought of something already, sir."
+
+"You have!"
+
+"The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay."
+
+"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it's going to cost a bit."
+
+Naturally the poor chap's face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl's melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+"You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky," I said. "Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves."
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple's
+attachment to ornithology."
+
+"How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?"
+
+"It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned."
+
+"Oh! Well?"
+
+"Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled--let
+us say--_The Children's Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it
+to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense,
+sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to
+eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple's own larger treatise on the
+same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy
+to Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable."
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn't let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves's
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+"But I'm sure I couldn't write a book about anything. I can't even
+write good letters."
+
+"Muriel's talents," said Corky, with a little cough "lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn't mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It's absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander's natural tendency
+to kick like a steer."
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha's attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don't know why it
+is--one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose--but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don't seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+"I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady's name should
+appear on the title page."
+
+"That's true," said Corky. "Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I'll get after him right away."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Will that be all, sir?" said Jeeves. "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky's place when the first copies of _The
+Children's Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was
+there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang
+at the door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl's name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+"Often of a spring morning," it said at the top of page twenty-one, "as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple's wonderful
+book--_American Birds_."
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed
+cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap
+who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze.
+I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can't call a chap the
+world's greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a
+certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+"It's a cert!" I said.
+
+"An absolute cinch!" said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn't known Mr.
+Worple's handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn't for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don't feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+"Well, well, well, what?" I said.
+
+"Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?"
+
+"Corky around?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You're waiting for Corky, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't understand. No, I'm not waiting for him."
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a
+kind of thingummy, you know.
+
+"I say, you haven't had a row with Corky, have you?"
+
+"A row?"
+
+"A spat, don't you know--little misunderstanding--faults on both
+sides--er--and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Why, whatever makes you think that?"
+
+"Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is--I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre."
+
+"I've left the stage now."
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+"Why, of course, I see now! You're married!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness."
+
+"Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander," she said, looking past me, "this is
+a friend of mine--Mr. Wooster."
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+"I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce's, Alexander."
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+"So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster," I heard him say. "I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?"
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I've a bit of
+news for you."
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+"Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You'll need it."
+
+"Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right. Please yourself. But you're going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle's esteem by
+writing the book on birds?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, she's slid. She's married the uncle."
+
+He took it without blinking. You can't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"That was always a development to be feared, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you were expecting it?"
+
+"It crossed my mind as a possibility."
+
+"Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!"
+
+"I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir."
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn't my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn't be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I'm bound to admit that I didn't relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+"Oh, ah!" I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie. Don't go. We're just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon," he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+"At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn't as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+"It's my uncle's idea," he said. "Muriel doesn't know about it yet. The
+portrait's to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here's the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can't
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid's vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: 'Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.'"
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn't
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie's sorrow. Besides, I'm
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the 'phone.
+
+"Bertie."
+
+"Halloa?"
+
+"Are you doing anything this afternoon?"
+
+"Nothing special."
+
+"You couldn't come down here, could you?"
+
+"What's the trouble? Anything up?"
+
+"I've finished the portrait."
+
+"Good boy! Stout work!"
+
+"Yes." His voice sounded rather doubtful. "The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn't look quite right to me. There's something about it--My uncle's
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and--I don't know why it is, but
+I kind of feel I'd like your moral support!"
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+"You think he'll cut up rough?"
+
+"He may."
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+"I'll come," I said.
+
+"Good!"
+
+"But only if I may bring Jeeves!"
+
+"Why Jeeves? What's Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led----"
+
+"Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves's support, you're mistaken. I'd sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+That's the sort of chap he is. You can't rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+"Stand right where you are, Bertie," he said, without moving. "Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?"
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but--but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I
+remember rightly?"
+
+"As ugly as that?"
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+"You're right quite, Bertie. Something's gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I've worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull--painting the soul of
+the sitter. I've got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child's soul on canvas."
+
+"But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don't see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?"
+
+"I doubt it, sir."
+
+"It--it sorts of leers at you, doesn't it?"
+
+"You've noticed that, too?" said Corky.
+
+"I don't see how one could help noticing."
+
+"All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated."
+
+"Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don't
+you think so, Jeeves?"
+
+"He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir."
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn't
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn't
+notice him.
+
+"Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it--really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let's have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let's----"
+
+And then he got it--suddenly, when he wasn't set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+"Oosh!" he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I've ever run up against.
+
+"Is this a practical joke?" he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+"You want to stand a bit farther away from it," I said.
+
+"You're perfectly right!" he snorted. "I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can't see the thing with a telescope!" He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. "And this--this--is what you have been wasting your time and
+my money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn't let you paint a
+house of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a
+competent worker, and this--this--this extract from a comic coloured
+supplement is the result!" He swung towards the door, lashing his tail
+and growling to himself. "This ends it! If you wish to continue this
+foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for
+idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report
+at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you
+should have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent--not another
+cent--not another--Boosh!"
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+"Corky, old top!" I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+"Well, that finishes it!" he muttered brokenly.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do? What can I do? I can't stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday."
+
+I couldn't think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don't know when I've been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who's just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir!"
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+"I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted."
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects
+a parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he
+did not despair. He put it on the market again under the name of
+Hair-o, guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months.
+It was advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is always
+a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In
+the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a
+coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran's portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr.
+Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been
+for the humorous. There is something about this picture--something bold
+and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular."
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+"Corky, old man!" I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+"He's right! The man's absolutely right! Jeeves, you're a life-saver!
+You've hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I'll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+_Sunday Star_. He'll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He'll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I've got a gold-mine.
+Where's my hat? I've got an income for life! Where's that confounded
+hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!"
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran--for a title of the
+series which you have in mind--'The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.'"
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. "I'm an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest
+before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the
+swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for
+instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the
+eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the
+neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?"
+
+"I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting."
+
+"They have made a big hit, you know."
+
+"I anticipated it, sir."
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+"You know, Jeeves, you're a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things."
+
+"I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir."
+
+"No, I think I'll wear the blue with the faint red stripe."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"But I rather fancy myself in it."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"Oh, all right, have it your own way."
+
+"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+Of course, I know it's as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You've got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's
+Shakespeare--or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad--who says that
+it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and
+more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up
+behind him with a bit of lead piping. There's no doubt the man's right.
+It's absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves--absolutely asserted myself, don't you
+know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming
+a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn't so much
+mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because, Jeeves's
+judgment about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when
+he wouldn't let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like
+a couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in
+the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who
+was who. It's a long story, and I haven't time to tell you now, but
+the point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre--as worn by John
+Drew--when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman--as worn by
+another famous actor chappie--and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that's how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+"What ho without there!"
+
+"Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room."
+
+"Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man," I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. "You know perfectly well
+there's no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it's barely ten o'clock yet?"
+
+"I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning."
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+"Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?"
+
+"Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship's son."
+
+"Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I'll be dressing."
+
+"Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir."
+
+"Then lead me to it."
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn't till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+"I've placed her, Jeeves. She's a pal of my Aunt Agatha."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left
+London. A very vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on
+social conditions in India when she came back from the Durbar."
+
+"Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!"
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+"What's wrong with this tie? I've seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Too ornate, sir."
+
+"Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more."
+
+"Unsuitable, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!" I said. "What?"
+
+"Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster."
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet
+from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as
+if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing
+arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging
+eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about
+fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb
+a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and
+had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say
+how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would
+wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren't
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn't appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you," I said. "So you've popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?"
+
+"About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you."
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you'll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn't dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn't want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she's really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+"Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us."
+
+"Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!"
+
+"Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while."
+
+I didn't get this for a moment.
+
+"Put him up? For my clubs?"
+
+"No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren't you, Motty
+darling?"
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+"Yes, mother," he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+"I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away."
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn't seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don't
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn't on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie's will-power.
+
+"I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write
+a companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_
+after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with
+me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall
+have to pick him up on my return."
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+"It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble." She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn't there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+"He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented." She got up. "Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don't know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon."
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+"Jeeves! What about it?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What's to be done? You heard it all, didn't you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here."
+
+"Pill, sir?"
+
+"The excrescence."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir?"
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn't like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+"Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves," I said
+coldly.
+
+"Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir."
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn't any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn't like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn't like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn't want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty's luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty's existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn't
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie's manner that he was still upset.
+
+"Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?" I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+"No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned."
+
+"Not returned? What do you mean?"
+
+"His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again."
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+"Better go and see what that is, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+"If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in."
+
+"Carry him in?"
+
+"His lordship is lying on the mat, sir."
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+"He's had some sort of dashed fit," I said. I took another look.
+"Jeeves! Someone's been feeding him meat!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"He's a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!"
+
+"I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship's legs, while I----"
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! You don't think--he can't be----"
+
+"I am inclined to think so, sir."
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn't
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+"You never can tell, Jeeves!"
+
+"Very seldom, sir."
+
+"Remove the eye of authority and where are you?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?"
+
+"It would seem so, sir."
+
+"Well, we had better bring him in, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty's room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+"What ho!" I said.
+
+"What ho!" said Motty.
+
+"What ho! What ho!"
+
+"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+"How are you feeling this morning?" I asked.
+
+"Topping!" replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. "I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours--Jeeves, you know--is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!"
+
+I couldn't believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+"You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn't you?" I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn't have it, at any price.
+
+"No!" he replied firmly. "I didn't do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what's more, I'm
+going to do it again! I'm going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top," he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, "tap me on
+the shoulder and say, 'Tut! Tut!' and I'll apologize and remedy the
+defect."
+
+"But I say, you know, what about me?"
+
+"What about you?"
+
+"Well, I'm so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I'm apt to get in
+the soup somewhat."
+
+"I can't help your troubles," said Motty firmly. "Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I've had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What's the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+"I know just how you feel, old dear," said Motty consolingly. "And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I've been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We're only young once. Why interfere with
+life's morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!"
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"All my bally life, dear boy," Motty went on, "I've been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you've
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don't know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I've got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I'm going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don't you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I'm a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_
+for the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie
+peering out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn't help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn't wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn't been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty's rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn't get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn't
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "this is getting a bit thick!"
+
+"Sir?" Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+"You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, I shall get blamed, don't you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn't unbend.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "haven't you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don't you know. It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn't the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.--artists and writers and what-not, who
+frolicked considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk.
+That was all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The
+neighbours can't get to sleep unless there's someone dancing Hawaiian
+dances over their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere
+wasn't right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a
+collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song
+when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked
+peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was
+extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of
+soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I'd chosen because there didn't seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Jeeves! There's something in there that grabs you by the leg!"
+
+"That would be Rollo, sir."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down."
+
+"Who the deuce is Rollo?"
+
+"His lordship's bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light."
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions' den, without
+a quiver. What's more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn't have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life--to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+"Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watchdog."
+
+"I don't want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well, what am I to do?"
+
+"No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."
+
+"What do you mean--my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right." I thought for a bit. "Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I'm going away--to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country."
+
+"Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I don't know when I shall be back. Forward my letters."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can't
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+"Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"
+
+"The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."
+
+I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+"Ripping!" I said. "Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you expect him back to dinner?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In prison, sir."
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That's how I felt then.
+
+"In prison!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You don't mean--in prison?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+"Why?" I said.
+
+"He assaulted a constable, sir."
+
+"Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I digested this.
+
+"But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?"
+
+"I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir."
+
+"But she'll come back and want to know where he is."
+
+"I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship's bit of time will have run out
+by then."
+
+"But supposing it hasn't?"
+
+"In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little."
+
+"How?"
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston."
+
+"Why Boston?"
+
+"Very interesting and respectable centre, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, I believe you've hit it."
+
+"I fancy so, sir."
+
+"Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn't turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back."
+
+"Exactly, sir."
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn't have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says--one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I'd almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn't anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn't
+been expecting her for days. I'd forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn't uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "So you've got back, what?"
+
+"I have got back."
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that
+I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"
+
+"I have not yet breakfasted."
+
+"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+"I called on you last night," she said, "but you were out."
+
+"Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?"
+
+"Extremely, thank you."
+
+"See everything? Niag'ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?"
+
+"I saw a great deal."
+
+There was another slightly _frapp�_ silence. Jeeves floated
+silently into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+"I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+"Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly."
+
+"You were his constant companion, then?"
+
+"Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don't you
+know. We'd take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston."
+
+"Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?"
+
+"Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn't know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe--I mean,
+don't you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn't get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston."
+
+"You're sure he went to Boston?"
+
+"Oh, absolutely." I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: "Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn't
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston."
+
+"Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell's Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?"
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn't have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+"So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!"
+
+I hadn't any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+"You deliberately----"
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship."
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+"I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship--was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship's movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him."
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand."
+
+"What!" Lady Malvern goggled at him. "Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?"
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship's
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship's instructions and collect material for your ladyship's
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help."
+
+"Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!" I said.
+
+"The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country--from within--occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him."
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+"Surely, your ladyship," said Jeeves, "it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship's character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?"
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+"Mr. Wooster," she said, "I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit."
+
+"Absolutely!" I said.
+
+"Your breakfast is ready, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "you are certainly a life-saver!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn't lured that
+blighter into riotous living."
+
+"I fancy you are right, sir."
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don't you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+"Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"That pink tie!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Burn it!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"And, Jeeves!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!"
+
+"Thank you very much, sir."
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "it isn't enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?"
+
+"Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion--fifty dollars."
+
+"Fifty dollars?"
+
+"It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship."
+
+"You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it."
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+"Take this, Jeeves," I said; "fifty isn't enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you're--well, you absolutely stand alone!"
+
+"I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I've sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I've wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It's not so bad
+now I'm in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who's
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what's more, he can always be counted on to extend himself
+on behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance,
+of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out."
+
+"Oh?" I said.
+
+"Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated."
+
+"What, pipped?"
+
+"He gave that impression, sir."
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn't apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided--rightly or wrongly--to grow a moustache and this
+had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price,
+and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval
+till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while
+there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the
+time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+"He said that he would call again later, sir."
+
+"Something must be up, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+"I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth's uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir."
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky's uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one's pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn't all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily
+gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though
+we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I really knew about him
+was that he was generally hard up, and had an uncle who relieved the
+strain a bit from time to time by sending him monthly remittances.
+
+"If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle," I said, "why hasn't he a title?
+Why isn't he Lord What-Not?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace's late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards."
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+"Is Mr. Bickersteth's father dead, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Leave any money?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky's people hadn't left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one's ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned," I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+"Halloa, Bicky!" I said. "Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What's the
+trouble, Bicky?"
+
+"I'm in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice."
+
+"Say on, old lad!"
+
+"My uncle's turning up to-morrow, Bertie."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+"The Duke of Chiswick, you know."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+"Jeeves seems to know everything."
+
+"Rather rummily, that's exactly what I was thinking just now myself."
+
+"Well, I wish," said Bicky gloomily, "that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I'm in."
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves," I said, "and wants you
+to rally round."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+"Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that."
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don't you, Jeeves?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Eh!" said Bicky, rattled.
+
+"I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?"
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"
+
+"I chanced to meet his grace's butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+"Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don't you know, I had to have that
+remittance."
+
+"I get you absolutely, dear boy."
+
+"Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I've been ever since. He thinks I'm
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don't you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?"
+
+"You see," said Bicky, "I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me--to save hotel bills, I suppose. I've always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can't have him to stay at my boarding-house."
+
+"Thought of anything, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+"To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?"
+
+"I'll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man."
+
+"Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth----"
+
+"No, by Jove!" said Bicky firmly. "I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I'm not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it's my boast
+that I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of
+course."
+
+"I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth's employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth's guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir."
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+"I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace
+on board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+"How does he do it, Bertie?" he said. "I'll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it's something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn't much
+after nine by the time I'd dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he'd got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+"The duke has arrived, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"That'll be him at the door now."
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. "Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name's Wooster, don't you know. Great pal of
+Bicky's, and all that sort of thing. I'm staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea."
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+"Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"It must be terribly expensive."
+
+"Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know."
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+"A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!" He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. "Have you any idea how
+much my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"About two hundred dollars a month, I believe."
+
+"What! Forty pounds a month!"
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.
+
+"I suppose it seems rummy to you," I said, "but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn't have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don't you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it's quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!"
+
+"I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew's business, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"Oh, just business, don't you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know." I slid for the door.
+"Awfully sorry to leave you, but I've got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere."
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?"
+
+"He's upstairs now, having some tea."
+
+"What does he think of it all?"
+
+"He's absolutely rattled."
+
+"Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later."
+
+"Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy."
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+"Where's everybody, Jeeves?" I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. "Gone out?"
+
+"His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant's Tomb."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going--what?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans."
+
+"Not altogether, sir."
+
+"What's his trouble now?"
+
+"The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir."
+
+"Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth's monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance."
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful."
+
+"Somewhat disturbing, sir."
+
+"I never expected anything like this!"
+
+"I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir."
+
+"I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir."
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+"We must do something, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Can you think of anything?"
+
+"Not at the moment, sir."
+
+"There must be something we can do."
+
+"It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir--as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before--the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there
+is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion--he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title--when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's
+difficulty, sir."
+
+"Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!"
+
+"I will spare no pains, sir."
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call "some blunt instrument."
+
+"This is a bit thick, old thing--what!" I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn't anything in it.
+
+"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
+
+"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars
+and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen--call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every
+day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep
+of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every
+seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs.
+Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
+more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep
+in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd
+make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get
+quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair
+at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no
+good," he said, "because I haven't the cash."
+
+"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
+
+"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
+
+That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend
+money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+"Well, there's only one hope, then."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I've bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jeeves!"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?"
+
+"Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace's
+potentialities as a source of revenue."
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+"I do not allude, sir," explained Jeeves, "to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present--if I may say
+so--useless property, which is capable of being developed."
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I'm bound to say I didn't
+get it myself.
+
+"Couldn't you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!"
+
+"In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee--let us say two
+dollars or three--for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace."
+
+Bicky didn't seem to think much of it.
+
+"Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?"
+
+"I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours."
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+"If you think it could be done----"
+
+"I feel convinced of it, sir."
+
+"What do you think, Bertie?"
+
+"I'm for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir."
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market
+opened quietly" with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You'd hardly believe how difficult it was to interest
+the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the
+week the only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper
+down in Bicky's part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in
+sliced ham instead of cash that didn't help much. There was a gleam of
+light when the brother of Bicky's pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money
+down, for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through,
+owing to its turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to
+kick the old boy instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me
+the deuce of a time to persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things
+take their course. He seemed to regard the pawnbroker's brother rather as
+a sportsman and benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I'm inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn't been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don't think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+"Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?"
+
+"It's all off. We've decided to chuck it."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"It won't work. We can't get anybody to come."
+
+"I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir."
+
+"Do you mean to say you've managed to get anybody?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir."
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+"Birdsburg?"
+
+"Birdsburg, Missouri, sir."
+
+"How did you get them?"
+
+"I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir--a large blue button with the words 'Boost for
+Birdsburg' upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman's evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name if
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon."
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+"Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?"
+
+"I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party."
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+"Payable in advance?"
+
+"No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful."
+
+"Well, any way, when we get it I'll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky'll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?"
+
+"I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright."
+
+"All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Right-o!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+"Uncle," he said, "are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I've asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don't you
+know."
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+"There will be no reporters among them?"
+
+"Reporters? Rather not! Why?"
+
+"I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again."
+
+"That'll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won't be a newspaper-man
+in the place."
+
+"In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends."
+
+"You'll shake hands with them and so forth?"
+
+"I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse."
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town's new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke's society by Jeeves's stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss's eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction--all except one chappie, who seemed to be
+brooding about something--and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+"What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?" asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+"I have never been to Birdsburg."
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+"You should pay it a visit," he said. "The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!"
+
+"Boost for Birdsburg!" said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+"Say!"
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+"As a matter of business," said the chappie--"mind you, I'm not
+questioning anybody's good faith, but, as a matter of strict
+business--I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+"No offence, simply business. I'm not saying anything, mind you, but
+there's one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name's Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you're
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn't he Lord Percy Something? I've read
+English novels, and I know all about it."
+
+"This is monstrous!"
+
+"Now don't get hot under the collar. I'm only asking. I've a right to
+know. You're going to take our money, so it's only fair that we should
+see that we get our money's worth."
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+"You're quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we've a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know----"
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+"I can assure you that I know nothing of this," he said, quite
+politely. "I should be grateful if you would explain."
+
+"Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens
+of Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands
+with you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my
+friend Simms here means--and I'm with him--is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth's word for it--and he is a stranger to us--that you are
+the Duke of Chiswick at all."
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+"Allow me to assure you, sir," he said, in a rummy kind of voice, "that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick."
+
+"Then that's all right," said the chappie heartily. "That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on."
+
+"I am sorry to say," said old Chiswick, "that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused."
+
+"But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you."
+
+"I fear I must disappoint them."
+
+"But in that case the deal would have to be off."
+
+"That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss."
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+"You really won't meet the rest of them?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, then, I guess we'll be going."
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bicky didn't seem to have anything to say.
+
+"Was it true what that man said?"
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"What do you mean by playing this trick?"
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+"I think you'd better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top."
+
+Bicky's Adam's-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+"You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+"Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically----"
+
+"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man."
+
+"Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.
+"The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that remittance
+of yours, and when you cut it off, don't you know, he was pretty solidly
+in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit of the
+ready pretty quick. That's why we thought of this handshaking scheme."
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+"So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!"
+
+"Poor old Bicky didn't want to go to that ranch," I explained. "He
+doesn't like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don't you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to----"
+
+"After what has happened? After this--this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"Not a penny!"
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+"Go ahead, Jeeves!" I said.
+
+"I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers."
+
+"By Jove!" I said.
+
+"By George!" said Bicky.
+
+"Great heavens!" said old Chiswick.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+"Jeeves is right. I'll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it.
+They eat that sort of stuff."
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+"I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!"
+
+"That's all very well," said Bicky, wonderfully braced, "but if I can't
+get the money any other way----"
+
+"Wait! Er--wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something."
+
+"I won't go to that bally ranch."
+
+"No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I--I think----"
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. "I--I think that,
+on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I--I
+might--in fact, I think I see my way to doing--to--I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position."
+
+"I shouldn't mind that."
+
+"I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure----"
+
+"The only figure I'll recognize," said Bicky firmly, "is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly."
+
+"My dear boy!"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to--in fact,
+you would be in an exceedingly advantageous position."
+
+"Five hundred a year!" said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. "Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don't sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don't think I'm going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o' goblins a year--what?"
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick's face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. "Very well, my boy," he said.
+
+"What-o!" said Bicky. "All right, then."
+
+"Jeeves," I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. "Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"It beats me how you do it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"The only trouble is you haven't got much out of it--what!"
+
+"I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends--I judge from his remarks--to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so."
+
+"It isn't enough, Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+"Bring my shaving things."
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie's eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+"You mean, sir?"
+
+"And shave off my moustache."
+
+There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
+interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
+and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
+the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
+see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
+By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
+there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
+name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
+My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
+left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
+I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
+to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
+that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now--what?"
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
+little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
+that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
+everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
+sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
+rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
+got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.
+
+I didn't exactly.
+
+"About a year, isn't it?"
+
+"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"
+
+Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.
+
+"Yesterday was----?"
+
+"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
+forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"
+
+"Till your wife mentioned it?"
+
+He nodded----
+
+"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren't half-hearted about it.
+
+"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."
+
+There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
+one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
+dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
+book.
+
+"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
+knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said.
+
+"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.
+
+"I owe it you."
+
+"How's that?" I said.
+
+"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd."
+
+"So you do remember some things?" I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+"Subside, laddie," I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
+due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
+make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."
+
+"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls."
+
+"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
+trouble."
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.
+
+"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
+If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
+only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
+that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
+But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I said. "Who?"
+
+"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"
+
+"Where?" I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+    "MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
+    to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
+    come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."
+
+I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"
+
+"Why don't I what?"
+
+"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
+ask."
+
+"But she says on her birthday."
+
+"Well, when is her birthday?"
+
+"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."
+
+"Forgotten!" I said.
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."
+
+"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"
+
+"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."
+
+"Think."
+
+"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."
+
+"And you can't remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
+birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."
+
+"Warm?"
+
+"Warmish."
+
+"Or cold?"
+
+"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
+which no home is complete."
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing's done."
+
+"Absolutely. What did you give her?"
+
+He sagged.
+
+"I can't remember," he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
+as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
+it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
+There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
+your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
+Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
+found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
+month, and narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
+Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
+extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
+with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
+up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
+memories"--Mary's speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
+"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
+is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
+a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
+brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
+all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"
+
+"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"
+
+"Why, they change the programme every week there."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."
+
+"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar."
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
+another time."
+
+"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
+I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
+was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."
+
+"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."
+
+"But I'm always writing cheques."
+
+"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
+you've got it. Hold the line."
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+"Halloa!" he said.
+
+"I'm here," I said.
+
+"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"
+
+"Topping," I said. "Good night."
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.
+
+"It's late," said the man at the other end.
+
+"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.
+
+"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
+you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Well, I hadn't.
+
+"Mr. Pepper."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and----"
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
+means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can't----"
+
+"But----"
+
+"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man."
+
+"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"
+
+"I thought it hateful, abominable."
+
+"But you said it was absolutely top----"
+
+"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony----"
+
+"But----!"
+
+"When one single word would have----"
+
+"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.
+
+"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?"
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
+the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute."
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes
+plays--a deuced brainy sort of fellow--and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+"Change of scene is what you want, old scout," I said. "Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party."
+
+"He's absolutely right," said Jimmy. "Change of scene's the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, 'Come back. Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never
+answered at all."
+
+But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing "The Rosary" with one
+finger. He couldn't play anything except "The Rosary," and he couldn't
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, "I've seen her."
+
+"Seen her?" I said. "What, Miss West?"
+
+"I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!"
+
+He started "The Rosary" again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away."
+
+"Go away?" I said. "Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong."
+
+"She cut me."
+
+"Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her."
+
+"She looked clean through me!"
+
+"Of course she did. But don't mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I'll see you through. Now, what you want," I said, "is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want----"
+
+"But what's she going to thank me timidly for?"
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+"Look out for a chance and save her from drowning," I said.
+
+"I can't swim," said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don't you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I've heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn't a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don't you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. Well, I
+don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you'd least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that's what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl's gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don't you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn't absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+"Stop it!" he said. "Do you think nobody's got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?"
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+"Well?" said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+"You're not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie," he said
+handsomely. "I'm bound to say this seems pretty good."
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don't know when I've felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world.
+
+"Hello!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
+
+"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+"This isn't her cousin, you idiot!" he said.
+
+"He's no relation at all. He's just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
+
+"What! Who is he, then?"
+
+"I don't know. Oh, Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you'll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you
+through the bars."
+
+"Tell me all, old boy," I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then--well, she didn't actually
+call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of
+way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+"And mind, this is your affair," he concluded. "I'm not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you'd better go and find
+the kid's parents and return him before the police come for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It's a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You'd have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn't till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people's heads that I
+wasn't standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, "Hi!"
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+"Hi!" it shouted again.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by 'Hi'?" I said.
+
+"You can't come in," said the face. "Hello, is that Tootles?"
+
+"My name is not Tootles, and I don't want to come in," I said. "Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I've brought back your son."
+
+"I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see 'oo!"
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+"Do you live here?" said the face.
+
+"I'm staying here for a few weeks."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Pepper. But----"
+
+"Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?"
+
+"My uncle. But----"
+
+"I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now."
+
+"I wish you were," I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+"This is most fortunate," he said. "We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper's has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days."
+
+"May!"
+
+"He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles."
+
+"I haven't got a wife," I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don't you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+"Did you catch it?" said the face, reappearing. "Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer's. Ask for Bailey's
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey's."
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation.
+Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat
+from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie's Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, "Wah!"
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+"Well, baby?" she said, bending down to him. "So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning," she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don't you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant's father.
+
+I hadn't expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn't speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+"Well," he said, when he had finished, "say something! Heavens! man,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"You don't give me a chance, old top," I said soothingly.
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"What can we do about it?"
+
+"We can't spend our time acting as nurses to this--this exhibit."
+
+He got up.
+
+"I'm going back to London," he said.
+
+"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?"
+
+"I would. This is your business, and you've got to manage it."
+
+"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+"Oh, well," he said resignedly.
+
+"Besides, old top," I said, "I did it all for your sake, don't you
+know?"
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a strained voice, "one moment. I'll stand a good
+deal, but I won't stand for being expected to be grateful."
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple--a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+"And after all," I said, "there's lots to be said for having a
+child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic--what!"
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+"For me," he said, "the hotel. I can't write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?"
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+"I might work this up for the stage," he said. "It wouldn't make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce."
+
+"Farce!" snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+"Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like--that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I'll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie."
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story--the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+"What!" he said. "Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It's the
+old 'Tiny Hand' business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It's big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?"
+
+"He can play a little of 'The Rosary' with one finger."
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+"No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest's all right.
+Look here." He squatted in the sand. "This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed's the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child's line. Child speaks like, 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?'
+Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses
+L., takes girl's hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big
+speech. 'Ah, Marie,' or whatever her name is--Jane--Agnes--Angela? Very
+well. 'Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child rebukes
+us! Angela!' And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I'm just
+giving you the general outline. And we must get a good line for the
+child. 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?' isn't definite enough. We
+want something more--ah! 'Kiss Freddie,' that's it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch."
+
+"But, Jimmy, old top," I said, "the only objection is, don't you know,
+that there's no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn't come within a mile of him."
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+"That's awkward," he said. "Well, we shall have to make it an exterior set
+instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere,
+when we're ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid letter-perfect. First
+rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp to-morrow."
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn't
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+"The chief difficulty," said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, "is to establish a connection in the kid's mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success."
+
+I've often thought, don't you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he'd been an old professional. And then he'd
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+"We must hurry up, Jimmy," I said. "The kid's uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away."
+
+"And we haven't an understudy," said Jimmy. "There's something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid's a bad study. I've known deaf-mutes
+who would have learned the part quicker."
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn't
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+"We're not nearly ready," said Jimmy. "To-day, for instance, he said
+'Kick Freddie.' That's not going to win any girl's heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet."
+
+But, by George, we didn't. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody's fault--certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the
+house to exercise it, when, just as we'd got out to the veranda, along
+came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual
+yell at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+"Hello, baby!" she said. "Good morning," she said to me. "May I come
+up?"
+
+She didn't wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don't you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn't even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+"We were just going down to the beach," I said.
+
+"Yes?" said the girl. She listened for a moment. "So you're having your
+piano tuned?" she said. "My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he's finished here?"
+
+"Er--not yet!" I said. "Not yet, if you don't mind. He can't bear to be
+disturbed when he's working. It's the artistic temperament. I'll tell
+him later."
+
+"Very well," she said, getting up to go. "Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I'll wait."
+
+"Don't you think--shouldn't we be going on to the beach?" I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn't hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+"The beach," I babbled.
+
+"See what I've brought for you, baby," she said. And, by George, don't
+you know, she held up in front of the kid's bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he yelled. "Kiss Fweddie!"
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called "business of outstretched hands" towards
+it.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shrieked.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the girl, turning to me.
+
+"You'd better give it to him, don't you know," I said. "He'll go on
+till you do."
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+"What does it mean?" said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don't you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn't any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: "_Please_ don't apologize.
+It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that's how Freddie's Angela looked.
+
+"_Well?_" she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, "Oh, well, it was this way." And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn't speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World's Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction "exit" was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+"Hello, Reggie!" he said. "I was just coming to you. Where's the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day."
+
+"No good," I said sadly. "It's all over. The thing's finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show."
+
+"Tell me," said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+"Fluffed in his lines, did he?" said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. "It's
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late," he said as we started. "Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and----"
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried. "Look!"
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer's staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other's arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people's business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn't bore you,
+don't you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an
+old sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself,
+my man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George's aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income--an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a
+chunk of o' goblins is a pile. George's uncle was in Monte Carlo, and
+had written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it
+struck me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at
+Monte Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don't you know. Fix
+up his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George
+had tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were
+anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the
+thing began at seven o'clock in the morning, when I was aroused from
+a dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: "Oh, Harold!" and a male voice "raised in anger," as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules's. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you'd
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently
+relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my
+midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+"Voules!" I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn't have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+"Voules," I said, "are you under the delusion that I'm going to be
+Queen of the May? You've called me early all right. It's only just
+seven."
+
+"I understood you to summon me, sir."
+
+"I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside."
+
+"I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice."
+
+"It's a wonder you didn't raise the roof. Who was that with you?"
+
+"Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley's maid."
+
+"What was all the trouble about?"
+
+"I was breaking our engagement, sir."
+
+I couldn't help gaping. Somehow one didn't associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I'd no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+"I think I'll get up," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I can't wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was
+a lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all
+the rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit
+pale and tired. She said she hadn't slept well. That accounted for
+it. Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+"Seen George?" I asked.
+
+I couldn't help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: "I've done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!"
+
+"I have not seen Mr. Lattaker," she said.
+
+I didn't pursue the subject. George's stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day's programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+"The poor, dear Prince!" she said.
+
+"What a shocking thing!" said old Marshall.
+
+"I knew him in Vienna," said Mrs. Vanderley. "He waltzed divinely."
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps "Serene") had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on
+his way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed
+the habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible
+in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken back to his
+yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+"This is going to do somebody no good," I said. "What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they'll catch the fellow?"
+
+"'Later,'" read old Marshall, "'the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.' That's the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can."
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+"Good morning," he said. "I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board--Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+"Yes," said Marshall. "He's down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?"
+
+"He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business."
+
+"Take a seat. He'll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up."
+
+I went down to George's state-room.
+
+"George, old man!" I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What's
+more, the bunk hadn't been slept in. I don't know when I've been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+"He isn't there," I said.
+
+"Not there!" said old Marshall. "Where is he, then? Perhaps he's gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he'll be back soon for breakfast. You'd better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?"
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried.
+
+"'Sh!" he whispered. "Anyone about?"
+
+"They're all down at breakfast."
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+"I say!" I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+"Did you do that? What did you do it for? What's the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!"
+
+"Yes, old boy?"
+
+"I did a murder last night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I----"
+
+"Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?"
+
+"About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn't a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what's-her-name--Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid--Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?"
+
+"Never. I've been refused dozens----"
+
+"Then you won't understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn't wait. It might have been the ship's cat. It
+wasn't. It was Pilbeam."
+
+"You kissed her?"
+
+"I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella."
+
+"Great Scott!"
+
+"Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn't care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I--It's just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don't remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I've lost my
+hat."
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+"Read," I said. "It's all there."
+
+He read.
+
+"Good heavens!" he said.
+
+"You didn't do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?"
+
+"Reggie, this is awful."
+
+"Cheer up. They say he'll recover."
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"It does to him."
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+"It says they've a clue."
+
+"They always say that."
+
+"But--My hat!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!"
+
+"George," I said, "you mustn't waste time. Oh!"
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+"Don't do it!" he said, irritably. "Don't bark like that. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"The man!"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He's down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn't give his name. I didn't like the
+look of him from the first. It's this fellow Sturgis. It must be."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I feel it. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Had he a hat?"
+
+"Of course he had a hat."
+
+"Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?"
+
+"By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your
+life out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _l�se-majest�_.
+It's worse than hitting a policeman. You haven't got a moment to
+waste."
+
+"But I haven't any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I'll wire
+my uncle to meet me in----"
+
+"Look out," I cried; "there's someone coming!"
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+"What's the matter!" I said. "What do you want?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker's voice. A
+letter has arrived for him."
+
+"He isn't here."
+
+"No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?"
+
+"No; give it to me. I'll give it to him when he comes."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?"
+
+"He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir."
+
+"Ah! That's all, Voules."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They're all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth's eating kippers."
+
+"That'll hold him for a bit. Full of bones." He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" he said, as he finished.
+
+"Reggie, this is a queer thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+    "My dear George--I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+    think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious
+    situation that has arisen in connection with the legacy which
+    your father inherited from your Aunt Emily, and which you are
+    expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you, now that you have
+    reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+    your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+    kidnapped--which, was never ascertained--when you were both
+    babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it
+    was supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a
+    letter purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos
+    Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has
+    only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is on
+    his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like
+    other claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile
+    his intervention will, I fear, cause a certain delay before I can
+    hand over your money to you. It will be necessary to go into a
+    thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this will take
+    some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+    meet.--Your affectionate uncle,
+
+                               "AUGUSTUS ARBUTT."
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+"Why, old top," I said, "this lets you out."
+
+"Lets me out of half the darned money, if that's what you mean. If this
+chap's not an imposter--and there's no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I've never heard my father say a word about him--we shall have
+to split the money. Aunt Emily's will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his 'offspring.' I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this."
+
+"Why, you chump," I said, "it's going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you've got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash."
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+"You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie."
+
+"Ass!" I cried. "Don't you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren't exactly alike? Who's to say you aren't
+Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred."
+
+"And Alfred will be there to call me a liar."
+
+"He won't. It's not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It's only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective
+off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning."
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+"Why, I really do believe it would work," he said.
+
+"Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I'll
+swear George hadn't one."
+
+"And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you're a genius."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"You _are_."
+
+"Well, it's only sometimes. I can't keep it up."
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here, Voules," I said.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all."
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+"Voules is all right," I said. "Decent Voules! Voules wouldn't give us
+away, would you, Voules?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"But, Voules, old man," I said, "be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?"
+
+"Financially, sir, nothing."
+
+"Whereas, by keeping quiet"--I tapped him on the chest--"by holding
+your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum."
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I said.
+
+"How much?" said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn't believe the way the man haggled.
+You'd have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He'd hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+"Did you meet him?" I asked.
+
+"Meet whom?" said old Marshall.
+
+"George's twin-brother Alfred."
+
+"I didn't know George had a brother."
+
+"Nor did he till yesterday. It's a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn't wonder if that's where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He's down in George's state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It'll amaze you, the likeness between them. You'll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes."
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren't quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+"Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board," said George.
+
+"It's an amazing likeness," said old Marshall.
+
+"Is my brother like me?" asked George amiably.
+
+"No one could tell you apart," I said.
+
+"I suppose twins always are alike," said George. "But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"He's a dear old pal of mine."
+
+"You've been swimming with him perhaps?"
+
+"Every day last August."
+
+"Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn't you?" He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+"Has George a mole like that?" he asked.
+
+"No," I said. "Oh, no."
+
+"You would have noticed it if he had?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Oh, yes."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said George. "It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one's own identity."
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn't get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn't a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "What did I tell you?"
+
+"What did you tell me?"
+
+"Why, about Stella. Didn't I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then----"
+
+"You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours."
+
+"Perhaps I did," said George modestly, "I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn't to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root."
+
+"I fancy he thinks that you're bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you."
+
+"He's an absolute nuisance," said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+"It's my uncle," said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+"Halloa, George!" he said. "Get my letter?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for my brother," said George. "My name is
+Alfred Lattaker."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I am George's brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?"
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+"You're very like George," he said.
+
+"So everyone tells me."
+
+"And you're really Alfred?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'd like to talk business with you for a moment."
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Voules. "If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off."
+
+I'm bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch--George didn't show up--and as I was going out I was
+waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?"
+
+I didn't see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+"Yes, I have given him the afternoon off."
+
+She broke down--absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I'm
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I'd said, "There, there!"
+which didn't seem to help much, I hadn't any remarks to make.
+
+"He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for."
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn't have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was
+at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George.
+There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules's mind
+had got to be eased as Stella's had been. I couldn't afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow's face being sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
+care? George's was like that. He looked green.
+
+"Finished with your uncle?" I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+"There isn't any uncle," he said. "There isn't any Alfred. And there
+isn't any money."
+
+"Explain yourself, old top," I said.
+
+"It won't take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He's been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When
+the time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he
+went to the tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last
+remnant of the stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while
+and postponing the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he
+invented this twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner
+or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America,
+which he has done. He's on his way now."
+
+"You let him go?"
+
+"What could I do? I can't afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can't prove there's no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred."
+
+"Well, you've made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway," I said, to cheer him up.
+
+"What's the good of that now? I've hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?"
+
+I pondered.
+
+"It looks to me, old top," I said at last, "as if things were in a bit
+of a mess."
+
+"You've guessed it," said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o'clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening--old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I--when
+he came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was
+suggesting the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was
+worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and
+I, only not for the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+"Mr. Marshall?" he said. "I am Count Fritz von C�slin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness"--he clicked his heels together and saluted--"the
+Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz."
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+"Why, Count," she said, "what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?"
+
+"Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?"
+
+"Stella, you remember Count Fritz?"
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+"And how is the poor, dear Prince?" asked Mrs. Vanderley. "What a
+terrible thing to have happened!"
+
+"I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment."
+
+"That's good," said old Marshall.
+
+"In a spoon only," sighed the Count. "Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis."
+
+"Mr. Who?"
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+"I am Denman Sturgis, at your service."
+
+"The deuce you are! What are you doing here?"
+
+"Mr. Sturgis," explained the Count, "graciously volunteered his
+services----"
+
+"I know. But what's he doing here?"
+
+"I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You have not found him?" asked the Count anxiously.
+
+"Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles."
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+"Don't go mixing me up with my brother," he said. "I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole."
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+"I am sorry," he said.
+
+George didn't offer to console him,
+
+"Don't worry," said Sturgis. "He won't escape me. I shall find him."
+
+"Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man."
+
+"What?" shouted George.
+
+"That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin."
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand," he said feebly.
+
+"We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis," went on the Count. "We leaped to the
+conclusion--was it not so?--that the owner of the hat you found was
+also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard
+the story from His Serene Highness's own lips. He was passing down a
+dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he
+had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily.
+My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, 'Where is my brave preserver?' His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!"
+
+"Thanks," said George limply.
+
+"And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker."
+
+"He needn't take all that trouble," said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+"I'll tell you where to find George Lattaker!" he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+"Yes, look at me," he yelled. "Look at me. You won't be the first this
+afternoon who's stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I'll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I'll
+learn you to break a poor man's heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over'eard 'im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They'd spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he'd swear George hadn't one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can."
+
+George got up.
+
+"I haven't the least desire to deny it, Voules."
+
+"Mr. Voules, if _you_ please."
+
+"It's true," said George, turning to the Count. "The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness."
+
+"Then you are really George Lattaker?" asked the Count.
+
+"I am."
+
+"'Ere, what does all this mean?" demanded Voules.
+
+"Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules."
+
+"It's a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall's
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+"Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd shot
+yourself."
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don't you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+"Voules, you're sacked," I said.
+
+"Who cares?" he said. "Think I was going to stop on now I'm a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month's notice and get
+your 'at, and I'll take you to dinner at Ciro's."
+
+"And you, Mr. Lattaker," said the Count, "may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver."
+
+"You may," said George. "May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?"
+
+There's just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+"I'm not sure," she was saying, "that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it."
+
+"Don't you?" said George. "Well, as it happens, I'm feeling just that
+way now."
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+"Halloa, Reggie!" he said.
+
+"Halloa, George!" I said. "Lovely night."
+
+"Beautiful," said Stella.
+
+"The moon," I said.
+
+"Ripping," said George.
+
+"Lovely," said Stella.
+
+"And look at the reflection of the stars on the----"
+
+George caught my eye. "Pop off," he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about--and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of--the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I've had it thrust on my
+notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty
+few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the
+Yeardsley "Venus."
+
+To make you understand the full what-d'you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don't you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+"The Wedding Glide," I'm hanged if she didn't break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley--Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn't seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I'm bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I'm telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+    "MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,--What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+    you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old
+    house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.
+    Couldn't you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be
+    so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
+    again. He was speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come.
+    Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+    --Yours most sincerely,
+
+                              ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+    "P.S.--We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+    "P.P.S.--Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
+    ever played on.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.--We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says
+    it is better than St. Andrews.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.S.--You _must_ come!"
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn't come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+"Thank goodness you've come," he said, as we drove off. "I was just
+about at my last grip."
+
+"What's the trouble, old scout?" I asked.
+
+"If I had the artistic what's-its-name," he went on, "if the mere
+mention of pictures didn't give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn't be
+so bad. As it is, it's rotten!"
+
+"Pictures?"
+
+"Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?"
+
+I remembered then--it hadn't come back to me before--that most of my
+time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had
+had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though
+pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had
+never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after
+marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere
+sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to
+old Bill.
+
+"They talk pictures at every meal," he said. "I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?"
+
+"A few days."
+
+"Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was
+that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn't get me
+back with a lasso."
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+"But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links
+near here."
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+"You don't mean honestly she said that?"
+
+"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
+
+"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
+
+"Well, wasn't it enough?"
+
+"She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?"
+
+"No, she forgot to tell me that."
+
+"It's the worst course in Great Britain."
+
+I felt rather stunned, don't you know. Whether it's a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can't say, but I simply can't do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I'm not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+"We'll have to take it out in billiards," I said. "I'm glad the table's
+good."
+
+"It depends what you call good. It's half-size, and there's a seven-inch
+cut just out of baulk where Clarence's cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended
+it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn't improve
+the thing as a billiard-table."
+
+"But she said you said----"
+
+"Must have been pulling your leg."
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn't help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought
+me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going
+to have a stab at marrying me off. I've often heard that young married
+women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence's
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as
+she had done wouldn't be likely to stick at a trifle.
+
+"Bill, old scout," I said, "there aren't any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?"
+
+"Wish there were," he said. "No such luck."
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman's figure
+appeared.
+
+"Have you got him, Bill?" she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don't you know.
+
+"Do you mean me?" I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+"Is that you, Reggie? I'm so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like."
+Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have
+preferred _this_ to me!" That's what I thought, when I set eyes on
+Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I'm no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.
+Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?" said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don't you know.
+
+"Eh?" I said.
+
+"A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!"
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+"Father," said Clarence, "did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing."
+
+"No," said the father, shaking his head; "no mewing cat."
+
+"I can't bear mewing cats," said Clarence. "A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!"
+
+"A mewing cat is so trying," said Elizabeth.
+
+"_I_ dislike mewing cats," said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the "Monna Lisa," and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+"Here it is," I said. "A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer----"
+
+They all shouted "What!" exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+"Let me look! Yes. 'Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants----'"
+
+"Why, that's near here," I said. "I passed through Midford----"
+
+"Dryden Park is only two miles from this house," said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+"Only two miles!" she said. "It might have been us! It might have been
+the 'Venus'!"
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+"The 'Venus'!" he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening's chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn't notice it before I don't know, but it was not till Elizabeth
+showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the Yeardsley
+"Venus." When she led me up to it, and switched on the light, it seemed
+impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing
+it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I
+was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, "Reggie."
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d'you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+"What-o?" I said nervously.
+
+"Reggie," she said, "I want to ask a great favour of you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+"Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?"
+
+There! That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her.
+I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn't
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn't feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn't think of anything to say but "Oh, yes."
+
+"There's something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"Do you know, Reggie," she said suddenly, "that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?"
+
+"Eh! Well, he still seems--er--_interested_ in them, what?"
+
+"Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves."
+
+"Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the----"
+
+"No, that wouldn't help him. He doesn't need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something."
+
+"I don't quite follow. Get rid of something?"
+
+"The 'Venus,'" said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+"You saw the 'Venus,'" she said.
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Well, come into the dining-room."
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+"There," she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door--that may have been why I hadn't noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it--was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you'd call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean is--well,
+you know what I mean. All I can say is that it's funny I _hadn't_
+noticed it.
+
+"Is that the 'Venus'?" I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think it would affect me much. I'd worry
+through all right."
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+"But you're not an artist," she said. "Clarence is."
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn't
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know,
+which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send
+you to chokey for and you don't want to go. What I mean is, if you're
+absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this "Venus" was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so
+far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a
+professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the "Venus." He couldn't stand it at any price.
+He didn't like the drawing. He didn't like the expression of the face.
+He didn't like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+"Now you see," she said.
+
+"In a way," I said. "But don't you think it's making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?"
+
+"Oh, can't you understand? Look!" Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley's. "There!" she said. "Clarence painted that!"
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence's effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+"Er--'Venus'?" I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+"No. 'Jocund Spring,'" she snapped. She switched off the light. "I see
+you don't understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club."
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, Reggie. I didn't mean to be cross. Only I do want to make you
+understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose--suppose--well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to sit
+and listen to a cheap vulgar tune--the same tune--day after day, day after
+day, wouldn't you expect his nerves to break! Well, it's just like that
+with Clarence. Now you see?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"But what? Surely I've put it plainly enough?"
+
+"Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?"
+
+"I want you to steal the 'Venus.'"
+
+I looked at her.
+
+"You want me to----?"
+
+"Steal it. Reggie!" Her eyes were shining with excitement. "Don't you
+see? It's Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it's the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his 'Venus.' It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it to-night,
+Reggie. I'll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas out of
+the frame, and it's done."
+
+"But one moment," I said. "I'd be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn't it be better--in
+fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?"
+
+"I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused."
+
+"But if I'm caught?"
+
+"You can't be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room."
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+"And as to the picture itself--when I've got it?"
+
+"Burn it. I'll see that you have a good fire in your room."
+
+"But----"
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+"Reggie," she said; nothing more. Just "Reggie."
+
+She looked at me.
+
+"Well, after all, if you see what I mean--The days that are no more,
+don't you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?"
+
+"All right," I said. "I'll do it."
+
+I don't know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces.
+If you're not, you'll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the job
+I'd taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had done
+when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn't help feeling there was a catch somewhere,
+and I've never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for
+one o'clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be
+pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn't stand it any longer.
+I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill's bicycle, took a grip of my
+knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn't have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill's say, "Feeling better now?"
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+"What happened?" I said.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, old man," he said. "I hadn't a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn't stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you're doing? Were you walking in your sleep?"
+
+"It was Elizabeth," I said. "Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you."
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me."
+
+"Reggie, old man," he said. "I'll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It's a fool's trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn't repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to
+do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn't have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I'm
+sorry."
+
+"Me, too," I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+"Are you feeling better now?"
+
+"Better than I was. But that's not saying much."
+
+"Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let's be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it's on
+the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves."
+
+"Heads."
+
+"Tails it is," he said, uncovering the coin. "Up you get. I'll hold the
+light. Don't spike yourself on that sword of yours."
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+"We've got a long evening before us," he said. "You can't burn a picture
+of that size in one chunk. You'd set the chimney on fire. Let's do the
+thing comfortably. Clarence can't grudge us the stuff. We've done him
+a bit of good this trip. To-morrow'll be the maddest, merriest day of
+Clarence's glad New Year. On we go."
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don't know when I've had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+"I heard something," he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+"There's somebody in the dining-room," I whispered.
+
+There's a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill's like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn't
+really heard anything after all. I'm a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+"We'll fling the door open and make a rush," said Bill.
+
+"Supposing they shoot, old scout?"
+
+"Burglars never shoot," said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence's "Jocund Spring,"
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+"What on earth?" said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn't know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+"Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I----"
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+"Clarence?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+"He's in bed," I said.
+
+"In bed! Then he doesn't know? Even now--Young men, I throw myself
+on your mercy. Don't be hard on me. Listen." He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. "I can explain everything--everything."
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+"You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me." He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. "Young man,"
+he said, "you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?"
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don't you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+"I won't say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley," I said. "I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean--what? _I_ know. But I'm afraid--Well, look!"
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+"The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have
+taken Clarence's picture!" He paused. "It might have been mine! My
+Venus!" he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know,
+but he had to know the truth.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, you know," I said. "But it _was_."
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"They _did_ take your Venus."
+
+"But I have it here."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"That's Clarence's 'Jocund Spring,'" I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+"What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don't know my own
+picture--my child--my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: 'Matthew Yeardsley.' This is _my_ picture!"
+
+And--well, by Jove, it _was_, don't you know!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill's
+fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn't be expected
+to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive
+silence for a bit.
+
+"Reggie," said Bill at last, "how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?"
+
+"Old scout," I said. "I was thinking much the same myself."
+
+"Reggie," said Bill, "I happen to know there's a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn't what you'd call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well--er--in the circumstances, how
+about it?"
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it's all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages
+for pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he's
+more like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who
+was apt to rally round him in times of need--a guide, don't you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and--I rather fancy--friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn't
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+    Be!
+    Be!
+      The past is dead.
+      To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+    To-day!
+      Be with every nerve,
+        With every muscle,
+        With every drop of your red blood!
+    Be!
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+"Read this, Bertie!" I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. "Wake up and read this!"
+
+I can't read before I've had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It's a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+"Tea, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He flowed silently out of the room--he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+"What is it?" I said. "What on earth's the matter?"
+
+"Read it!"
+
+"I can't. I haven't had my tea."
+
+"Well, listen then."
+
+"Who's it from?"
+
+"My aunt."
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+"So what on earth am I to do?"
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+"Read it again, Rocky, old top," I said. "I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd's aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+    "MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.--I have been thinking things over for a
+    long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been
+    very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made
+    up my mind to do now."
+
+"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
+
+"It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication."
+
+"It becomes as clear as mud!" said Rocky.
+
+"Proceed, old scout," I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+    "You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see
+    for myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I
+    fear that now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I
+    am old and worn out. I seem to have no strength left in me."
+
+"Sad, Jeeves, what?"
+
+"Extremely, sir."
+
+"Sad nothing!" said Rocky. "It's sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she's a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She's got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it's
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is."
+
+"Rather like the chappie whose heart was 'in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,' Jeeves?"
+
+"The cases are in some respects parallel, sir."
+
+"Carry on, Rocky, dear
+boy."
+
+    "So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the
+    city myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly
+    thought of this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the
+    Sunday paper about a young man who had longed all his life for a
+    certain thing and won it in the end only when he was too old to
+    enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me."
+
+"A thing," interpolated Rocky bitterly, "that I've not been able to do
+in ten years."
+
+    "As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now
+    I have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I
+    have now decided to do so--on one condition. I have written to a
+    firm of lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you
+    quite a substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you
+    live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do.
+    I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+    I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic
+    life of New York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant
+    supper parties.
+
+    "Above all, I want you--indeed, I insist on this--to write me
+    letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all
+    you are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may
+    enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying
+    for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.--Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+                                       "ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER."
+
+"What about it?" said Rocky.
+
+"What about it?" I said.
+
+"Yes. What on earth am I going to do?"
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+"Aren't you bucked?" I said.
+
+"Bucked!"
+
+"If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you."
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop.!
+
+"Pretty soft!" he cried. "To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because
+they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got
+to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral
+delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!"
+
+I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+"It would kill me to have to live in New York," he went on. "To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To----" He started. "Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!"
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+"My dear chap!" I said reproachfully.
+
+"Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. "How many suits of evening clothes have I?"
+
+"We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets----"
+
+"Three."
+
+"For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats."
+
+"And shirts?"
+
+"Four dozen, sir."
+
+"And white ties?"
+
+"The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir."
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+"You see?"
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+"I won't do it! I can't do it! I'll be hanged if I'll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don't
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?"
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+"Then, what are you going to do about it?" I said.
+
+"That's what I want to know."
+
+"You might write and explain to your aunt."
+
+"I might--if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer's in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will."
+
+I saw his point.
+
+"What do you suggest, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+"The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence."
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn't been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn't on to his curves.
+
+"Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?" he said. "I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What's the
+idea?"
+
+"My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you've got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That's it, isn't it, Jeeves?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky's eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man's vast intellect.
+
+"But who would do it?" he said. "It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things."
+
+"Jeeves!" I said. "Let Jeeves do it."
+
+"But would he?"
+
+"You would do it, wouldn't you, Jeeves?"
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish's.
+
+"I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York's places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit."
+
+"Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer's. It's on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way."
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+"Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer's. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof."
+
+"You see?" I said to Rocky. "Leave it to Jeeves. He knows."
+
+It isn't often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights.
+I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table
+on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a
+fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I'd never imagined he could look so
+nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere benevolence, and he
+was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond
+of old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky's letters, based on Jeeves's notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+    "DEAR FREDDIE,--Well, here I am in New York. It's not a bad place.
+    I'm not having a bad time. Everything's pretty all right. The
+    cabarets aren't bad. Don't know when I shall be back. How's
+    everybody? Cheer-o!--Yours,
+
+                                "BERTIE.
+
+    "PS.--Seen old Ted lately?"
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn't dragged him in I couldn't
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here's old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+    "DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,--How can I ever thank you enough for giving
+    me the opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems
+    more wonderful every day.
+
+    "Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!"
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn't know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+    "I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+    night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new
+    place on Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie
+    Cohan looked in about midnight and got off a good one about Willie
+    Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks
+    did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was
+    there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The
+    show at the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.
+
+    "Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof----"
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it's the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it's easier for a chappie
+who's used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there's
+no doubt that Rocky's correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+"Jeeves, you're a wonder!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn't tell
+you a thing about them, except that I've had a good time."
+
+"It's just a knack, sir."
+
+"Well, Mr. Todd's letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir," agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn't that he spoke loud. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It
+was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+"Miss Rockmetteller!"
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I'm not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father's ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I'd
+come to look on Rocky's aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn't seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky's aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I've ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+"Good afternoon," I managed to say.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Mr. Cohan?"
+
+"Er--no."
+
+"Mr. Fred Stone?"
+
+"Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name's Wooster--Bertie
+Wooster."
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+"Isn't Rockmetteller home?" she said. "Where is he?"
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn't think of anything to say. I
+couldn't tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+"If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon."
+
+"So he did, Jeeves; so he did," I said, looking at my watch. "Did he
+say when he would be back?"
+
+"He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning."
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I'd forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England,
+has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails
+to make my spine curl.
+
+"You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller's?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather!"
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+"Well, you need to be," she said, "the way you treat his flat as your
+own!"
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I'd been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn't,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber's man come
+to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her--my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea--the good old
+stand-by.
+
+"Would you care for a cup of tea?" I said.
+
+"Tea?"
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+"Nothing like a cup after a journey," I said. "Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don't you
+know. I'll go and tell Jeeves."
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves's lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn't a care in the world.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "we want some tea."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?"
+
+I wanted sympathy, don't you know--sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+"She's got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?"
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+"No doubt because of Mr. Todd's letters, sir," he said. "It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city."
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+"Well, it's bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I'm someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It's pretty rotten, you know."
+
+"Most disturbing, sir."
+
+"And there's another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We've got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train."
+
+"I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant."
+
+"By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you."
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn't moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There
+was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I
+suppose because I wasn't George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+
+"This is a surprise, what?" I said, after about five minutes' restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+"What is a surprise?"
+
+"Your coming here, don't you know, and so on."
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+"Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?" she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"Oh, rather," I said. "Of course! Certainly. What I mean is----"
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There's nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn't certain of one's lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+"Tea, tea, tea--what? What?" I said.
+
+It wasn't what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+"Do you mean to say, young man," she said frostily, "that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?"
+
+"Rather! Bucks you up, you know."
+
+"What do you mean by the expression 'Bucks you up'?"
+
+"Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz."
+
+"I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"
+
+I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she'd have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can't make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people,
+especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+"Are you comfortable at your hotel?" I said.
+
+"At which hotel?"
+
+"The hotel you're staying at."
+
+"I am not staying at an hotel."
+
+"Stopping with friends--what?"
+
+"I am naturally stopping with my nephew."
+
+I didn't get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+"What! Here?" I gurgled.
+
+"Certainly! Where else should I go?"
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn't
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn't explain that this wasn't
+Rocky's flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+"Will you kindly tell my nephew's man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down."
+
+"Your nephew's man-servant?"
+
+"The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns."
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves's den.
+
+"Jeeves!" I whispered.
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"She thinks you're Mr. Todd's man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don't see what you're to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can't say anything or she'll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don't want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed."
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+"It is hardly my place, sir----"
+
+"I know--I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it's hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?"
+
+"Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?"
+
+"Good Lord! I hadn't thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn't looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?"
+
+"I will endeavour to do so, sir."
+
+"Well, I don't think there's anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+"Good-bye, Jeeves," I said.
+
+"Good-bye, sir."
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's
+misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn't forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I'm not sure this didn't
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn't the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don't know when I've
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said "Halloa!" five times, thinking he hadn't got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+"Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I'm having a time!"
+
+"Where are you speaking from?"
+
+"The Midnight Revels. We've been here an hour, and I think we're a
+fixture for the night. I've told Aunt Isabel I've gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She's glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I'm nearly crazy."
+
+"Tell me all, old top," I said.
+
+"A little more of this," he said, "and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It's simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can't play louder
+than the other. I'm a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours."
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn't struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+"You'll ruin them!"
+
+"I hope so," said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. "I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they've given me a bad enough time. They're
+about three sizes too small, and something's apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven't
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don't know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It's taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I've hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it's
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something's got to be done, Bertie! You've got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it."
+
+"Me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, Jeeves, then. It's all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt's just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she's had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can't stand it, Bertie!
+It's got to end!"
+
+"Can't Jeeves think of anything?"
+
+"No. He just hangs round saying: 'Most disturbing, sir!' A fat lot of
+help that is!"
+
+"Well, old lad," I said, "after all, it's far worse for me than it is
+for you. You've got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you're saving a
+lot of money."
+
+"Saving money? What do you mean--saving money?"
+
+"Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she's paying
+all the expenses now, isn't she?"
+
+"Certainly she is; but she's stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she's in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it's
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I've
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it's got a silver
+lining it's some little dissembler!"
+
+"But, Rocky, old top, it's too bally awful! You've no notion of what
+I'm going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat."
+
+"Don't come near the flat."
+
+"But it's my own flat."
+
+"I can't help that. Aunt Isabel doesn't like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn't do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she'll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said. "I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings."
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+"Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?"
+
+"It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady."
+
+"You know, Jeeves, say what you like--this is a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill."
+
+"It can't go on--this sort of thing--Jeeves."
+
+"We must hope for the best, sir."
+
+"Can't you think of anything to do?"
+
+"I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts--the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve--in the first long drawer, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?"
+
+"For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left." He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. "A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir."
+
+"You understate it, Jeeves."
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+"In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire."
+
+"I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves," I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. "But I don't see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir."
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they've been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There's a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the cabarets
+once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York's a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn't long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky's. I saw him once at Peale's, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn't anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn't difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn't bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn't blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: "What's the use?" and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn't come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+"Bertie, old scout," said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+"we've always been pals, haven't we? I mean, you know I'd do you a good
+turn if you asked me?"
+
+"My dear old lad," I said. The man had moved me.
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening."
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+"My dear chap," I said, "you know I'd do anything in reason; but----"
+
+"You must come, Bertie. You've got to. Something's got to be done to
+divert her mind. She's brooding about something. She's been like that
+for the last two days. I think she's beginning to suspect. She can't
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect
+has worn off now, and she's beginning to wonder again. Something's got to
+be done, or she will find out everything, and if she does I'd take a
+nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the
+love of Mike, come across to our table and help things along."
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+"You've met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?" said Rocky.
+
+"I have."
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+"Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?"
+
+"Take a seat, Bertie. What'll you have?" said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+"You'll come along, won't you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?"
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn't in the contract, but there wasn't
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and,
+though Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his
+best to supply dialogue, we weren't a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+"Say when, Bertie."
+
+"Stop!" barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky's eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+"Leave it there, Rockmetteller!" said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+"The time has come to speak," she said. "I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!"
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+"Eh?" he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+"The fault," she said, "was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city."
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie's face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+"But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York."
+
+"Jimmy Mundy!" I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and
+you suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I'd seen it happen before.
+I remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off
+to a meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front
+of a crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+"Yes; Jimmy Mundy!" she said. "I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they would
+have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it--in his picturesque
+phrase--to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How
+often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+
+"You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained."
+
+She gulped.
+
+"Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+"He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, 'This means you!' I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?"
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+"Y-yes," he stammered; "I--I thought something was wrong."
+
+"Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won't you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won't you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will----"
+
+I can't help thinking it must have been that word "will" that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel's. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+"Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to live in the country?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller."
+
+"Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you--for my sake?"
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+"I will!" he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat, lying
+in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour
+before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was
+the curse of; so we were alone at last. "Jeeves, there's no place like
+home--what?"
+
+"Very true, sir."
+
+"The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing--what?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir."
+
+"Your aunt? The hansom cab one?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller."
+
+I was stunned by the man's resource.
+
+"It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born
+that way there's no use worrying."
+
+"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves. "If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir."
+
+"All right, Jeeves." I said humbly. "You know!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #8164]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2003]
+Last updated: August 30, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY MAN JEEVES
+
+
+
+
+BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable.
+Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's
+like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements
+at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know
+the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train
+for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to
+think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're
+right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of
+omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+"Jeeves," I said that evening. "I'm getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng's."
+
+"Injudicious, sir," he said firmly. "It will not become you."
+
+"What absolute rot! It's the soundest thing I've struck for years."
+
+"Unsuitable for you, sir."
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life's mysteries, and
+that's all there is to it.
+
+But it isn't only that Jeeves's judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that's really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the "Lincolnshire."
+I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, for I'm fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, "if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the 'Lincolnshire.'"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'd rather not, sir."
+
+"But it's the straight goods. I'm going to put my shirt on him."
+
+"I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after."
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+"After this," I said, "not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment."
+
+"Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction."
+
+And he has, by Jove! I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don't you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I'm game to advise any one about anything. And that's why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves," I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don't know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I'm
+bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn't long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square--artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn't painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting--I've looked into the
+thing a bit--is that you can't start painting portraits till people
+come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until
+you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture
+for the comic papers--he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got
+a good idea--and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the
+advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived
+from biting the ear of a rich uncle--one Alexander Worple, who was in
+the jute business. I'm a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it's
+apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had
+made quite an indecently large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
+American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
+he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
+gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
+him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked
+with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
+these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
+time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fianc�e, Miss
+Singer," the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, "Corky, how about your uncle?"
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can't think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him."
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn't going to hurt me." She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, "There, there,
+little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked," I said
+to Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it.
+That's the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it."
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along----"
+
+"But how can I work it that way?"
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+"There's only one thing to do," I said.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves."
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+"Jeeves, we want your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I boiled down Corky's painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+"So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, try to think of something."
+
+"I have thought of something already, sir."
+
+"You have!"
+
+"The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay."
+
+"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it's going to cost a bit."
+
+Naturally the poor chap's face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl's melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+"You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky," I said. "Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves."
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple's
+attachment to ornithology."
+
+"How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?"
+
+"It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned."
+
+"Oh! Well?"
+
+"Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled--let
+us say--_The Children's Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it
+to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense,
+sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to
+eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple's own larger treatise on the
+same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy
+to Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable."
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn't let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves's
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+"But I'm sure I couldn't write a book about anything. I can't even
+write good letters."
+
+"Muriel's talents," said Corky, with a little cough "lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn't mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It's absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander's natural tendency
+to kick like a steer."
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha's attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don't know why it
+is--one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose--but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don't seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+"I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady's name should
+appear on the title page."
+
+"That's true," said Corky. "Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I'll get after him right away."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Will that be all, sir?" said Jeeves. "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky's place when the first copies of _The
+Children's Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was
+there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang
+at the door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl's name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+"Often of a spring morning," it said at the top of page twenty-one, "as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple's wonderful
+book--_American Birds_."
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed
+cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap
+who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze.
+I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can't call a chap the
+world's greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a
+certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+"It's a cert!" I said.
+
+"An absolute cinch!" said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn't known Mr.
+Worple's handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn't for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don't feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+"Well, well, well, what?" I said.
+
+"Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?"
+
+"Corky around?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You're waiting for Corky, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't understand. No, I'm not waiting for him."
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a
+kind of thingummy, you know.
+
+"I say, you haven't had a row with Corky, have you?"
+
+"A row?"
+
+"A spat, don't you know--little misunderstanding--faults on both
+sides--er--and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Why, whatever makes you think that?"
+
+"Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is--I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre."
+
+"I've left the stage now."
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+"Why, of course, I see now! You're married!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness."
+
+"Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander," she said, looking past me, "this is
+a friend of mine--Mr. Wooster."
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+"I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce's, Alexander."
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+"So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster," I heard him say. "I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?"
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I've a bit of
+news for you."
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+"Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You'll need it."
+
+"Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right. Please yourself. But you're going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle's esteem by
+writing the book on birds?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, she's slid. She's married the uncle."
+
+He took it without blinking. You can't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"That was always a development to be feared, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you were expecting it?"
+
+"It crossed my mind as a possibility."
+
+"Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!"
+
+"I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir."
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn't my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn't be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I'm bound to admit that I didn't relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+"Oh, ah!" I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie. Don't go. We're just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon," he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+"At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn't as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+"It's my uncle's idea," he said. "Muriel doesn't know about it yet. The
+portrait's to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here's the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can't
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid's vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: 'Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.'"
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn't
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie's sorrow. Besides, I'm
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the 'phone.
+
+"Bertie."
+
+"Halloa?"
+
+"Are you doing anything this afternoon?"
+
+"Nothing special."
+
+"You couldn't come down here, could you?"
+
+"What's the trouble? Anything up?"
+
+"I've finished the portrait."
+
+"Good boy! Stout work!"
+
+"Yes." His voice sounded rather doubtful. "The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn't look quite right to me. There's something about it--My uncle's
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and--I don't know why it is, but
+I kind of feel I'd like your moral support!"
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+"You think he'll cut up rough?"
+
+"He may."
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+"I'll come," I said.
+
+"Good!"
+
+"But only if I may bring Jeeves!"
+
+"Why Jeeves? What's Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led----"
+
+"Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves's support, you're mistaken. I'd sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+That's the sort of chap he is. You can't rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+"Stand right where you are, Bertie," he said, without moving. "Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?"
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but--but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I
+remember rightly?"
+
+"As ugly as that?"
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+"You're right quite, Bertie. Something's gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I've worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull--painting the soul of
+the sitter. I've got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child's soul on canvas."
+
+"But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don't see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?"
+
+"I doubt it, sir."
+
+"It--it sorts of leers at you, doesn't it?"
+
+"You've noticed that, too?" said Corky.
+
+"I don't see how one could help noticing."
+
+"All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated."
+
+"Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don't
+you think so, Jeeves?"
+
+"He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir."
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn't
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn't
+notice him.
+
+"Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it--really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let's have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let's----"
+
+And then he got it--suddenly, when he wasn't set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+"Oosh!" he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I've ever run up against.
+
+"Is this a practical joke?" he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+"You want to stand a bit farther away from it," I said.
+
+"You're perfectly right!" he snorted. "I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can't see the thing with a telescope!" He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. "And this--this--is what you have been wasting your time and
+my money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn't let you paint a
+house of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a
+competent worker, and this--this--this extract from a comic coloured
+supplement is the result!" He swung towards the door, lashing his tail
+and growling to himself. "This ends it! If you wish to continue this
+foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for
+idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report
+at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you
+should have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent--not another
+cent--not another--Boosh!"
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+"Corky, old top!" I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+"Well, that finishes it!" he muttered brokenly.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do? What can I do? I can't stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday."
+
+I couldn't think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don't know when I've been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who's just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir!"
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+"I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted."
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects
+a parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he
+did not despair. He put it on the market again under the name of
+Hair-o, guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months.
+It was advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is always
+a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In
+the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a
+coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran's portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr.
+Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been
+for the humorous. There is something about this picture--something bold
+and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular."
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+"Corky, old man!" I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+"He's right! The man's absolutely right! Jeeves, you're a life-saver!
+You've hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I'll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+_Sunday Star_. He'll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He'll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I've got a gold-mine.
+Where's my hat? I've got an income for life! Where's that confounded
+hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!"
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran--for a title of the
+series which you have in mind--'The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.'"
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. "I'm an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest
+before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the
+swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for
+instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the
+eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the
+neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?"
+
+"I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting."
+
+"They have made a big hit, you know."
+
+"I anticipated it, sir."
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+"You know, Jeeves, you're a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things."
+
+"I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir."
+
+"No, I think I'll wear the blue with the faint red stripe."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"But I rather fancy myself in it."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"Oh, all right, have it your own way."
+
+"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+Of course, I know it's as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You've got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's
+Shakespeare--or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad--who says that
+it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and
+more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up
+behind him with a bit of lead piping. There's no doubt the man's right.
+It's absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves--absolutely asserted myself, don't you
+know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming
+a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn't so much
+mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because, Jeeves's
+judgment about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when
+he wouldn't let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like
+a couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in
+the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who
+was who. It's a long story, and I haven't time to tell you now, but
+the point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre--as worn by John
+Drew--when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman--as worn by
+another famous actor chappie--and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that's how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+"What ho without there!"
+
+"Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room."
+
+"Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man," I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. "You know perfectly well
+there's no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it's barely ten o'clock yet?"
+
+"I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning."
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+"Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?"
+
+"Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship's son."
+
+"Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I'll be dressing."
+
+"Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir."
+
+"Then lead me to it."
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn't till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+"I've placed her, Jeeves. She's a pal of my Aunt Agatha."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left
+London. A very vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on
+social conditions in India when she came back from the Durbar."
+
+"Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!"
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+"What's wrong with this tie? I've seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Too ornate, sir."
+
+"Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more."
+
+"Unsuitable, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!" I said. "What?"
+
+"Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster."
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet
+from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as
+if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing
+arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging
+eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about
+fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb
+a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and
+had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say
+how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would
+wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren't
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn't appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you," I said. "So you've popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?"
+
+"About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you."
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you'll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn't dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn't want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she's really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+"Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us."
+
+"Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!"
+
+"Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while."
+
+I didn't get this for a moment.
+
+"Put him up? For my clubs?"
+
+"No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren't you, Motty
+darling?"
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+"Yes, mother," he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+"I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away."
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn't seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don't
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn't on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie's will-power.
+
+"I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write
+a companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_
+after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with
+me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall
+have to pick him up on my return."
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+"It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble." She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn't there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+"He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented." She got up. "Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don't know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon."
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+"Jeeves! What about it?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What's to be done? You heard it all, didn't you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here."
+
+"Pill, sir?"
+
+"The excrescence."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir?"
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn't like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+"Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves," I said
+coldly.
+
+"Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir."
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn't any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn't like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn't like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn't want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty's luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty's existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn't
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie's manner that he was still upset.
+
+"Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?" I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+"No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned."
+
+"Not returned? What do you mean?"
+
+"His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again."
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+"Better go and see what that is, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+"If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in."
+
+"Carry him in?"
+
+"His lordship is lying on the mat, sir."
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+"He's had some sort of dashed fit," I said. I took another look.
+"Jeeves! Someone's been feeding him meat!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"He's a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!"
+
+"I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship's legs, while I----"
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! You don't think--he can't be----"
+
+"I am inclined to think so, sir."
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn't
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+"You never can tell, Jeeves!"
+
+"Very seldom, sir."
+
+"Remove the eye of authority and where are you?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?"
+
+"It would seem so, sir."
+
+"Well, we had better bring him in, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty's room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+"What ho!" I said.
+
+"What ho!" said Motty.
+
+"What ho! What ho!"
+
+"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+"How are you feeling this morning?" I asked.
+
+"Topping!" replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. "I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours--Jeeves, you know--is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!"
+
+I couldn't believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+"You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn't you?" I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn't have it, at any price.
+
+"No!" he replied firmly. "I didn't do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what's more, I'm
+going to do it again! I'm going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top," he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, "tap me on
+the shoulder and say, 'Tut! Tut!' and I'll apologize and remedy the
+defect."
+
+"But I say, you know, what about me?"
+
+"What about you?"
+
+"Well, I'm so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I'm apt to get in
+the soup somewhat."
+
+"I can't help your troubles," said Motty firmly. "Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I've had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What's the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+"I know just how you feel, old dear," said Motty consolingly. "And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I've been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We're only young once. Why interfere with
+life's morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!"
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"All my bally life, dear boy," Motty went on, "I've been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you've
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don't know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I've got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I'm going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don't you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I'm a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_
+for the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie
+peering out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn't help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn't wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn't been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty's rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn't get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn't
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "this is getting a bit thick!"
+
+"Sir?" Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+"You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, I shall get blamed, don't you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn't unbend.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "haven't you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don't you know. It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn't the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.--artists and writers and what-not, who
+frolicked considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk.
+That was all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The
+neighbours can't get to sleep unless there's someone dancing Hawaiian
+dances over their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere
+wasn't right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a
+collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song
+when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked
+peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was
+extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of
+soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I'd chosen because there didn't seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Jeeves! There's something in there that grabs you by the leg!"
+
+"That would be Rollo, sir."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down."
+
+"Who the deuce is Rollo?"
+
+"His lordship's bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light."
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions' den, without
+a quiver. What's more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn't have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life--to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+"Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watchdog."
+
+"I don't want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well, what am I to do?"
+
+"No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."
+
+"What do you mean--my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right." I thought for a bit. "Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I'm going away--to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country."
+
+"Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I don't know when I shall be back. Forward my letters."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can't
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+"Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"
+
+"The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."
+
+I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+"Ripping!" I said. "Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you expect him back to dinner?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In prison, sir."
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That's how I felt then.
+
+"In prison!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You don't mean--in prison?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+"Why?" I said.
+
+"He assaulted a constable, sir."
+
+"Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I digested this.
+
+"But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?"
+
+"I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir."
+
+"But she'll come back and want to know where he is."
+
+"I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship's bit of time will have run out
+by then."
+
+"But supposing it hasn't?"
+
+"In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little."
+
+"How?"
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston."
+
+"Why Boston?"
+
+"Very interesting and respectable centre, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, I believe you've hit it."
+
+"I fancy so, sir."
+
+"Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn't turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back."
+
+"Exactly, sir."
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn't have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says--one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I'd almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn't anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn't
+been expecting her for days. I'd forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn't uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "So you've got back, what?"
+
+"I have got back."
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that
+I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"
+
+"I have not yet breakfasted."
+
+"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+"I called on you last night," she said, "but you were out."
+
+"Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?"
+
+"Extremely, thank you."
+
+"See everything? Niag'ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?"
+
+"I saw a great deal."
+
+There was another slightly _frapp�_ silence. Jeeves floated
+silently into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+"I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+"Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly."
+
+"You were his constant companion, then?"
+
+"Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don't you
+know. We'd take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston."
+
+"Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?"
+
+"Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn't know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe--I mean,
+don't you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn't get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston."
+
+"You're sure he went to Boston?"
+
+"Oh, absolutely." I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: "Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn't
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston."
+
+"Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell's Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?"
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn't have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+"So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!"
+
+I hadn't any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+"You deliberately----"
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship."
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+"I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship--was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship's movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him."
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand."
+
+"What!" Lady Malvern goggled at him. "Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?"
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship's
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship's instructions and collect material for your ladyship's
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help."
+
+"Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!" I said.
+
+"The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country--from within--occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him."
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+"Surely, your ladyship," said Jeeves, "it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship's character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?"
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+"Mr. Wooster," she said, "I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit."
+
+"Absolutely!" I said.
+
+"Your breakfast is ready, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "you are certainly a life-saver!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn't lured that
+blighter into riotous living."
+
+"I fancy you are right, sir."
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don't you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+"Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"That pink tie!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Burn it!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"And, Jeeves!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!"
+
+"Thank you very much, sir."
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "it isn't enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?"
+
+"Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion--fifty dollars."
+
+"Fifty dollars?"
+
+"It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship."
+
+"You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it."
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+"Take this, Jeeves," I said; "fifty isn't enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you're--well, you absolutely stand alone!"
+
+"I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I've sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I've wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It's not so bad
+now I'm in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who's
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what's more, he can always be counted on to extend himself
+on behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance,
+of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out."
+
+"Oh?" I said.
+
+"Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated."
+
+"What, pipped?"
+
+"He gave that impression, sir."
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn't apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided--rightly or wrongly--to grow a moustache and this
+had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price,
+and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval
+till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while
+there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the
+time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+"He said that he would call again later, sir."
+
+"Something must be up, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+"I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth's uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir."
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky's uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one's pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn't all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily
+gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though
+we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I really knew about him
+was that he was generally hard up, and had an uncle who relieved the
+strain a bit from time to time by sending him monthly remittances.
+
+"If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle," I said, "why hasn't he a title?
+Why isn't he Lord What-Not?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace's late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards."
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+"Is Mr. Bickersteth's father dead, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Leave any money?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky's people hadn't left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one's ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned," I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+"Halloa, Bicky!" I said. "Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What's the
+trouble, Bicky?"
+
+"I'm in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice."
+
+"Say on, old lad!"
+
+"My uncle's turning up to-morrow, Bertie."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+"The Duke of Chiswick, you know."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+"Jeeves seems to know everything."
+
+"Rather rummily, that's exactly what I was thinking just now myself."
+
+"Well, I wish," said Bicky gloomily, "that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I'm in."
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves," I said, "and wants you
+to rally round."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+"Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that."
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don't you, Jeeves?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Eh!" said Bicky, rattled.
+
+"I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?"
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"
+
+"I chanced to meet his grace's butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+"Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don't you know, I had to have that
+remittance."
+
+"I get you absolutely, dear boy."
+
+"Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I've been ever since. He thinks I'm
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don't you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?"
+
+"You see," said Bicky, "I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me--to save hotel bills, I suppose. I've always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can't have him to stay at my boarding-house."
+
+"Thought of anything, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+"To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?"
+
+"I'll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man."
+
+"Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth----"
+
+"No, by Jove!" said Bicky firmly. "I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I'm not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it's my boast
+that I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of
+course."
+
+"I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth's employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth's guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir."
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+"I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace
+on board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+"How does he do it, Bertie?" he said. "I'll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it's something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn't much
+after nine by the time I'd dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he'd got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+"The duke has arrived, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"That'll be him at the door now."
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. "Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name's Wooster, don't you know. Great pal of
+Bicky's, and all that sort of thing. I'm staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea."
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+"Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"It must be terribly expensive."
+
+"Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know."
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+"A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!" He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. "Have you any idea how
+much my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"About two hundred dollars a month, I believe."
+
+"What! Forty pounds a month!"
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.
+
+"I suppose it seems rummy to you," I said, "but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn't have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don't you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it's quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!"
+
+"I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew's business, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"Oh, just business, don't you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know." I slid for the door.
+"Awfully sorry to leave you, but I've got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere."
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?"
+
+"He's upstairs now, having some tea."
+
+"What does he think of it all?"
+
+"He's absolutely rattled."
+
+"Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later."
+
+"Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy."
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+"Where's everybody, Jeeves?" I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. "Gone out?"
+
+"His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant's Tomb."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going--what?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans."
+
+"Not altogether, sir."
+
+"What's his trouble now?"
+
+"The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir."
+
+"Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth's monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance."
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful."
+
+"Somewhat disturbing, sir."
+
+"I never expected anything like this!"
+
+"I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir."
+
+"I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir."
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+"We must do something, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Can you think of anything?"
+
+"Not at the moment, sir."
+
+"There must be something we can do."
+
+"It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir--as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before--the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there
+is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion--he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title--when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's
+difficulty, sir."
+
+"Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!"
+
+"I will spare no pains, sir."
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call "some blunt instrument."
+
+"This is a bit thick, old thing--what!" I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn't anything in it.
+
+"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
+
+"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars
+and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen--call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every
+day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep
+of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every
+seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs.
+Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
+more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep
+in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd
+make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get
+quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair
+at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no
+good," he said, "because I haven't the cash."
+
+"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
+
+"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
+
+That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend
+money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+"Well, there's only one hope, then."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I've bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jeeves!"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?"
+
+"Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace's
+potentialities as a source of revenue."
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+"I do not allude, sir," explained Jeeves, "to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present--if I may say
+so--useless property, which is capable of being developed."
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I'm bound to say I didn't
+get it myself.
+
+"Couldn't you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!"
+
+"In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee--let us say two
+dollars or three--for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace."
+
+Bicky didn't seem to think much of it.
+
+"Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?"
+
+"I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours."
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+"If you think it could be done----"
+
+"I feel convinced of it, sir."
+
+"What do you think, Bertie?"
+
+"I'm for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir."
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market
+opened quietly" with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You'd hardly believe how difficult it was to interest
+the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the
+week the only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper
+down in Bicky's part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in
+sliced ham instead of cash that didn't help much. There was a gleam of
+light when the brother of Bicky's pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money
+down, for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through,
+owing to its turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to
+kick the old boy instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me
+the deuce of a time to persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things
+take their course. He seemed to regard the pawnbroker's brother rather as
+a sportsman and benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I'm inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn't been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don't think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+"Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?"
+
+"It's all off. We've decided to chuck it."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"It won't work. We can't get anybody to come."
+
+"I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir."
+
+"Do you mean to say you've managed to get anybody?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir."
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+"Birdsburg?"
+
+"Birdsburg, Missouri, sir."
+
+"How did you get them?"
+
+"I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir--a large blue button with the words 'Boost for
+Birdsburg' upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman's evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name if
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon."
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+"Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?"
+
+"I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party."
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+"Payable in advance?"
+
+"No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful."
+
+"Well, any way, when we get it I'll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky'll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?"
+
+"I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright."
+
+"All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Right-o!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+"Uncle," he said, "are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I've asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don't you
+know."
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+"There will be no reporters among them?"
+
+"Reporters? Rather not! Why?"
+
+"I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again."
+
+"That'll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won't be a newspaper-man
+in the place."
+
+"In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends."
+
+"You'll shake hands with them and so forth?"
+
+"I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse."
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town's new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke's society by Jeeves's stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss's eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction--all except one chappie, who seemed to be
+brooding about something--and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+"What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?" asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+"I have never been to Birdsburg."
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+"You should pay it a visit," he said. "The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!"
+
+"Boost for Birdsburg!" said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+"Say!"
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+"As a matter of business," said the chappie--"mind you, I'm not
+questioning anybody's good faith, but, as a matter of strict
+business--I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+"No offence, simply business. I'm not saying anything, mind you, but
+there's one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name's Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you're
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn't he Lord Percy Something? I've read
+English novels, and I know all about it."
+
+"This is monstrous!"
+
+"Now don't get hot under the collar. I'm only asking. I've a right to
+know. You're going to take our money, so it's only fair that we should
+see that we get our money's worth."
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+"You're quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we've a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know----"
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+"I can assure you that I know nothing of this," he said, quite
+politely. "I should be grateful if you would explain."
+
+"Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens
+of Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands
+with you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my
+friend Simms here means--and I'm with him--is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth's word for it--and he is a stranger to us--that you are
+the Duke of Chiswick at all."
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+"Allow me to assure you, sir," he said, in a rummy kind of voice, "that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick."
+
+"Then that's all right," said the chappie heartily. "That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on."
+
+"I am sorry to say," said old Chiswick, "that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused."
+
+"But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you."
+
+"I fear I must disappoint them."
+
+"But in that case the deal would have to be off."
+
+"That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss."
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+"You really won't meet the rest of them?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, then, I guess we'll be going."
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bicky didn't seem to have anything to say.
+
+"Was it true what that man said?"
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"What do you mean by playing this trick?"
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+"I think you'd better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top."
+
+Bicky's Adam's-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+"You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+"Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically----"
+
+"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man."
+
+"Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.
+"The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that remittance
+of yours, and when you cut it off, don't you know, he was pretty solidly
+in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit of the
+ready pretty quick. That's why we thought of this handshaking scheme."
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+"So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!"
+
+"Poor old Bicky didn't want to go to that ranch," I explained. "He
+doesn't like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don't you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to----"
+
+"After what has happened? After this--this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"Not a penny!"
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+"Go ahead, Jeeves!" I said.
+
+"I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers."
+
+"By Jove!" I said.
+
+"By George!" said Bicky.
+
+"Great heavens!" said old Chiswick.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+"Jeeves is right. I'll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it.
+They eat that sort of stuff."
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+"I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!"
+
+"That's all very well," said Bicky, wonderfully braced, "but if I can't
+get the money any other way----"
+
+"Wait! Er--wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something."
+
+"I won't go to that bally ranch."
+
+"No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I--I think----"
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. "I--I think that,
+on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I--I
+might--in fact, I think I see my way to doing--to--I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position."
+
+"I shouldn't mind that."
+
+"I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure----"
+
+"The only figure I'll recognize," said Bicky firmly, "is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly."
+
+"My dear boy!"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to--in fact,
+you would be in an exceedingly advantageous position."
+
+"Five hundred a year!" said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. "Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don't sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don't think I'm going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o' goblins a year--what?"
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick's face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. "Very well, my boy," he said.
+
+"What-o!" said Bicky. "All right, then."
+
+"Jeeves," I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. "Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"It beats me how you do it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"The only trouble is you haven't got much out of it--what!"
+
+"I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends--I judge from his remarks--to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so."
+
+"It isn't enough, Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+"Bring my shaving things."
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie's eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+"You mean, sir?"
+
+"And shave off my moustache."
+
+There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
+interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
+and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
+the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
+see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
+By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
+there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
+name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
+My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
+left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
+I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
+to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
+that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now--what?"
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
+little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
+that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
+everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
+sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
+rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
+got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.
+
+I didn't exactly.
+
+"About a year, isn't it?"
+
+"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"
+
+Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.
+
+"Yesterday was----?"
+
+"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
+forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"
+
+"Till your wife mentioned it?"
+
+He nodded----
+
+"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren't half-hearted about it.
+
+"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."
+
+There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
+one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
+dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
+book.
+
+"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
+knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said.
+
+"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.
+
+"I owe it you."
+
+"How's that?" I said.
+
+"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd."
+
+"So you do remember some things?" I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+"Subside, laddie," I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
+due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
+make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."
+
+"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls."
+
+"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
+trouble."
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.
+
+"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
+If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
+only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
+that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
+But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I said. "Who?"
+
+"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"
+
+"Where?" I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+    "MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
+    to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
+    come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."
+
+I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"
+
+"Why don't I what?"
+
+"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
+ask."
+
+"But she says on her birthday."
+
+"Well, when is her birthday?"
+
+"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."
+
+"Forgotten!" I said.
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."
+
+"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"
+
+"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."
+
+"Think."
+
+"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."
+
+"And you can't remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
+birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."
+
+"Warm?"
+
+"Warmish."
+
+"Or cold?"
+
+"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
+which no home is complete."
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing's done."
+
+"Absolutely. What did you give her?"
+
+He sagged.
+
+"I can't remember," he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
+as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
+it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
+There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
+your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
+Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
+found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
+month, and narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
+Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
+extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
+with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
+up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
+memories"--Mary's speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
+"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
+is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
+a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
+brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
+all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"
+
+"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"
+
+"Why, they change the programme every week there."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."
+
+"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar."
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
+another time."
+
+"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
+I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
+was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."
+
+"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."
+
+"But I'm always writing cheques."
+
+"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
+you've got it. Hold the line."
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+"Halloa!" he said.
+
+"I'm here," I said.
+
+"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"
+
+"Topping," I said. "Good night."
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.
+
+"It's late," said the man at the other end.
+
+"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.
+
+"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
+you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Well, I hadn't.
+
+"Mr. Pepper."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and----"
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
+means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can't----"
+
+"But----"
+
+"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man."
+
+"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"
+
+"I thought it hateful, abominable."
+
+"But you said it was absolutely top----"
+
+"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony----"
+
+"But----!"
+
+"When one single word would have----"
+
+"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.
+
+"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?"
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
+the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute."
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes
+plays--a deuced brainy sort of fellow--and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+"Change of scene is what you want, old scout," I said. "Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party."
+
+"He's absolutely right," said Jimmy. "Change of scene's the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, 'Come back. Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never
+answered at all."
+
+But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing "The Rosary" with one
+finger. He couldn't play anything except "The Rosary," and he couldn't
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, "I've seen her."
+
+"Seen her?" I said. "What, Miss West?"
+
+"I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!"
+
+He started "The Rosary" again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away."
+
+"Go away?" I said. "Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong."
+
+"She cut me."
+
+"Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her."
+
+"She looked clean through me!"
+
+"Of course she did. But don't mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I'll see you through. Now, what you want," I said, "is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want----"
+
+"But what's she going to thank me timidly for?"
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+"Look out for a chance and save her from drowning," I said.
+
+"I can't swim," said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don't you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I've heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn't a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don't you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. Well, I
+don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you'd least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that's what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl's gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don't you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn't absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+"Stop it!" he said. "Do you think nobody's got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?"
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+"Well?" said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+"You're not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie," he said
+handsomely. "I'm bound to say this seems pretty good."
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don't know when I've felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world.
+
+"Hello!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
+
+"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+"This isn't her cousin, you idiot!" he said.
+
+"He's no relation at all. He's just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
+
+"What! Who is he, then?"
+
+"I don't know. Oh, Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you'll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you
+through the bars."
+
+"Tell me all, old boy," I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then--well, she didn't actually
+call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of
+way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+"And mind, this is your affair," he concluded. "I'm not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you'd better go and find
+the kid's parents and return him before the police come for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It's a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You'd have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn't till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people's heads that I
+wasn't standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, "Hi!"
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+"Hi!" it shouted again.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by 'Hi'?" I said.
+
+"You can't come in," said the face. "Hello, is that Tootles?"
+
+"My name is not Tootles, and I don't want to come in," I said. "Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I've brought back your son."
+
+"I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see 'oo!"
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+"Do you live here?" said the face.
+
+"I'm staying here for a few weeks."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Pepper. But----"
+
+"Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?"
+
+"My uncle. But----"
+
+"I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now."
+
+"I wish you were," I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+"This is most fortunate," he said. "We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper's has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days."
+
+"May!"
+
+"He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles."
+
+"I haven't got a wife," I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don't you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+"Did you catch it?" said the face, reappearing. "Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer's. Ask for Bailey's
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey's."
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation.
+Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat
+from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie's Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, "Wah!"
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+"Well, baby?" she said, bending down to him. "So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning," she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don't you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant's father.
+
+I hadn't expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn't speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+"Well," he said, when he had finished, "say something! Heavens! man,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"You don't give me a chance, old top," I said soothingly.
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"What can we do about it?"
+
+"We can't spend our time acting as nurses to this--this exhibit."
+
+He got up.
+
+"I'm going back to London," he said.
+
+"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?"
+
+"I would. This is your business, and you've got to manage it."
+
+"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+"Oh, well," he said resignedly.
+
+"Besides, old top," I said, "I did it all for your sake, don't you
+know?"
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a strained voice, "one moment. I'll stand a good
+deal, but I won't stand for being expected to be grateful."
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple--a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+"And after all," I said, "there's lots to be said for having a
+child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic--what!"
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+"For me," he said, "the hotel. I can't write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?"
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+"I might work this up for the stage," he said. "It wouldn't make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce."
+
+"Farce!" snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+"Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like--that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I'll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie."
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story--the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+"What!" he said. "Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It's the
+old 'Tiny Hand' business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It's big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?"
+
+"He can play a little of 'The Rosary' with one finger."
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+"No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest's all right.
+Look here." He squatted in the sand. "This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed's the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child's line. Child speaks like, 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?'
+Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses
+L., takes girl's hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big
+speech. 'Ah, Marie,' or whatever her name is--Jane--Agnes--Angela? Very
+well. 'Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child rebukes
+us! Angela!' And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I'm just
+giving you the general outline. And we must get a good line for the
+child. 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?' isn't definite enough. We
+want something more--ah! 'Kiss Freddie,' that's it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch."
+
+"But, Jimmy, old top," I said, "the only objection is, don't you know,
+that there's no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn't come within a mile of him."
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+"That's awkward," he said. "Well, we shall have to make it an exterior set
+instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere,
+when we're ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid letter-perfect. First
+rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp to-morrow."
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn't
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+"The chief difficulty," said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, "is to establish a connection in the kid's mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success."
+
+I've often thought, don't you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he'd been an old professional. And then he'd
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+"We must hurry up, Jimmy," I said. "The kid's uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away."
+
+"And we haven't an understudy," said Jimmy. "There's something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid's a bad study. I've known deaf-mutes
+who would have learned the part quicker."
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn't
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+"We're not nearly ready," said Jimmy. "To-day, for instance, he said
+'Kick Freddie.' That's not going to win any girl's heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet."
+
+But, by George, we didn't. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody's fault--certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the
+house to exercise it, when, just as we'd got out to the veranda, along
+came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual
+yell at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+"Hello, baby!" she said. "Good morning," she said to me. "May I come
+up?"
+
+She didn't wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don't you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn't even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+"We were just going down to the beach," I said.
+
+"Yes?" said the girl. She listened for a moment. "So you're having your
+piano tuned?" she said. "My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he's finished here?"
+
+"Er--not yet!" I said. "Not yet, if you don't mind. He can't bear to be
+disturbed when he's working. It's the artistic temperament. I'll tell
+him later."
+
+"Very well," she said, getting up to go. "Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I'll wait."
+
+"Don't you think--shouldn't we be going on to the beach?" I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn't hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+"The beach," I babbled.
+
+"See what I've brought for you, baby," she said. And, by George, don't
+you know, she held up in front of the kid's bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he yelled. "Kiss Fweddie!"
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called "business of outstretched hands" towards
+it.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shrieked.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the girl, turning to me.
+
+"You'd better give it to him, don't you know," I said. "He'll go on
+till you do."
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+"What does it mean?" said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don't you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn't any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: "_Please_ don't apologize.
+It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that's how Freddie's Angela looked.
+
+"_Well?_" she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, "Oh, well, it was this way." And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn't speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World's Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction "exit" was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+"Hello, Reggie!" he said. "I was just coming to you. Where's the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day."
+
+"No good," I said sadly. "It's all over. The thing's finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show."
+
+"Tell me," said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+"Fluffed in his lines, did he?" said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. "It's
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late," he said as we started. "Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and----"
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried. "Look!"
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer's staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other's arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people's business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn't bore you,
+don't you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an
+old sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself,
+my man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George's aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income--an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a
+chunk of o' goblins is a pile. George's uncle was in Monte Carlo, and
+had written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it
+struck me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at
+Monte Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don't you know. Fix
+up his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George
+had tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were
+anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the
+thing began at seven o'clock in the morning, when I was aroused from
+a dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: "Oh, Harold!" and a male voice "raised in anger," as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules's. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you'd
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently
+relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my
+midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+"Voules!" I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn't have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+"Voules," I said, "are you under the delusion that I'm going to be
+Queen of the May? You've called me early all right. It's only just
+seven."
+
+"I understood you to summon me, sir."
+
+"I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside."
+
+"I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice."
+
+"It's a wonder you didn't raise the roof. Who was that with you?"
+
+"Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley's maid."
+
+"What was all the trouble about?"
+
+"I was breaking our engagement, sir."
+
+I couldn't help gaping. Somehow one didn't associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I'd no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+"I think I'll get up," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I can't wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was
+a lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all
+the rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit
+pale and tired. She said she hadn't slept well. That accounted for
+it. Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+"Seen George?" I asked.
+
+I couldn't help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: "I've done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!"
+
+"I have not seen Mr. Lattaker," she said.
+
+I didn't pursue the subject. George's stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day's programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+"The poor, dear Prince!" she said.
+
+"What a shocking thing!" said old Marshall.
+
+"I knew him in Vienna," said Mrs. Vanderley. "He waltzed divinely."
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps "Serene") had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on
+his way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed
+the habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible
+in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken back to his
+yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+"This is going to do somebody no good," I said. "What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they'll catch the fellow?"
+
+"'Later,'" read old Marshall, "'the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.' That's the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can."
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+"Good morning," he said. "I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board--Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+"Yes," said Marshall. "He's down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?"
+
+"He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business."
+
+"Take a seat. He'll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up."
+
+I went down to George's state-room.
+
+"George, old man!" I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What's
+more, the bunk hadn't been slept in. I don't know when I've been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+"He isn't there," I said.
+
+"Not there!" said old Marshall. "Where is he, then? Perhaps he's gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he'll be back soon for breakfast. You'd better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?"
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried.
+
+"'Sh!" he whispered. "Anyone about?"
+
+"They're all down at breakfast."
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+"I say!" I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+"Did you do that? What did you do it for? What's the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!"
+
+"Yes, old boy?"
+
+"I did a murder last night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I----"
+
+"Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?"
+
+"About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn't a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what's-her-name--Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid--Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?"
+
+"Never. I've been refused dozens----"
+
+"Then you won't understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn't wait. It might have been the ship's cat. It
+wasn't. It was Pilbeam."
+
+"You kissed her?"
+
+"I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella."
+
+"Great Scott!"
+
+"Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn't care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I--It's just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don't remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I've lost my
+hat."
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+"Read," I said. "It's all there."
+
+He read.
+
+"Good heavens!" he said.
+
+"You didn't do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?"
+
+"Reggie, this is awful."
+
+"Cheer up. They say he'll recover."
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"It does to him."
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+"It says they've a clue."
+
+"They always say that."
+
+"But--My hat!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!"
+
+"George," I said, "you mustn't waste time. Oh!"
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+"Don't do it!" he said, irritably. "Don't bark like that. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"The man!"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He's down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn't give his name. I didn't like the
+look of him from the first. It's this fellow Sturgis. It must be."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I feel it. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Had he a hat?"
+
+"Of course he had a hat."
+
+"Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?"
+
+"By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your
+life out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _l�se-majest�_.
+It's worse than hitting a policeman. You haven't got a moment to
+waste."
+
+"But I haven't any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I'll wire
+my uncle to meet me in----"
+
+"Look out," I cried; "there's someone coming!"
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+"What's the matter!" I said. "What do you want?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker's voice. A
+letter has arrived for him."
+
+"He isn't here."
+
+"No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?"
+
+"No; give it to me. I'll give it to him when he comes."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?"
+
+"He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir."
+
+"Ah! That's all, Voules."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They're all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth's eating kippers."
+
+"That'll hold him for a bit. Full of bones." He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" he said, as he finished.
+
+"Reggie, this is a queer thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+    "My dear George--I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+    think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious
+    situation that has arisen in connection with the legacy which
+    your father inherited from your Aunt Emily, and which you are
+    expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you, now that you have
+    reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+    your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+    kidnapped--which, was never ascertained--when you were both
+    babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it
+    was supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a
+    letter purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos
+    Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has
+    only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is on
+    his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like
+    other claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile
+    his intervention will, I fear, cause a certain delay before I can
+    hand over your money to you. It will be necessary to go into a
+    thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this will take
+    some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+    meet.--Your affectionate uncle,
+
+                               "AUGUSTUS ARBUTT."
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+"Why, old top," I said, "this lets you out."
+
+"Lets me out of half the darned money, if that's what you mean. If this
+chap's not an imposter--and there's no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I've never heard my father say a word about him--we shall have
+to split the money. Aunt Emily's will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his 'offspring.' I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this."
+
+"Why, you chump," I said, "it's going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you've got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash."
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+"You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie."
+
+"Ass!" I cried. "Don't you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren't exactly alike? Who's to say you aren't
+Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred."
+
+"And Alfred will be there to call me a liar."
+
+"He won't. It's not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It's only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective
+off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning."
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+"Why, I really do believe it would work," he said.
+
+"Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I'll
+swear George hadn't one."
+
+"And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you're a genius."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"You _are_."
+
+"Well, it's only sometimes. I can't keep it up."
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here, Voules," I said.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all."
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+"Voules is all right," I said. "Decent Voules! Voules wouldn't give us
+away, would you, Voules?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"But, Voules, old man," I said, "be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?"
+
+"Financially, sir, nothing."
+
+"Whereas, by keeping quiet"--I tapped him on the chest--"by holding
+your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum."
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I said.
+
+"How much?" said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn't believe the way the man haggled.
+You'd have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He'd hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+"Did you meet him?" I asked.
+
+"Meet whom?" said old Marshall.
+
+"George's twin-brother Alfred."
+
+"I didn't know George had a brother."
+
+"Nor did he till yesterday. It's a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn't wonder if that's where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He's down in George's state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It'll amaze you, the likeness between them. You'll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes."
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren't quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+"Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board," said George.
+
+"It's an amazing likeness," said old Marshall.
+
+"Is my brother like me?" asked George amiably.
+
+"No one could tell you apart," I said.
+
+"I suppose twins always are alike," said George. "But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"He's a dear old pal of mine."
+
+"You've been swimming with him perhaps?"
+
+"Every day last August."
+
+"Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn't you?" He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+"Has George a mole like that?" he asked.
+
+"No," I said. "Oh, no."
+
+"You would have noticed it if he had?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Oh, yes."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said George. "It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one's own identity."
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn't get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn't a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "What did I tell you?"
+
+"What did you tell me?"
+
+"Why, about Stella. Didn't I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then----"
+
+"You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours."
+
+"Perhaps I did," said George modestly, "I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn't to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root."
+
+"I fancy he thinks that you're bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you."
+
+"He's an absolute nuisance," said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+"It's my uncle," said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+"Halloa, George!" he said. "Get my letter?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for my brother," said George. "My name is
+Alfred Lattaker."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I am George's brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?"
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+"You're very like George," he said.
+
+"So everyone tells me."
+
+"And you're really Alfred?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'd like to talk business with you for a moment."
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Voules. "If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off."
+
+I'm bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch--George didn't show up--and as I was going out I was
+waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?"
+
+I didn't see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+"Yes, I have given him the afternoon off."
+
+She broke down--absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I'm
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I'd said, "There, there!"
+which didn't seem to help much, I hadn't any remarks to make.
+
+"He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for."
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn't have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was
+at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George.
+There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules's mind
+had got to be eased as Stella's had been. I couldn't afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow's face being sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
+care? George's was like that. He looked green.
+
+"Finished with your uncle?" I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+"There isn't any uncle," he said. "There isn't any Alfred. And there
+isn't any money."
+
+"Explain yourself, old top," I said.
+
+"It won't take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He's been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When
+the time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he
+went to the tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last
+remnant of the stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while
+and postponing the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he
+invented this twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner
+or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America,
+which he has done. He's on his way now."
+
+"You let him go?"
+
+"What could I do? I can't afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can't prove there's no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred."
+
+"Well, you've made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway," I said, to cheer him up.
+
+"What's the good of that now? I've hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?"
+
+I pondered.
+
+"It looks to me, old top," I said at last, "as if things were in a bit
+of a mess."
+
+"You've guessed it," said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o'clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening--old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I--when
+he came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was
+suggesting the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was
+worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and
+I, only not for the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+"Mr. Marshall?" he said. "I am Count Fritz von C�slin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness"--he clicked his heels together and saluted--"the
+Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz."
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+"Why, Count," she said, "what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?"
+
+"Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?"
+
+"Stella, you remember Count Fritz?"
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+"And how is the poor, dear Prince?" asked Mrs. Vanderley. "What a
+terrible thing to have happened!"
+
+"I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment."
+
+"That's good," said old Marshall.
+
+"In a spoon only," sighed the Count. "Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis."
+
+"Mr. Who?"
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+"I am Denman Sturgis, at your service."
+
+"The deuce you are! What are you doing here?"
+
+"Mr. Sturgis," explained the Count, "graciously volunteered his
+services----"
+
+"I know. But what's he doing here?"
+
+"I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You have not found him?" asked the Count anxiously.
+
+"Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles."
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+"Don't go mixing me up with my brother," he said. "I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole."
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+"I am sorry," he said.
+
+George didn't offer to console him,
+
+"Don't worry," said Sturgis. "He won't escape me. I shall find him."
+
+"Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man."
+
+"What?" shouted George.
+
+"That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin."
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand," he said feebly.
+
+"We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis," went on the Count. "We leaped to the
+conclusion--was it not so?--that the owner of the hat you found was
+also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard
+the story from His Serene Highness's own lips. He was passing down a
+dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he
+had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily.
+My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, 'Where is my brave preserver?' His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!"
+
+"Thanks," said George limply.
+
+"And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker."
+
+"He needn't take all that trouble," said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+"I'll tell you where to find George Lattaker!" he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+"Yes, look at me," he yelled. "Look at me. You won't be the first this
+afternoon who's stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I'll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I'll
+learn you to break a poor man's heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over'eard 'im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They'd spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he'd swear George hadn't one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can."
+
+George got up.
+
+"I haven't the least desire to deny it, Voules."
+
+"Mr. Voules, if _you_ please."
+
+"It's true," said George, turning to the Count. "The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness."
+
+"Then you are really George Lattaker?" asked the Count.
+
+"I am."
+
+"'Ere, what does all this mean?" demanded Voules.
+
+"Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules."
+
+"It's a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall's
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+"Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd shot
+yourself."
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don't you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+"Voules, you're sacked," I said.
+
+"Who cares?" he said. "Think I was going to stop on now I'm a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month's notice and get
+your 'at, and I'll take you to dinner at Ciro's."
+
+"And you, Mr. Lattaker," said the Count, "may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver."
+
+"You may," said George. "May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?"
+
+There's just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+"I'm not sure," she was saying, "that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it."
+
+"Don't you?" said George. "Well, as it happens, I'm feeling just that
+way now."
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+"Halloa, Reggie!" he said.
+
+"Halloa, George!" I said. "Lovely night."
+
+"Beautiful," said Stella.
+
+"The moon," I said.
+
+"Ripping," said George.
+
+"Lovely," said Stella.
+
+"And look at the reflection of the stars on the----"
+
+George caught my eye. "Pop off," he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about--and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of--the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I've had it thrust on my
+notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty
+few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the
+Yeardsley "Venus."
+
+To make you understand the full what-d'you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don't you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+"The Wedding Glide," I'm hanged if she didn't break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley--Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn't seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I'm bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I'm telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+    "MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,--What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+    you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old
+    house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.
+    Couldn't you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be
+    so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
+    again. He was speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come.
+    Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+    --Yours most sincerely,
+
+                              ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+    "P.S.--We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+    "P.P.S.--Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
+    ever played on.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.--We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says
+    it is better than St. Andrews.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.S.--You _must_ come!"
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn't come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+"Thank goodness you've come," he said, as we drove off. "I was just
+about at my last grip."
+
+"What's the trouble, old scout?" I asked.
+
+"If I had the artistic what's-its-name," he went on, "if the mere
+mention of pictures didn't give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn't be
+so bad. As it is, it's rotten!"
+
+"Pictures?"
+
+"Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?"
+
+I remembered then--it hadn't come back to me before--that most of my
+time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had
+had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though
+pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had
+never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after
+marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere
+sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to
+old Bill.
+
+"They talk pictures at every meal," he said. "I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?"
+
+"A few days."
+
+"Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was
+that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn't get me
+back with a lasso."
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+"But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links
+near here."
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+"You don't mean honestly she said that?"
+
+"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
+
+"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
+
+"Well, wasn't it enough?"
+
+"She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?"
+
+"No, she forgot to tell me that."
+
+"It's the worst course in Great Britain."
+
+I felt rather stunned, don't you know. Whether it's a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can't say, but I simply can't do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I'm not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+"We'll have to take it out in billiards," I said. "I'm glad the table's
+good."
+
+"It depends what you call good. It's half-size, and there's a seven-inch
+cut just out of baulk where Clarence's cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended
+it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn't improve
+the thing as a billiard-table."
+
+"But she said you said----"
+
+"Must have been pulling your leg."
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn't help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought
+me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going
+to have a stab at marrying me off. I've often heard that young married
+women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence's
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as
+she had done wouldn't be likely to stick at a trifle.
+
+"Bill, old scout," I said, "there aren't any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?"
+
+"Wish there were," he said. "No such luck."
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman's figure
+appeared.
+
+"Have you got him, Bill?" she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don't you know.
+
+"Do you mean me?" I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+"Is that you, Reggie? I'm so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like."
+Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have
+preferred _this_ to me!" That's what I thought, when I set eyes on
+Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I'm no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.
+Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?" said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don't you know.
+
+"Eh?" I said.
+
+"A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!"
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+"Father," said Clarence, "did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing."
+
+"No," said the father, shaking his head; "no mewing cat."
+
+"I can't bear mewing cats," said Clarence. "A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!"
+
+"A mewing cat is so trying," said Elizabeth.
+
+"_I_ dislike mewing cats," said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the "Monna Lisa," and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+"Here it is," I said. "A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer----"
+
+They all shouted "What!" exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+"Let me look! Yes. 'Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants----'"
+
+"Why, that's near here," I said. "I passed through Midford----"
+
+"Dryden Park is only two miles from this house," said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+"Only two miles!" she said. "It might have been us! It might have been
+the 'Venus'!"
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+"The 'Venus'!" he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening's chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn't notice it before I don't know, but it was not till Elizabeth
+showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the Yeardsley
+"Venus." When she led me up to it, and switched on the light, it seemed
+impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing
+it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I
+was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, "Reggie."
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d'you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+"What-o?" I said nervously.
+
+"Reggie," she said, "I want to ask a great favour of you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+"Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?"
+
+There! That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her.
+I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn't
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn't feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn't think of anything to say but "Oh, yes."
+
+"There's something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"Do you know, Reggie," she said suddenly, "that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?"
+
+"Eh! Well, he still seems--er--_interested_ in them, what?"
+
+"Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves."
+
+"Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the----"
+
+"No, that wouldn't help him. He doesn't need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something."
+
+"I don't quite follow. Get rid of something?"
+
+"The 'Venus,'" said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+"You saw the 'Venus,'" she said.
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Well, come into the dining-room."
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+"There," she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door--that may have been why I hadn't noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it--was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you'd call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean is--well,
+you know what I mean. All I can say is that it's funny I _hadn't_
+noticed it.
+
+"Is that the 'Venus'?" I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think it would affect me much. I'd worry
+through all right."
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+"But you're not an artist," she said. "Clarence is."
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn't
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know,
+which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send
+you to chokey for and you don't want to go. What I mean is, if you're
+absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this "Venus" was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so
+far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a
+professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the "Venus." He couldn't stand it at any price.
+He didn't like the drawing. He didn't like the expression of the face.
+He didn't like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+"Now you see," she said.
+
+"In a way," I said. "But don't you think it's making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?"
+
+"Oh, can't you understand? Look!" Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley's. "There!" she said. "Clarence painted that!"
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence's effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+"Er--'Venus'?" I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+"No. 'Jocund Spring,'" she snapped. She switched off the light. "I see
+you don't understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club."
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, Reggie. I didn't mean to be cross. Only I do want to make you
+understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose--suppose--well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to sit
+and listen to a cheap vulgar tune--the same tune--day after day, day after
+day, wouldn't you expect his nerves to break! Well, it's just like that
+with Clarence. Now you see?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"But what? Surely I've put it plainly enough?"
+
+"Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?"
+
+"I want you to steal the 'Venus.'"
+
+I looked at her.
+
+"You want me to----?"
+
+"Steal it. Reggie!" Her eyes were shining with excitement. "Don't you
+see? It's Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it's the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his 'Venus.' It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it to-night,
+Reggie. I'll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas out of
+the frame, and it's done."
+
+"But one moment," I said. "I'd be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn't it be better--in
+fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?"
+
+"I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused."
+
+"But if I'm caught?"
+
+"You can't be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room."
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+"And as to the picture itself--when I've got it?"
+
+"Burn it. I'll see that you have a good fire in your room."
+
+"But----"
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+"Reggie," she said; nothing more. Just "Reggie."
+
+She looked at me.
+
+"Well, after all, if you see what I mean--The days that are no more,
+don't you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?"
+
+"All right," I said. "I'll do it."
+
+I don't know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces.
+If you're not, you'll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the job
+I'd taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had done
+when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn't help feeling there was a catch somewhere,
+and I've never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for
+one o'clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be
+pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn't stand it any longer.
+I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill's bicycle, took a grip of my
+knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn't have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill's say, "Feeling better now?"
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+"What happened?" I said.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, old man," he said. "I hadn't a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn't stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you're doing? Were you walking in your sleep?"
+
+"It was Elizabeth," I said. "Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you."
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me."
+
+"Reggie, old man," he said. "I'll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It's a fool's trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn't repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to
+do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn't have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I'm
+sorry."
+
+"Me, too," I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+"Are you feeling better now?"
+
+"Better than I was. But that's not saying much."
+
+"Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let's be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it's on
+the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves."
+
+"Heads."
+
+"Tails it is," he said, uncovering the coin. "Up you get. I'll hold the
+light. Don't spike yourself on that sword of yours."
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+"We've got a long evening before us," he said. "You can't burn a picture
+of that size in one chunk. You'd set the chimney on fire. Let's do the
+thing comfortably. Clarence can't grudge us the stuff. We've done him
+a bit of good this trip. To-morrow'll be the maddest, merriest day of
+Clarence's glad New Year. On we go."
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don't know when I've had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+"I heard something," he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+"There's somebody in the dining-room," I whispered.
+
+There's a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill's like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn't
+really heard anything after all. I'm a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+"We'll fling the door open and make a rush," said Bill.
+
+"Supposing they shoot, old scout?"
+
+"Burglars never shoot," said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence's "Jocund Spring,"
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+"What on earth?" said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn't know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+"Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I----"
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+"Clarence?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+"He's in bed," I said.
+
+"In bed! Then he doesn't know? Even now--Young men, I throw myself
+on your mercy. Don't be hard on me. Listen." He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. "I can explain everything--everything."
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+"You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me." He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. "Young man,"
+he said, "you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?"
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don't you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+"I won't say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley," I said. "I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean--what? _I_ know. But I'm afraid--Well, look!"
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+"The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have
+taken Clarence's picture!" He paused. "It might have been mine! My
+Venus!" he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know,
+but he had to know the truth.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, you know," I said. "But it _was_."
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"They _did_ take your Venus."
+
+"But I have it here."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"That's Clarence's 'Jocund Spring,'" I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+"What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don't know my own
+picture--my child--my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: 'Matthew Yeardsley.' This is _my_ picture!"
+
+And--well, by Jove, it _was_, don't you know!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill's
+fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn't be expected
+to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive
+silence for a bit.
+
+"Reggie," said Bill at last, "how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?"
+
+"Old scout," I said. "I was thinking much the same myself."
+
+"Reggie," said Bill, "I happen to know there's a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn't what you'd call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well--er--in the circumstances, how
+about it?"
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it's all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages
+for pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he's
+more like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who
+was apt to rally round him in times of need--a guide, don't you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and--I rather fancy--friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn't
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+    Be!
+    Be!
+      The past is dead.
+      To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+    To-day!
+      Be with every nerve,
+        With every muscle,
+        With every drop of your red blood!
+    Be!
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+"Read this, Bertie!" I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. "Wake up and read this!"
+
+I can't read before I've had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It's a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+"Tea, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He flowed silently out of the room--he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+"What is it?" I said. "What on earth's the matter?"
+
+"Read it!"
+
+"I can't. I haven't had my tea."
+
+"Well, listen then."
+
+"Who's it from?"
+
+"My aunt."
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+"So what on earth am I to do?"
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+"Read it again, Rocky, old top," I said. "I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd's aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+    "MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.--I have been thinking things over for a
+    long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been
+    very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made
+    up my mind to do now."
+
+"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
+
+"It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication."
+
+"It becomes as clear as mud!" said Rocky.
+
+"Proceed, old scout," I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+    "You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see
+    for myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I
+    fear that now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I
+    am old and worn out. I seem to have no strength left in me."
+
+"Sad, Jeeves, what?"
+
+"Extremely, sir."
+
+"Sad nothing!" said Rocky. "It's sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she's a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She's got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it's
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is."
+
+"Rather like the chappie whose heart was 'in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,' Jeeves?"
+
+"The cases are in some respects parallel, sir."
+
+"Carry on, Rocky, dear
+boy."
+
+    "So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the
+    city myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly
+    thought of this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the
+    Sunday paper about a young man who had longed all his life for a
+    certain thing and won it in the end only when he was too old to
+    enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me."
+
+"A thing," interpolated Rocky bitterly, "that I've not been able to do
+in ten years."
+
+    "As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now
+    I have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I
+    have now decided to do so--on one condition. I have written to a
+    firm of lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you
+    quite a substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you
+    live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do.
+    I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+    I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic
+    life of New York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant
+    supper parties.
+
+    "Above all, I want you--indeed, I insist on this--to write me
+    letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all
+    you are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may
+    enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying
+    for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.--Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+                                       "ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER."
+
+"What about it?" said Rocky.
+
+"What about it?" I said.
+
+"Yes. What on earth am I going to do?"
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+"Aren't you bucked?" I said.
+
+"Bucked!"
+
+"If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you."
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop.!
+
+"Pretty soft!" he cried. "To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because
+they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got
+to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral
+delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!"
+
+I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+"It would kill me to have to live in New York," he went on. "To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To----" He started. "Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!"
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+"My dear chap!" I said reproachfully.
+
+"Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. "How many suits of evening clothes have I?"
+
+"We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets----"
+
+"Three."
+
+"For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats."
+
+"And shirts?"
+
+"Four dozen, sir."
+
+"And white ties?"
+
+"The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir."
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+"You see?"
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+"I won't do it! I can't do it! I'll be hanged if I'll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don't
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?"
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+"Then, what are you going to do about it?" I said.
+
+"That's what I want to know."
+
+"You might write and explain to your aunt."
+
+"I might--if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer's in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will."
+
+I saw his point.
+
+"What do you suggest, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+"The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence."
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn't been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn't on to his curves.
+
+"Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?" he said. "I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What's the
+idea?"
+
+"My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you've got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That's it, isn't it, Jeeves?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky's eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man's vast intellect.
+
+"But who would do it?" he said. "It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things."
+
+"Jeeves!" I said. "Let Jeeves do it."
+
+"But would he?"
+
+"You would do it, wouldn't you, Jeeves?"
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish's.
+
+"I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York's places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit."
+
+"Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer's. It's on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way."
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+"Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer's. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof."
+
+"You see?" I said to Rocky. "Leave it to Jeeves. He knows."
+
+It isn't often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights.
+I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table
+on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a
+fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I'd never imagined he could look so
+nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere benevolence, and he
+was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond
+of old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky's letters, based on Jeeves's notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+    "DEAR FREDDIE,--Well, here I am in New York. It's not a bad place.
+    I'm not having a bad time. Everything's pretty all right. The
+    cabarets aren't bad. Don't know when I shall be back. How's
+    everybody? Cheer-o!--Yours,
+
+                                "BERTIE.
+
+    "PS.--Seen old Ted lately?"
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn't dragged him in I couldn't
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here's old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+    "DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,--How can I ever thank you enough for giving
+    me the opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems
+    more wonderful every day.
+
+    "Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!"
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn't know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+    "I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+    night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new
+    place on Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie
+    Cohan looked in about midnight and got off a good one about Willie
+    Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks
+    did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was
+    there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The
+    show at the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.
+
+    "Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof----"
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it's the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it's easier for a chappie
+who's used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there's
+no doubt that Rocky's correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+"Jeeves, you're a wonder!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn't tell
+you a thing about them, except that I've had a good time."
+
+"It's just a knack, sir."
+
+"Well, Mr. Todd's letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir," agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn't that he spoke loud. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It
+was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+"Miss Rockmetteller!"
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I'm not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father's ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I'd
+come to look on Rocky's aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn't seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky's aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I've ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+"Good afternoon," I managed to say.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Mr. Cohan?"
+
+"Er--no."
+
+"Mr. Fred Stone?"
+
+"Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name's Wooster--Bertie
+Wooster."
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+"Isn't Rockmetteller home?" she said. "Where is he?"
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn't think of anything to say. I
+couldn't tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+"If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon."
+
+"So he did, Jeeves; so he did," I said, looking at my watch. "Did he
+say when he would be back?"
+
+"He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning."
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I'd forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England,
+has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails
+to make my spine curl.
+
+"You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller's?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather!"
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+"Well, you need to be," she said, "the way you treat his flat as your
+own!"
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I'd been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn't,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber's man come
+to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her--my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea--the good old
+stand-by.
+
+"Would you care for a cup of tea?" I said.
+
+"Tea?"
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+"Nothing like a cup after a journey," I said. "Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don't you
+know. I'll go and tell Jeeves."
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves's lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn't a care in the world.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "we want some tea."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?"
+
+I wanted sympathy, don't you know--sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+"She's got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?"
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+"No doubt because of Mr. Todd's letters, sir," he said. "It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city."
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+"Well, it's bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I'm someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It's pretty rotten, you know."
+
+"Most disturbing, sir."
+
+"And there's another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We've got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train."
+
+"I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant."
+
+"By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you."
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn't moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There
+was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I
+suppose because I wasn't George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+
+"This is a surprise, what?" I said, after about five minutes' restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+"What is a surprise?"
+
+"Your coming here, don't you know, and so on."
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+"Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?" she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"Oh, rather," I said. "Of course! Certainly. What I mean is----"
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There's nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn't certain of one's lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+"Tea, tea, tea--what? What?" I said.
+
+It wasn't what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+"Do you mean to say, young man," she said frostily, "that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?"
+
+"Rather! Bucks you up, you know."
+
+"What do you mean by the expression 'Bucks you up'?"
+
+"Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz."
+
+"I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"
+
+I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she'd have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can't make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people,
+especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+"Are you comfortable at your hotel?" I said.
+
+"At which hotel?"
+
+"The hotel you're staying at."
+
+"I am not staying at an hotel."
+
+"Stopping with friends--what?"
+
+"I am naturally stopping with my nephew."
+
+I didn't get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+"What! Here?" I gurgled.
+
+"Certainly! Where else should I go?"
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn't
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn't explain that this wasn't
+Rocky's flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+"Will you kindly tell my nephew's man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down."
+
+"Your nephew's man-servant?"
+
+"The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns."
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves's den.
+
+"Jeeves!" I whispered.
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"She thinks you're Mr. Todd's man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don't see what you're to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can't say anything or she'll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don't want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed."
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+"It is hardly my place, sir----"
+
+"I know--I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it's hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?"
+
+"Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?"
+
+"Good Lord! I hadn't thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn't looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?"
+
+"I will endeavour to do so, sir."
+
+"Well, I don't think there's anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+"Good-bye, Jeeves," I said.
+
+"Good-bye, sir."
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's
+misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn't forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I'm not sure this didn't
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn't the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don't know when I've
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said "Halloa!" five times, thinking he hadn't got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+"Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I'm having a time!"
+
+"Where are you speaking from?"
+
+"The Midnight Revels. We've been here an hour, and I think we're a
+fixture for the night. I've told Aunt Isabel I've gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She's glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I'm nearly crazy."
+
+"Tell me all, old top," I said.
+
+"A little more of this," he said, "and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It's simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can't play louder
+than the other. I'm a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours."
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn't struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+"You'll ruin them!"
+
+"I hope so," said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. "I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they've given me a bad enough time. They're
+about three sizes too small, and something's apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven't
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don't know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It's taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I've hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it's
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something's got to be done, Bertie! You've got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it."
+
+"Me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, Jeeves, then. It's all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt's just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she's had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can't stand it, Bertie!
+It's got to end!"
+
+"Can't Jeeves think of anything?"
+
+"No. He just hangs round saying: 'Most disturbing, sir!' A fat lot of
+help that is!"
+
+"Well, old lad," I said, "after all, it's far worse for me than it is
+for you. You've got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you're saving a
+lot of money."
+
+"Saving money? What do you mean--saving money?"
+
+"Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she's paying
+all the expenses now, isn't she?"
+
+"Certainly she is; but she's stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she's in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it's
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I've
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it's got a silver
+lining it's some little dissembler!"
+
+"But, Rocky, old top, it's too bally awful! You've no notion of what
+I'm going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat."
+
+"Don't come near the flat."
+
+"But it's my own flat."
+
+"I can't help that. Aunt Isabel doesn't like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn't do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she'll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said. "I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings."
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+"Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?"
+
+"It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady."
+
+"You know, Jeeves, say what you like--this is a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill."
+
+"It can't go on--this sort of thing--Jeeves."
+
+"We must hope for the best, sir."
+
+"Can't you think of anything to do?"
+
+"I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts--the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve--in the first long drawer, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?"
+
+"For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left." He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. "A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir."
+
+"You understate it, Jeeves."
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+"In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire."
+
+"I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves," I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. "But I don't see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir."
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they've been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There's a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the cabarets
+once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York's a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn't long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky's. I saw him once at Peale's, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn't anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn't difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn't bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn't blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: "What's the use?" and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn't come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+"Bertie, old scout," said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+"we've always been pals, haven't we? I mean, you know I'd do you a good
+turn if you asked me?"
+
+"My dear old lad," I said. The man had moved me.
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening."
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+"My dear chap," I said, "you know I'd do anything in reason; but----"
+
+"You must come, Bertie. You've got to. Something's got to be done to
+divert her mind. She's brooding about something. She's been like that
+for the last two days. I think she's beginning to suspect. She can't
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect
+has worn off now, and she's beginning to wonder again. Something's got to
+be done, or she will find out everything, and if she does I'd take a
+nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the
+love of Mike, come across to our table and help things along."
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+"You've met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?" said Rocky.
+
+"I have."
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+"Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?"
+
+"Take a seat, Bertie. What'll you have?" said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+"You'll come along, won't you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?"
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn't in the contract, but there wasn't
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and,
+though Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his
+best to supply dialogue, we weren't a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+"Say when, Bertie."
+
+"Stop!" barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky's eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+"Leave it there, Rockmetteller!" said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+"The time has come to speak," she said. "I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!"
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+"Eh?" he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+"The fault," she said, "was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city."
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie's face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+"But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York."
+
+"Jimmy Mundy!" I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and
+you suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I'd seen it happen before.
+I remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off
+to a meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front
+of a crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+"Yes; Jimmy Mundy!" she said. "I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they would
+have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it--in his picturesque
+phrase--to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How
+often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+
+"You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained."
+
+She gulped.
+
+"Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+"He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, 'This means you!' I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?"
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+"Y-yes," he stammered; "I--I thought something was wrong."
+
+"Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won't you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won't you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will----"
+
+I can't help thinking it must have been that word "will" that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel's. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+"Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to live in the country?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller."
+
+"Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you--for my sake?"
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+"I will!" he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat, lying
+in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour
+before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was
+the curse of; so we were alone at last. "Jeeves, there's no place like
+home--what?"
+
+"Very true, sir."
+
+"The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing--what?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir."
+
+"Your aunt? The hansom cab one?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller."
+
+I was stunned by the man's resource.
+
+"It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born
+that way there's no use worrying."
+
+"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves. "If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir."
+
+"All right, Jeeves." I said humbly. "You know!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #8164]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2003]
+Last Updated: August 30, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY MAN JEEVES
+
+
+
+
+BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable.
+Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's
+like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements
+at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know
+the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train
+for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to
+think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're
+right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of
+omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+"Jeeves," I said that evening. "I'm getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng's."
+
+"Injudicious, sir," he said firmly. "It will not become you."
+
+"What absolute rot! It's the soundest thing I've struck for years."
+
+"Unsuitable for you, sir."
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life's mysteries, and
+that's all there is to it.
+
+But it isn't only that Jeeves's judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that's really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the "Lincolnshire."
+I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, for I'm fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, "if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the 'Lincolnshire.'"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'd rather not, sir."
+
+"But it's the straight goods. I'm going to put my shirt on him."
+
+"I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after."
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+"After this," I said, "not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment."
+
+"Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction."
+
+And he has, by Jove! I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don't you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I'm game to advise any one about anything. And that's why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves," I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don't know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I'm
+bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn't long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square--artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn't painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting--I've looked into the
+thing a bit--is that you can't start painting portraits till people
+come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until
+you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture
+for the comic papers--he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got
+a good idea--and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the
+advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived
+from biting the ear of a rich uncle--one Alexander Worple, who was in
+the jute business. I'm a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it's
+apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had
+made quite an indecently large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
+American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
+he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
+gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
+him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked
+with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
+these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
+time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancee, Miss
+Singer," the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, "Corky, how about your uncle?"
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can't think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him."
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn't going to hurt me." She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, "There, there,
+little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked," I said
+to Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it.
+That's the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it."
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along----"
+
+"But how can I work it that way?"
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+"There's only one thing to do," I said.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves."
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+"Jeeves, we want your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I boiled down Corky's painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+"So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, try to think of something."
+
+"I have thought of something already, sir."
+
+"You have!"
+
+"The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay."
+
+"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it's going to cost a bit."
+
+Naturally the poor chap's face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl's melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+"You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky," I said. "Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves."
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple's
+attachment to ornithology."
+
+"How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?"
+
+"It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned."
+
+"Oh! Well?"
+
+"Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled--let
+us say--_The Children's Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it
+to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense,
+sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to
+eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple's own larger treatise on the
+same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy
+to Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable."
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn't let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves's
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+"But I'm sure I couldn't write a book about anything. I can't even
+write good letters."
+
+"Muriel's talents," said Corky, with a little cough "lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn't mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It's absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander's natural tendency
+to kick like a steer."
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha's attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don't know why it
+is--one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose--but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don't seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+"I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady's name should
+appear on the title page."
+
+"That's true," said Corky. "Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I'll get after him right away."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Will that be all, sir?" said Jeeves. "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky's place when the first copies of _The
+Children's Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was
+there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang
+at the door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl's name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+"Often of a spring morning," it said at the top of page twenty-one, "as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple's wonderful
+book--_American Birds_."
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed
+cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap
+who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze.
+I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can't call a chap the
+world's greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a
+certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+"It's a cert!" I said.
+
+"An absolute cinch!" said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn't known Mr.
+Worple's handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn't for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don't feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+"Well, well, well, what?" I said.
+
+"Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?"
+
+"Corky around?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You're waiting for Corky, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't understand. No, I'm not waiting for him."
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a
+kind of thingummy, you know.
+
+"I say, you haven't had a row with Corky, have you?"
+
+"A row?"
+
+"A spat, don't you know--little misunderstanding--faults on both
+sides--er--and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Why, whatever makes you think that?"
+
+"Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is--I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre."
+
+"I've left the stage now."
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+"Why, of course, I see now! You're married!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness."
+
+"Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander," she said, looking past me, "this is
+a friend of mine--Mr. Wooster."
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+"I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce's, Alexander."
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+"So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster," I heard him say. "I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?"
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I've a bit of
+news for you."
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+"Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You'll need it."
+
+"Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right. Please yourself. But you're going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle's esteem by
+writing the book on birds?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, she's slid. She's married the uncle."
+
+He took it without blinking. You can't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"That was always a development to be feared, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you were expecting it?"
+
+"It crossed my mind as a possibility."
+
+"Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!"
+
+"I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir."
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn't my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn't be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I'm bound to admit that I didn't relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+"Oh, ah!" I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie. Don't go. We're just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon," he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+"At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn't as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+"It's my uncle's idea," he said. "Muriel doesn't know about it yet. The
+portrait's to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here's the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can't
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid's vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: 'Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.'"
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn't
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie's sorrow. Besides, I'm
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the 'phone.
+
+"Bertie."
+
+"Halloa?"
+
+"Are you doing anything this afternoon?"
+
+"Nothing special."
+
+"You couldn't come down here, could you?"
+
+"What's the trouble? Anything up?"
+
+"I've finished the portrait."
+
+"Good boy! Stout work!"
+
+"Yes." His voice sounded rather doubtful. "The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn't look quite right to me. There's something about it--My uncle's
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and--I don't know why it is, but
+I kind of feel I'd like your moral support!"
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+"You think he'll cut up rough?"
+
+"He may."
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+"I'll come," I said.
+
+"Good!"
+
+"But only if I may bring Jeeves!"
+
+"Why Jeeves? What's Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led----"
+
+"Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves's support, you're mistaken. I'd sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+That's the sort of chap he is. You can't rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+"Stand right where you are, Bertie," he said, without moving. "Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?"
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but--but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I
+remember rightly?"
+
+"As ugly as that?"
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+"You're right quite, Bertie. Something's gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I've worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull--painting the soul of
+the sitter. I've got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child's soul on canvas."
+
+"But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don't see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?"
+
+"I doubt it, sir."
+
+"It--it sorts of leers at you, doesn't it?"
+
+"You've noticed that, too?" said Corky.
+
+"I don't see how one could help noticing."
+
+"All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated."
+
+"Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don't
+you think so, Jeeves?"
+
+"He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir."
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn't
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn't
+notice him.
+
+"Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it--really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let's have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let's----"
+
+And then he got it--suddenly, when he wasn't set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+"Oosh!" he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I've ever run up against.
+
+"Is this a practical joke?" he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+"You want to stand a bit farther away from it," I said.
+
+"You're perfectly right!" he snorted. "I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can't see the thing with a telescope!" He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. "And this--this--is what you have been wasting your time and
+my money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn't let you paint a
+house of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a
+competent worker, and this--this--this extract from a comic coloured
+supplement is the result!" He swung towards the door, lashing his tail
+and growling to himself. "This ends it! If you wish to continue this
+foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for
+idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report
+at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you
+should have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent--not another
+cent--not another--Boosh!"
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+"Corky, old top!" I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+"Well, that finishes it!" he muttered brokenly.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do? What can I do? I can't stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday."
+
+I couldn't think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don't know when I've been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who's just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir!"
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+"I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted."
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects
+a parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he
+did not despair. He put it on the market again under the name of
+Hair-o, guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months.
+It was advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is always
+a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In
+the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a
+coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran's portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr.
+Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been
+for the humorous. There is something about this picture--something bold
+and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular."
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+"Corky, old man!" I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+"He's right! The man's absolutely right! Jeeves, you're a life-saver!
+You've hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I'll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+_Sunday Star_. He'll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He'll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I've got a gold-mine.
+Where's my hat? I've got an income for life! Where's that confounded
+hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!"
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran--for a title of the
+series which you have in mind--'The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.'"
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. "I'm an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest
+before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the
+swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for
+instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the
+eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the
+neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?"
+
+"I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting."
+
+"They have made a big hit, you know."
+
+"I anticipated it, sir."
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+"You know, Jeeves, you're a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things."
+
+"I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir."
+
+"No, I think I'll wear the blue with the faint red stripe."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"But I rather fancy myself in it."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"Oh, all right, have it your own way."
+
+"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+Of course, I know it's as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You've got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's
+Shakespeare--or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad--who says that
+it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and
+more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up
+behind him with a bit of lead piping. There's no doubt the man's right.
+It's absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves--absolutely asserted myself, don't you
+know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming
+a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn't so much
+mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because, Jeeves's
+judgment about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when
+he wouldn't let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like
+a couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in
+the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who
+was who. It's a long story, and I haven't time to tell you now, but
+the point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre--as worn by John
+Drew--when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman--as worn by
+another famous actor chappie--and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that's how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+"What ho without there!"
+
+"Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room."
+
+"Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man," I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. "You know perfectly well
+there's no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it's barely ten o'clock yet?"
+
+"I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning."
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+"Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?"
+
+"Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship's son."
+
+"Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I'll be dressing."
+
+"Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir."
+
+"Then lead me to it."
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn't till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+"I've placed her, Jeeves. She's a pal of my Aunt Agatha."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left
+London. A very vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on
+social conditions in India when she came back from the Durbar."
+
+"Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!"
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+"What's wrong with this tie? I've seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Too ornate, sir."
+
+"Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more."
+
+"Unsuitable, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!" I said. "What?"
+
+"Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster."
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet
+from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as
+if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing
+arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging
+eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about
+fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb
+a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and
+had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say
+how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would
+wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren't
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn't appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you," I said. "So you've popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?"
+
+"About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you."
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you'll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn't dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn't want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she's really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+"Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us."
+
+"Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!"
+
+"Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while."
+
+I didn't get this for a moment.
+
+"Put him up? For my clubs?"
+
+"No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren't you, Motty
+darling?"
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+"Yes, mother," he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+"I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away."
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn't seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don't
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn't on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie's will-power.
+
+"I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write
+a companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_
+after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with
+me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall
+have to pick him up on my return."
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+"It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble." She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn't there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+"He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented." She got up. "Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don't know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon."
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+"Jeeves! What about it?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What's to be done? You heard it all, didn't you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here."
+
+"Pill, sir?"
+
+"The excrescence."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir?"
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn't like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+"Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves," I said
+coldly.
+
+"Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir."
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn't any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn't like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn't like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn't want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty's luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty's existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn't
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie's manner that he was still upset.
+
+"Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?" I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+"No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned."
+
+"Not returned? What do you mean?"
+
+"His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again."
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+"Better go and see what that is, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+"If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in."
+
+"Carry him in?"
+
+"His lordship is lying on the mat, sir."
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+"He's had some sort of dashed fit," I said. I took another look.
+"Jeeves! Someone's been feeding him meat!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"He's a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!"
+
+"I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship's legs, while I----"
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! You don't think--he can't be----"
+
+"I am inclined to think so, sir."
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn't
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+"You never can tell, Jeeves!"
+
+"Very seldom, sir."
+
+"Remove the eye of authority and where are you?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?"
+
+"It would seem so, sir."
+
+"Well, we had better bring him in, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty's room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+"What ho!" I said.
+
+"What ho!" said Motty.
+
+"What ho! What ho!"
+
+"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+"How are you feeling this morning?" I asked.
+
+"Topping!" replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. "I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours--Jeeves, you know--is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!"
+
+I couldn't believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+"You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn't you?" I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn't have it, at any price.
+
+"No!" he replied firmly. "I didn't do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what's more, I'm
+going to do it again! I'm going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top," he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, "tap me on
+the shoulder and say, 'Tut! Tut!' and I'll apologize and remedy the
+defect."
+
+"But I say, you know, what about me?"
+
+"What about you?"
+
+"Well, I'm so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I'm apt to get in
+the soup somewhat."
+
+"I can't help your troubles," said Motty firmly. "Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I've had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What's the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+"I know just how you feel, old dear," said Motty consolingly. "And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I've been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We're only young once. Why interfere with
+life's morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!"
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"All my bally life, dear boy," Motty went on, "I've been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you've
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don't know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I've got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I'm going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don't you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I'm a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_
+for the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie
+peering out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn't help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn't wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn't been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty's rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn't get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn't
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "this is getting a bit thick!"
+
+"Sir?" Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+"You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, I shall get blamed, don't you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn't unbend.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "haven't you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don't you know. It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn't the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.--artists and writers and what-not, who
+frolicked considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk.
+That was all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The
+neighbours can't get to sleep unless there's someone dancing Hawaiian
+dances over their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere
+wasn't right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a
+collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song
+when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked
+peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was
+extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of
+soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I'd chosen because there didn't seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Jeeves! There's something in there that grabs you by the leg!"
+
+"That would be Rollo, sir."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down."
+
+"Who the deuce is Rollo?"
+
+"His lordship's bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light."
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions' den, without
+a quiver. What's more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn't have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life--to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+"Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watchdog."
+
+"I don't want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well, what am I to do?"
+
+"No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."
+
+"What do you mean--my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right." I thought for a bit. "Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I'm going away--to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country."
+
+"Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I don't know when I shall be back. Forward my letters."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can't
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+"Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"
+
+"The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."
+
+I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+"Ripping!" I said. "Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you expect him back to dinner?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In prison, sir."
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That's how I felt then.
+
+"In prison!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You don't mean--in prison?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+"Why?" I said.
+
+"He assaulted a constable, sir."
+
+"Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I digested this.
+
+"But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?"
+
+"I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir."
+
+"But she'll come back and want to know where he is."
+
+"I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship's bit of time will have run out
+by then."
+
+"But supposing it hasn't?"
+
+"In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little."
+
+"How?"
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston."
+
+"Why Boston?"
+
+"Very interesting and respectable centre, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, I believe you've hit it."
+
+"I fancy so, sir."
+
+"Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn't turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back."
+
+"Exactly, sir."
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn't have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says--one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I'd almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn't anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn't
+been expecting her for days. I'd forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn't uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "So you've got back, what?"
+
+"I have got back."
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that
+I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"
+
+"I have not yet breakfasted."
+
+"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+"I called on you last night," she said, "but you were out."
+
+"Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?"
+
+"Extremely, thank you."
+
+"See everything? Niag'ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?"
+
+"I saw a great deal."
+
+There was another slightly _frappe_ silence. Jeeves floated
+silently into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+"I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+"Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly."
+
+"You were his constant companion, then?"
+
+"Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don't you
+know. We'd take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston."
+
+"Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?"
+
+"Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn't know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe--I mean,
+don't you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn't get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston."
+
+"You're sure he went to Boston?"
+
+"Oh, absolutely." I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: "Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn't
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston."
+
+"Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell's Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?"
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn't have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+"So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!"
+
+I hadn't any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+"You deliberately----"
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship."
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+"I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship--was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship's movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him."
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand."
+
+"What!" Lady Malvern goggled at him. "Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?"
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship's
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship's instructions and collect material for your ladyship's
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help."
+
+"Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!" I said.
+
+"The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country--from within--occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him."
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+"Surely, your ladyship," said Jeeves, "it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship's character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?"
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+"Mr. Wooster," she said, "I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit."
+
+"Absolutely!" I said.
+
+"Your breakfast is ready, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "you are certainly a life-saver!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn't lured that
+blighter into riotous living."
+
+"I fancy you are right, sir."
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don't you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+"Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"That pink tie!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Burn it!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"And, Jeeves!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!"
+
+"Thank you very much, sir."
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "it isn't enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?"
+
+"Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion--fifty dollars."
+
+"Fifty dollars?"
+
+"It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship."
+
+"You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it."
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+"Take this, Jeeves," I said; "fifty isn't enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you're--well, you absolutely stand alone!"
+
+"I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I've sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I've wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It's not so bad
+now I'm in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who's
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what's more, he can always be counted on to extend himself
+on behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance,
+of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out."
+
+"Oh?" I said.
+
+"Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated."
+
+"What, pipped?"
+
+"He gave that impression, sir."
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn't apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided--rightly or wrongly--to grow a moustache and this
+had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price,
+and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval
+till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while
+there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the
+time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+"He said that he would call again later, sir."
+
+"Something must be up, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+"I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth's uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir."
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky's uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one's pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn't all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily
+gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though
+we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I really knew about him
+was that he was generally hard up, and had an uncle who relieved the
+strain a bit from time to time by sending him monthly remittances.
+
+"If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle," I said, "why hasn't he a title?
+Why isn't he Lord What-Not?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace's late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards."
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+"Is Mr. Bickersteth's father dead, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Leave any money?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky's people hadn't left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one's ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned," I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+"Halloa, Bicky!" I said. "Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What's the
+trouble, Bicky?"
+
+"I'm in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice."
+
+"Say on, old lad!"
+
+"My uncle's turning up to-morrow, Bertie."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+"The Duke of Chiswick, you know."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+"Jeeves seems to know everything."
+
+"Rather rummily, that's exactly what I was thinking just now myself."
+
+"Well, I wish," said Bicky gloomily, "that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I'm in."
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves," I said, "and wants you
+to rally round."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+"Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that."
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don't you, Jeeves?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Eh!" said Bicky, rattled.
+
+"I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?"
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"
+
+"I chanced to meet his grace's butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+"Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don't you know, I had to have that
+remittance."
+
+"I get you absolutely, dear boy."
+
+"Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I've been ever since. He thinks I'm
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don't you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?"
+
+"You see," said Bicky, "I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me--to save hotel bills, I suppose. I've always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can't have him to stay at my boarding-house."
+
+"Thought of anything, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+"To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?"
+
+"I'll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man."
+
+"Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth----"
+
+"No, by Jove!" said Bicky firmly. "I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I'm not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it's my boast
+that I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of
+course."
+
+"I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth's employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth's guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir."
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+"I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace
+on board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+"How does he do it, Bertie?" he said. "I'll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it's something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn't much
+after nine by the time I'd dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he'd got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+"The duke has arrived, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"That'll be him at the door now."
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. "Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name's Wooster, don't you know. Great pal of
+Bicky's, and all that sort of thing. I'm staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea."
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+"Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"It must be terribly expensive."
+
+"Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know."
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+"A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!" He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. "Have you any idea how
+much my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"About two hundred dollars a month, I believe."
+
+"What! Forty pounds a month!"
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.
+
+"I suppose it seems rummy to you," I said, "but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn't have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don't you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it's quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!"
+
+"I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew's business, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"Oh, just business, don't you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know." I slid for the door.
+"Awfully sorry to leave you, but I've got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere."
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?"
+
+"He's upstairs now, having some tea."
+
+"What does he think of it all?"
+
+"He's absolutely rattled."
+
+"Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later."
+
+"Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy."
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+"Where's everybody, Jeeves?" I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. "Gone out?"
+
+"His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant's Tomb."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going--what?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans."
+
+"Not altogether, sir."
+
+"What's his trouble now?"
+
+"The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir."
+
+"Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth's monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance."
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful."
+
+"Somewhat disturbing, sir."
+
+"I never expected anything like this!"
+
+"I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir."
+
+"I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir."
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+"We must do something, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Can you think of anything?"
+
+"Not at the moment, sir."
+
+"There must be something we can do."
+
+"It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir--as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before--the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there
+is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion--he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title--when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's
+difficulty, sir."
+
+"Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!"
+
+"I will spare no pains, sir."
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call "some blunt instrument."
+
+"This is a bit thick, old thing--what!" I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn't anything in it.
+
+"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
+
+"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars
+and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen--call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every
+day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep
+of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every
+seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs.
+Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
+more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep
+in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd
+make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get
+quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair
+at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no
+good," he said, "because I haven't the cash."
+
+"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
+
+"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
+
+That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend
+money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+"Well, there's only one hope, then."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I've bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jeeves!"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?"
+
+"Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace's
+potentialities as a source of revenue."
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+"I do not allude, sir," explained Jeeves, "to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present--if I may say
+so--useless property, which is capable of being developed."
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I'm bound to say I didn't
+get it myself.
+
+"Couldn't you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!"
+
+"In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee--let us say two
+dollars or three--for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace."
+
+Bicky didn't seem to think much of it.
+
+"Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?"
+
+"I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours."
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+"If you think it could be done----"
+
+"I feel convinced of it, sir."
+
+"What do you think, Bertie?"
+
+"I'm for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir."
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market
+opened quietly" with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You'd hardly believe how difficult it was to interest
+the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the
+week the only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper
+down in Bicky's part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in
+sliced ham instead of cash that didn't help much. There was a gleam of
+light when the brother of Bicky's pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money
+down, for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through,
+owing to its turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to
+kick the old boy instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me
+the deuce of a time to persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things
+take their course. He seemed to regard the pawnbroker's brother rather as
+a sportsman and benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I'm inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn't been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don't think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+"Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?"
+
+"It's all off. We've decided to chuck it."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"It won't work. We can't get anybody to come."
+
+"I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir."
+
+"Do you mean to say you've managed to get anybody?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir."
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+"Birdsburg?"
+
+"Birdsburg, Missouri, sir."
+
+"How did you get them?"
+
+"I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir--a large blue button with the words 'Boost for
+Birdsburg' upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman's evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name if
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon."
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+"Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?"
+
+"I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party."
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+"Payable in advance?"
+
+"No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful."
+
+"Well, any way, when we get it I'll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky'll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?"
+
+"I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright."
+
+"All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Right-o!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+"Uncle," he said, "are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I've asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don't you
+know."
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+"There will be no reporters among them?"
+
+"Reporters? Rather not! Why?"
+
+"I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again."
+
+"That'll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won't be a newspaper-man
+in the place."
+
+"In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends."
+
+"You'll shake hands with them and so forth?"
+
+"I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse."
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town's new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke's society by Jeeves's stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss's eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction--all except one chappie, who seemed to be
+brooding about something--and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+"What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?" asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+"I have never been to Birdsburg."
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+"You should pay it a visit," he said. "The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!"
+
+"Boost for Birdsburg!" said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+"Say!"
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+"As a matter of business," said the chappie--"mind you, I'm not
+questioning anybody's good faith, but, as a matter of strict
+business--I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+"No offence, simply business. I'm not saying anything, mind you, but
+there's one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name's Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you're
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn't he Lord Percy Something? I've read
+English novels, and I know all about it."
+
+"This is monstrous!"
+
+"Now don't get hot under the collar. I'm only asking. I've a right to
+know. You're going to take our money, so it's only fair that we should
+see that we get our money's worth."
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+"You're quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we've a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know----"
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+"I can assure you that I know nothing of this," he said, quite
+politely. "I should be grateful if you would explain."
+
+"Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens
+of Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands
+with you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my
+friend Simms here means--and I'm with him--is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth's word for it--and he is a stranger to us--that you are
+the Duke of Chiswick at all."
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+"Allow me to assure you, sir," he said, in a rummy kind of voice, "that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick."
+
+"Then that's all right," said the chappie heartily. "That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on."
+
+"I am sorry to say," said old Chiswick, "that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused."
+
+"But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you."
+
+"I fear I must disappoint them."
+
+"But in that case the deal would have to be off."
+
+"That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss."
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+"You really won't meet the rest of them?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, then, I guess we'll be going."
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bicky didn't seem to have anything to say.
+
+"Was it true what that man said?"
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"What do you mean by playing this trick?"
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+"I think you'd better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top."
+
+Bicky's Adam's-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+"You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+"Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically----"
+
+"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man."
+
+"Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.
+"The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that remittance
+of yours, and when you cut it off, don't you know, he was pretty solidly
+in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit of the
+ready pretty quick. That's why we thought of this handshaking scheme."
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+"So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!"
+
+"Poor old Bicky didn't want to go to that ranch," I explained. "He
+doesn't like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don't you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to----"
+
+"After what has happened? After this--this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"Not a penny!"
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+"Go ahead, Jeeves!" I said.
+
+"I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers."
+
+"By Jove!" I said.
+
+"By George!" said Bicky.
+
+"Great heavens!" said old Chiswick.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+"Jeeves is right. I'll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it.
+They eat that sort of stuff."
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+"I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!"
+
+"That's all very well," said Bicky, wonderfully braced, "but if I can't
+get the money any other way----"
+
+"Wait! Er--wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something."
+
+"I won't go to that bally ranch."
+
+"No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I--I think----"
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. "I--I think that,
+on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I--I
+might--in fact, I think I see my way to doing--to--I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position."
+
+"I shouldn't mind that."
+
+"I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure----"
+
+"The only figure I'll recognize," said Bicky firmly, "is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly."
+
+"My dear boy!"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to--in fact,
+you would be in an exceedingly advantageous position."
+
+"Five hundred a year!" said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. "Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don't sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don't think I'm going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o' goblins a year--what?"
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick's face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. "Very well, my boy," he said.
+
+"What-o!" said Bicky. "All right, then."
+
+"Jeeves," I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. "Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"It beats me how you do it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"The only trouble is you haven't got much out of it--what!"
+
+"I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends--I judge from his remarks--to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so."
+
+"It isn't enough, Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+"Bring my shaving things."
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie's eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+"You mean, sir?"
+
+"And shave off my moustache."
+
+There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
+interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
+and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
+the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
+see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
+By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
+there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
+name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
+My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
+left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
+I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
+to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
+that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now--what?"
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
+little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
+that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
+everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
+sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
+rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
+got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.
+
+I didn't exactly.
+
+"About a year, isn't it?"
+
+"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"
+
+Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.
+
+"Yesterday was----?"
+
+"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
+forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"
+
+"Till your wife mentioned it?"
+
+He nodded----
+
+"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren't half-hearted about it.
+
+"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."
+
+There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
+one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
+dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
+book.
+
+"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
+knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said.
+
+"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.
+
+"I owe it you."
+
+"How's that?" I said.
+
+"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd."
+
+"So you do remember some things?" I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+"Subside, laddie," I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
+due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
+make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."
+
+"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls."
+
+"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
+trouble."
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.
+
+"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
+If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
+only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
+that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
+But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I said. "Who?"
+
+"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"
+
+"Where?" I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+    "MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
+    to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
+    come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."
+
+I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"
+
+"Why don't I what?"
+
+"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
+ask."
+
+"But she says on her birthday."
+
+"Well, when is her birthday?"
+
+"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."
+
+"Forgotten!" I said.
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."
+
+"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"
+
+"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."
+
+"Think."
+
+"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."
+
+"And you can't remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
+birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."
+
+"Warm?"
+
+"Warmish."
+
+"Or cold?"
+
+"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
+which no home is complete."
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing's done."
+
+"Absolutely. What did you give her?"
+
+He sagged.
+
+"I can't remember," he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
+as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
+it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
+There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
+your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
+Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
+found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
+month, and narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
+Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
+extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
+with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
+up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
+memories"--Mary's speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
+"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
+is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
+a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
+brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
+all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"
+
+"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"
+
+"Why, they change the programme every week there."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."
+
+"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar."
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
+another time."
+
+"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
+I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
+was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."
+
+"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."
+
+"But I'm always writing cheques."
+
+"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
+you've got it. Hold the line."
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+"Halloa!" he said.
+
+"I'm here," I said.
+
+"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"
+
+"Topping," I said. "Good night."
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.
+
+"It's late," said the man at the other end.
+
+"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.
+
+"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
+you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Well, I hadn't.
+
+"Mr. Pepper."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and----"
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
+means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can't----"
+
+"But----"
+
+"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man."
+
+"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"
+
+"I thought it hateful, abominable."
+
+"But you said it was absolutely top----"
+
+"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony----"
+
+"But----!"
+
+"When one single word would have----"
+
+"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.
+
+"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?"
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
+the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute."
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes
+plays--a deuced brainy sort of fellow--and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+"Change of scene is what you want, old scout," I said. "Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party."
+
+"He's absolutely right," said Jimmy. "Change of scene's the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, 'Come back. Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never
+answered at all."
+
+But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing "The Rosary" with one
+finger. He couldn't play anything except "The Rosary," and he couldn't
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, "I've seen her."
+
+"Seen her?" I said. "What, Miss West?"
+
+"I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!"
+
+He started "The Rosary" again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away."
+
+"Go away?" I said. "Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong."
+
+"She cut me."
+
+"Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her."
+
+"She looked clean through me!"
+
+"Of course she did. But don't mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I'll see you through. Now, what you want," I said, "is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want----"
+
+"But what's she going to thank me timidly for?"
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+"Look out for a chance and save her from drowning," I said.
+
+"I can't swim," said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don't you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I've heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn't a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don't you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. Well, I
+don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you'd least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that's what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl's gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don't you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn't absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+"Stop it!" he said. "Do you think nobody's got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?"
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+"Well?" said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+"You're not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie," he said
+handsomely. "I'm bound to say this seems pretty good."
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don't know when I've felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world.
+
+"Hello!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
+
+"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+"This isn't her cousin, you idiot!" he said.
+
+"He's no relation at all. He's just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
+
+"What! Who is he, then?"
+
+"I don't know. Oh, Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you'll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you
+through the bars."
+
+"Tell me all, old boy," I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then--well, she didn't actually
+call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of
+way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+"And mind, this is your affair," he concluded. "I'm not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you'd better go and find
+the kid's parents and return him before the police come for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It's a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You'd have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn't till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people's heads that I
+wasn't standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, "Hi!"
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+"Hi!" it shouted again.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by 'Hi'?" I said.
+
+"You can't come in," said the face. "Hello, is that Tootles?"
+
+"My name is not Tootles, and I don't want to come in," I said. "Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I've brought back your son."
+
+"I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see 'oo!"
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+"Do you live here?" said the face.
+
+"I'm staying here for a few weeks."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Pepper. But----"
+
+"Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?"
+
+"My uncle. But----"
+
+"I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now."
+
+"I wish you were," I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+"This is most fortunate," he said. "We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper's has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days."
+
+"May!"
+
+"He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles."
+
+"I haven't got a wife," I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don't you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+"Did you catch it?" said the face, reappearing. "Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer's. Ask for Bailey's
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey's."
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation.
+Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat
+from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie's Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, "Wah!"
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+"Well, baby?" she said, bending down to him. "So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning," she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don't you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant's father.
+
+I hadn't expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn't speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+"Well," he said, when he had finished, "say something! Heavens! man,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"You don't give me a chance, old top," I said soothingly.
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"What can we do about it?"
+
+"We can't spend our time acting as nurses to this--this exhibit."
+
+He got up.
+
+"I'm going back to London," he said.
+
+"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?"
+
+"I would. This is your business, and you've got to manage it."
+
+"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+"Oh, well," he said resignedly.
+
+"Besides, old top," I said, "I did it all for your sake, don't you
+know?"
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a strained voice, "one moment. I'll stand a good
+deal, but I won't stand for being expected to be grateful."
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple--a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+"And after all," I said, "there's lots to be said for having a
+child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic--what!"
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+"For me," he said, "the hotel. I can't write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?"
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+"I might work this up for the stage," he said. "It wouldn't make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce."
+
+"Farce!" snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+"Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like--that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I'll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie."
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story--the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+"What!" he said. "Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It's the
+old 'Tiny Hand' business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It's big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?"
+
+"He can play a little of 'The Rosary' with one finger."
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+"No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest's all right.
+Look here." He squatted in the sand. "This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed's the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child's line. Child speaks like, 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?'
+Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses
+L., takes girl's hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big
+speech. 'Ah, Marie,' or whatever her name is--Jane--Agnes--Angela? Very
+well. 'Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child rebukes
+us! Angela!' And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I'm just
+giving you the general outline. And we must get a good line for the
+child. 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?' isn't definite enough. We
+want something more--ah! 'Kiss Freddie,' that's it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch."
+
+"But, Jimmy, old top," I said, "the only objection is, don't you know,
+that there's no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn't come within a mile of him."
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+"That's awkward," he said. "Well, we shall have to make it an exterior set
+instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere,
+when we're ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid letter-perfect. First
+rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp to-morrow."
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn't
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+"The chief difficulty," said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, "is to establish a connection in the kid's mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success."
+
+I've often thought, don't you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he'd been an old professional. And then he'd
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+"We must hurry up, Jimmy," I said. "The kid's uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away."
+
+"And we haven't an understudy," said Jimmy. "There's something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid's a bad study. I've known deaf-mutes
+who would have learned the part quicker."
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn't
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+"We're not nearly ready," said Jimmy. "To-day, for instance, he said
+'Kick Freddie.' That's not going to win any girl's heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet."
+
+But, by George, we didn't. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody's fault--certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the
+house to exercise it, when, just as we'd got out to the veranda, along
+came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual
+yell at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+"Hello, baby!" she said. "Good morning," she said to me. "May I come
+up?"
+
+She didn't wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don't you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn't even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+"We were just going down to the beach," I said.
+
+"Yes?" said the girl. She listened for a moment. "So you're having your
+piano tuned?" she said. "My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he's finished here?"
+
+"Er--not yet!" I said. "Not yet, if you don't mind. He can't bear to be
+disturbed when he's working. It's the artistic temperament. I'll tell
+him later."
+
+"Very well," she said, getting up to go. "Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I'll wait."
+
+"Don't you think--shouldn't we be going on to the beach?" I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn't hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+"The beach," I babbled.
+
+"See what I've brought for you, baby," she said. And, by George, don't
+you know, she held up in front of the kid's bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he yelled. "Kiss Fweddie!"
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called "business of outstretched hands" towards
+it.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shrieked.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the girl, turning to me.
+
+"You'd better give it to him, don't you know," I said. "He'll go on
+till you do."
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+"What does it mean?" said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don't you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn't any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: "_Please_ don't apologize.
+It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that's how Freddie's Angela looked.
+
+"_Well?_" she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, "Oh, well, it was this way." And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn't speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World's Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction "exit" was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+"Hello, Reggie!" he said. "I was just coming to you. Where's the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day."
+
+"No good," I said sadly. "It's all over. The thing's finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show."
+
+"Tell me," said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+"Fluffed in his lines, did he?" said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. "It's
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late," he said as we started. "Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and----"
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried. "Look!"
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer's staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other's arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people's business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn't bore you,
+don't you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an
+old sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself,
+my man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George's aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income--an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a
+chunk of o' goblins is a pile. George's uncle was in Monte Carlo, and
+had written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it
+struck me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at
+Monte Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don't you know. Fix
+up his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George
+had tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were
+anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the
+thing began at seven o'clock in the morning, when I was aroused from
+a dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: "Oh, Harold!" and a male voice "raised in anger," as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules's. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you'd
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently
+relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my
+midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+"Voules!" I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn't have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+"Voules," I said, "are you under the delusion that I'm going to be
+Queen of the May? You've called me early all right. It's only just
+seven."
+
+"I understood you to summon me, sir."
+
+"I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside."
+
+"I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice."
+
+"It's a wonder you didn't raise the roof. Who was that with you?"
+
+"Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley's maid."
+
+"What was all the trouble about?"
+
+"I was breaking our engagement, sir."
+
+I couldn't help gaping. Somehow one didn't associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I'd no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+"I think I'll get up," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I can't wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was
+a lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all
+the rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit
+pale and tired. She said she hadn't slept well. That accounted for
+it. Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+"Seen George?" I asked.
+
+I couldn't help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: "I've done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!"
+
+"I have not seen Mr. Lattaker," she said.
+
+I didn't pursue the subject. George's stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day's programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+"The poor, dear Prince!" she said.
+
+"What a shocking thing!" said old Marshall.
+
+"I knew him in Vienna," said Mrs. Vanderley. "He waltzed divinely."
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps "Serene") had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on
+his way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed
+the habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible
+in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken back to his
+yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+"This is going to do somebody no good," I said. "What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they'll catch the fellow?"
+
+"'Later,'" read old Marshall, "'the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.' That's the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can."
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+"Good morning," he said. "I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board--Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+"Yes," said Marshall. "He's down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?"
+
+"He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business."
+
+"Take a seat. He'll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up."
+
+I went down to George's state-room.
+
+"George, old man!" I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What's
+more, the bunk hadn't been slept in. I don't know when I've been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+"He isn't there," I said.
+
+"Not there!" said old Marshall. "Where is he, then? Perhaps he's gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he'll be back soon for breakfast. You'd better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?"
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried.
+
+"'Sh!" he whispered. "Anyone about?"
+
+"They're all down at breakfast."
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+"I say!" I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+"Did you do that? What did you do it for? What's the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!"
+
+"Yes, old boy?"
+
+"I did a murder last night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I----"
+
+"Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?"
+
+"About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn't a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what's-her-name--Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid--Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?"
+
+"Never. I've been refused dozens----"
+
+"Then you won't understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn't wait. It might have been the ship's cat. It
+wasn't. It was Pilbeam."
+
+"You kissed her?"
+
+"I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella."
+
+"Great Scott!"
+
+"Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn't care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I--It's just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don't remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I've lost my
+hat."
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+"Read," I said. "It's all there."
+
+He read.
+
+"Good heavens!" he said.
+
+"You didn't do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?"
+
+"Reggie, this is awful."
+
+"Cheer up. They say he'll recover."
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"It does to him."
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+"It says they've a clue."
+
+"They always say that."
+
+"But--My hat!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!"
+
+"George," I said, "you mustn't waste time. Oh!"
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+"Don't do it!" he said, irritably. "Don't bark like that. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"The man!"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He's down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn't give his name. I didn't like the
+look of him from the first. It's this fellow Sturgis. It must be."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I feel it. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Had he a hat?"
+
+"Of course he had a hat."
+
+"Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?"
+
+"By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your
+life out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _lese-majeste_.
+It's worse than hitting a policeman. You haven't got a moment to
+waste."
+
+"But I haven't any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I'll wire
+my uncle to meet me in----"
+
+"Look out," I cried; "there's someone coming!"
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+"What's the matter!" I said. "What do you want?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker's voice. A
+letter has arrived for him."
+
+"He isn't here."
+
+"No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?"
+
+"No; give it to me. I'll give it to him when he comes."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?"
+
+"He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir."
+
+"Ah! That's all, Voules."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They're all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth's eating kippers."
+
+"That'll hold him for a bit. Full of bones." He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" he said, as he finished.
+
+"Reggie, this is a queer thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+    "My dear George--I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+    think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious
+    situation that has arisen in connection with the legacy which
+    your father inherited from your Aunt Emily, and which you are
+    expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you, now that you have
+    reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+    your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+    kidnapped--which, was never ascertained--when you were both
+    babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it
+    was supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a
+    letter purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos
+    Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has
+    only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is on
+    his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like
+    other claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile
+    his intervention will, I fear, cause a certain delay before I can
+    hand over your money to you. It will be necessary to go into a
+    thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this will take
+    some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+    meet.--Your affectionate uncle,
+
+                               "AUGUSTUS ARBUTT."
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+"Why, old top," I said, "this lets you out."
+
+"Lets me out of half the darned money, if that's what you mean. If this
+chap's not an imposter--and there's no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I've never heard my father say a word about him--we shall have
+to split the money. Aunt Emily's will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his 'offspring.' I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this."
+
+"Why, you chump," I said, "it's going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you've got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash."
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+"You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie."
+
+"Ass!" I cried. "Don't you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren't exactly alike? Who's to say you aren't
+Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred."
+
+"And Alfred will be there to call me a liar."
+
+"He won't. It's not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It's only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective
+off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning."
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+"Why, I really do believe it would work," he said.
+
+"Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I'll
+swear George hadn't one."
+
+"And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you're a genius."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"You _are_."
+
+"Well, it's only sometimes. I can't keep it up."
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here, Voules," I said.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all."
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+"Voules is all right," I said. "Decent Voules! Voules wouldn't give us
+away, would you, Voules?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"But, Voules, old man," I said, "be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?"
+
+"Financially, sir, nothing."
+
+"Whereas, by keeping quiet"--I tapped him on the chest--"by holding
+your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum."
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I said.
+
+"How much?" said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn't believe the way the man haggled.
+You'd have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He'd hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+"Did you meet him?" I asked.
+
+"Meet whom?" said old Marshall.
+
+"George's twin-brother Alfred."
+
+"I didn't know George had a brother."
+
+"Nor did he till yesterday. It's a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn't wonder if that's where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He's down in George's state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It'll amaze you, the likeness between them. You'll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes."
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren't quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+"Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board," said George.
+
+"It's an amazing likeness," said old Marshall.
+
+"Is my brother like me?" asked George amiably.
+
+"No one could tell you apart," I said.
+
+"I suppose twins always are alike," said George. "But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"He's a dear old pal of mine."
+
+"You've been swimming with him perhaps?"
+
+"Every day last August."
+
+"Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn't you?" He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+"Has George a mole like that?" he asked.
+
+"No," I said. "Oh, no."
+
+"You would have noticed it if he had?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Oh, yes."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said George. "It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one's own identity."
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn't get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn't a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "What did I tell you?"
+
+"What did you tell me?"
+
+"Why, about Stella. Didn't I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then----"
+
+"You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours."
+
+"Perhaps I did," said George modestly, "I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn't to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root."
+
+"I fancy he thinks that you're bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you."
+
+"He's an absolute nuisance," said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+"It's my uncle," said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+"Halloa, George!" he said. "Get my letter?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for my brother," said George. "My name is
+Alfred Lattaker."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I am George's brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?"
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+"You're very like George," he said.
+
+"So everyone tells me."
+
+"And you're really Alfred?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'd like to talk business with you for a moment."
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Voules. "If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off."
+
+I'm bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch--George didn't show up--and as I was going out I was
+waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?"
+
+I didn't see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+"Yes, I have given him the afternoon off."
+
+She broke down--absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I'm
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I'd said, "There, there!"
+which didn't seem to help much, I hadn't any remarks to make.
+
+"He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for."
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn't have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was
+at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George.
+There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules's mind
+had got to be eased as Stella's had been. I couldn't afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow's face being sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
+care? George's was like that. He looked green.
+
+"Finished with your uncle?" I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+"There isn't any uncle," he said. "There isn't any Alfred. And there
+isn't any money."
+
+"Explain yourself, old top," I said.
+
+"It won't take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He's been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When
+the time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he
+went to the tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last
+remnant of the stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while
+and postponing the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he
+invented this twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner
+or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America,
+which he has done. He's on his way now."
+
+"You let him go?"
+
+"What could I do? I can't afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can't prove there's no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred."
+
+"Well, you've made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway," I said, to cheer him up.
+
+"What's the good of that now? I've hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?"
+
+I pondered.
+
+"It looks to me, old top," I said at last, "as if things were in a bit
+of a mess."
+
+"You've guessed it," said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o'clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening--old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I--when
+he came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was
+suggesting the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was
+worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and
+I, only not for the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+"Mr. Marshall?" he said. "I am Count Fritz von Coeslin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness"--he clicked his heels together and saluted--"the
+Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz."
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+"Why, Count," she said, "what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?"
+
+"Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?"
+
+"Stella, you remember Count Fritz?"
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+"And how is the poor, dear Prince?" asked Mrs. Vanderley. "What a
+terrible thing to have happened!"
+
+"I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment."
+
+"That's good," said old Marshall.
+
+"In a spoon only," sighed the Count. "Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis."
+
+"Mr. Who?"
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+"I am Denman Sturgis, at your service."
+
+"The deuce you are! What are you doing here?"
+
+"Mr. Sturgis," explained the Count, "graciously volunteered his
+services----"
+
+"I know. But what's he doing here?"
+
+"I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You have not found him?" asked the Count anxiously.
+
+"Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles."
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+"Don't go mixing me up with my brother," he said. "I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole."
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+"I am sorry," he said.
+
+George didn't offer to console him,
+
+"Don't worry," said Sturgis. "He won't escape me. I shall find him."
+
+"Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man."
+
+"What?" shouted George.
+
+"That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin."
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand," he said feebly.
+
+"We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis," went on the Count. "We leaped to the
+conclusion--was it not so?--that the owner of the hat you found was
+also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard
+the story from His Serene Highness's own lips. He was passing down a
+dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he
+had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily.
+My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, 'Where is my brave preserver?' His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!"
+
+"Thanks," said George limply.
+
+"And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker."
+
+"He needn't take all that trouble," said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+"I'll tell you where to find George Lattaker!" he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+"Yes, look at me," he yelled. "Look at me. You won't be the first this
+afternoon who's stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I'll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I'll
+learn you to break a poor man's heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over'eard 'im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They'd spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he'd swear George hadn't one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can."
+
+George got up.
+
+"I haven't the least desire to deny it, Voules."
+
+"Mr. Voules, if _you_ please."
+
+"It's true," said George, turning to the Count. "The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness."
+
+"Then you are really George Lattaker?" asked the Count.
+
+"I am."
+
+"'Ere, what does all this mean?" demanded Voules.
+
+"Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules."
+
+"It's a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall's
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+"Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd shot
+yourself."
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don't you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+"Voules, you're sacked," I said.
+
+"Who cares?" he said. "Think I was going to stop on now I'm a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month's notice and get
+your 'at, and I'll take you to dinner at Ciro's."
+
+"And you, Mr. Lattaker," said the Count, "may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver."
+
+"You may," said George. "May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?"
+
+There's just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+"I'm not sure," she was saying, "that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it."
+
+"Don't you?" said George. "Well, as it happens, I'm feeling just that
+way now."
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+"Halloa, Reggie!" he said.
+
+"Halloa, George!" I said. "Lovely night."
+
+"Beautiful," said Stella.
+
+"The moon," I said.
+
+"Ripping," said George.
+
+"Lovely," said Stella.
+
+"And look at the reflection of the stars on the----"
+
+George caught my eye. "Pop off," he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about--and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of--the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I've had it thrust on my
+notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty
+few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the
+Yeardsley "Venus."
+
+To make you understand the full what-d'you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don't you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+"The Wedding Glide," I'm hanged if she didn't break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley--Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn't seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I'm bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I'm telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+    "MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,--What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+    you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old
+    house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.
+    Couldn't you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be
+    so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
+    again. He was speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come.
+    Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+    --Yours most sincerely,
+
+                              ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+    "P.S.--We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+    "P.P.S.--Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
+    ever played on.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.--We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says
+    it is better than St. Andrews.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.S.--You _must_ come!"
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn't come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+"Thank goodness you've come," he said, as we drove off. "I was just
+about at my last grip."
+
+"What's the trouble, old scout?" I asked.
+
+"If I had the artistic what's-its-name," he went on, "if the mere
+mention of pictures didn't give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn't be
+so bad. As it is, it's rotten!"
+
+"Pictures?"
+
+"Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?"
+
+I remembered then--it hadn't come back to me before--that most of my
+time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had
+had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though
+pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had
+never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after
+marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere
+sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to
+old Bill.
+
+"They talk pictures at every meal," he said. "I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?"
+
+"A few days."
+
+"Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was
+that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn't get me
+back with a lasso."
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+"But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links
+near here."
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+"You don't mean honestly she said that?"
+
+"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
+
+"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
+
+"Well, wasn't it enough?"
+
+"She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?"
+
+"No, she forgot to tell me that."
+
+"It's the worst course in Great Britain."
+
+I felt rather stunned, don't you know. Whether it's a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can't say, but I simply can't do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I'm not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+"We'll have to take it out in billiards," I said. "I'm glad the table's
+good."
+
+"It depends what you call good. It's half-size, and there's a seven-inch
+cut just out of baulk where Clarence's cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended
+it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn't improve
+the thing as a billiard-table."
+
+"But she said you said----"
+
+"Must have been pulling your leg."
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn't help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought
+me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going
+to have a stab at marrying me off. I've often heard that young married
+women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence's
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as
+she had done wouldn't be likely to stick at a trifle.
+
+"Bill, old scout," I said, "there aren't any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?"
+
+"Wish there were," he said. "No such luck."
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman's figure
+appeared.
+
+"Have you got him, Bill?" she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don't you know.
+
+"Do you mean me?" I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+"Is that you, Reggie? I'm so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like."
+Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have
+preferred _this_ to me!" That's what I thought, when I set eyes on
+Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I'm no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.
+Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?" said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don't you know.
+
+"Eh?" I said.
+
+"A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!"
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+"Father," said Clarence, "did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing."
+
+"No," said the father, shaking his head; "no mewing cat."
+
+"I can't bear mewing cats," said Clarence. "A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!"
+
+"A mewing cat is so trying," said Elizabeth.
+
+"_I_ dislike mewing cats," said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the "Monna Lisa," and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+"Here it is," I said. "A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer----"
+
+They all shouted "What!" exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+"Let me look! Yes. 'Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants----'"
+
+"Why, that's near here," I said. "I passed through Midford----"
+
+"Dryden Park is only two miles from this house," said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+"Only two miles!" she said. "It might have been us! It might have been
+the 'Venus'!"
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+"The 'Venus'!" he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening's chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn't notice it before I don't know, but it was not till Elizabeth
+showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the Yeardsley
+"Venus." When she led me up to it, and switched on the light, it seemed
+impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing
+it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I
+was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, "Reggie."
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d'you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+"What-o?" I said nervously.
+
+"Reggie," she said, "I want to ask a great favour of you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+"Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?"
+
+There! That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her.
+I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn't
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn't feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn't think of anything to say but "Oh, yes."
+
+"There's something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"Do you know, Reggie," she said suddenly, "that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?"
+
+"Eh! Well, he still seems--er--_interested_ in them, what?"
+
+"Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves."
+
+"Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the----"
+
+"No, that wouldn't help him. He doesn't need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something."
+
+"I don't quite follow. Get rid of something?"
+
+"The 'Venus,'" said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+"You saw the 'Venus,'" she said.
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Well, come into the dining-room."
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+"There," she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door--that may have been why I hadn't noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it--was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you'd call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean is--well,
+you know what I mean. All I can say is that it's funny I _hadn't_
+noticed it.
+
+"Is that the 'Venus'?" I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think it would affect me much. I'd worry
+through all right."
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+"But you're not an artist," she said. "Clarence is."
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn't
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know,
+which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send
+you to chokey for and you don't want to go. What I mean is, if you're
+absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this "Venus" was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so
+far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a
+professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the "Venus." He couldn't stand it at any price.
+He didn't like the drawing. He didn't like the expression of the face.
+He didn't like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+"Now you see," she said.
+
+"In a way," I said. "But don't you think it's making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?"
+
+"Oh, can't you understand? Look!" Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley's. "There!" she said. "Clarence painted that!"
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence's effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+"Er--'Venus'?" I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+"No. 'Jocund Spring,'" she snapped. She switched off the light. "I see
+you don't understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club."
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, Reggie. I didn't mean to be cross. Only I do want to make you
+understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose--suppose--well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to sit
+and listen to a cheap vulgar tune--the same tune--day after day, day after
+day, wouldn't you expect his nerves to break! Well, it's just like that
+with Clarence. Now you see?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"But what? Surely I've put it plainly enough?"
+
+"Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?"
+
+"I want you to steal the 'Venus.'"
+
+I looked at her.
+
+"You want me to----?"
+
+"Steal it. Reggie!" Her eyes were shining with excitement. "Don't you
+see? It's Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it's the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his 'Venus.' It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it to-night,
+Reggie. I'll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas out of
+the frame, and it's done."
+
+"But one moment," I said. "I'd be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn't it be better--in
+fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?"
+
+"I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused."
+
+"But if I'm caught?"
+
+"You can't be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room."
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+"And as to the picture itself--when I've got it?"
+
+"Burn it. I'll see that you have a good fire in your room."
+
+"But----"
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+"Reggie," she said; nothing more. Just "Reggie."
+
+She looked at me.
+
+"Well, after all, if you see what I mean--The days that are no more,
+don't you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?"
+
+"All right," I said. "I'll do it."
+
+I don't know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces.
+If you're not, you'll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the job
+I'd taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had done
+when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn't help feeling there was a catch somewhere,
+and I've never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for
+one o'clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be
+pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn't stand it any longer.
+I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill's bicycle, took a grip of my
+knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn't have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill's say, "Feeling better now?"
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+"What happened?" I said.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, old man," he said. "I hadn't a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn't stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you're doing? Were you walking in your sleep?"
+
+"It was Elizabeth," I said. "Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you."
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me."
+
+"Reggie, old man," he said. "I'll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It's a fool's trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn't repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to
+do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn't have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I'm
+sorry."
+
+"Me, too," I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+"Are you feeling better now?"
+
+"Better than I was. But that's not saying much."
+
+"Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let's be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it's on
+the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves."
+
+"Heads."
+
+"Tails it is," he said, uncovering the coin. "Up you get. I'll hold the
+light. Don't spike yourself on that sword of yours."
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+"We've got a long evening before us," he said. "You can't burn a picture
+of that size in one chunk. You'd set the chimney on fire. Let's do the
+thing comfortably. Clarence can't grudge us the stuff. We've done him
+a bit of good this trip. To-morrow'll be the maddest, merriest day of
+Clarence's glad New Year. On we go."
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don't know when I've had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+"I heard something," he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+"There's somebody in the dining-room," I whispered.
+
+There's a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill's like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn't
+really heard anything after all. I'm a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+"We'll fling the door open and make a rush," said Bill.
+
+"Supposing they shoot, old scout?"
+
+"Burglars never shoot," said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence's "Jocund Spring,"
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+"What on earth?" said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn't know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+"Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I----"
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+"Clarence?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+"He's in bed," I said.
+
+"In bed! Then he doesn't know? Even now--Young men, I throw myself
+on your mercy. Don't be hard on me. Listen." He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. "I can explain everything--everything."
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+"You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me." He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. "Young man,"
+he said, "you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?"
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don't you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+"I won't say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley," I said. "I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean--what? _I_ know. But I'm afraid--Well, look!"
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+"The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have
+taken Clarence's picture!" He paused. "It might have been mine! My
+Venus!" he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know,
+but he had to know the truth.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, you know," I said. "But it _was_."
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"They _did_ take your Venus."
+
+"But I have it here."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"That's Clarence's 'Jocund Spring,'" I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+"What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don't know my own
+picture--my child--my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: 'Matthew Yeardsley.' This is _my_ picture!"
+
+And--well, by Jove, it _was_, don't you know!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill's
+fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn't be expected
+to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive
+silence for a bit.
+
+"Reggie," said Bill at last, "how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?"
+
+"Old scout," I said. "I was thinking much the same myself."
+
+"Reggie," said Bill, "I happen to know there's a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn't what you'd call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well--er--in the circumstances, how
+about it?"
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it's all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages
+for pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he's
+more like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who
+was apt to rally round him in times of need--a guide, don't you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and--I rather fancy--friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn't
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+    Be!
+    Be!
+      The past is dead.
+      To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+    To-day!
+      Be with every nerve,
+        With every muscle,
+        With every drop of your red blood!
+    Be!
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+"Read this, Bertie!" I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. "Wake up and read this!"
+
+I can't read before I've had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It's a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+"Tea, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He flowed silently out of the room--he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+"What is it?" I said. "What on earth's the matter?"
+
+"Read it!"
+
+"I can't. I haven't had my tea."
+
+"Well, listen then."
+
+"Who's it from?"
+
+"My aunt."
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+"So what on earth am I to do?"
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+"Read it again, Rocky, old top," I said. "I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd's aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+    "MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.--I have been thinking things over for a
+    long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been
+    very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made
+    up my mind to do now."
+
+"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
+
+"It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication."
+
+"It becomes as clear as mud!" said Rocky.
+
+"Proceed, old scout," I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+    "You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see
+    for myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I
+    fear that now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I
+    am old and worn out. I seem to have no strength left in me."
+
+"Sad, Jeeves, what?"
+
+"Extremely, sir."
+
+"Sad nothing!" said Rocky. "It's sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she's a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She's got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it's
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is."
+
+"Rather like the chappie whose heart was 'in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,' Jeeves?"
+
+"The cases are in some respects parallel, sir."
+
+"Carry on, Rocky, dear
+boy."
+
+    "So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the
+    city myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly
+    thought of this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the
+    Sunday paper about a young man who had longed all his life for a
+    certain thing and won it in the end only when he was too old to
+    enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me."
+
+"A thing," interpolated Rocky bitterly, "that I've not been able to do
+in ten years."
+
+    "As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now
+    I have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I
+    have now decided to do so--on one condition. I have written to a
+    firm of lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you
+    quite a substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you
+    live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do.
+    I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+    I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic
+    life of New York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant
+    supper parties.
+
+    "Above all, I want you--indeed, I insist on this--to write me
+    letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all
+    you are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may
+    enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying
+    for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.--Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+                                       "ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER."
+
+"What about it?" said Rocky.
+
+"What about it?" I said.
+
+"Yes. What on earth am I going to do?"
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+"Aren't you bucked?" I said.
+
+"Bucked!"
+
+"If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you."
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop.!
+
+"Pretty soft!" he cried. "To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because
+they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got
+to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral
+delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!"
+
+I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+"It would kill me to have to live in New York," he went on. "To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To----" He started. "Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!"
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+"My dear chap!" I said reproachfully.
+
+"Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. "How many suits of evening clothes have I?"
+
+"We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets----"
+
+"Three."
+
+"For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats."
+
+"And shirts?"
+
+"Four dozen, sir."
+
+"And white ties?"
+
+"The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir."
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+"You see?"
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+"I won't do it! I can't do it! I'll be hanged if I'll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don't
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?"
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+"Then, what are you going to do about it?" I said.
+
+"That's what I want to know."
+
+"You might write and explain to your aunt."
+
+"I might--if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer's in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will."
+
+I saw his point.
+
+"What do you suggest, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+"The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence."
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn't been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn't on to his curves.
+
+"Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?" he said. "I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What's the
+idea?"
+
+"My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you've got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That's it, isn't it, Jeeves?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky's eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man's vast intellect.
+
+"But who would do it?" he said. "It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things."
+
+"Jeeves!" I said. "Let Jeeves do it."
+
+"But would he?"
+
+"You would do it, wouldn't you, Jeeves?"
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish's.
+
+"I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York's places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit."
+
+"Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer's. It's on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way."
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+"Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer's. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof."
+
+"You see?" I said to Rocky. "Leave it to Jeeves. He knows."
+
+It isn't often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights.
+I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table
+on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a
+fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I'd never imagined he could look so
+nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere benevolence, and he
+was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond
+of old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky's letters, based on Jeeves's notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+    "DEAR FREDDIE,--Well, here I am in New York. It's not a bad place.
+    I'm not having a bad time. Everything's pretty all right. The
+    cabarets aren't bad. Don't know when I shall be back. How's
+    everybody? Cheer-o!--Yours,
+
+                                "BERTIE.
+
+    "PS.--Seen old Ted lately?"
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn't dragged him in I couldn't
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here's old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+    "DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,--How can I ever thank you enough for giving
+    me the opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems
+    more wonderful every day.
+
+    "Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!"
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn't know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+    "I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+    night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new
+    place on Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie
+    Cohan looked in about midnight and got off a good one about Willie
+    Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks
+    did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was
+    there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The
+    show at the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.
+
+    "Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof----"
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it's the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it's easier for a chappie
+who's used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there's
+no doubt that Rocky's correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+"Jeeves, you're a wonder!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn't tell
+you a thing about them, except that I've had a good time."
+
+"It's just a knack, sir."
+
+"Well, Mr. Todd's letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir," agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn't that he spoke loud. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It
+was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+"Miss Rockmetteller!"
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I'm not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father's ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I'd
+come to look on Rocky's aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn't seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky's aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I've ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+"Good afternoon," I managed to say.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Mr. Cohan?"
+
+"Er--no."
+
+"Mr. Fred Stone?"
+
+"Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name's Wooster--Bertie
+Wooster."
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+"Isn't Rockmetteller home?" she said. "Where is he?"
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn't think of anything to say. I
+couldn't tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+"If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon."
+
+"So he did, Jeeves; so he did," I said, looking at my watch. "Did he
+say when he would be back?"
+
+"He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning."
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I'd forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England,
+has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails
+to make my spine curl.
+
+"You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller's?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather!"
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+"Well, you need to be," she said, "the way you treat his flat as your
+own!"
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I'd been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn't,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber's man come
+to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her--my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea--the good old
+stand-by.
+
+"Would you care for a cup of tea?" I said.
+
+"Tea?"
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+"Nothing like a cup after a journey," I said. "Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don't you
+know. I'll go and tell Jeeves."
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves's lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn't a care in the world.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "we want some tea."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?"
+
+I wanted sympathy, don't you know--sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+"She's got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?"
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+"No doubt because of Mr. Todd's letters, sir," he said. "It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city."
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+"Well, it's bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I'm someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It's pretty rotten, you know."
+
+"Most disturbing, sir."
+
+"And there's another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We've got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train."
+
+"I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant."
+
+"By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you."
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn't moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There
+was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I
+suppose because I wasn't George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+
+"This is a surprise, what?" I said, after about five minutes' restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+"What is a surprise?"
+
+"Your coming here, don't you know, and so on."
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+"Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?" she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"Oh, rather," I said. "Of course! Certainly. What I mean is----"
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There's nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn't certain of one's lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+"Tea, tea, tea--what? What?" I said.
+
+It wasn't what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+"Do you mean to say, young man," she said frostily, "that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?"
+
+"Rather! Bucks you up, you know."
+
+"What do you mean by the expression 'Bucks you up'?"
+
+"Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz."
+
+"I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"
+
+I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she'd have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can't make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people,
+especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+"Are you comfortable at your hotel?" I said.
+
+"At which hotel?"
+
+"The hotel you're staying at."
+
+"I am not staying at an hotel."
+
+"Stopping with friends--what?"
+
+"I am naturally stopping with my nephew."
+
+I didn't get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+"What! Here?" I gurgled.
+
+"Certainly! Where else should I go?"
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn't
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn't explain that this wasn't
+Rocky's flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+"Will you kindly tell my nephew's man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down."
+
+"Your nephew's man-servant?"
+
+"The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns."
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves's den.
+
+"Jeeves!" I whispered.
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"She thinks you're Mr. Todd's man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don't see what you're to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can't say anything or she'll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don't want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed."
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+"It is hardly my place, sir----"
+
+"I know--I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it's hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?"
+
+"Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?"
+
+"Good Lord! I hadn't thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn't looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?"
+
+"I will endeavour to do so, sir."
+
+"Well, I don't think there's anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+"Good-bye, Jeeves," I said.
+
+"Good-bye, sir."
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's
+misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn't forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I'm not sure this didn't
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn't the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don't know when I've
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said "Halloa!" five times, thinking he hadn't got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+"Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I'm having a time!"
+
+"Where are you speaking from?"
+
+"The Midnight Revels. We've been here an hour, and I think we're a
+fixture for the night. I've told Aunt Isabel I've gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She's glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I'm nearly crazy."
+
+"Tell me all, old top," I said.
+
+"A little more of this," he said, "and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It's simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can't play louder
+than the other. I'm a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours."
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn't struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+"You'll ruin them!"
+
+"I hope so," said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. "I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they've given me a bad enough time. They're
+about three sizes too small, and something's apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven't
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don't know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It's taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I've hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it's
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something's got to be done, Bertie! You've got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it."
+
+"Me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, Jeeves, then. It's all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt's just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she's had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can't stand it, Bertie!
+It's got to end!"
+
+"Can't Jeeves think of anything?"
+
+"No. He just hangs round saying: 'Most disturbing, sir!' A fat lot of
+help that is!"
+
+"Well, old lad," I said, "after all, it's far worse for me than it is
+for you. You've got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you're saving a
+lot of money."
+
+"Saving money? What do you mean--saving money?"
+
+"Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she's paying
+all the expenses now, isn't she?"
+
+"Certainly she is; but she's stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she's in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it's
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I've
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it's got a silver
+lining it's some little dissembler!"
+
+"But, Rocky, old top, it's too bally awful! You've no notion of what
+I'm going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat."
+
+"Don't come near the flat."
+
+"But it's my own flat."
+
+"I can't help that. Aunt Isabel doesn't like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn't do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she'll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said. "I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings."
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+"Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?"
+
+"It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady."
+
+"You know, Jeeves, say what you like--this is a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill."
+
+"It can't go on--this sort of thing--Jeeves."
+
+"We must hope for the best, sir."
+
+"Can't you think of anything to do?"
+
+"I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts--the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve--in the first long drawer, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?"
+
+"For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left." He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. "A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir."
+
+"You understate it, Jeeves."
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+"In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire."
+
+"I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves," I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. "But I don't see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir."
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they've been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There's a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the cabarets
+once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York's a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn't long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky's. I saw him once at Peale's, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn't anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn't difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn't bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn't blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: "What's the use?" and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn't come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+"Bertie, old scout," said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+"we've always been pals, haven't we? I mean, you know I'd do you a good
+turn if you asked me?"
+
+"My dear old lad," I said. The man had moved me.
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening."
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+"My dear chap," I said, "you know I'd do anything in reason; but----"
+
+"You must come, Bertie. You've got to. Something's got to be done to
+divert her mind. She's brooding about something. She's been like that
+for the last two days. I think she's beginning to suspect. She can't
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect
+has worn off now, and she's beginning to wonder again. Something's got to
+be done, or she will find out everything, and if she does I'd take a
+nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the
+love of Mike, come across to our table and help things along."
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+"You've met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?" said Rocky.
+
+"I have."
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+"Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?"
+
+"Take a seat, Bertie. What'll you have?" said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+"You'll come along, won't you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?"
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn't in the contract, but there wasn't
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and,
+though Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his
+best to supply dialogue, we weren't a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+"Say when, Bertie."
+
+"Stop!" barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky's eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+"Leave it there, Rockmetteller!" said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+"The time has come to speak," she said. "I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!"
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+"Eh?" he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+"The fault," she said, "was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city."
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie's face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+"But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York."
+
+"Jimmy Mundy!" I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and
+you suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I'd seen it happen before.
+I remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off
+to a meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front
+of a crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+"Yes; Jimmy Mundy!" she said. "I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they would
+have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it--in his picturesque
+phrase--to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How
+often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+
+"You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained."
+
+She gulped.
+
+"Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+"He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, 'This means you!' I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?"
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+"Y-yes," he stammered; "I--I thought something was wrong."
+
+"Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won't you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won't you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will----"
+
+I can't help thinking it must have been that word "will" that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel's. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+"Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to live in the country?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller."
+
+"Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you--for my sake?"
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+"I will!" he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat, lying
+in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour
+before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was
+the curse of; so we were alone at last. "Jeeves, there's no place like
+home--what?"
+
+"Very true, sir."
+
+"The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing--what?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir."
+
+"Your aunt? The hansom cab one?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller."
+
+I was stunned by the man's resource.
+
+"It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born
+that way there's no use worrying."
+
+"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves. "If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir."
+
+"All right, Jeeves." I said humbly. "You know!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
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diff --git a/old/8164.txt~ b/old/8164.txt~
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Man Jeeves
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Posting Date: February 18, 2012 [EBook #8164]
+Release Date: May, 2005
+[This file was first posted on June 24, 2003]
+Last Updated: August 30, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY MAN JEEVES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
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+MY MAN JEEVES
+
+
+
+
+BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+
+
+LEAVE IT TO JEEVES
+
+
+Jeeves--my man, you know--is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable.
+Honestly, I shouldn't know what to do without him. On broader lines he's
+like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements
+at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked "Inquiries." You know
+the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: "When's the next train
+for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to
+think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're
+right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of
+omniscience.
+
+As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
+Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
+felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
+of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
+hour.
+
+"Jeeves," I said that evening. "I'm getting a check suit like that one
+of Mr. Byng's."
+
+"Injudicious, sir," he said firmly. "It will not become you."
+
+"What absolute rot! It's the soundest thing I've struck for years."
+
+"Unsuitable for you, sir."
+
+Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
+home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
+nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
+music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
+absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life's mysteries, and
+that's all there is to it.
+
+But it isn't only that Jeeves's judgment about clothes is infallible,
+though, of course, that's really the main thing. The man knows
+everything. There was the matter of that tip on the "Lincolnshire."
+I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
+red-hot tabasco.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, for I'm fond of the man, and like to do him a good
+turn when I can, "if you want to make a bit of money have something on
+Wonderchild for the 'Lincolnshire.'"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'd rather not, sir."
+
+"But it's the straight goods. I'm going to put my shirt on him."
+
+"I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
+place is what the stable is after."
+
+Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
+anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
+he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
+nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
+
+"After this," I said, "not another step for me without your advice.
+From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment."
+
+"Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction."
+
+And he has, by Jove! I'm a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
+would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
+don't you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
+Jeeves, and I'm game to advise any one about anything. And that's why,
+when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
+ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves," I said.
+
+I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
+cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
+way. I don't know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
+left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
+stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
+the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
+scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
+having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
+to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I'm
+bound to say that New York's a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
+was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
+on, and I'm a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
+me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn't long before
+I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
+up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
+around Washington Square--artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
+coves.
+
+Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
+but he hadn't painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
+with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
+game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting--I've looked into the
+thing a bit--is that you can't start painting portraits till people
+come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until
+you've painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a
+chappie. Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture
+for the comic papers--he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got
+a good idea--and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the
+advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived
+from biting the ear of a rich uncle--one Alexander Worple, who was in
+the jute business. I'm a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it's
+apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had
+made quite an indecently large stack out of it.
+
+Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
+soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
+was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
+fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
+however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
+no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
+way the above Worple used to harry him.
+
+Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
+think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
+chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
+work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
+him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
+Corky said was that, while he didn't know what they did at the bottom
+of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
+beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
+artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
+using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
+cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
+
+He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr. Worple
+was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
+American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
+When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
+just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
+being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
+what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
+_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
+American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
+he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
+gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
+him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked
+with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
+these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
+time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
+frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
+broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
+
+To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
+extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
+Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
+on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
+should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
+
+So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
+in front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancee, Miss
+Singer," the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
+one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
+were, "Corky, how about your uncle?"
+
+The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
+anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
+can't think what the deuce to do with the body.
+
+"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you
+might suggest a way of breaking it to him."
+
+Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
+way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
+the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it
+yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
+as if she were saying to herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man
+isn't going to hurt me." She gave a fellow a protective kind of
+feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, "There, there,
+little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
+nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
+innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
+system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
+to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
+tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
+you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
+dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
+felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
+
+"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked," I said
+to Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."
+
+Corky declined to cheer up.
+
+"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it.
+That's the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
+principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
+gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
+would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it."
+
+I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.
+
+"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance
+without knowing that you know her. Then you come along----"
+
+"But how can I work it that way?"
+
+I saw his point. That was the catch.
+
+"There's only one thing to do," I said.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Leave it to Jeeves."
+
+And I rang the bell.
+
+"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy
+things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very
+seldom see him come into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies
+in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in
+a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they
+want them. I've got a cousin who's what they call a Theosophist, and he
+says he's often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn't quite
+bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh
+of animals slain in anger and pie.
+
+The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful
+attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost
+child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him
+that gave me confidence.
+
+Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye
+gleams with the light of pure intelligence.
+
+"Jeeves, we want your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I boiled down Corky's painful case into a few well-chosen words.
+
+"So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way
+by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting
+on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, try to think of something."
+
+"I have thought of something already, sir."
+
+"You have!"
+
+"The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may
+seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial
+outlay."
+
+"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has got a pippin of an
+idea, but it's going to cost a bit."
+
+Naturally the poor chap's face dropped, for this seemed to dish the
+whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl's melting
+gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.
+
+"You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky," I said. "Only
+too glad. Carry on, Jeeves."
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple's
+attachment to ornithology."
+
+"How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?"
+
+"It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite
+unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the
+flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.
+Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I
+have mentioned."
+
+"Oh! Well?"
+
+"Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled--let
+us say--_The Children's Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it
+to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense,
+sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to
+eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple's own larger treatise on the
+same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy
+to Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in
+which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one
+to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired
+result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable."
+
+I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage
+when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had
+betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn't let me
+down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to
+hang around pressing my clothes and what-not. If I had half Jeeves's
+brain, I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+The girl made an objection.
+
+"But I'm sure I couldn't write a book about anything. I can't even
+write good letters."
+
+"Muriel's talents," said Corky, with a little cough "lie more in the
+direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn't mention it before, but one of
+our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will
+receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose
+your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It's absurdly unreasonable, but we both
+feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander's natural tendency
+to kick like a steer."
+
+I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family
+when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the
+recollection of my Aunt Agatha's attitude in the matter of Gussie and
+the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don't know why it
+is--one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose--but
+uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,
+legitimate or otherwise. They don't seem able to stick it at any price.
+
+But Jeeves had a solution, of course.
+
+"I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
+author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for
+a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady's name should
+appear on the title page."
+
+"That's true," said Corky. "Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred
+dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand
+words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different
+names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.
+I'll get after him right away."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"Will that be all, sir?" said Jeeves. "Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent
+fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I've got their number
+now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while
+a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real
+work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the
+old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny
+book came along.
+
+I happened to be down at Corky's place when the first copies of _The
+Children's Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was
+there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang
+at the door and the parcel was delivered.
+
+It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some
+species on it, and underneath the girl's name in gold letters. I opened
+a copy at random.
+
+"Often of a spring morning," it said at the top of page twenty-one, "as
+you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,
+carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are
+older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple's wonderful
+book--_American Birds_."
+
+You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later
+there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed
+cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap
+who had written it and Jeeves's genius in putting us on to the wheeze.
+I didn't see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can't call a chap the
+world's greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a
+certain disposition towards chumminess in him.
+
+"It's a cert!" I said.
+
+"An absolute cinch!" said Corky.
+
+And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to
+tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so
+dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn't known Mr.
+Worple's handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author
+of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would
+be delighted to make her acquaintance.
+
+Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had
+invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn't for
+several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been
+wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out
+right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop
+into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don't feel
+inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by
+herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out
+telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.
+
+"Well, well, well, what?" I said.
+
+"Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?"
+
+"Corky around?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You're waiting for Corky, aren't you?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't understand. No, I'm not waiting for him."
+
+It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a
+kind of thingummy, you know.
+
+"I say, you haven't had a row with Corky, have you?"
+
+"A row?"
+
+"A spat, don't you know--little misunderstanding--faults on both
+sides--er--and all that sort of thing."
+
+"Why, whatever makes you think that?"
+
+"Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is--I thought you usually
+dined with him before you went to the theatre."
+
+"I've left the stage now."
+
+Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time
+I had been away.
+
+"Why, of course, I see now! You're married!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness."
+
+"Thank you, so much. Oh Alexander," she said, looking past me, "this is
+a friend of mine--Mr. Wooster."
+
+I spun round. A chappie with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of
+healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he
+looked, though quite peaceful at the moment.
+
+"I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Wooster. Mr. Wooster is a friend of
+Bruce's, Alexander."
+
+The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that kept me from
+hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.
+
+"So you know my nephew, Mr. Wooster," I heard him say. "I wish you
+would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this
+playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I
+noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be
+introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious.
+Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-night, Mr. Wooster? Or have you
+dined?"
+
+I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I
+wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.
+
+When I reached my apartment I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I
+called him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid
+of the party. A stiff b.-and-s. first of all, and then I've a bit of
+news for you."
+
+He came back with a tray and a long glass.
+
+"Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You'll need it."
+
+"Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right. Please yourself. But you're going to get a shock. You
+remember my friend, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle's esteem by
+writing the book on birds?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Well, she's slid. She's married the uncle."
+
+He took it without blinking. You can't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"That was always a development to be feared, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to tell me that you were expecting it?"
+
+"It crossed my mind as a possibility."
+
+"Did it, by Jove! Well, I think, you might have warned us!"
+
+"I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir."
+
+Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer
+frame of mind, what had happened wasn't my fault, if you come down to
+it. I couldn't be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a
+cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the
+same I'm bound to admit that I didn't relish the idea of meeting Corky
+again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of
+soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few
+months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when I was
+beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather
+up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the
+healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on
+it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs. Alexander Worple
+had presented her husband with a son and heir.
+
+I was so darned sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn't the heart to
+touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself. I was bowled
+over. Absolutely. It was the limit.
+
+I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to
+Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and
+then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the
+touch. I gave it him in waves.
+
+But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it
+was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this
+just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I
+pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his
+bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I
+bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the
+studio.
+
+I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting
+away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle
+age, holding a baby.
+
+A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.
+
+"Oh, ah!" I said, and started to back out.
+
+Corky looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie. Don't go. We're just finishing for the day. That will
+be all this afternoon," he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby
+and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.
+
+"At the same hour to-morrow, Mr. Corcoran?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+"Good afternoon."
+
+Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and
+began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for
+granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn't as
+awkward as it might have been.
+
+"It's my uncle's idea," he said. "Muriel doesn't know about it yet. The
+portrait's to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes
+the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here.
+If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted
+with this. Here's the first commission I have ever had to paint a
+portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in
+and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it
+rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into
+the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit
+me behind the ear with a blackjack and swiped all I possess. I can't
+refuse to paint the portrait because if I did my uncle would stop my
+allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid's vacant eye, I
+suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a
+patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted
+him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front
+page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are
+moments when I can almost see the headlines: 'Promising Young Artist
+Beans Baby With Axe.'"
+
+I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was
+too deep for words.
+
+I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn't
+seem right to me to intrude on the poor chappie's sorrow. Besides, I'm
+bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally
+of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
+
+But one afternoon Corky called me on the 'phone.
+
+"Bertie."
+
+"Halloa?"
+
+"Are you doing anything this afternoon?"
+
+"Nothing special."
+
+"You couldn't come down here, could you?"
+
+"What's the trouble? Anything up?"
+
+"I've finished the portrait."
+
+"Good boy! Stout work!"
+
+"Yes." His voice sounded rather doubtful. "The fact is, Bertie, it
+doesn't look quite right to me. There's something about it--My uncle's
+coming in half an hour to inspect it, and--I don't know why it is, but
+I kind of feel I'd like your moral support!"
+
+I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The
+sympathetic co-operation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
+
+"You think he'll cut up rough?"
+
+"He may."
+
+I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the
+restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too
+easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
+
+"I'll come," I said.
+
+"Good!"
+
+"But only if I may bring Jeeves!"
+
+"Why Jeeves? What's Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves
+is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led----"
+
+"Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of
+yours without Jeeves's support, you're mistaken. I'd sooner go into a
+den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang
+for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+That's the sort of chap he is. You can't rattle him.
+
+We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture, with one hand up
+in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
+
+"Stand right where you are, Bertie," he said, without moving. "Now,
+tell me honestly, how does it strike you?"
+
+The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good
+look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I
+went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn't seemed quite
+so bad from there.
+
+"Well?" said Corky, anxiously.
+
+I hesitated a bit.
+
+"Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a
+moment, but--but it _was_ an ugly sort of kid, wasn't it, if I
+remember rightly?"
+
+"As ugly as that?"
+
+I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
+
+"I don't see how it could have been, old chap."
+
+Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort
+of way. He groaned.
+
+"You're right quite, Bertie. Something's gone wrong with the darned
+thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I've worked
+that stunt that Sargent and those fellows pull--painting the soul of
+the sitter. I've got through the mere outward appearance, and have put
+the child's soul on canvas."
+
+"But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don't see how
+he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?"
+
+"I doubt it, sir."
+
+"It--it sorts of leers at you, doesn't it?"
+
+"You've noticed that, too?" said Corky.
+
+"I don't see how one could help noticing."
+
+"All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression.
+But, as it worked out, he looks positively dissipated."
+
+"Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in
+the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don't
+you think so, Jeeves?"
+
+"He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir."
+
+Corky was starting to say something when the door opened, and the uncle
+came in.
+
+For about three seconds all was joy, jollity, and goodwill. The old boy
+shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said that he didn't
+think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his
+stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn't
+notice him.
+
+"Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it--really
+finished? Well, bring it out. Let's have a look at it. This will be a
+wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let's----"
+
+And then he got it--suddenly, when he wasn't set for the punch; and he
+rocked back on his heels.
+
+"Oosh!" he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the
+scaliest silences I've ever run up against.
+
+"Is this a practical joke?" he said at last, in a way that set about
+sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
+
+I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
+
+"You want to stand a bit farther away from it," I said.
+
+"You're perfectly right!" he snorted. "I do! I want to stand so far
+away from it that I can't see the thing with a telescope!" He turned on
+Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
+of meat. "And this--this--is what you have been wasting your time and
+my money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn't let you paint a
+house of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a
+competent worker, and this--this--this extract from a comic coloured
+supplement is the result!" He swung towards the door, lashing his tail
+and growling to himself. "This ends it! If you wish to continue this
+foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for
+idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report
+at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and
+start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you
+should have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent--not another
+cent--not another--Boosh!"
+
+Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
+of the bombproof shelter.
+
+"Corky, old top!" I whispered faintly.
+
+Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
+a hunted look in his eye.
+
+"Well, that finishes it!" he muttered brokenly.
+
+"What are you going to do?"
+
+"Do? What can I do? I can't stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
+heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday."
+
+I couldn't think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
+the office. I don't know when I've been so infernally uncomfortable. It
+was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who's just
+been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
+
+And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir!"
+
+It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
+the picture. Upon my word, I can't give you a better idea of the
+shattering effect of Corky's uncle Alexander when in action than by
+saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
+was there.
+
+"I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
+Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
+He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
+saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
+use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
+he promoted."
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth are you talking about?"
+
+"I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects
+a parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he
+did not despair. He put it on the market again under the name of
+Hair-o, guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months.
+It was advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
+billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
+fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
+for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
+into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is always
+a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In
+the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a
+coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable
+one, sir. Mr. Corcoran's portrait may not have pleased Mr. Worple as a
+likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly
+consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr.
+Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been
+for the humorous. There is something about this picture--something bold
+and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly
+popular."
+
+Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
+noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
+
+And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
+
+"Corky, old man!" I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
+blighter was hysterical.
+
+He began to stagger about all over the floor.
+
+"He's right! The man's absolutely right! Jeeves, you're a life-saver!
+You've hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
+Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I'll buy the business if I
+feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the
+_Sunday Star_. He'll eat this thing. He was telling me only the
+other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He'll give me
+anything I ask for a real winner like this. I've got a gold-mine.
+Where's my hat? I've got an income for life! Where's that confounded
+hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!"
+
+Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
+muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
+smiling.
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran--for a title of the
+series which you have in mind--'The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.'"
+
+Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
+Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
+looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. "I'm an
+optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with
+Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest
+before the dawn and there's a silver lining and what you lose on the
+swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for
+instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the
+eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the
+neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?"
+
+"I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
+sir. Extremely diverting."
+
+"They have made a big hit, you know."
+
+"I anticipated it, sir."
+
+I leaned back against the pillows.
+
+"You know, Jeeves, you're a genius. You ought to be drawing a
+commission on these things."
+
+"I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr. Corcoran has
+been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir."
+
+"No, I think I'll wear the blue with the faint red stripe."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"But I rather fancy myself in it."
+
+"Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir."
+
+"Oh, all right, have it your own way."
+
+"Very good, sir. Thank you, sir."
+
+Of course, I know it's as bad as being henpecked; but then Jeeves is
+always right. You've got to consider that, you know. What?
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
+
+
+I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's
+Shakespeare--or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad--who says that
+it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and
+more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up
+behind him with a bit of lead piping. There's no doubt the man's right.
+It's absolutely that way with me. Take, for instance, the fairly rummy
+matter of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. A moment before they turned
+up, I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
+
+It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from
+under the cold shower, feeling like a two-year-old. As a matter of
+fact, I was especially bucked just then because the day before I had
+asserted myself with Jeeves--absolutely asserted myself, don't you
+know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming
+a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn't so much
+mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because, Jeeves's
+judgment about suits is sound. But I as near as a toucher rebelled when
+he wouldn't let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like
+a couple of brothers. And when he tried to tread on me like a worm in
+the matter of a hat, I jolly well put my foot down and showed him who
+was who. It's a long story, and I haven't time to tell you now, but
+the point is that he wanted me to wear the Longacre--as worn by John
+Drew--when I had set my heart on the Country Gentleman--as worn by
+another famous actor chappie--and the end of the matter was that, after
+a rather painful scene, I bought the Country Gentleman. So that's how
+things stood on this particular morning, and I was feeling kind of
+manly and independent.
+
+Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for
+breakfast while I massaged the good old spine with a rough towel and
+sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and
+opened the door an inch.
+
+"What ho without there!"
+
+"Lady Malvern wishes to see you, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room."
+
+"Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man," I said, rather severely, for
+I bar practical jokes before breakfast. "You know perfectly well
+there's no one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be
+when it's barely ten o'clock yet?"
+
+"I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean
+liner at an early hour this morning."
+
+This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had
+arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at
+some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a
+foreign shore considerably before eight.
+
+"Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?"
+
+"Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir."
+
+"Is she alone?"
+
+"Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his
+lordship would be her ladyship's son."
+
+"Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I'll be dressing."
+
+"Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir."
+
+"Then lead me to it."
+
+While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern
+could be. It wasn't till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and
+was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
+
+"I've placed her, Jeeves. She's a pal of my Aunt Agatha."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left
+London. A very vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on
+social conditions in India when she came back from the Durbar."
+
+"Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir!"
+
+It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather
+a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work
+the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
+
+"What's wrong with this tie? I've seen you give it a nasty look before.
+Speak out like a man! What's the matter with it?"
+
+"Too ornate, sir."
+
+"Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more."
+
+"Unsuitable, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was
+firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into
+the sitting-room.
+
+"Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!" I said. "What?"
+
+"Ah! How do you do, Mr. Wooster? You have never met my son, Wilmot, I
+think? Motty, darling, this is Mr. Wooster."
+
+Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed
+female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet
+from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest arm-chair as
+if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing
+arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging
+eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about
+fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb
+a fellow's faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and
+had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say
+how-d'you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would
+wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
+
+Motty, the son, was about twenty-three, tall and thin and meek-looking.
+He had the same yellow hair as his mother, but he wore it plastered
+down and parted in the middle. His eyes bulged, too, but they weren't
+bright. They were a dull grey with pink rims. His chin gave up the
+struggle about half-way down, and he didn't appear to have any
+eyelashes. A mild, furtive, sheepish sort of blighter, in short.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you," I said. "So you've popped over, eh? Making a
+long stay in America?"
+
+"About a month. Your aunt gave me your address and told me to be sure
+and call on you."
+
+I was glad to hear this, as it showed that Aunt Agatha was beginning to
+come round a bit. There had been some unpleasantness a year before,
+when she had sent me over to New York to disentangle my Cousin Gussie
+from the clutches of a girl on the music-hall stage. When I tell you
+that by the time I had finished my operations, Gussie had not only
+married the girl but had gone on the stage himself, and was doing well,
+you'll understand that Aunt Agatha was upset to no small extent. I
+simply hadn't dared go back and face her, and it was a relief to find
+that time had healed the wound and all that sort of thing enough to
+make her tell her pals to look me up. What I mean is, much as I liked
+America, I didn't want to have England barred to me for the rest of my
+natural; and, believe me, England is a jolly sight too small for anyone
+to live in with Aunt Agatha, if she's really on the warpath. So I
+braced on hearing these kind words and smiled genially on the
+assemblage.
+
+"Your aunt said that you would do anything that was in your power to be
+of assistance to us."
+
+"Rather? Oh, rather! Absolutely!"
+
+"Thank you so much. I want you to put dear Motty up for a little
+while."
+
+I didn't get this for a moment.
+
+"Put him up? For my clubs?"
+
+"No, no! Darling Motty is essentially a home bird. Aren't you, Motty
+darling?"
+
+Motty, who was sucking the knob of his stick, uncorked himself.
+
+"Yes, mother," he said, and corked himself up again.
+
+"I should not like him to belong to clubs. I mean put him up here. Have
+him to live with you while I am away."
+
+These frightful words trickled out of her like honey. The woman simply
+didn't seem to understand the ghastly nature of her proposal. I gave
+Motty the swift east-to-west. He was sitting with his mouth nuzzling
+the stick, blinking at the wall. The thought of having this planted on
+me for an indefinite period appalled me. Absolutely appalled me, don't
+you know. I was just starting to say that the shot wasn't on the board
+at any price, and that the first sign Motty gave of trying to nestle
+into my little home I would yell for the police, when she went on,
+rolling placidly over me, as it were.
+
+There was something about this woman that sapped a chappie's will-power.
+
+"I am leaving New York by the midday train, as I have to pay a visit to
+Sing-Sing prison. I am extremely interested in prison conditions in
+America. After that I work my way gradually across to the coast,
+visiting the points of interest on the journey. You see, Mr. Wooster, I
+am in America principally on business. No doubt you read my book,
+_India and the Indians_? My publishers are anxious for me to write
+a companion volume on the United States. I shall not be able to spend
+more than a month in the country, as I have to get back for the season,
+but a month should be ample. I was less than a month in India, and my
+dear friend Sir Roger Cremorne wrote his _America from Within_
+after a stay of only two weeks. I should love to take dear Motty with
+me, but the poor boy gets so sick when he travels by train. I shall
+have to pick him up on my return."
+
+From where I sat I could see Jeeves in the dining-room, laying the
+breakfast-table. I wished I could have had a minute with him alone. I
+felt certain that he would have been able to think of some way of
+putting a stop to this woman.
+
+"It will be such a relief to know that Motty is safe with you, Mr.
+Wooster. I know what the temptations of a great city are. Hitherto dear
+Motty has been sheltered from them. He has lived quietly with me in the
+country. I know that you will look after him carefully, Mr. Wooster. He
+will give very little trouble." She talked about the poor blighter as
+if he wasn't there. Not that Motty seemed to mind. He had stopped
+chewing his walking-stick and was sitting there with his mouth open.
+"He is a vegetarian and a teetotaller and is devoted to reading. Give
+him a nice book and he will be quite contented." She got up. "Thank you
+so much, Mr. Wooster! I don't know what I should have done without your
+help. Come, Motty! We have just time to see a few of the sights before
+my train goes. But I shall have to rely on you for most of my
+information about New York, darling. Be sure to keep your eyes open and
+take notes of your impressions! It will be such a help. Good-bye, Mr.
+Wooster. I will send Motty back early in the afternoon."
+
+They went out, and I howled for Jeeves.
+
+"Jeeves! What about it?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What's to be done? You heard it all, didn't you? You were in the
+dining-room most of the time. That pill is coming to stay here."
+
+"Pill, sir?"
+
+"The excrescence."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir?"
+
+I looked at Jeeves sharply. This sort of thing wasn't like him. It was
+as if he were deliberately trying to give me the pip. Then I
+understood. The man was really upset about that tie. He was trying to
+get his own back.
+
+"Lord Pershore will be staying here from to-night, Jeeves," I said
+coldly.
+
+"Very good, sir. Breakfast is ready, sir."
+
+I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn't any
+sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a
+moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he
+didn't like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I
+was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
+
+But, what with brooding on Jeeves and brooding on Motty, I was in a
+pretty reduced sort of state. The more I examined the situation, the
+more blighted it became. There was nothing I could do. If I slung Motty
+out, he would report to his mother, and she would pass it on to Aunt
+Agatha, and I didn't like to think what would happen then. Sooner or
+later, I should be wanting to go back to England, and I didn't want to
+get there and find Aunt Agatha waiting on the quay for me with a
+stuffed eelskin. There was absolutely nothing for it but to put the
+fellow up and make the best of it.
+
+About midday Motty's luggage arrived, and soon afterward a large parcel
+of what I took to be nice books. I brightened up a little when I saw
+it. It was one of those massive parcels and looked as if it had enough
+in it to keep the chappie busy for a year. I felt a trifle more
+cheerful, and I got my Country Gentleman hat and stuck it on my head,
+and gave the pink tie a twist, and reeled out to take a bite of lunch
+with one or two of the lads at a neighbouring hostelry; and what with
+excellent browsing and sluicing and cheery conversation and what-not,
+the afternoon passed quite happily. By dinner-time I had almost
+forgotten blighted Motty's existence.
+
+I dined at the club and looked in at a show afterward, and it wasn't
+till fairly late that I got back to the flat. There were no signs of
+Motty, and I took it that he had gone to bed.
+
+It seemed rummy to me, though, that the parcel of nice books was still
+there with the string and paper on it. It looked as if Motty, after
+seeing mother off at the station, had decided to call it a day.
+
+Jeeves came in with the nightly whisky-and-soda. I could tell by the
+chappie's manner that he was still upset.
+
+"Lord Pershore gone to bed, Jeeves?" I asked, with reserved hauteur and
+what-not.
+
+"No, sir. His lordship has not yet returned."
+
+"Not returned? What do you mean?"
+
+"His lordship came in shortly after six-thirty, and, having dressed,
+went out again."
+
+At this moment there was a noise outside the front door, a sort of
+scrabbling noise, as if somebody were trying to paw his way through the
+woodwork. Then a sort of thud.
+
+"Better go and see what that is, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He went out and came back again.
+
+"If you would not mind stepping this way, sir, I think we might be able
+to carry him in."
+
+"Carry him in?"
+
+"His lordship is lying on the mat, sir."
+
+I went to the front door. The man was right. There was Motty huddled up
+outside on the floor. He was moaning a bit.
+
+"He's had some sort of dashed fit," I said. I took another look.
+"Jeeves! Someone's been feeding him meat!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"He's a vegetarian, you know. He must have been digging into a steak or
+something. Call up a doctor!"
+
+"I hardly think it will be necessary, sir. If you would take his
+lordship's legs, while I----"
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! You don't think--he can't be----"
+
+"I am inclined to think so, sir."
+
+And, by Jove, he was right! Once on the right track, you couldn't
+mistake it. Motty was under the surface.
+
+It was the deuce of a shock.
+
+"You never can tell, Jeeves!"
+
+"Very seldom, sir."
+
+"Remove the eye of authority and where are you?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Where is my wandering boy to-night and all that sort of thing, what?"
+
+"It would seem so, sir."
+
+"Well, we had better bring him in, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So we lugged him in, and Jeeves put him to bed, and I lit a cigarette
+and sat down to think the thing over. I had a kind of foreboding. It
+seemed to me that I had let myself in for something pretty rocky.
+
+Next morning, after I had sucked down a thoughtful cup of tea, I went
+into Motty's room to investigate. I expected to find the fellow a
+wreck, but there he was, sitting up in bed, quite chirpy, reading
+Gingery stories.
+
+"What ho!" I said.
+
+"What ho!" said Motty.
+
+"What ho! What ho!"
+
+"What ho! What ho! What ho!"
+
+After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.
+
+"How are you feeling this morning?" I asked.
+
+"Topping!" replied Motty, blithely and with abandon. "I say, you know,
+that fellow of yours--Jeeves, you know--is a corker. I had a most
+frightful headache when I woke up, and he brought me a sort of rummy
+dark drink, and it put me right again at once. Said it was his own
+invention. I must see more of that lad. He seems to me distinctly one
+of the ones!"
+
+I couldn't believe that this was the same blighter who had sat and
+sucked his stick the day before.
+
+"You ate something that disagreed with you last night, didn't you?" I
+said, by way of giving him a chance to slide out of it if he wanted to.
+But he wouldn't have it, at any price.
+
+"No!" he replied firmly. "I didn't do anything of the kind. I drank too
+much! Much too much. Lots and lots too much! And, what's more, I'm
+going to do it again! I'm going to do it every night. If ever you see
+me sober, old top," he said, with a kind of holy exaltation, "tap me on
+the shoulder and say, 'Tut! Tut!' and I'll apologize and remedy the
+defect."
+
+"But I say, you know, what about me?"
+
+"What about you?"
+
+"Well, I'm so to speak, as it were, kind of responsible for you. What I
+mean to say is, if you go doing this sort of thing I'm apt to get in
+the soup somewhat."
+
+"I can't help your troubles," said Motty firmly. "Listen to me, old
+thing: this is the first time in my life that I've had a real chance to
+yield to the temptations of a great city. What's the use of a great
+city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them? Makes it so
+bally discouraging for a great city. Besides, mother told me to keep my
+eyes open and collect impressions."
+
+I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt dizzy.
+
+"I know just how you feel, old dear," said Motty consolingly. "And, if
+my principles would permit it, I would simmer down for your sake. But
+duty first! This is the first time I've been let out alone, and I mean
+to make the most of it. We're only young once. Why interfere with
+life's morning? Young man, rejoice in thy youth! Tra-la! What ho!"
+
+Put like that, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"All my bally life, dear boy," Motty went on, "I've been cooped up in
+the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you've
+been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don't know what cooping is! The
+only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught
+sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about
+it for days. I've got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up
+a few happy memories for the long winter evenings. This is my only
+chance to collect a past, and I'm going to do it. Now tell me, old
+sport, as man to man, how does one get in touch with that very decent
+chappie Jeeves? Does one ring a bell or shout a bit? I should like to
+discuss the subject of a good stiff b.-and-s. with him!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had had a sort of vague idea, don't you know, that if I stuck close
+to Motty and went about the place with him, I might act as a bit of a
+damper on the gaiety. What I mean is, I thought that if, when he was
+being the life and soul of the party, he were to catch my reproving eye
+he might ease up a trifle on the revelry. So the next night I took him
+along to supper with me. It was the last time. I'm a quiet, peaceful
+sort of chappie who has lived all his life in London, and I can't stand
+the pace these swift sportsmen from the rural districts set. What I
+mean to say is this, I'm all for rational enjoyment and so forth, but I
+think a chappie makes himself conspicuous when he throws soft-boiled
+eggs at the electric fan. And decent mirth and all that sort of thing
+are all right, but I do bar dancing on tables and having to dash all
+over the place dodging waiters, managers, and chuckers-out, just when
+you want to sit still and digest.
+
+Directly I managed to tear myself away that night and get home, I made
+up my mind that this was jolly well the last time that I went about
+with Motty. The only time I met him late at night after that was once
+when I passed the door of a fairly low-down sort of restaurant and had
+to step aside to dodge him as he sailed through the air _en route_
+for the opposite pavement, with a muscular sort of looking chappie
+peering out after him with a kind of gloomy satisfaction.
+
+In a way, I couldn't help sympathizing with the fellow. He had about
+four weeks to have the good time that ought to have been spread over
+about ten years, and I didn't wonder at his wanting to be pretty busy.
+I should have been just the same in his place. Still, there was no
+denying that it was a bit thick. If it hadn't been for the thought of
+Lady Malvern and Aunt Agatha in the background, I should have regarded
+Motty's rapid work with an indulgent smile. But I couldn't get rid of
+the feeling that, sooner or later, I was the lad who was scheduled to
+get it behind the ear. And what with brooding on this prospect, and
+sitting up in the old flat waiting for the familiar footstep, and
+putting it to bed when it got there, and stealing into the sick-chamber
+next morning to contemplate the wreckage, I was beginning to lose
+weight. Absolutely becoming the good old shadow, I give you my honest
+word. Starting at sudden noises and what-not.
+
+And no sympathy from Jeeves. That was what cut me to the quick. The man
+was still thoroughly pipped about the hat and tie, and simply wouldn't
+rally round. One morning I wanted comforting so much that I sank the
+pride of the Woosters and appealed to the fellow direct.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "this is getting a bit thick!"
+
+"Sir?" Business and cold respectfulness.
+
+"You know what I mean. This lad seems to have chucked all the
+principles of a well-spent boyhood. He has got it up his nose!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, I shall get blamed, don't you know. You know what my Aunt Agatha
+is!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Very well, then."
+
+I waited a moment, but he wouldn't unbend.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "haven't you any scheme up your sleeve for coping
+with this blighter?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+And he shimmered off to his lair. Obstinate devil! So dashed absurd,
+don't you know. It wasn't as if there was anything wrong with that
+Country Gentleman hat. It was a remarkably priceless effort, and much
+admired by the lads. But, just because he preferred the Longacre, he
+left me flat.
+
+It was shortly after this that young Motty got the idea of bringing
+pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home.
+This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of
+town where I was living wasn't the right place for that sort of thing.
+I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the
+evening at about 2 a.m.--artists and writers and what-not, who
+frolicked considerably till checked by the arrival of the morning milk.
+That was all right. They like that sort of thing down there. The
+neighbours can't get to sleep unless there's someone dancing Hawaiian
+dances over their heads. But on Fifty-seventh Street the atmosphere
+wasn't right, and when Motty turned up at three in the morning with a
+collection of hearty lads, who only stopped singing their college song
+when they started singing "The Old Oaken Bucket," there was a marked
+peevishness among the old settlers in the flats. The management was
+extremely terse over the telephone at breakfast-time, and took a lot of
+soothing.
+
+The next night I came home early, after a lonely dinner at a place
+which I'd chosen because there didn't seem any chance of meeting Motty
+there. The sitting-room was quite dark, and I was just moving to switch
+on the light, when there was a sort of explosion and something collared
+hold of my trouser-leg. Living with Motty had reduced me to such an
+extent that I was simply unable to cope with this thing. I jumped
+backward with a loud yell of anguish, and tumbled out into the hall
+just as Jeeves came out of his den to see what the matter was.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Jeeves! There's something in there that grabs you by the leg!"
+
+"That would be Rollo, sir."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"I would have warned you of his presence, but I did not hear you come
+in. His temper is a little uncertain at present, as he has not yet
+settled down."
+
+"Who the deuce is Rollo?"
+
+"His lordship's bull-terrier, sir. His lordship won him in a raffle,
+and tied him to the leg of the table. If you will allow me, sir, I will
+go in and switch on the light."
+
+There really is nobody like Jeeves. He walked straight into the
+sitting-room, the biggest feat since Daniel and the lions' den, without
+a quiver. What's more, his magnetism or whatever they call it was such
+that the dashed animal, instead of pinning him by the leg, calmed down
+as if he had had a bromide, and rolled over on his back with all his
+paws in the air. If Jeeves had been his rich uncle he couldn't have
+been more chummy. Yet directly he caught sight of me again, he got all
+worked up and seemed to have only one idea in life--to start chewing me
+where he had left off.
+
+"Rollo is not used to you yet, sir," said Jeeves, regarding the bally
+quadruped in an admiring sort of way. "He is an excellent watchdog."
+
+"I don't want a watchdog to keep me out of my rooms."
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well, what am I to do?"
+
+"No doubt in time the animal will learn to discriminate, sir. He will
+learn to distinguish your peculiar scent."
+
+"What do you mean--my peculiar scent? Correct the impression that I
+intend to hang about in the hall while life slips by, in the hope that
+one of these days that dashed animal will decide that I smell all
+right." I thought for a bit. "Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I'm going away--to-morrow morning by the first train. I shall go and
+stop with Mr. Todd in the country."
+
+"Do you wish me to accompany you, sir?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I don't know when I shall be back. Forward my letters."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As a matter of fact, I was back within the week. Rocky Todd, the pal I
+went to stay with, is a rummy sort of a chap who lives all alone in the
+wilds of Long Island, and likes it; but a little of that sort of thing
+goes a long way with me. Dear old Rocky is one of the best, but after a
+few days in his cottage in the woods, miles away from anywhere, New
+York, even with Motty on the premises, began to look pretty good to me.
+The days down on Long Island have forty-eight hours in them; you can't
+get to sleep at night because of the bellowing of the crickets; and you
+have to walk two miles for a drink and six for an evening paper. I
+thanked Rocky for his kind hospitality, and caught the only train they
+have down in those parts. It landed me in New York about dinner-time. I
+went straight to the old flat. Jeeves came out of his lair. I looked
+round cautiously for Rollo.
+
+"Where's that dog, Jeeves? Have you got him tied up?"
+
+"The animal is no longer here, sir. His lordship gave him to the
+porter, who sold him. His lordship took a prejudice against the animal
+on account of being bitten by him in the calf of the leg."
+
+I don't think I've ever been so bucked by a bit of news. I felt I had
+misjudged Rollo. Evidently, when you got to know him better, he had a
+lot of intelligence in him.
+
+"Ripping!" I said. "Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you expect him back to dinner?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"In prison, sir."
+
+Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you?
+That's how I felt then.
+
+"In prison!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You don't mean--in prison?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I lowered myself into a chair.
+
+"Why?" I said.
+
+"He assaulted a constable, sir."
+
+"Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I digested this.
+
+"But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?"
+
+"I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir."
+
+"But she'll come back and want to know where he is."
+
+"I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship's bit of time will have run out
+by then."
+
+"But supposing it hasn't?"
+
+"In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little."
+
+"How?"
+
+"If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that
+his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston."
+
+"Why Boston?"
+
+"Very interesting and respectable centre, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, I believe you've hit it."
+
+"I fancy so, sir."
+
+"Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this
+hadn't turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a
+sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back."
+
+"Exactly, sir."
+
+The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze
+seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what
+the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have
+pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I
+reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a
+small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn't have much to kick
+at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again.
+Life became like what the poet Johnnie says--one grand, sweet song.
+Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that
+I give you my word that I'd almost forgotten such a person as Motty
+existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was
+still pained and distant. It wasn't anything he said or did, mind you,
+but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was
+tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There
+was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
+
+And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn't
+been expecting her for days. I'd forgotten how time had been slipping
+along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea
+and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement
+that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few
+garments round me and went in.
+
+There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as
+ever. The only difference was that she didn't uncover the teeth, as she
+had done the first time.
+
+"Good morning," I said. "So you've got back, what?"
+
+"I have got back."
+
+There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had
+swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she
+probably hadn't breakfasted. It's only after a bit of breakfast that
+I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a
+fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've
+engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
+
+"I suppose you haven't breakfasted?"
+
+"I have not yet breakfasted."
+
+"Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for
+the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
+
+"I called on you last night," she said, "but you were out."
+
+"Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?"
+
+"Extremely, thank you."
+
+"See everything? Niag'ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old
+Grand Canyon, and what-not?"
+
+"I saw a great deal."
+
+There was another slightly _frappe_ silence. Jeeves floated
+silently into the dining-room and began to lay the breakfast-table.
+
+"I hope Wilmot was not in your way, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+I had been wondering when she was going to mention Motty.
+
+"Rather not! Great pals! Hit it off splendidly."
+
+"You were his constant companion, then?"
+
+"Absolutely! We were always together. Saw all the sights, don't you
+know. We'd take in the Museum of Art in the morning, and have a bit of
+lunch at some good vegetarian place, and then toddle along to a sacred
+concert in the afternoon, and home to an early dinner. We usually
+played dominoes after dinner. And then the early bed and the refreshing
+sleep. We had a great time. I was awfully sorry when he went away to
+Boston."
+
+"Oh! Wilmot is in Boston?"
+
+"Yes. I ought to have let you know, but of course we didn't know where
+you were. You were dodging all over the place like a snipe--I mean,
+don't you know, dodging all over the place, and we couldn't get at you.
+Yes, Motty went off to Boston."
+
+"You're sure he went to Boston?"
+
+"Oh, absolutely." I called out to Jeeves, who was now messing about in
+the next room with forks and so forth: "Jeeves, Lord Pershore didn't
+change his mind about going to Boston, did he?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I thought I was right. Yes, Motty went to Boston."
+
+"Then how do you account, Mr. Wooster, for the fact that when I went
+yesterday afternoon to Blackwell's Island prison, to secure material
+for my book, I saw poor, dear Wilmot there, dressed in a striped suit,
+seated beside a pile of stones with a hammer in his hands?"
+
+I tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. A chappie has
+to be a lot broader about the forehead than I am to handle a jolt like
+this. I strained the old bean till it creaked, but between the collar
+and the hair parting nothing stirred. I was dumb. Which was lucky,
+because I wouldn't have had a chance to get any persiflage out of my
+system. Lady Malvern collared the conversation. She had been bottling
+it up, and now it came out with a rush:
+
+"So this is how you have looked after my poor, dear boy, Mr. Wooster!
+So this is how you have abused my trust! I left him in your charge,
+thinking that I could rely on you to shield him from evil. He came to
+you innocent, unversed in the ways of the world, confiding, unused to
+the temptations of a large city, and you led him astray!"
+
+I hadn't any remarks to make. All I could think of was the picture of
+Aunt Agatha drinking all this in and reaching out to sharpen the
+hatchet against my return.
+
+"You deliberately----"
+
+Far away in the misty distance a soft voice spoke:
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship."
+
+Jeeves had projected himself in from the dining-room and materialized
+on the rug. Lady Malvern tried to freeze him with a look, but you can't
+do that sort of thing to Jeeves. He is look-proof.
+
+"I fancy, your ladyship, that you have misunderstood Mr. Wooster, and
+that he may have given you the impression that he was in New York when
+his lordship--was removed. When Mr. Wooster informed your ladyship that
+his lordship had gone to Boston, he was relying on the version I had
+given him of his lordship's movements. Mr. Wooster was away, visiting a
+friend in the country, at the time, and knew nothing of the matter till
+your ladyship informed him."
+
+Lady Malvern gave a kind of grunt. It didn't rattle Jeeves.
+
+"I feared Mr. Wooster might be disturbed if he knew the truth, as he is
+so attached to his lordship and has taken such pains to look after him,
+so I took the liberty of telling him that his lordship had gone away
+for a visit. It might have been hard for Mr. Wooster to believe that
+his lordship had gone to prison voluntarily and from the best motives,
+but your ladyship, knowing him better, will readily understand."
+
+"What!" Lady Malvern goggled at him. "Did you say that Lord Pershore
+went to prison voluntarily?"
+
+"If I might explain, your ladyship. I think that your ladyship's
+parting words made a deep impression on his lordship. I have frequently
+heard him speak to Mr. Wooster of his desire to do something to follow
+your ladyship's instructions and collect material for your ladyship's
+book on America. Mr. Wooster will bear me out when I say that his
+lordship was frequently extremely depressed at the thought that he was
+doing so little to help."
+
+"Absolutely, by Jove! Quite pipped about it!" I said.
+
+"The idea of making a personal examination into the prison system of
+the country--from within--occurred to his lordship very suddenly one
+night. He embraced it eagerly. There was no restraining him."
+
+Lady Malvern looked at Jeeves, then at me, then at Jeeves again. I
+could see her struggling with the thing.
+
+"Surely, your ladyship," said Jeeves, "it is more reasonable to suppose
+that a gentleman of his lordship's character went to prison of his own
+volition than that he committed some breach of the law which
+necessitated his arrest?"
+
+Lady Malvern blinked. Then she got up.
+
+"Mr. Wooster," she said, "I apologize. I have done you an injustice. I
+should have known Wilmot better. I should have had more faith in his
+pure, fine spirit."
+
+"Absolutely!" I said.
+
+"Your breakfast is ready, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+I sat down and dallied in a dazed sort of way with a poached egg.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "you are certainly a life-saver!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Nothing would have convinced my Aunt Agatha that I hadn't lured that
+blighter into riotous living."
+
+"I fancy you are right, sir."
+
+I champed my egg for a bit. I was most awfully moved, don't you know,
+by the way Jeeves had rallied round. Something seemed to tell me that
+this was an occasion that called for rich rewards. For a moment I
+hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
+
+"Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"That pink tie!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Burn it!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"And, Jeeves!"
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"Take a taxi and get me that Longacre hat, as worn by John Drew!"
+
+"Thank you very much, sir."
+
+I felt most awfully braced. I felt as if the clouds had rolled away and
+all was as it used to be. I felt like one of those chappies in the
+novels who calls off the fight with his wife in the last chapter and
+decides to forget and forgive. I felt I wanted to do all sorts of other
+things to show Jeeves that I appreciated him.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "it isn't enough. Is there anything else you would
+like?"
+
+"Yes, sir. If I may make the suggestion--fifty dollars."
+
+"Fifty dollars?"
+
+"It will enable me to pay a debt of honour, sir. I owe it to his
+lordship."
+
+"You owe Lord Pershore fifty dollars?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I happened to meet him in the street the night his lordship
+was arrested. I had been thinking a good deal about the most suitable
+method of inducing him to abandon his mode of living, sir. His lordship
+was a little over-excited at the time and I fancy that he mistook me
+for a friend of his. At any rate when I took the liberty of wagering
+him fifty dollars that he would not punch a passing policeman in the
+eye, he accepted the bet very cordially and won it."
+
+I produced my pocket-book and counted out a hundred.
+
+"Take this, Jeeves," I said; "fifty isn't enough. Do you know, Jeeves,
+you're--well, you absolutely stand alone!"
+
+"I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+
+
+
+JEEVES AND THE HARD-BOILED EGG
+
+
+Sometimes of a morning, as I've sat in bed sucking down the early cup
+of tea and watched my man Jeeves flitting about the room and putting
+out the raiment for the day, I've wondered what the deuce I should do
+if the fellow ever took it into his head to leave me. It's not so bad
+now I'm in New York, but in London the anxiety was frightful. There
+used to be all sorts of attempts on the part of low blighters to sneak
+him away from me. Young Reggie Foljambe to my certain knowledge offered
+him double what I was giving him, and Alistair Bingham-Reeves, who's
+got a valet who had been known to press his trousers sideways, used to
+look at him, when he came to see me, with a kind of glittering hungry
+eye which disturbed me deucedly. Bally pirates!
+
+The thing, you see, is that Jeeves is so dashed competent. You can spot
+it even in the way he shoves studs into a shirt.
+
+I rely on him absolutely in every crisis, and he never lets me down.
+And, what's more, he can always be counted on to extend himself
+on behalf of any pal of mine who happens to be to all appearances
+knee-deep in the bouillon. Take the rather rummy case, for instance,
+of dear old Bicky and his uncle, the hard-boiled egg.
+
+It happened after I had been in America for a few months. I got back to
+the flat latish one night, and when Jeeves brought me the final drink
+he said:
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth called to see you this evening, sir, while you were
+out."
+
+"Oh?" I said.
+
+"Twice, sir. He appeared a trifle agitated."
+
+"What, pipped?"
+
+"He gave that impression, sir."
+
+I sipped the whisky. I was sorry if Bicky was in trouble, but, as a
+matter of fact, I was rather glad to have something I could discuss
+freely with Jeeves just then, because things had been a bit strained
+between us for some time, and it had been rather difficult to hit on
+anything to talk about that wasn't apt to take a personal turn. You
+see, I had decided--rightly or wrongly--to grow a moustache and this
+had cut Jeeves to the quick. He couldn't stick the thing at any price,
+and I had been living ever since in an atmosphere of bally disapproval
+till I was getting jolly well fed up with it. What I mean is, while
+there's no doubt that in certain matters of dress Jeeves's judgment is
+absolutely sound and should be followed, it seemed to me that it was
+getting a bit too thick if he was going to edit my face as well as my
+costume. No one can call me an unreasonable chappie, and many's the
+time I've given in like a lamb when Jeeves has voted against one of my
+pet suits or ties; but when it comes to a valet's staking out a claim
+on your upper lip you've simply got to have a bit of the good old
+bulldog pluck and defy the blighter.
+
+"He said that he would call again later, sir."
+
+"Something must be up, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+I gave the moustache a thoughtful twirl. It seemed to hurt Jeeves a
+good deal, so I chucked it.
+
+"I see by the paper, sir, that Mr. Bickersteth's uncle is arriving on
+the _Carmantic_."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"His Grace the Duke of Chiswick, sir."
+
+This was news to me, that Bicky's uncle was a duke. Rum, how little one
+knows about one's pals! I had met Bicky for the first time at a species
+of beano or jamboree down in Washington Square, not long after my
+arrival in New York. I suppose I was a bit homesick at the time, and I
+rather took to Bicky when I found that he was an Englishman and had, in
+fact, been up at Oxford with me. Besides, he was a frightful chump, so
+we naturally drifted together; and while we were taking a quiet snort
+in a corner that wasn't all cluttered up with artists and sculptors and
+what-not, he furthermore endeared himself to me by a most extraordinarily
+gifted imitation of a bull-terrier chasing a cat up a tree. But, though
+we had subsequently become extremely pally, all I really knew about him
+was that he was generally hard up, and had an uncle who relieved the
+strain a bit from time to time by sending him monthly remittances.
+
+"If the Duke of Chiswick is his uncle," I said, "why hasn't he a title?
+Why isn't he Lord What-Not?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is the son of his grace's late sister, sir, who
+married Captain Rollo Bickersteth of the Coldstream Guards."
+
+Jeeves knows everything.
+
+"Is Mr. Bickersteth's father dead, too?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Leave any money?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+I began to understand why poor old Bicky was always more or less on the
+rocks. To the casual and irreflective observer, if you know what I
+mean, it may sound a pretty good wheeze having a duke for an uncle, but
+the trouble about old Chiswick was that, though an extremely wealthy
+old buster, owning half London and about five counties up north, he was
+notoriously the most prudent spender in England. He was what American
+chappies would call a hard-boiled egg. If Bicky's people hadn't left
+him anything and he depended on what he could prise out of the old
+duke, he was in a pretty bad way. Not that that explained why he was
+hunting me like this, because he was a chap who never borrowed money.
+He said he wanted to keep his pals, so never bit any one's ear on
+principle.
+
+At this juncture the door bell rang. Jeeves floated out to answer it.
+
+"Yes, sir. Mr. Wooster has just returned," I heard him say. And Bicky
+came trickling in, looking pretty sorry for himself.
+
+"Halloa, Bicky!" I said. "Jeeves told me you had been trying to get me.
+Jeeves, bring another glass, and let the revels commence. What's the
+trouble, Bicky?"
+
+"I'm in a hole, Bertie. I want your advice."
+
+"Say on, old lad!"
+
+"My uncle's turning up to-morrow, Bertie."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+"The Duke of Chiswick, you know."
+
+"So Jeeves told me."
+
+Bicky seemed a bit surprised.
+
+"Jeeves seems to know everything."
+
+"Rather rummily, that's exactly what I was thinking just now myself."
+
+"Well, I wish," said Bicky gloomily, "that he knew a way to get me out
+of the hole I'm in."
+
+Jeeves shimmered in with the glass, and stuck it competently on the
+table.
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth is in a bit of a hole, Jeeves," I said, "and wants you
+to rally round."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+Bicky looked a bit doubtful.
+
+"Well, of course, you know, Bertie, this thing is by way of being a bit
+private and all that."
+
+"I shouldn't worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
+already. Don't you, Jeeves?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Eh!" said Bicky, rattled.
+
+"I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
+that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
+instead of in Colorado?"
+
+Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
+
+"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"
+
+"I chanced to meet his grace's butler before we left England. He
+informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
+the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."
+
+Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
+
+"Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try
+to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
+was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
+remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
+the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
+call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't
+fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
+and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
+scheme. At the same time, don't you know, I had to have that
+remittance."
+
+"I get you absolutely, dear boy."
+
+"Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
+so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
+cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
+wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
+that it was all right, and here I've been ever since. He thinks I'm
+doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don't you
+know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?"
+
+"You see," said Bicky, "I had a wireless from him to say that he was
+coming to stay with me--to save hotel bills, I suppose. I've always
+given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
+can't have him to stay at my boarding-house."
+
+"Thought of anything, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+"To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
+prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?"
+
+"I'll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man."
+
+"Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
+Bickersteth----"
+
+"No, by Jove!" said Bicky firmly. "I never have touched you, Bertie,
+and I'm not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it's my boast
+that I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of
+course."
+
+"I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
+flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
+the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
+was in Mr. Bickersteth's employment, and not in yours. You would be
+residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth's guest. His grace would
+occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
+answer satisfactorily, sir."
+
+Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
+sort of way.
+
+"I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace
+on board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
+Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
+Will that meet the situation, sir?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
+
+"How does he do it, Bertie?" he said. "I'll tell you what I think it
+is. I believe it's something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
+ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
+back!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
+when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
+liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn't much
+after nine by the time I'd dressed and had my morning tea and was
+leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
+It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
+he'd got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
+general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
+below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
+and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
+make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
+to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
+London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
+said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
+the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
+
+"The duke has arrived, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir?"
+
+"That'll be him at the door now."
+
+Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
+crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" I said, bustling up and being the ray of
+sunshine. "Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
+have missed him. My name's Wooster, don't you know. Great pal of
+Bicky's, and all that sort of thing. I'm staying with him, you know.
+Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea."
+
+Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
+
+"Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"It must be terribly expensive."
+
+"Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know."
+
+He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
+it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
+
+"A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
+shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!" He took another look
+round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. "Have you any idea how
+much my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"About two hundred dollars a month, I believe."
+
+"What! Forty pounds a month!"
+
+I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
+scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
+thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
+of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
+for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
+an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
+pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.
+
+"I suppose it seems rummy to you," I said, "but the fact is New York
+often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
+wouldn't have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
+Something in the air, don't you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
+when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it's quite
+different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
+commercial circles as quite the nib!"
+
+"I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew's business, Mr. Wooster?"
+
+"Oh, just business, don't you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
+Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know." I slid for the door.
+"Awfully sorry to leave you, but I've got to meet some of the lads
+elsewhere."
+
+Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
+
+"Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?"
+
+"He's upstairs now, having some tea."
+
+"What does he think of it all?"
+
+"He's absolutely rattled."
+
+"Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
+you later."
+
+"Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy."
+
+He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
+club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
+going down the other.
+
+It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
+dinner.
+
+"Where's everybody, Jeeves?" I said, finding no little feet pattering
+about the place. "Gone out?"
+
+"His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
+Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
+was Grant's Tomb."
+
+"I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
+going--what?"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans."
+
+"Not altogether, sir."
+
+"What's his trouble now?"
+
+"The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
+and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
+sir."
+
+"Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
+business, and all that sort of thing?"
+
+"Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
+Bickersteth's monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
+is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
+assistance."
+
+"Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful."
+
+"Somewhat disturbing, sir."
+
+"I never expected anything like this!"
+
+"I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir."
+
+"I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?"
+
+"Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir."
+
+My heart bled for Bicky.
+
+"We must do something, Jeeves."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Can you think of anything?"
+
+"Not at the moment, sir."
+
+"There must be something we can do."
+
+"It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir--as I believe I
+mentioned to you once before--the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there
+is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
+occasion--he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
+title--when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
+failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
+name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
+generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No
+doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's
+difficulty, sir."
+
+"Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!"
+
+"I will spare no pains, sir."
+
+I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
+when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
+dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
+than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
+of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
+
+When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
+hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
+hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
+in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
+newspaper chappies call "some blunt instrument."
+
+"This is a bit thick, old thing--what!" I said.
+
+He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
+that it hadn't anything in it.
+
+"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
+
+He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
+
+"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money
+was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been
+reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
+make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars
+and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
+hen--call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every
+day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep
+of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every
+seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs.
+Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
+more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep
+in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd
+make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get
+quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair
+at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no
+good," he said, "because I haven't the cash."
+
+"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
+
+"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
+
+That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend
+money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it
+to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
+the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
+tolerably free in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the
+second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along
+Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
+neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've
+simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a
+hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
+and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
+uppers, not taking any at any price.
+
+"Well, there's only one hope, then."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
+shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting
+in the old arm-chair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
+look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
+uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
+He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves
+now, but often in the days when he first came to me I've bitten my
+tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
+
+"Did you call, sir?"
+
+"Oh, there you are, Jeeves!"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+"Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?"
+
+"Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
+found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
+liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace's
+potentialities as a source of revenue."
+
+Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
+mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
+rather like a gargle.
+
+"I do not allude, sir," explained Jeeves, "to the possibility of
+inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
+regarding his grace in the light of an at present--if I may say
+so--useless property, which is capable of being developed."
+
+Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I'm bound to say I didn't
+get it myself.
+
+"Couldn't you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!"
+
+"In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
+prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
+are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
+personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
+know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee--let us say two
+dollars or three--for the privilege of an introduction, including
+handshake, to his grace."
+
+Bicky didn't seem to think much of it.
+
+"Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
+cash just to shake hands with my uncle?"
+
+"I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
+bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
+her social standing among the neighbours."
+
+Bicky wavered.
+
+"If you think it could be done----"
+
+"I feel convinced of it, sir."
+
+"What do you think, Bertie?"
+
+"I'm for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir."
+
+And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
+
+Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
+proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
+Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays
+I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market
+opened quietly" with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
+quietly for us! You'd hardly believe how difficult it was to interest
+the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the
+week the only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper
+down in Bicky's part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in
+sliced ham instead of cash that didn't help much. There was a gleam of
+light when the brother of Bicky's pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money
+down, for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through,
+owing to its turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to
+kick the old boy instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me
+the deuce of a time to persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things
+take their course. He seemed to regard the pawnbroker's brother rather as
+a sportsman and benefactor of his species than otherwise.
+
+The whole thing, I'm inclined to think, would have been off if it
+hadn't been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
+his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don't think I have ever
+met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
+one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
+something doing.
+
+"Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?"
+
+"It's all off. We've decided to chuck it."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"It won't work. We can't get anybody to come."
+
+"I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir."
+
+"Do you mean to say you've managed to get anybody?"
+
+"Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir."
+
+I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
+
+"Birdsburg?"
+
+"Birdsburg, Missouri, sir."
+
+"How did you get them?"
+
+"I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
+absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
+conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
+I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
+buttonhole, sir--a large blue button with the words 'Boost for
+Birdsburg' upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
+gentleman's evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
+auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
+inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
+a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name if
+Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
+purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
+some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
+It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
+pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
+shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
+broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
+have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
+shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon."
+
+I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
+
+"Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?"
+
+"I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
+finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party."
+
+I thought a bit.
+
+"Payable in advance?"
+
+"No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
+successful."
+
+"Well, any way, when we get it I'll make it up to five hundred.
+Bicky'll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
+anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?"
+
+"I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
+bright."
+
+"All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
+money."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Right-o!"
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
+him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
+sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
+section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
+
+"Uncle," he said, "are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
+I mean to say, I've asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don't you
+know."
+
+The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
+
+"There will be no reporters among them?"
+
+"Reporters? Rather not! Why?"
+
+"I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
+young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
+the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
+persecution again."
+
+"That'll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won't be a newspaper-man
+in the place."
+
+"In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
+friends."
+
+"You'll shake hands with them and so forth?"
+
+"I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
+of civilized intercourse."
+
+Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
+where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
+
+After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
+contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
+round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
+decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
+it in the direction of his home-town's new water-supply system. We
+settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
+each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
+duke's society by Jeeves's stop-watch, and that when their time was up
+Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
+with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
+Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
+some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
+thanked him.
+
+Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
+cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
+respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
+up they had been working in the office and catching the boss's eye and
+what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
+apparent satisfaction--all except one chappie, who seemed to be
+brooding about something--and then they stood off and became chatty.
+
+"What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?" asked our pal.
+
+The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
+
+"I have never been to Birdsburg."
+
+The chappie seemed pained.
+
+"You should pay it a visit," he said. "The most rapidly-growing city in
+the country. Boost for Birdsburg!"
+
+"Boost for Birdsburg!" said the other chappies reverently.
+
+The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
+
+"Say!"
+
+He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
+and a cold eye.
+
+The assemblage looked at him.
+
+"As a matter of business," said the chappie--"mind you, I'm not
+questioning anybody's good faith, but, as a matter of strict
+business--I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
+record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" cried the old boy, getting purple.
+
+"No offence, simply business. I'm not saying anything, mind you, but
+there's one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
+says his name's Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you're
+the Duke of Chiswick, why isn't he Lord Percy Something? I've read
+English novels, and I know all about it."
+
+"This is monstrous!"
+
+"Now don't get hot under the collar. I'm only asking. I've a right to
+know. You're going to take our money, so it's only fair that we should
+see that we get our money's worth."
+
+The water-supply cove chipped in:
+
+"You're quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
+agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we've a right to
+reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
+a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
+to know----"
+
+Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
+water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
+
+"I can assure you that I know nothing of this," he said, quite
+politely. "I should be grateful if you would explain."
+
+"Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens
+of Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands
+with you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my
+friend Simms here means--and I'm with him--is that we have only Mr.
+Bickersteth's word for it--and he is a stranger to us--that you are
+the Duke of Chiswick at all."
+
+Old Chiswick gulped.
+
+"Allow me to assure you, sir," he said, in a rummy kind of voice, "that
+I am the Duke of Chiswick."
+
+"Then that's all right," said the chappie heartily. "That was all we
+wanted to know. Let the thing go on."
+
+"I am sorry to say," said old Chiswick, "that it cannot go on. I am
+feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused."
+
+"But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
+this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you."
+
+"I fear I must disappoint them."
+
+"But in that case the deal would have to be off."
+
+"That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss."
+
+The chappie seemed troubled.
+
+"You really won't meet the rest of them?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Well, then, I guess we'll be going."
+
+They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
+turned to Bicky:
+
+"Well?"
+
+Bicky didn't seem to have anything to say.
+
+"Was it true what that man said?"
+
+"Yes, uncle."
+
+"What do you mean by playing this trick?"
+
+Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
+
+"I think you'd better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top."
+
+Bicky's Adam's-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
+
+"You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
+money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if
+you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
+day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
+cents.
+
+"Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically----"
+
+"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
+substantial business man."
+
+"Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.
+"The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that remittance
+of yours, and when you cut it off, don't you know, he was pretty solidly
+in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit of the
+ready pretty quick. That's why we thought of this handshaking scheme."
+
+Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
+
+"So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
+financial status!"
+
+"Poor old Bicky didn't want to go to that ranch," I explained. "He
+doesn't like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
+stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don't you think
+it would be rather a wheeze if you were to----"
+
+"After what has happened? After this--this deceit and foolery? Not a
+penny!"
+
+"But----"
+
+"Not a penny!"
+
+There was a respectful cough in the background.
+
+"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
+
+Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
+
+"Go ahead, Jeeves!" I said.
+
+"I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
+little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
+secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
+afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
+enterprising newspapers."
+
+"By Jove!" I said.
+
+"By George!" said Bicky.
+
+"Great heavens!" said old Chiswick.
+
+"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
+
+Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
+
+"Jeeves is right. I'll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it.
+They eat that sort of stuff."
+
+Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
+
+"I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!"
+
+"That's all very well," said Bicky, wonderfully braced, "but if I can't
+get the money any other way----"
+
+"Wait! Er--wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
+something."
+
+"I won't go to that bally ranch."
+
+"No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
+moment suggest it. I--I think----"
+
+He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. "I--I think that,
+on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I--I
+might--in fact, I think I see my way to doing--to--I might be able to
+utilize your services in some secretarial position."
+
+"I shouldn't mind that."
+
+"I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
+English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure----"
+
+"The only figure I'll recognize," said Bicky firmly, "is five hundred
+quid a year, paid quarterly."
+
+"My dear boy!"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
+opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
+accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to--in fact,
+you would be in an exceedingly advantageous position."
+
+"Five hundred a year!" said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. "Why,
+that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
+It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
+has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
+chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's
+a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
+Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don't sell them till
+they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don't think I'm going to chuck a
+future like this for anything under five hundred o' goblins a year--what?"
+
+A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick's face, then he seemed to be
+resigned to it. "Very well, my boy," he said.
+
+"What-o!" said Bicky. "All right, then."
+
+"Jeeves," I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
+celebrate, and we were alone. "Jeeves, this has been one of your best
+efforts."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"It beats me how you do it."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"The only trouble is you haven't got much out of it--what!"
+
+"I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends--I judge from his remarks--to signify
+his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
+assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
+to do so."
+
+"It isn't enough, Jeeves!"
+
+"Sir?"
+
+It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
+
+"Bring my shaving things."
+
+A gleam of hope shone in the chappie's eye, mixed with doubt.
+
+"You mean, sir?"
+
+"And shave off my moustache."
+
+There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice, and popped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+ABSENT TREATMENT
+
+
+I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
+interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
+I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
+If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
+and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
+girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
+
+If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
+surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
+the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
+have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
+when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.
+
+In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
+pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
+me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
+came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
+was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
+a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
+a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
+the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
+see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
+By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
+before my messenger arrived.
+
+The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
+Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
+once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
+stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
+
+At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
+occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
+that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
+chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
+doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
+that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
+as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
+things.
+
+She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
+about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
+living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
+there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
+girl who works for her living.
+
+Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
+had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
+determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
+up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
+rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
+been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
+the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
+
+Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
+introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
+name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
+My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
+left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
+I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
+girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
+an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
+for years.
+
+Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
+to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
+greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
+thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
+her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
+didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
+quite happy.
+
+Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
+really start till then.
+
+They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
+a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
+running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
+thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
+were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
+
+But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
+that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
+
+I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
+to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
+myself under police protection, I went.
+
+When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
+you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
+crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
+she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
+describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
+was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
+dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
+domesticity.
+
+"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
+a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
+up now--what?"
+
+She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
+scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
+laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
+about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
+
+"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
+me.
+
+And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
+talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
+the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
+little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
+thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
+working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
+that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
+everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
+sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
+rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
+got away.
+
+Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
+at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
+gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
+
+He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
+about it.
+
+"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.
+
+I didn't exactly.
+
+"About a year, isn't it?"
+
+"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"
+
+Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.
+
+"Yesterday was----?"
+
+"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
+Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
+I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
+dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
+forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"
+
+"Till your wife mentioned it?"
+
+He nodded----
+
+"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.
+
+I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
+angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
+they aren't half-hearted about it.
+
+"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
+sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."
+
+There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
+there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
+window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
+watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
+walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
+instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
+certain stratum of sense.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
+of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
+one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
+but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
+average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
+mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
+through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
+chump of the first water.
+
+And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
+Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
+dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
+disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
+against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
+Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
+cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
+had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
+life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
+forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
+
+For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
+little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
+somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
+Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
+enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
+Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
+
+It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
+frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
+it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
+one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
+married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
+do it now, before he began to drift away.
+
+I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
+was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
+remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
+something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
+book.
+
+"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
+knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
+everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."
+
+He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
+couple of sovereigns.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said.
+
+"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.
+
+"I owe it you."
+
+"How's that?" I said.
+
+"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
+playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
+and Murray beat him by twenty odd."
+
+"So you do remember some things?" I said.
+
+He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
+who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
+knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
+
+"Subside, laddie," I said.
+
+Then I spoke to him like a father.
+
+"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
+yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
+due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
+make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
+even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
+got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
+in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."
+
+"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
+such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
+what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
+cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
+memorizing freak at the halls."
+
+"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
+that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
+trouble."
+
+He chewed the knob of his stick.
+
+"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.
+
+"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
+in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
+and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
+no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
+I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
+anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
+If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
+only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
+that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
+But I thought a lot about him.
+
+Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
+and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
+kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
+been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
+he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
+thorax.
+
+I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
+over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
+down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
+Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
+waving a piece of paper in his hand.
+
+"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"
+
+"Gone!" I said. "Who?"
+
+"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"
+
+"Where?" I said.
+
+Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
+foamed at the mouth.
+
+"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."
+
+He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
+
+"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."
+
+So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
+but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
+
+    "MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
+    to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
+    come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."
+
+I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"
+
+"Why don't I what?"
+
+"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
+ask."
+
+"But she says on her birthday."
+
+"Well, when is her birthday?"
+
+"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."
+
+"Forgotten!" I said.
+
+"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."
+
+"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
+twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"
+
+"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
+thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."
+
+"Think."
+
+"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
+been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."
+
+"And you can't remember?"
+
+"No."
+
+I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
+
+"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
+untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
+and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
+birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
+enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
+deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
+out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
+instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
+sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."
+
+Bobbie shook his head.
+
+"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."
+
+"Warm?"
+
+"Warmish."
+
+"Or cold?"
+
+"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."
+
+I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
+Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
+invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
+which no home is complete."
+
+Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
+
+"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
+her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
+date when it was bought, and the thing's done."
+
+"Absolutely. What did you give her?"
+
+He sagged.
+
+"I can't remember," he said.
+
+Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
+as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
+had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
+it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
+undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
+brain-wave.
+
+Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
+There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
+your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
+Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
+found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
+month, and narrow it down a whole lot.
+
+A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
+out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
+As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
+saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
+but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
+hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
+people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
+Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
+extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
+with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
+up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
+memories"--Mary's speciality.
+
+We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
+
+Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
+month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
+happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
+"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
+expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
+about as like Mary as anything could be.
+
+In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
+home.
+
+It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
+Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
+represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
+middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
+is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
+a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
+in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
+brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
+human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
+all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
+brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
+over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
+only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
+idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
+
+I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
+came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
+never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
+
+One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
+that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
+shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
+together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"
+
+"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"
+
+"Why, they change the programme every week there."
+
+"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."
+
+"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
+Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
+it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
+minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
+of them, if I have to use a crowbar."
+
+So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
+brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
+pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
+
+"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
+another time."
+
+"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."
+
+And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.
+
+Once you get your memory on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
+I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
+was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
+We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."
+
+"Yes?" I said.
+
+"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
+been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."
+
+"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."
+
+I heard him give a sort of howl.
+
+"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
+Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
+bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."
+
+"But I'm always writing cheques."
+
+"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
+your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
+Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."
+
+He gave a kind of gulp.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
+you've got it. Hold the line."
+
+Presently he came back again.
+
+"Halloa!" he said.
+
+"I'm here," I said.
+
+"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"
+
+"Topping," I said. "Good night."
+
+It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
+well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
+near the Strand.
+
+"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.
+
+"It's late," said the man at the other end.
+
+"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."
+
+I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
+frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
+
+"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.
+
+"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
+particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."
+
+She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
+be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
+you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
+my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
+
+"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"
+
+"No."
+
+Well, I hadn't.
+
+"Mr. Pepper."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"
+
+I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
+party.
+
+"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
+He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
+started out to worry after breakfast, and----"
+
+Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
+pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
+wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
+don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
+bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
+that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
+means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
+
+And then she began.
+
+"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
+see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
+you would have put everything right, I can't----"
+
+"But----"
+
+"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
+unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
+kind-hearted man."
+
+"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"
+
+"I thought it hateful, abominable."
+
+"But you said it was absolutely top----"
+
+"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
+wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
+be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
+separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
+gloating over his agony----"
+
+"But----!"
+
+"When one single word would have----"
+
+"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.
+
+"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
+break your promise?"
+
+I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
+receiver, and crawled into bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
+the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
+invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
+went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
+as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
+together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
+am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
+"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
+minute."
+
+
+
+
+HELPING FREDDIE
+
+
+I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but
+I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at
+literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give
+the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all
+right.
+
+Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
+years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
+sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
+generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
+was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
+soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
+thing.
+
+Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes
+plays--a deuced brainy sort of fellow--and between us we set to work to
+question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
+matter was.
+
+As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
+Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
+engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently
+she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused
+to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
+
+I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
+in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
+that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my
+autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
+
+"Change of scene is what you want, old scout," I said. "Come with me to
+Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the
+twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party."
+
+"He's absolutely right," said Jimmy. "Change of scene's the thing. I
+knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
+wired him, 'Come back. Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply;
+suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never
+answered at all."
+
+But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
+swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
+Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
+
+Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a
+fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
+there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
+out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on
+the wounds and go to bed.
+
+It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
+sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a
+rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round
+waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
+the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
+
+Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
+began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
+for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write
+home to mother about. When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the
+carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing "The Rosary" with one
+finger. He couldn't play anything except "The Rosary," and he couldn't
+play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
+blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
+
+He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, "I've seen her."
+
+"Seen her?" I said. "What, Miss West?"
+
+"I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
+doorway. She cut me!"
+
+He started "The Rosary" again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
+
+"Reggie," he said, "you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
+away."
+
+"Go away?" I said. "Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that
+could have happened. This is where you come out strong."
+
+"She cut me."
+
+"Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her."
+
+"She looked clean through me!"
+
+"Of course she did. But don't mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
+I'll see you through. Now, what you want," I said, "is to place her
+under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
+thanking you. What you want----"
+
+"But what's she going to thank me timidly for?"
+
+I thought for a moment.
+
+"Look out for a chance and save her from drowning," I said.
+
+"I can't swim," said Freddie.
+
+That was Freddie all over, don't you know. A dear old chap in a
+thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
+
+He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
+
+I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
+There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
+old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
+happier days I've heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
+backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn't a
+man of enterprise.
+
+Well, don't you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
+like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
+was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
+of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken.
+She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
+On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
+girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
+that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
+been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
+the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't
+think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
+of those round, bulging kids.
+
+After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
+began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
+sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
+
+Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. Well, I
+don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
+chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you'd least
+expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that's what happened now.
+I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
+single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
+
+It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
+when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
+The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in
+sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
+the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of
+the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
+her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
+heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
+anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
+appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
+effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
+practically saved his life, why, the girl's gratitude is bound to make
+her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
+and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
+reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don't you know, that, by
+George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
+
+Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
+points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
+down in our sitting-room, he didn't absolutely effervesce with joy, if
+you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
+poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
+
+"Stop it!" he said. "Do you think nobody's got any troubles except you?
+What the deuce is all this, Reggie?"
+
+The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
+raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
+stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
+stuff.
+
+"Well?" said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
+After a while it began to strike him.
+
+"You're not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie," he said
+handsomely. "I'm bound to say this seems pretty good."
+
+And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
+scour the beach for Angela.
+
+I don't know when I've felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
+that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
+made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
+leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
+the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
+with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world.
+
+"Hello!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
+
+"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
+laughs.
+
+"Well, then----?"
+
+Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
+
+"This isn't her cousin, you idiot!" he said.
+
+"He's no relation at all. He's just a kid she happened to meet on the
+beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
+
+"What! Who is he, then?"
+
+"I don't know. Oh, Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you'll
+probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
+kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you
+through the bars."
+
+"Tell me all, old boy," I said.
+
+It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
+middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
+gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
+told the story he had prepared, and then--well, she didn't actually
+call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of
+way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
+stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
+crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
+
+"And mind, this is your affair," he concluded. "I'm not mixed up in it
+at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you'd better go and find
+the kid's parents and return him before the police come for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
+kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
+restore a child to its anxious parents. It's a mystery to me how
+kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
+but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You'd have thought, from
+the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
+in a cottage of his own. It wasn't till, by an inspiration, I thought
+to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
+and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
+
+I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
+answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
+came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
+that the idea would filter through into these people's heads that I
+wasn't standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
+somewhere above shouted, "Hi!"
+
+I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
+west of it, staring down from an upper window.
+
+"Hi!" it shouted again.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean by 'Hi'?" I said.
+
+"You can't come in," said the face. "Hello, is that Tootles?"
+
+"My name is not Tootles, and I don't want to come in," I said. "Are you
+Mr. Medwin? I've brought back your son."
+
+"I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see 'oo!"
+
+The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
+reappeared.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+I churned the gravel madly.
+
+"Do you live here?" said the face.
+
+"I'm staying here for a few weeks."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Pepper. But----"
+
+"Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?"
+
+"My uncle. But----"
+
+"I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
+now."
+
+"I wish you were," I said.
+
+He beamed down at me.
+
+"This is most fortunate," he said. "We were wondering what we were to
+do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
+has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
+infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
+fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
+to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
+nephew of Edward Pepper's has my implicit confidence. You must take
+Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
+to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
+days."
+
+"May!"
+
+"He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
+week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
+Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles."
+
+"I haven't got a wife," I yelled; but the window had closed with a
+bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
+escape, don't you know, and had headed it off just in time.
+
+I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
+
+The window flew up again.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
+bomb.
+
+"Did you catch it?" said the face, reappearing. "Dear me, you missed
+it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer's. Ask for Bailey's
+Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
+little milk. Be certain to get Bailey's."
+
+My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation.
+Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat
+from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
+
+As we turned up the road we met Freddie's Angela.
+
+The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
+her and said, "Wah!"
+
+The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
+
+"Well, baby?" she said, bending down to him. "So father found you
+again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
+morning," she said to me.
+
+This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
+lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don't you know, that she had nodded
+good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
+breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant's father.
+
+I hadn't expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
+what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
+manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
+head. He didn't speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
+began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
+dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
+expressions.
+
+"Well," he said, when he had finished, "say something! Heavens! man,
+why don't you say something?"
+
+"You don't give me a chance, old top," I said soothingly.
+
+"What are you going to do about it?"
+
+"What can we do about it?"
+
+"We can't spend our time acting as nurses to this--this exhibit."
+
+He got up.
+
+"I'm going back to London," he said.
+
+"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you
+desert a pal at a time like this?"
+
+"I would. This is your business, and you've got to manage it."
+
+"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
+that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
+wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
+were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+"Oh, well," he said resignedly.
+
+"Besides, old top," I said, "I did it all for your sake, don't you
+know?"
+
+He looked at me in a curious way.
+
+"Reggie," he said, in a strained voice, "one moment. I'll stand a good
+deal, but I won't stand for being expected to be grateful."
+
+Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
+crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
+local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
+incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
+satisfactorily. At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
+undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
+were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
+
+Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
+what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple--a mere
+matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
+stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
+might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
+nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
+
+But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
+bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
+nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
+dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
+wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
+down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
+lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
+
+"And after all," I said, "there's lots to be said for having a
+child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
+domestic--what!"
+
+Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he
+had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
+much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
+the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
+
+Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
+kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
+portmanteau.
+
+"For me," he said, "the hotel. I can't write dialogue with that sort of
+thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
+treasure?"
+
+I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
+
+"I might work this up for the stage," he said. "It wouldn't make a bad
+situation for act two of a farce."
+
+"Farce!" snarled poor old Freddie.
+
+"Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot just like--that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
+idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I'll
+rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie."
+
+As we went I told him the rest of the story--the Angela part. He laid
+down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
+
+"What!" he said. "Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It's the
+old 'Tiny Hand' business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
+child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It's big. Child, centre.
+Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
+piano?"
+
+"He can play a little of 'The Rosary' with one finger."
+
+Jimmy shook his head.
+
+"No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest's all right.
+Look here." He squatted in the sand. "This stone is the girl. This bit
+of seaweed's the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
+to child's line. Child speaks like, 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?'
+Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses
+L., takes girl's hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big
+speech. 'Ah, Marie,' or whatever her name is--Jane--Agnes--Angela? Very
+well. 'Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child rebukes
+us! Angela!' And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I'm just
+giving you the general outline. And we must get a good line for the
+child. 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?' isn't definite enough. We
+want something more--ah! 'Kiss Freddie,' that's it. Short, crisp, and
+has the punch."
+
+"But, Jimmy, old top," I said, "the only objection is, don't you know,
+that there's no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
+Freddie. She wouldn't come within a mile of him."
+
+Jimmy frowned.
+
+"That's awkward," he said. "Well, we shall have to make it an exterior set
+instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere,
+when we're ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid letter-perfect. First
+rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp to-morrow."
+
+Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
+to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn't
+in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
+concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
+that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
+was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
+
+"The chief difficulty," said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
+rehearsal, "is to establish a connection in the kid's mind between his
+line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
+words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
+a success."
+
+I've often thought, don't you know, how interesting it must be to be
+one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
+intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
+exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
+kid got the line out as if he'd been an old professional. And then he'd
+go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
+
+"We must hurry up, Jimmy," I said. "The kid's uncle may arrive any day
+now and take him away."
+
+"And we haven't an understudy," said Jimmy. "There's something in that.
+We must work! My goodness, that kid's a bad study. I've known deaf-mutes
+who would have learned the part quicker."
+
+I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn't
+discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
+at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
+after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
+been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
+opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
+
+"We're not nearly ready," said Jimmy. "To-day, for instance, he said
+'Kick Freddie.' That's not going to win any girl's heart. And she might
+do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet."
+
+But, by George, we didn't. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
+
+It was nobody's fault--certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
+had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the
+house to exercise it, when, just as we'd got out to the veranda, along
+came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual
+yell at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
+
+"Hello, baby!" she said. "Good morning," she said to me. "May I come
+up?"
+
+She didn't wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
+sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
+kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
+sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don't you know. At
+any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
+veranda, and we hadn't even begun to rehearse him in his part.
+
+I tried to break up the scene.
+
+"We were just going down to the beach," I said.
+
+"Yes?" said the girl. She listened for a moment. "So you're having your
+piano tuned?" she said. "My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
+ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
+he's finished here?"
+
+"Er--not yet!" I said. "Not yet, if you don't mind. He can't bear to be
+disturbed when he's working. It's the artistic temperament. I'll tell
+him later."
+
+"Very well," she said, getting up to go. "Ask him to call at Pine
+Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
+will be out in a minute now. I'll wait."
+
+"Don't you think--shouldn't we be going on to the beach?" I said.
+
+She had started talking to the kid and didn't hear. She was feeling in
+her pocket for something.
+
+"The beach," I babbled.
+
+"See what I've brought for you, baby," she said. And, by George, don't
+you know, she held up in front of the kid's bulging eyes a chunk of
+toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
+
+That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
+was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shouted.
+
+And the front door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for
+all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
+
+He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the
+ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he yelled. "Kiss Fweddie!"
+
+The girl was still holding up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy
+Pinkerton would have called "business of outstretched hands" towards
+it.
+
+"Kiss Fweddie!" he shrieked.
+
+"What does this mean?" said the girl, turning to me.
+
+"You'd better give it to him, don't you know," I said. "He'll go on
+till you do."
+
+She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still
+stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+"What does it mean?" said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her
+eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don't you know, that makes a
+fellow feel as if he hadn't any bones in him, if you know what I mean.
+Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance and tear it, and
+see her smile at you like an angel and say: "_Please_ don't apologize.
+It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as
+if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up
+and hit you in the face? Well, that's how Freddie's Angela looked.
+
+"_Well?_" she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
+
+I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much.
+Then I said, "Oh, well, it was this way." And, after a few brief
+remarks about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the
+while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word.
+
+And the girl didn't speak, either. She just stood listening.
+
+And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She
+leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while
+Freddie, the World's Champion Chump, stood there, saying nothing.
+
+Well I sidled towards the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it
+seemed to me that about here the stage-direction "exit" was written in
+my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a
+word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
+What can a fellow do with a fellow like that?
+
+Just out of sight of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
+
+"Hello, Reggie!" he said. "I was just coming to you. Where's the kid?
+We must have a big rehearsal to-day."
+
+"No good," I said sadly. "It's all over. The thing's finished. Poor
+dear old Freddie has made an ass of himself and killed the whole show."
+
+"Tell me," said Jimmy.
+
+I told him.
+
+"Fluffed in his lines, did he?" said Jimmy, nodding thoughtfully. "It's
+always the way with these amateurs. We must go back at once. Things
+look bad, but it may not be too late," he said as we started. "Even now
+a few well-chosen words from a man of the world, and----"
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried. "Look!"
+
+In front of the cottage stood six children, a nurse, and the fellow
+from the grocer's staring. From the windows of the houses opposite
+projected about four hundred heads of both sexes, staring. Down the
+road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy,
+about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as
+if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and Angela, clasped
+in each other's arms.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines, but, by George, his
+business had certainly gone with a bang!
+
+
+
+
+RALLYING ROUND OLD GEORGE
+
+
+I think one of the rummiest affairs I was ever mixed up with, in the
+course of a lifetime devoted to butting into other people's business,
+was that affair of George Lattaker at Monte Carlo. I wouldn't bore you,
+don't you know, for the world, but I think you ought to hear about it.
+
+We had come to Monte Carlo on the yacht _Circe_, belonging to an
+old sportsman of the name of Marshall. Among those present were myself,
+my man Voules, a Mrs. Vanderley, her daughter Stella, Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid Pilbeam and George.
+
+George was a dear old pal of mine. In fact, it was I who had worked him
+into the party. You see, George was due to meet his Uncle Augustus, who
+was scheduled, George having just reached his twenty-fifth birthday, to
+hand over to him a legacy left by one of George's aunts, for which he
+had been trustee. The aunt had died when George was quite a kid. It was
+a date that George had been looking forward to; for, though he had a
+sort of income--an income, after-all, is only an income, whereas a
+chunk of o' goblins is a pile. George's uncle was in Monte Carlo, and
+had written George that he would come to London and unbelt; but it
+struck me that a far better plan was for George to go to his uncle at
+Monte Carlo instead. Kill two birds with one stone, don't you know. Fix
+up his affairs and have a pleasant holiday simultaneously. So George
+had tagged along, and at the time when the trouble started we were
+anchored in Monaco Harbour, and Uncle Augustus was due next day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Looking back, I may say that, so far as I was mixed up in it, the
+thing began at seven o'clock in the morning, when I was aroused from
+a dreamless sleep by the dickens of a scrap in progress outside my
+state-room door. The chief ingredients were a female voice that sobbed
+and said: "Oh, Harold!" and a male voice "raised in anger," as they say,
+which after considerable difficulty, I identified as Voules's. I hardly
+recognized it. In his official capacity Voules talks exactly like you'd
+expect a statue to talk, if it could. In private, however, he evidently
+relaxed to some extent, and to have that sort of thing going on in my
+midst at that hour was too much for me.
+
+"Voules!" I yelled.
+
+Spion Kop ceased with a jerk. There was silence, then sobs diminishing
+in the distance, and finally a tap at the door. Voules entered with
+that impressive, my-lord-the-carriage-waits look which is what I pay
+him for. You wouldn't have believed he had a drop of any sort of
+emotion in him.
+
+"Voules," I said, "are you under the delusion that I'm going to be
+Queen of the May? You've called me early all right. It's only just
+seven."
+
+"I understood you to summon me, sir."
+
+"I summoned you to find out why you were making that infernal noise
+outside."
+
+"I owe you an apology, sir. I am afraid that in the heat of the moment
+I raised my voice."
+
+"It's a wonder you didn't raise the roof. Who was that with you?"
+
+"Miss Pilbeam, sir; Mrs. Vanderley's maid."
+
+"What was all the trouble about?"
+
+"I was breaking our engagement, sir."
+
+I couldn't help gaping. Somehow one didn't associate Voules with
+engagements. Then it struck me that I'd no right to butt in on his
+secret sorrows, so I switched the conversation.
+
+"I think I'll get up," I said.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I can't wait to breakfast with the rest. Can you get me some right
+away?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+So I had a solitary breakfast and went up on deck to smoke. It was
+a lovely morning. Blue sea, gleaming Casino, cloudless sky, and all
+the rest of the hippodrome. Presently the others began to trickle up.
+Stella Vanderley was one of the first. I thought she looked a bit
+pale and tired. She said she hadn't slept well. That accounted for
+it. Unless you get your eight hours, where are you?
+
+"Seen George?" I asked.
+
+I couldn't help thinking the name seemed to freeze her a bit. Which was
+queer, because all the voyage she and George had been particularly
+close pals. In fact, at any moment I expected George to come to me and
+slip his little hand in mine, and whisper: "I've done it, old scout;
+she loves muh!"
+
+"I have not seen Mr. Lattaker," she said.
+
+I didn't pursue the subject. George's stock was apparently low that
+a.m.
+
+The next item in the day's programme occurred a few minutes later when
+the morning papers arrived.
+
+Mrs. Vanderley opened hers and gave a scream.
+
+"The poor, dear Prince!" she said.
+
+"What a shocking thing!" said old Marshall.
+
+"I knew him in Vienna," said Mrs. Vanderley. "He waltzed divinely."
+
+Then I got at mine and saw what they were talking about. The paper was
+full of it. It seemed that late the night before His Serene Highness
+the Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz (I always wonder why they call these
+chaps "Serene") had been murderously assaulted in a dark street on
+his way back from the Casino to his yacht. Apparently he had developed
+the habit of going about without an escort, and some rough-neck, taking
+advantage of this, had laid for him and slugged him with considerable
+vim. The Prince had been found lying pretty well beaten up and insensible
+in the street by a passing pedestrian, and had been taken back to his
+yacht, where he still lay unconscious.
+
+"This is going to do somebody no good," I said. "What do you get for
+slugging a Serene Highness? I wonder if they'll catch the fellow?"
+
+"'Later,'" read old Marshall, "'the pedestrian who discovered His
+Serene Highness proves to have been Mr. Denman Sturgis, the eminent
+private investigator. Mr. Sturgis has offered his services to the
+police, and is understood to be in possession of a most important
+clue.' That's the fellow who had charge of that kidnapping case in
+Chicago. If anyone can catch the man, he can."
+
+About five minutes later, just as the rest of them were going to move
+off to breakfast, a boat hailed us and came alongside. A tall, thin man
+came up the gangway. He looked round the group, and fixed on old
+Marshall as the probable owner of the yacht.
+
+"Good morning," he said. "I believe you have a Mr. Lattaker on
+board--Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+"Yes," said Marshall. "He's down below. Want to see him? Whom shall I
+say?"
+
+"He would not know my name. I should like to see him for a moment on
+somewhat urgent business."
+
+"Take a seat. He'll be up in a moment. Reggie, my boy, go and hurry him
+up."
+
+I went down to George's state-room.
+
+"George, old man!" I shouted.
+
+No answer. I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. What's
+more, the bunk hadn't been slept in. I don't know when I've been more
+surprised. I went on deck.
+
+"He isn't there," I said.
+
+"Not there!" said old Marshall. "Where is he, then? Perhaps he's gone
+for a stroll ashore. But he'll be back soon for breakfast. You'd better
+wait for him. Have you breakfasted? No? Then will you join us?"
+
+The man said he would, and just then the gong went and they trooped
+down, leaving me alone on deck.
+
+I sat smoking and thinking, and then smoking a bit more, when I thought
+I heard somebody call my name in a sort of hoarse whisper. I looked
+over my shoulder, and, by Jove, there at the top of the gangway in
+evening dress, dusty to the eyebrows and without a hat, was dear old
+George.
+
+"Great Scot!" I cried.
+
+"'Sh!" he whispered. "Anyone about?"
+
+"They're all down at breakfast."
+
+He gave a sigh of relief, sank into my chair, and closed his eyes. I
+regarded him with pity. The poor old boy looked a wreck.
+
+"I say!" I said, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+He leaped out of the chair with a smothered yell.
+
+"Did you do that? What did you do it for? What's the sense of it? How
+do you suppose you can ever make yourself popular if you go about
+touching people on the shoulder? My nerves are sticking a yard out of
+my body this morning, Reggie!"
+
+"Yes, old boy?"
+
+"I did a murder last night."
+
+"What?"
+
+"It's the sort of thing that might happen to anybody. Directly Stella
+Vanderley broke off our engagement I----"
+
+"Broke off your engagement? How long were you engaged?"
+
+"About two minutes. It may have been less. I hadn't a stop-watch. I
+proposed to her at ten last night in the saloon. She accepted me. I was
+just going to kiss her when we heard someone coming. I went out. Coming
+along the corridor was that infernal what's-her-name--Mrs. Vanderley's
+maid--Pilbeam. Have you ever been accepted by the girl you love,
+Reggie?"
+
+"Never. I've been refused dozens----"
+
+"Then you won't understand how I felt. I was off my head with joy. I
+hardly knew what I was doing. I just felt I had to kiss the nearest
+thing handy. I couldn't wait. It might have been the ship's cat. It
+wasn't. It was Pilbeam."
+
+"You kissed her?"
+
+"I kissed her. And just at that moment the door of the saloon opened
+and out came Stella."
+
+"Great Scott!"
+
+"Exactly what I said. It flashed across me that to Stella, dear girl,
+not knowing the circumstances, the thing might seem a little odd. It
+did. She broke off the engagement, and I got out the dinghy and rowed
+off. I was mad. I didn't care what became of me. I simply wanted to
+forget. I went ashore. I--It's just on the cards that I may have drowned
+my sorrows a bit. Anyhow, I don't remember a thing, except that I can
+recollect having the deuce of a scrap with somebody in a dark street
+and somebody falling, and myself falling, and myself legging it for all
+I was worth. I woke up this morning in the Casino gardens. I've lost my
+hat."
+
+I dived for the paper.
+
+"Read," I said. "It's all there."
+
+He read.
+
+"Good heavens!" he said.
+
+"You didn't do a thing to His Serene Nibs, did you?"
+
+"Reggie, this is awful."
+
+"Cheer up. They say he'll recover."
+
+"That doesn't matter."
+
+"It does to him."
+
+He read the paper again.
+
+"It says they've a clue."
+
+"They always say that."
+
+"But--My hat!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"My hat. I must have dropped it during the scrap. This man, Denman
+Sturgis, must have found it. It had my name in it!"
+
+"George," I said, "you mustn't waste time. Oh!"
+
+He jumped a foot in the air.
+
+"Don't do it!" he said, irritably. "Don't bark like that. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"The man!"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"A tall, thin man with an eye like a gimlet. He arrived just before you
+did. He's down in the saloon now, having breakfast. He said he wanted
+to see you on business, and wouldn't give his name. I didn't like the
+look of him from the first. It's this fellow Sturgis. It must be."
+
+"No!"
+
+"I feel it. I'm sure of it."
+
+"Had he a hat?"
+
+"Of course he had a hat."
+
+"Fool! I mean mine. Was he carrying a hat?"
+
+"By Jove, he _was_ carrying a parcel. George, old scout, you must
+get a move on. You must light out if you want to spend the rest of your
+life out of prison. Slugging a Serene Highness is _lese-majeste_.
+It's worse than hitting a policeman. You haven't got a moment to
+waste."
+
+"But I haven't any money. Reggie, old man, lend me a tenner or
+something. I must get over the frontier into Italy at once. I'll wire
+my uncle to meet me in----"
+
+"Look out," I cried; "there's someone coming!"
+
+He dived out of sight just as Voules came up the companion-way,
+carrying a letter on a tray.
+
+"What's the matter!" I said. "What do you want?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I thought I heard Mr. Lattaker's voice. A
+letter has arrived for him."
+
+"He isn't here."
+
+"No, sir. Shall I remove the letter?"
+
+"No; give it to me. I'll give it to him when he comes."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"Oh, Voules! Are they all still at breakfast? The gentleman who came to
+see Mr. Lattaker? Still hard at it?"
+
+"He is at present occupied with a kippered herring, sir."
+
+"Ah! That's all, Voules."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+He retired. I called to George, and he came out.
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Only Voules. He brought a letter for you. They're all at breakfast
+still. The sleuth's eating kippers."
+
+"That'll hold him for a bit. Full of bones." He began to read his
+letter. He gave a kind of grunt of surprise at the first paragraph.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" he said, as he finished.
+
+"Reggie, this is a queer thing."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+He handed me the letter, and directly I started in on it I saw why he
+had grunted. This is how it ran:
+
+    "My dear George--I shall be seeing you to-morrow, I hope; but I
+    think it is better, before we meet, to prepare you for a curious
+    situation that has arisen in connection with the legacy which
+    your father inherited from your Aunt Emily, and which you are
+    expecting me, as trustee, to hand over to you, now that you have
+    reached your twenty-fifth birthday. You have doubtless heard
+    your father speak of your twin-brother Alfred, who was lost or
+    kidnapped--which, was never ascertained--when you were both
+    babies. When no news was received of him for so many years, it
+    was supposed that he was dead. Yesterday, however, I received a
+    letter purporting that he had been living all this time in Buenos
+    Ayres as the adopted son of a wealthy South American, and has
+    only recently discovered his identity. He states that he is on
+    his way to meet me, and will arrive any day now. Of course, like
+    other claimants, he may prove to be an impostor, but meanwhile
+    his intervention will, I fear, cause a certain delay before I can
+    hand over your money to you. It will be necessary to go into a
+    thorough examination of credentials, etc., and this will take
+    some time. But I will go fully into the matter with you when we
+    meet.--Your affectionate uncle,
+
+                               "AUGUSTUS ARBUTT."
+
+I read it through twice, and the second time I had one of those ideas I
+do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class. I
+have seldom had such a thoroughly corking brain-wave.
+
+"Why, old top," I said, "this lets you out."
+
+"Lets me out of half the darned money, if that's what you mean. If this
+chap's not an imposter--and there's no earthly reason to suppose he is,
+though I've never heard my father say a word about him--we shall have
+to split the money. Aunt Emily's will left the money to my father, or,
+failing him, his 'offspring.' I thought that meant me, but apparently
+there are a crowd of us. I call it rotten work, springing unexpected
+offspring on a fellow at the eleventh hour like this."
+
+"Why, you chump," I said, "it's going to save you. This lets you out of
+your spectacular dash across the frontier. All you've got to do is to
+stay here and be your brother Alfred. It came to me in a flash."
+
+He looked at me in a kind of dazed way.
+
+"You ought to be in some sort of a home, Reggie."
+
+"Ass!" I cried. "Don't you understand? Have you ever heard of
+twin-brothers who weren't exactly alike? Who's to say you aren't
+Alfred if you swear you are? Your uncle will be there to back you
+up that you have a brother Alfred."
+
+"And Alfred will be there to call me a liar."
+
+"He won't. It's not as if you had to keep it up for the rest of your
+life. It's only for an hour or two, till we can get this detective
+off the yacht. We sail for England to-morrow morning."
+
+At last the thing seemed to sink into him. His face brightened.
+
+"Why, I really do believe it would work," he said.
+
+"Of course it would work. If they want proof, show them your mole. I'll
+swear George hadn't one."
+
+"And as Alfred I should get a chance of talking to Stella and making
+things all right for George. Reggie, old top, you're a genius."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"You _are_."
+
+"Well, it's only sometimes. I can't keep it up."
+
+And just then there was a gentle cough behind us. We spun round.
+
+"What the devil are you doing here, Voules," I said.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I have heard all."
+
+I looked at George. George looked at me.
+
+"Voules is all right," I said. "Decent Voules! Voules wouldn't give us
+away, would you, Voules?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"But, Voules, old man," I said, "be sensible. What would you gain by
+it?"
+
+"Financially, sir, nothing."
+
+"Whereas, by keeping quiet"--I tapped him on the chest--"by holding
+your tongue, Voules, by saying nothing about it to anybody, Voules, old
+fellow, you might gain a considerable sum."
+
+"Am I to understand, sir, that, because you are rich and I am poor, you
+think that you can buy my self-respect?"
+
+"Oh, come!" I said.
+
+"How much?" said Voules.
+
+So we switched to terms. You wouldn't believe the way the man haggled.
+You'd have thought a decent, faithful servant would have been delighted
+to oblige one in a little matter like that for a fiver. But not Voules.
+By no means. It was a hundred down, and the promise of another hundred
+when we had got safely away, before he was satisfied. But we fixed it
+up at last, and poor old George got down to his state-room and changed
+his clothes.
+
+He'd hardly gone when the breakfast-party came on deck.
+
+"Did you meet him?" I asked.
+
+"Meet whom?" said old Marshall.
+
+"George's twin-brother Alfred."
+
+"I didn't know George had a brother."
+
+"Nor did he till yesterday. It's a long story. He was kidnapped in
+infancy, and everyone thought he was dead. George had a letter from his
+uncle about him yesterday. I shouldn't wonder if that's where George
+has gone, to see his uncle and find out about it. In the meantime,
+Alfred has arrived. He's down in George's state-room now, having a
+brush-up. It'll amaze you, the likeness between them. You'll think it
+_is_ George at first. Look! Here he comes."
+
+And up came George, brushed and clean, in an ordinary yachting suit.
+
+They were rattled. There was no doubt about that. They stood looking at
+him, as if they thought there was a catch somewhere, but weren't quite
+certain where it was. I introduced him, and still they looked doubtful.
+
+"Mr. Pepper tells me my brother is not on board," said George.
+
+"It's an amazing likeness," said old Marshall.
+
+"Is my brother like me?" asked George amiably.
+
+"No one could tell you apart," I said.
+
+"I suppose twins always are alike," said George. "But if it ever came
+to a question of identification, there would be one way of
+distinguishing us. Do you know George well, Mr. Pepper?"
+
+"He's a dear old pal of mine."
+
+"You've been swimming with him perhaps?"
+
+"Every day last August."
+
+"Well, then, you would have noticed it if he had had a mole like this
+on the back of his neck, wouldn't you?" He turned his back and stooped
+and showed the mole. His collar hid it at ordinary times. I had seen it
+often when we were bathing together.
+
+"Has George a mole like that?" he asked.
+
+"No," I said. "Oh, no."
+
+"You would have noticed it if he had?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "Oh, yes."
+
+"I'm glad of that," said George. "It would be a nuisance not to be able
+to prove one's own identity."
+
+That seemed to satisfy them all. They couldn't get away from it. It
+seemed to me that from now on the thing was a walk-over. And I think
+George felt the same, for, when old Marshall asked him if he had had
+breakfast, he said he had not, went below, and pitched in as if he
+hadn't a care in the world.
+
+Everything went right till lunch-time. George sat in the shade on the
+foredeck talking to Stella most of the time. When the gong went and the
+rest had started to go below, he drew me back. He was beaming.
+
+"It's all right," he said. "What did I tell you?"
+
+"What did you tell me?"
+
+"Why, about Stella. Didn't I say that Alfred would fix things for
+George? I told her she looked worried, and got her to tell me what the
+trouble was. And then----"
+
+"You must have shown a flash of speed if you got her to confide in you
+after knowing you for about two hours."
+
+"Perhaps I did," said George modestly, "I had no notion, till I became
+him, what a persuasive sort of chap my brother Alfred was. Anyway, she
+told me all about it, and I started in to show her that George was a
+pretty good sort of fellow on the whole, who oughtn't to be turned down
+for what was evidently merely temporary insanity. She saw my point."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Absolutely, if only we can produce George. How much longer does that
+infernal sleuth intend to stay here? He seems to have taken root."
+
+"I fancy he thinks that you're bound to come back sooner or later, and
+is waiting for you."
+
+"He's an absolute nuisance," said George.
+
+We were moving towards the companion way, to go below for lunch, when a
+boat hailed us. We went to the side and looked over.
+
+"It's my uncle," said George.
+
+A stout man came up the gangway.
+
+"Halloa, George!" he said. "Get my letter?"
+
+"I think you are mistaking me for my brother," said George. "My name is
+Alfred Lattaker."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"I am George's brother Alfred. Are you my Uncle Augustus?"
+
+The stout man stared at him.
+
+"You're very like George," he said.
+
+"So everyone tells me."
+
+"And you're really Alfred?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"I'd like to talk business with you for a moment."
+
+He cocked his eye at me. I sidled off and went below.
+
+At the foot of the companion-steps I met Voules.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Voules. "If it would be convenient I
+should be glad to have the afternoon off."
+
+I'm bound to say I rather liked his manner. Absolutely normal. Not a
+trace of the fellow-conspirator about it. I gave him the afternoon off.
+
+I had lunch--George didn't show up--and as I was going out I was
+waylaid by the girl Pilbeam. She had been crying.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but did Mr. Voules ask you for the afternoon?"
+
+I didn't see what business if was of hers, but she seemed all worked up
+about it, so I told her.
+
+"Yes, I have given him the afternoon off."
+
+She broke down--absolutely collapsed. Devilish unpleasant it was. I'm
+hopeless in a situation like this. After I'd said, "There, there!"
+which didn't seem to help much, I hadn't any remarks to make.
+
+"He s-said he was going to the tables to gamble away all his savings
+and then shoot himself, because he had nothing left to live for."
+
+I suddenly remembered the scrap in the small hours outside my
+state-room door. I hate mysteries. I meant to get to the bottom of
+this. I couldn't have a really first-class valet like Voules going
+about the place shooting himself up. Evidently the girl Pilbeam was
+at the bottom of the thing. I questioned her. She sobbed.
+
+I questioned her more. I was firm. And eventually she yielded up the
+facts. Voules had seen George kiss her the night before; that was the
+trouble.
+
+Things began to piece themselves together. I went up to interview George.
+There was going to be another job for persuasive Alfred. Voules's mind
+had got to be eased as Stella's had been. I couldn't afford to lose a
+fellow with his genius for preserving a trouser-crease.
+
+I found George on the foredeck. What is it Shakespeare or somebody says
+about some fellow's face being sicklied o'er with the pale cast of
+care? George's was like that. He looked green.
+
+"Finished with your uncle?" I said.
+
+He grinned a ghostly grin.
+
+"There isn't any uncle," he said. "There isn't any Alfred. And there
+isn't any money."
+
+"Explain yourself, old top," I said.
+
+"It won't take long. The old crook has spent every penny of the
+trust money. He's been at it for years, ever since I was a kid. When
+the time came to cough up, and I was due to see that he did it, he
+went to the tables in the hope of a run of luck, and lost the last
+remnant of the stuff. He had to find a way of holding me for a while
+and postponing the squaring of accounts while he got away, and he
+invented this twin-brother business. He knew I should find out sooner
+or later, but meanwhile he would be able to get off to South America,
+which he has done. He's on his way now."
+
+"You let him go?"
+
+"What could I do? I can't afford to make a fuss with that man Sturgis
+around. I can't prove there's no Alfred when my only chance of avoiding
+prison is to be Alfred."
+
+"Well, you've made things right for yourself with Stella Vanderley,
+anyway," I said, to cheer him up.
+
+"What's the good of that now? I've hardly any money and no prospects.
+How can I marry her?"
+
+I pondered.
+
+"It looks to me, old top," I said at last, "as if things were in a bit
+of a mess."
+
+"You've guessed it," said poor old George.
+
+I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what
+a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you
+see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along,
+and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You
+can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling.
+Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as ever stepped,
+getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what
+I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about
+it.
+
+It was close on six o'clock when our third visitor of the day arrived.
+We were sitting on the afterdeck in the cool of the evening--old
+Marshall, Denman Sturgis, Mrs. Vanderley, Stella, George, and I--when
+he came up. We had been talking of George, and old Marshall was
+suggesting the advisability of sending out search-parties. He was
+worried. So was Stella Vanderley. So, for that matter, were George and
+I, only not for the same reason.
+
+We were just arguing the thing out when the visitor appeared. He was a
+well-built, stiff sort of fellow. He spoke with a German accent.
+
+"Mr. Marshall?" he said. "I am Count Fritz von Coeslin, equerry to His
+Serene Highness"--he clicked his heels together and saluted--"the
+Prince of Saxburg-Leignitz."
+
+Mrs. Vanderley jumped up.
+
+"Why, Count," she said, "what ages since we met in Vienna! You
+remember?"
+
+"Could I ever forget? And the charming Miss Stella, she is well, I
+suppose not?"
+
+"Stella, you remember Count Fritz?"
+
+Stella shook hands with him.
+
+"And how is the poor, dear Prince?" asked Mrs. Vanderley. "What a
+terrible thing to have happened!"
+
+"I rejoice to say that my high-born master is better. He has regained
+consciousness and is sitting up and taking nourishment."
+
+"That's good," said old Marshall.
+
+"In a spoon only," sighed the Count. "Mr. Marshall, with your
+permission I should like a word with Mr. Sturgis."
+
+"Mr. Who?"
+
+The gimlet-eyed sportsman came forward.
+
+"I am Denman Sturgis, at your service."
+
+"The deuce you are! What are you doing here?"
+
+"Mr. Sturgis," explained the Count, "graciously volunteered his
+services----"
+
+"I know. But what's he doing here?"
+
+"I am waiting for Mr. George Lattaker, Mr. Marshall."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"You have not found him?" asked the Count anxiously.
+
+"Not yet, Count; but I hope to do so shortly. I know what he looks like
+now. This gentleman is his twin-brother. They are doubles."
+
+"You are sure this gentleman is not Mr. George Lattaker?"
+
+George put his foot down firmly on the suggestion.
+
+"Don't go mixing me up with my brother," he said. "I am Alfred. You can
+tell me by my mole."
+
+He exhibited the mole. He was taking no risks.
+
+The Count clicked his tongue regretfully.
+
+"I am sorry," he said.
+
+George didn't offer to console him,
+
+"Don't worry," said Sturgis. "He won't escape me. I shall find him."
+
+"Do, Mr. Sturgis, do. And quickly. Find swiftly that noble young man."
+
+"What?" shouted George.
+
+"That noble young man, George Lattaker, who, at the risk of his life,
+saved my high-born master from the assassin."
+
+George sat down suddenly.
+
+"I don't understand," he said feebly.
+
+"We were wrong, Mr. Sturgis," went on the Count. "We leaped to the
+conclusion--was it not so?--that the owner of the hat you found was
+also the assailant of my high-born master. We were wrong. I have heard
+the story from His Serene Highness's own lips. He was passing down a
+dark street when a ruffian in a mask sprang out upon him. Doubtless he
+had been followed from the Casino, where he had been winning heavily.
+My high-born master was taken by surprise. He was felled. But before he
+lost consciousness he perceived a young man in evening dress, wearing
+the hat you found, running swiftly towards him. The hero engaged the
+assassin in combat, and my high-born master remembers no more. His
+Serene Highness asks repeatedly, 'Where is my brave preserver?' His
+gratitude is princely. He seeks for this young man to reward him. Ah,
+you should be proud of your brother, sir!"
+
+"Thanks," said George limply.
+
+"And you, Mr. Sturgis, you must redouble your efforts. You must search
+the land; you must scour the sea to find George Lattaker."
+
+"He needn't take all that trouble," said a voice from the gangway.
+
+It was Voules. His face was flushed, his hat was on the back of his
+head, and he was smoking a fat cigar.
+
+"I'll tell you where to find George Lattaker!" he shouted.
+
+He glared at George, who was staring at him.
+
+"Yes, look at me," he yelled. "Look at me. You won't be the first this
+afternoon who's stared at the mysterious stranger who won for two hours
+without a break. I'll be even with you now, Mr. Blooming Lattaker. I'll
+learn you to break a poor man's heart. Mr. Marshall and gents, this
+morning I was on deck, and I over'eard 'im plotting to put up a game on
+you. They'd spotted that gent there as a detective, and they arranged
+that blooming Lattaker was to pass himself off as his own twin-brother.
+And if you wanted proof, blooming Pepper tells him to show them his
+mole and he'd swear George hadn't one. Those were his very words. That
+man there is George Lattaker, Hesquire, and let him deny it if he can."
+
+George got up.
+
+"I haven't the least desire to deny it, Voules."
+
+"Mr. Voules, if _you_ please."
+
+"It's true," said George, turning to the Count. "The fact is, I had
+rather a foggy recollection of what happened last night. I only
+remembered knocking some one down, and, like you, I jumped to the
+conclusion that I must have assaulted His Serene Highness."
+
+"Then you are really George Lattaker?" asked the Count.
+
+"I am."
+
+"'Ere, what does all this mean?" demanded Voules.
+
+"Merely that I saved the life of His Serene Highness the Prince of
+Saxburg-Leignitz, Mr. Voules."
+
+"It's a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the
+girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall's
+chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules.
+
+"Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd shot
+yourself."
+
+He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed
+to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
+
+It was all dashed romantic, don't you know, but there _are_ limits.
+
+"Voules, you're sacked," I said.
+
+"Who cares?" he said. "Think I was going to stop on now I'm a gentleman
+of property? Come along, Emma, my dear. Give a month's notice and get
+your 'at, and I'll take you to dinner at Ciro's."
+
+"And you, Mr. Lattaker," said the Count, "may I conduct you to the
+presence of my high-born master? He wishes to show his gratitude to his
+preserver."
+
+"You may," said George. "May I have my hat, Mr. Sturgis?"
+
+There's just one bit more. After dinner that night I came up for a
+smoke, and, strolling on to the foredeck, almost bumped into George and
+Stella. They seemed to be having an argument.
+
+"I'm not sure," she was saying, "that I believe that a man can be so
+happy that he wants to kiss the nearest thing in sight, as you put it."
+
+"Don't you?" said George. "Well, as it happens, I'm feeling just that
+way now."
+
+I coughed and he turned round.
+
+"Halloa, Reggie!" he said.
+
+"Halloa, George!" I said. "Lovely night."
+
+"Beautiful," said Stella.
+
+"The moon," I said.
+
+"Ripping," said George.
+
+"Lovely," said Stella.
+
+"And look at the reflection of the stars on the----"
+
+George caught my eye. "Pop off," he said.
+
+I popped.
+
+
+
+
+DOING CLARENCE A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Have you ever thought about--and, when I say thought about, I mean
+really carefully considered the question of--the coolness, the cheek,
+or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
+bursts? _I_ have, by Jove! But then I've had it thrust on my
+notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty
+few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the
+Yeardsley "Venus."
+
+To make you understand the full what-d'you-call-it of the situation, I
+shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
+myself.
+
+When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
+family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
+Oxford with me.
+
+I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don't you know. And there was
+a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
+as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
+catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
+"The Wedding Glide," I'm hanged if she didn't break it off, and a month
+later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley--Clarence
+Yeardsley, an artist.
+
+What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
+club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
+got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
+book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn't seem likely to me
+that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
+country somewhere and never came to London, and I'm bound to own that,
+by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
+was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
+be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
+had done.
+
+This letter I'm telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
+sky, as it were. It ran like this:
+
+    "MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,--What ages it seems since I saw anything of
+    you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old
+    house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.
+    Couldn't you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be
+    so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
+    again. He was speaking of you only this morning. _Do_ come.
+    Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
+    --Yours most sincerely,
+
+                              ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.
+
+    "P.S.--We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!
+
+    "P.P.S.--Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
+    ever played on.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.--We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says
+    it is better than St. Andrews.
+
+    "P.P.S.S.S.--You _must_ come!"
+
+Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
+head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
+easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.
+
+However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
+was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
+be something special. So I went.
+
+Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn't come across him
+for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
+glad to see me.
+
+"Thank goodness you've come," he said, as we drove off. "I was just
+about at my last grip."
+
+"What's the trouble, old scout?" I asked.
+
+"If I had the artistic what's-its-name," he went on, "if the mere
+mention of pictures didn't give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn't be
+so bad. As it is, it's rotten!"
+
+"Pictures?"
+
+"Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
+artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
+when one gives her her head?"
+
+I remembered then--it hadn't come back to me before--that most of my
+time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
+period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had
+had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though
+pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had
+never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after
+marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere
+sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to
+old Bill.
+
+"They talk pictures at every meal," he said. "I tell you, it makes a
+chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?"
+
+"A few days."
+
+"Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
+to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was
+that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn't get me
+back with a lasso."
+
+I tried to point out the silver lining.
+
+"But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there's a most corking links
+near here."
+
+He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.
+
+"You don't mean honestly she said that?"
+
+"She said you said it was better than St. Andrews."
+
+"So I did. Was that all she said I said?"
+
+"Well, wasn't it enough?"
+
+"She didn't happen to mention that I added the words, 'I don't think'?"
+
+"No, she forgot to tell me that."
+
+"It's the worst course in Great Britain."
+
+I felt rather stunned, don't you know. Whether it's a bad habit to have
+got into or not, I can't say, but I simply can't do without my daily
+allowance of golf when I'm not in London.
+
+I took another whirl at the silver lining.
+
+"We'll have to take it out in billiards," I said. "I'm glad the table's
+good."
+
+"It depends what you call good. It's half-size, and there's a seven-inch
+cut just out of baulk where Clarence's cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended
+it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn't improve
+the thing as a billiard-table."
+
+"But she said you said----"
+
+"Must have been pulling your leg."
+
+We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
+back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
+couldn't help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
+about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
+hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
+know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
+had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
+what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought
+me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going
+to have a stab at marrying me off. I've often heard that young married
+women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
+nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence's
+father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as
+she had done wouldn't be likely to stick at a trifle.
+
+"Bill, old scout," I said, "there aren't any frightful girls or any rot
+of that sort stopping here, are there?"
+
+"Wish there were," he said. "No such luck."
+
+As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman's figure
+appeared.
+
+"Have you got him, Bill?" she said, which in my present frame of mind
+struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
+Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don't you know.
+
+"Do you mean me?" I said.
+
+She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
+as in the old days.
+
+"Is that you, Reggie? I'm so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
+you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
+along in and have some tea."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
+then been introduced to her husband? If so you'll understand how I felt
+when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
+hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, "I wonder what he's like."
+Then you meet him, and think, "There must be some mistake. She can't have
+preferred _this_ to me!" That's what I thought, when I set eyes on
+Clarence.
+
+He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
+hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
+pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I'm no Bombardier Wells
+myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
+mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.
+Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?" said
+Clarence. All in one breath, don't you know.
+
+"Eh?" I said.
+
+"A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!"
+
+While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
+gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
+an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
+Elizabeth introduced us.
+
+"Father," said Clarence, "did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
+positive I heard a cat mewing."
+
+"No," said the father, shaking his head; "no mewing cat."
+
+"I can't bear mewing cats," said Clarence. "A mewing cat gets on my
+nerves!"
+
+"A mewing cat is so trying," said Elizabeth.
+
+"_I_ dislike mewing cats," said old Mr. Yeardsley.
+
+That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
+they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
+pictures.
+
+We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
+least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
+picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the "Monna Lisa," and
+then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
+was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
+valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
+first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
+any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
+pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.
+
+"Here it is," I said. "A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer----"
+
+They all shouted "What!" exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
+Elizabeth grabbed the paper.
+
+"Let me look! Yes. 'Late last night burglars entered the residence of
+Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants----'"
+
+"Why, that's near here," I said. "I passed through Midford----"
+
+"Dryden Park is only two miles from this house," said Elizabeth. I
+noticed her eyes were sparkling.
+
+"Only two miles!" she said. "It might have been us! It might have been
+the 'Venus'!"
+
+Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.
+
+"The 'Venus'!" he cried.
+
+They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
+evening's chat had made quite a hit.
+
+Why I didn't notice it before I don't know, but it was not till Elizabeth
+showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the Yeardsley
+"Venus." When she led me up to it, and switched on the light, it seemed
+impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing
+it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
+foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I
+was aware of its existence.
+
+She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
+was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
+rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
+effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
+Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
+towards me and said, "Reggie."
+
+And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
+know that pre-what-d'you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
+then.
+
+"What-o?" I said nervously.
+
+"Reggie," she said, "I want to ask a great favour of you."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
+to me:
+
+"Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
+world for me?"
+
+There! That's what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
+a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you'd have thought she
+would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
+sort of thing, what?
+
+Mind you, I _had_ said I would do anything in the world for her.
+I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn't
+appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
+may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
+her, doesn't feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
+when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
+who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.
+
+I couldn't think of anything to say but "Oh, yes."
+
+"There's something you can do for me now, which will make me
+everlastingly grateful."
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"Do you know, Reggie," she said suddenly, "that only a few months ago
+Clarence was very fond of cats?"
+
+"Eh! Well, he still seems--er--_interested_ in them, what?"
+
+"Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves."
+
+"Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the----"
+
+"No, that wouldn't help him. He doesn't need to take anything. He wants
+to get rid of something."
+
+"I don't quite follow. Get rid of something?"
+
+"The 'Venus,'" said Elizabeth.
+
+She looked up and caught my bulging eye.
+
+"You saw the 'Venus,'" she said.
+
+"Not that I remember."
+
+"Well, come into the dining-room."
+
+We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.
+
+"There," she said.
+
+On the wall close to the door--that may have been why I hadn't noticed
+it before; I had sat with my back to it--was a large oil-painting. It
+was what you'd call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean is--well,
+you know what I mean. All I can say is that it's funny I _hadn't_
+noticed it.
+
+"Is that the 'Venus'?" I said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
+a meal?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I don't think it would affect me much. I'd worry
+through all right."
+
+She jerked her head impatiently.
+
+"But you're not an artist," she said. "Clarence is."
+
+And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn't
+understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
+Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
+explains everything. It's like the Unwritten Law, don't you know,
+which you plead in America if you've done anything they want to send
+you to chokey for and you don't want to go. What I mean is, if you're
+absolutely off your rocker, but don't find it convenient to be scooped
+into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
+teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
+go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
+the Cat's Friend, ready for anything.
+
+And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.
+
+It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
+that this "Venus" was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
+known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
+present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so
+far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a
+professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
+the game, saw flaws in the "Venus." He couldn't stand it at any price.
+He didn't like the drawing. He didn't like the expression of the face.
+He didn't like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
+look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
+rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
+store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
+picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
+that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.
+
+"Now you see," she said.
+
+"In a way," I said. "But don't you think it's making rather heavy
+weather over a trifle?"
+
+"Oh, can't you understand? Look!" Her voice dropped as if she was in
+church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
+to old Yeardsley's. "There!" she said. "Clarence painted that!"
+
+She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
+or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence's effort. It
+was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
+one.
+
+Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
+dash at it.
+
+"Er--'Venus'?" I said.
+
+Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
+evidence, I mean.
+
+"No. 'Jocund Spring,'" she snapped. She switched off the light. "I see
+you don't understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
+When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
+been at your club."
+
+This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
+to me, and put her hand on my arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, Reggie. I didn't mean to be cross. Only I do want to make you
+understand that Clarence is _suffering_. Suppose--suppose--well, let
+us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to sit
+and listen to a cheap vulgar tune--the same tune--day after day, day after
+day, wouldn't you expect his nerves to break! Well, it's just like that
+with Clarence. Now you see?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"But what? Surely I've put it plainly enough?"
+
+"Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
+do?"
+
+"I want you to steal the 'Venus.'"
+
+I looked at her.
+
+"You want me to----?"
+
+"Steal it. Reggie!" Her eyes were shining with excitement. "Don't you
+see? It's Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
+idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
+the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
+last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
+feelings hurt. Why, it's the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
+One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
+his 'Venus.' It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it to-night,
+Reggie. I'll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas out of
+the frame, and it's done."
+
+"But one moment," I said. "I'd be delighted to be of any use to you,
+but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn't it be better--in
+fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?"
+
+"I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused."
+
+"But if I'm caught?"
+
+"You can't be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
+the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room."
+
+It sounded simple enough.
+
+"And as to the picture itself--when I've got it?"
+
+"Burn it. I'll see that you have a good fire in your room."
+
+"But----"
+
+She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.
+
+"Reggie," she said; nothing more. Just "Reggie."
+
+She looked at me.
+
+"Well, after all, if you see what I mean--The days that are no more,
+don't you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
+me?"
+
+"All right," I said. "I'll do it."
+
+I don't know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
+in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces.
+If you're not, you'll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the job
+I'd taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had done
+when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
+easy enough, but I couldn't help feeling there was a catch somewhere,
+and I've never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for
+one o'clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be
+pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn't stand it any longer.
+I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill's bicycle, took a grip of my
+knife, and slunk downstairs.
+
+The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
+window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
+local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
+I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
+when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn't have
+said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
+Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
+things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
+something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
+sounded like old Bill's say, "Feeling better now?"
+
+I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
+kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
+
+"What happened?" I said.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, old man," he said. "I hadn't a notion it was you. I
+came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
+chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn't stop to make inquiries. I
+just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
+you're doing? Were you walking in your sleep?"
+
+"It was Elizabeth," I said. "Why, you know all about it. She said she
+had told you."
+
+"You don't mean----"
+
+"The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me."
+
+"Reggie, old man," he said. "I'll never believe what they say about
+repentance again. It's a fool's trick and upsets everything. If I
+hadn't repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to
+do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
+all, you wouldn't have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I'm
+sorry."
+
+"Me, too," I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
+still on.
+
+"Are you feeling better now?"
+
+"Better than I was. But that's not saying much."
+
+"Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
+job finished and going to bed? And let's be quick about it too. You made
+a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it's on
+the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves."
+
+"Heads."
+
+"Tails it is," he said, uncovering the coin. "Up you get. I'll hold the
+light. Don't spike yourself on that sword of yours."
+
+It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
+the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
+Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
+collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
+
+"We've got a long evening before us," he said. "You can't burn a picture
+of that size in one chunk. You'd set the chimney on fire. Let's do the
+thing comfortably. Clarence can't grudge us the stuff. We've done him
+a bit of good this trip. To-morrow'll be the maddest, merriest day of
+Clarence's glad New Year. On we go."
+
+We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
+drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
+shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
+of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
+by stealth, I don't know when I've had a jollier time since the days
+when we used to brew in my study at school.
+
+We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
+gripped my arm.
+
+"I heard something," he said.
+
+I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
+the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
+footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
+
+"There's somebody in the dining-room," I whispered.
+
+There's a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
+chivvying trouble. Old Bill's like that. If I had been alone, it would
+have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn't
+really heard anything after all. I'm a peaceful sort of cove, and
+believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
+a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
+jump.
+
+"Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."
+
+I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
+knife. We crept downstairs.
+
+"We'll fling the door open and make a rush," said Bill.
+
+"Supposing they shoot, old scout?"
+
+"Burglars never shoot," said Bill.
+
+Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.
+
+Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
+And then we pulled up sharp, staring.
+
+The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
+near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence's "Jocund Spring,"
+holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
+was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
+had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
+stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
+in a heap together. The candle went out.
+
+"What on earth?" said Bill.
+
+I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
+fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
+collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
+could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
+it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
+me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn't know what to do. I
+saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
+we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
+short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
+Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.
+
+"Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
+It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
+to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I----"
+
+It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
+those present.
+
+"Clarence?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+"He's in bed," I said.
+
+"In bed! Then he doesn't know? Even now--Young men, I throw myself
+on your mercy. Don't be hard on me. Listen." He grabbed at Bill, who
+sidestepped. "I can explain everything--everything."
+
+He gave a gulp.
+
+"You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
+understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
+years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
+was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
+Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
+cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
+thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
+picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
+And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
+could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
+a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
+suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
+who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
+I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
+here to carry out my plan. You found me." He grabbed again, at me this
+time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. "Young man,"
+he said, "you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?"
+
+I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
+time, don't you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
+straight instead of breaking it by degrees.
+
+"I won't say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley," I said. "I quite
+understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
+of thing. I mean--what? _I_ know. But I'm afraid--Well, look!"
+
+I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
+staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
+at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.
+
+"The gang! The burglars! They _have_ been here, and they have
+taken Clarence's picture!" He paused. "It might have been mine! My
+Venus!" he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know,
+but he had to know the truth.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, you know," I said. "But it _was_."
+
+He started, poor old chap.
+
+"Eh? What do you mean?"
+
+"They _did_ take your Venus."
+
+"But I have it here."
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"That's Clarence's 'Jocund Spring,'" I said.
+
+He jumped at it and straightened it out.
+
+"What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don't know my own
+picture--my child--my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
+you read, boy? Look: 'Matthew Yeardsley.' This is _my_ picture!"
+
+And--well, by Jove, it _was_, don't you know!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
+down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
+my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill's
+fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn't be expected
+to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive
+silence for a bit.
+
+"Reggie," said Bill at last, "how exactly do you feel about facing
+Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?"
+
+"Old scout," I said. "I was thinking much the same myself."
+
+"Reggie," said Bill, "I happen to know there's a milk-train leaving
+Midford at three-fifteen. It isn't what you'd call a flier. It gets to
+London at about half-past nine. Well--er--in the circumstances, how
+about it?"
+
+
+
+
+THE AUNT AND THE SLUGGARD
+
+
+Now that it's all over, I may as well admit that there was a time
+during the rather funny affair of Rockmetteller Todd when I thought
+that Jeeves was going to let me down. The man had the appearance of
+being baffled.
+
+Jeeves is my man, you know. Officially he pulls in his weekly wages
+for pressing my clothes and all that sort of thing; but actually he's
+more like what the poet Johnnie called some bird of his acquaintance who
+was apt to rally round him in times of need--a guide, don't you know;
+philosopher, if I remember rightly, and--I rather fancy--friend. I rely
+on him at every turn.
+
+So naturally, when Rocky Todd told me about his aunt, I didn't
+hesitate. Jeeves was in on the thing from the start.
+
+The affair of Rocky Todd broke loose early one morning of spring. I was
+in bed, restoring the good old tissues with about nine hours of the
+dreamless, when the door flew open and somebody prodded me in the lower
+ribs and began to shake the bedclothes. After blinking a bit and
+generally pulling myself together, I located Rocky, and my first
+impression was that it was some horrid dream.
+
+Rocky, you see, lived down on Long Island somewhere, miles away from
+New York; and not only that, but he had told me himself more than once
+that he never got up before twelve, and seldom earlier than one.
+Constitutionally the laziest young devil in America, he had hit on a
+walk in life which enabled him to go the limit in that direction. He
+was a poet. At least, he wrote poems when he did anything; but most of
+his time, as far as I could make out, he spent in a sort of trance. He
+told me once that he could sit on a fence, watching a worm and
+wondering what on earth it was up to, for hours at a stretch.
+
+He had his scheme of life worked out to a fine point. About once a
+month he would take three days writing a few poems; the other three
+hundred and twenty-nine days of the year he rested. I didn't know there
+was enough money in poetry to support a chappie, even in the way in
+which Rocky lived; but it seems that, if you stick to exhortations to
+young men to lead the strenuous life and don't shove in any rhymes,
+American editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things
+once. It began:
+
+    Be!
+    Be!
+      The past is dead.
+      To-morrow is not born.
+        Be to-day!
+    To-day!
+      Be with every nerve,
+        With every muscle,
+        With every drop of your red blood!
+    Be!
+
+It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine with a sort of
+scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly-nude chappie,
+with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the glad eye. Rocky said
+they gave him a hundred dollars for it, and he stayed in bed till four
+in the afternoon for over a month.
+
+As regarded the future he was pretty solid, owing to the fact that he
+had a moneyed aunt tucked away somewhere in Illinois; and, as he had
+been named Rockmetteller after her, and was her only nephew, his
+position was pretty sound. He told me that when he did come into the
+money he meant to do no work at all, except perhaps an occasional poem
+recommending the young man with life opening out before him, with all
+its splendid possibilities, to light a pipe and shove his feet upon the
+mantelpiece.
+
+And this was the man who was prodding me in the ribs in the grey dawn!
+
+"Read this, Bertie!" I could just see that he was waving a letter or
+something equally foul in my face. "Wake up and read this!"
+
+I can't read before I've had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped
+for the bell.
+
+Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It's a mystery to me
+how he does it.
+
+"Tea, Jeeves."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He flowed silently out of the room--he always gives you the impression
+of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky
+was surging round with his beastly letter again.
+
+"What is it?" I said. "What on earth's the matter?"
+
+"Read it!"
+
+"I can't. I haven't had my tea."
+
+"Well, listen then."
+
+"Who's it from?"
+
+"My aunt."
+
+At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:
+
+"So what on earth am I to do?"
+
+Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering
+over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.
+
+"Read it again, Rocky, old top," I said. "I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr.
+Todd's aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want
+your advice."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause,
+and Rocky started again:
+
+    "MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.--I have been thinking things over for a
+    long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been
+    very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made
+    up my mind to do now."
+
+"What do you make of that, Jeeves?"
+
+"It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes
+cleared at a later point in the communication."
+
+"It becomes as clear as mud!" said Rocky.
+
+"Proceed, old scout," I said, champing my bread and butter.
+
+    "You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see
+    for myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I
+    fear that now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I
+    am old and worn out. I seem to have no strength left in me."
+
+"Sad, Jeeves, what?"
+
+"Extremely, sir."
+
+"Sad nothing!" said Rocky. "It's sheer laziness. I went to see her last
+Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself
+that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist
+that she's a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She's got a
+fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it's
+been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is."
+
+"Rather like the chappie whose heart was 'in the Highlands a-chasing of
+the deer,' Jeeves?"
+
+"The cases are in some respects parallel, sir."
+
+"Carry on, Rocky, dear
+boy."
+
+    "So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the
+    city myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly
+    thought of this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the
+    Sunday paper about a young man who had longed all his life for a
+    certain thing and won it in the end only when he was too old to
+    enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me."
+
+"A thing," interpolated Rocky bitterly, "that I've not been able to do
+in ten years."
+
+    "As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now
+    I have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I
+    have now decided to do so--on one condition. I have written to a
+    firm of lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you
+    quite a substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you
+    live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do.
+    I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as
+    I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic
+    life of New York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant
+    supper parties.
+
+    "Above all, I want you--indeed, I insist on this--to write me
+    letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all
+    you are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may
+    enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying
+    for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no
+    detail is too trivial to interest.--Your affectionate Aunt,
+
+                                       "ISABEL ROCKMETTELLER."
+
+"What about it?" said Rocky.
+
+"What about it?" I said.
+
+"Yes. What on earth am I going to do?"
+
+It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
+of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of the
+right stuff had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind
+it was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
+the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
+plexus. It amazed me.
+
+"Aren't you bucked?" I said.
+
+"Bucked!"
+
+"If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
+this pretty soft for you."
+
+He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
+talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
+chappie. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign,
+and I had popped in at the Garden a couple of days before, for half an
+hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some pretty
+straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike to the
+place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like a
+publicity agent for the old metrop.!
+
+"Pretty soft!" he cried. "To have to come and live in New York! To have
+to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
+of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have to
+mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of St.
+Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because
+they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
+loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't got
+to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral
+delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than
+a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!"
+
+I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in
+for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticise the Cities of
+the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
+
+"It would kill me to have to live in New York," he went on. "To have to
+share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff collars
+and decent clothes all the time! To----" He started. "Good Lord! I
+suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
+ghastly notion!"
+
+I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
+
+"My dear chap!" I said reproachfully.
+
+"Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?"
+
+"Jeeves," I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by
+the door. "How many suits of evening clothes have I?"
+
+"We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets----"
+
+"Three."
+
+"For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear
+the third. We have also seven white waistcoats."
+
+"And shirts?"
+
+"Four dozen, sir."
+
+"And white ties?"
+
+"The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely
+filled with our white ties, sir."
+
+I turned to Rocky.
+
+"You see?"
+
+The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
+
+"I won't do it! I can't do it! I'll be hanged if I'll do it! How on
+earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don't
+get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put
+on an old sweater?"
+
+I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his
+finest feelings.
+
+"Then, what are you going to do about it?" I said.
+
+"That's what I want to know."
+
+"You might write and explain to your aunt."
+
+"I might--if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer's in two rapid
+leaps and cut me out of her will."
+
+I saw his point.
+
+"What do you suggest, Jeeves?" I said.
+
+Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
+
+"The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is
+obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his
+possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters
+relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be
+accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of
+remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party
+to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes
+reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful
+report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his
+imagination, to base the suggested correspondence."
+
+Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked
+at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn't been brought up on Jeeves as
+I have, and he isn't on to his curves.
+
+"Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?" he said. "I thought at the
+start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What's the
+idea?"
+
+"My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves.
+All you've got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you
+and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters.
+That's it, isn't it, Jeeves?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+The light of hope gleamed in Rocky's eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a
+startled way, dazed by the man's vast intellect.
+
+"But who would do it?" he said. "It would have to be a pretty smart
+sort of man, a man who would notice things."
+
+"Jeeves!" I said. "Let Jeeves do it."
+
+"But would he?"
+
+"You would do it, wouldn't you, Jeeves?"
+
+For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost
+smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and
+for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish's.
+
+"I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have
+already visited some of New York's places of interest on my evening
+out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit."
+
+"Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She
+wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,
+Jeeves, is Reigelheimer's. It's on Forty-second Street. Anybody will
+show you the way."
+
+Jeeves shook his head.
+
+"Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer's. The
+place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof."
+
+"You see?" I said to Rocky. "Leave it to Jeeves. He knows."
+
+It isn't often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans
+happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of
+the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything
+went absolutely right from the start.
+
+Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,
+and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights.
+I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table
+on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a
+fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I'd never imagined he could look so
+nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere benevolence, and he
+was making notes in a small book.
+
+As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond
+of old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was
+perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his
+pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to
+death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to
+be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it
+was full of life.
+
+But then Rocky's letters, based on Jeeves's notes, were enough to buck
+anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,
+loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired
+feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:
+
+    "DEAR FREDDIE,--Well, here I am in New York. It's not a bad place.
+    I'm not having a bad time. Everything's pretty all right. The
+    cabarets aren't bad. Don't know when I shall be back. How's
+    everybody? Cheer-o!--Yours,
+
+                                "BERTIE.
+
+    "PS.--Seen old Ted lately?"
+
+Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn't dragged him in I couldn't
+have got the confounded thing on to the second page.
+
+Now here's old Rocky on exactly the same subject:
+
+    "DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,--How can I ever thank you enough for giving
+    me the opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems
+    more wonderful every day.
+
+    "Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are
+    magnificent!"
+
+Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn't know Jeeves was such an
+authority.
+
+    "I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other
+    night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new
+    place on Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie
+    Cohan looked in about midnight and got off a good one about Willie
+    Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks
+    did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was
+    there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The
+    show at the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.
+
+    "Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof----"
+
+And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it's the artistic
+temperament or something. What I mean is, it's easier for a chappie
+who's used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a
+punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there's
+no doubt that Rocky's correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in
+and congratulated him.
+
+"Jeeves, you're a wonder!"
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn't tell
+you a thing about them, except that I've had a good time."
+
+"It's just a knack, sir."
+
+"Well, Mr. Todd's letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,
+what?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, sir," agreed Jeeves.
+
+And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to
+say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month
+after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old
+bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence
+like a bomb.
+
+It wasn't that he spoke loud. He has one of those soft, soothing voices
+that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It
+was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.
+
+"Miss Rockmetteller!"
+
+And in came a large, solid female.
+
+The situation floored me. I'm not denying it. Hamlet must have felt
+much as I did when his father's ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I'd
+come to look on Rocky's aunt as such a permanency at her own home that
+it didn't seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I
+stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an
+attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should
+have been rallying round the young master, it was now.
+
+Rocky's aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I've ever seen,
+except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as
+a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if
+put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly
+regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor
+old Rocky had been pulling on her.
+
+"Good afternoon," I managed to say.
+
+"How do you do?" she said. "Mr. Cohan?"
+
+"Er--no."
+
+"Mr. Fred Stone?"
+
+"Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name's Wooster--Bertie
+Wooster."
+
+She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean
+nothing in her life.
+
+"Isn't Rockmetteller home?" she said. "Where is he?"
+
+She had me with the first shot. I couldn't think of anything to say. I
+couldn't tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.
+
+There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the
+respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak
+without having been spoken to.
+
+"If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party
+in the afternoon."
+
+"So he did, Jeeves; so he did," I said, looking at my watch. "Did he
+say when he would be back?"
+
+"He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in
+returning."
+
+He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I'd forgotten to offer
+her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It
+made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended
+to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England,
+has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails
+to make my spine curl.
+
+"You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of
+Rockmetteller's?"
+
+"Oh, yes, rather!"
+
+She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.
+
+"Well, you need to be," she said, "the way you treat his flat as your
+own!"
+
+I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the
+power of speech. I'd been looking on myself in the light of the dashing
+host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn't,
+mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered
+my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously
+looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber's man come
+to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her--my being there.
+
+At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being
+about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea--the good old
+stand-by.
+
+"Would you care for a cup of tea?" I said.
+
+"Tea?"
+
+She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.
+
+"Nothing like a cup after a journey," I said. "Bucks you up! Puts a bit
+of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don't you
+know. I'll go and tell Jeeves."
+
+I tottered down the passage to Jeeves's lair. The man was reading the
+evening paper as if he hadn't a care in the world.
+
+"Jeeves," I said, "we want some tea."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?"
+
+I wanted sympathy, don't you know--sympathy and kindness. The old nerve
+centres had had the deuce of a shock.
+
+"She's got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put
+that into her head?"
+
+Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.
+
+"No doubt because of Mr. Todd's letters, sir," he said. "It was my
+suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from
+this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good
+central residence in the city."
+
+I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.
+
+"Well, it's bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an
+intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I'm someone who hangs about
+here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"It's pretty rotten, you know."
+
+"Most disturbing, sir."
+
+"And there's another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We've got
+to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the
+tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come
+up by the next train."
+
+"I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message
+and dispatching it by the lift attendant."
+
+"By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.
+Thank you."
+
+I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn't moved an inch. She was still
+bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a
+hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There
+was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I
+suppose because I wasn't George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
+
+"This is a surprise, what?" I said, after about five minutes' restful
+silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
+
+"What is a surprise?"
+
+"Your coming here, don't you know, and so on."
+
+She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
+
+"Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?" she said.
+
+Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
+
+"Oh, rather," I said. "Of course! Certainly. What I mean is----"
+
+Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad
+to see him. There's nothing like having a bit of business arranged for
+one when one isn't certain of one's lines. With the teapot to fool
+about with I felt happier.
+
+"Tea, tea, tea--what? What?" I said.
+
+It wasn't what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal
+more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her
+out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
+
+"Do you mean to say, young man," she said frostily, "that you expect me
+to drink this stuff?"
+
+"Rather! Bucks you up, you know."
+
+"What do you mean by the expression 'Bucks you up'?"
+
+"Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz."
+
+"I don't understand a word you say. You're English, aren't you?"
+
+I admitted it. She didn't say a word. And somehow she did it in a way
+that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was
+brought home to me that she didn't like Englishmen, and that if she had
+had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she'd have chosen last.
+
+Conversation languished again after that.
+
+Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you
+can't make a real lively _salon_ with a couple of people,
+especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
+
+"Are you comfortable at your hotel?" I said.
+
+"At which hotel?"
+
+"The hotel you're staying at."
+
+"I am not staying at an hotel."
+
+"Stopping with friends--what?"
+
+"I am naturally stopping with my nephew."
+
+I didn't get it for the moment; then it hit me.
+
+"What! Here?" I gurgled.
+
+"Certainly! Where else should I go?"
+
+The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn't
+see what on earth I was to do. I couldn't explain that this wasn't
+Rocky's flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because
+she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in
+the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock
+and produce some results when she spoke again.
+
+"Will you kindly tell my nephew's man-servant to prepare my room? I
+wish to lie down."
+
+"Your nephew's man-servant?"
+
+"The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile
+ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish
+to be alone with me when he returns."
+
+I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for
+me. I crept into Jeeves's den.
+
+"Jeeves!" I whispered.
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+"This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"She thinks you're Mr. Todd's man. She thinks the whole place is his,
+and everything in it. I don't see what you're to do, except stay on and
+keep it up. We can't say anything or she'll get on to the whole thing,
+and I don't want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants
+you to prepare her bed."
+
+He looked wounded.
+
+"It is hardly my place, sir----"
+
+"I know--I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to
+that, it's hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and
+have to go to an hotel, what?"
+
+"Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for
+clothes?"
+
+"Good Lord! I hadn't thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag
+when she isn't looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?"
+
+"I will endeavour to do so, sir."
+
+"Well, I don't think there's anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd
+where I am when he gets here."
+
+"Very good, sir."
+
+I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.
+The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive
+chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.
+
+"Good-bye, Jeeves," I said.
+
+"Good-bye, sir."
+
+And I staggered out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher
+Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he
+has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,
+you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more
+sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people's
+misfortunes if you've been through the same thing yourself.
+
+As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white
+tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole
+squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to
+look after them. I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural
+phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,
+there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own
+clothes themselves and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the
+morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don't you know. I
+mean to say, ever since then I've been able to appreciate the frightful
+privations the poor have to stick.
+
+I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn't forgotten a thing in his packing.
+Everything was there, down to the final stud. I'm not sure this didn't
+make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what
+somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.
+
+I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but
+nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn't the heart to go
+on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the
+hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don't know when I've
+felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as
+if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I
+should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang
+I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end
+of the wire said "Halloa!" five times, thinking he hadn't got me.
+
+It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.
+
+"Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I'm having a time!"
+
+"Where are you speaking from?"
+
+"The Midnight Revels. We've been here an hour, and I think we're a
+fixture for the night. I've told Aunt Isabel I've gone out to call up a
+friend to join us. She's glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life
+written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and
+I'm nearly crazy."
+
+"Tell me all, old top," I said.
+
+"A little more of this," he said, "and I shall sneak quietly off to the
+river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of
+thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It's simply infernal! I was
+just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when
+about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There
+are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can't play louder
+than the other. I'm a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram
+arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of
+absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two
+miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top
+of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.
+And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of
+yours."
+
+I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn't struck me till then that Rocky
+was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.
+
+"You'll ruin them!"
+
+"I hope so," said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles
+seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. "I should like to
+get back at them somehow; they've given me a bad enough time. They're
+about three sizes too small, and something's apt to give at any moment.
+I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven't
+breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out
+and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by
+now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure
+Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I
+dance when I don't know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could
+I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It's taking big chances even
+to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I've hurt my ankle. She
+keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it's
+simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting
+two tables away. Something's got to be done, Bertie! You've got to
+think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me
+into it."
+
+"Me! What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, Jeeves, then. It's all the same. It was you who suggested
+leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that
+did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt's just been telling me
+about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where
+she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of
+New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled
+herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she's had some
+miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can't stand it, Bertie!
+It's got to end!"
+
+"Can't Jeeves think of anything?"
+
+"No. He just hangs round saying: 'Most disturbing, sir!' A fat lot of
+help that is!"
+
+"Well, old lad," I said, "after all, it's far worse for me than it is
+for you. You've got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you're saving a
+lot of money."
+
+"Saving money? What do you mean--saving money?"
+
+"Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she's paying
+all the expenses now, isn't she?"
+
+"Certainly she is; but she's stopped the allowance. She wrote the
+lawyers to-night. She says that, now she's in New York, there is no
+necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it's
+simpler for her to look after that end of it. I tell you, Bertie, I've
+examined the darned cloud with a microscope, and if it's got a silver
+lining it's some little dissembler!"
+
+"But, Rocky, old top, it's too bally awful! You've no notion of what
+I'm going through in this beastly hotel, without Jeeves. I must get
+back to the flat."
+
+"Don't come near the flat."
+
+"But it's my own flat."
+
+"I can't help that. Aunt Isabel doesn't like you. She asked me what you
+did for a living. And when I told her you didn't do anything she said
+she thought as much, and that you were a typical specimen of a useless
+and decaying aristocracy. So if you think you have made a hit, forget
+it. Now I must be going back, or she'll be coming out here after me.
+Good-bye."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Next morning Jeeves came round. It was all so home-like when he floated
+noiselessly into the room that I nearly broke down.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said. "I have brought a few more of your
+personal belongings."
+
+He began to unstrap the suit-case he was carrying.
+
+"Did you have any trouble sneaking them away?"
+
+"It was not easy, sir. I had to watch my chance. Miss Rockmetteller is
+a remarkably alert lady."
+
+"You know, Jeeves, say what you like--this is a bit thick, isn't it?"
+
+"The situation is certainly one that has never before come under my
+notice, sir. I have brought the heather-mixture suit, as the climatic
+conditions are congenial. To-morrow, if not prevented, I will endeavour
+to add the brown lounge with the faint green twill."
+
+"It can't go on--this sort of thing--Jeeves."
+
+"We must hope for the best, sir."
+
+"Can't you think of anything to do?"
+
+"I have been giving the matter considerable thought, sir, but so far
+without success. I am placing three silk shirts--the dove-coloured, the
+light blue, and the mauve--in the first long drawer, sir."
+
+"You don't mean to say you can't think of anything, Jeeves?"
+
+"For the moment, sir, no. You will find a dozen handkerchiefs and the
+tan socks in the upper drawer on the left." He strapped the suit-case
+and put it on a chair. "A curious lady, Miss Rockmetteller, sir."
+
+"You understate it, Jeeves."
+
+He gazed meditatively out of the window.
+
+"In many ways, sir, Miss Rockmetteller reminds me of an aunt of mine
+who resides in the south-east portion of London. Their temperaments are
+much alike. My aunt has the same taste for the pleasures of the great
+city. It is a passion with her to ride in hansom cabs, sir. Whenever
+the family take their eyes off her she escapes from the house and
+spends the day riding about in cabs. On several occasions she has
+broken into the children's savings bank to secure the means to enable
+her to gratify this desire."
+
+"I love to have these little chats with you about your female
+relatives, Jeeves," I said coldly, for I felt that the man had let me
+down, and I was fed up with him. "But I don't see what all this has got
+to do with my trouble."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir. I am leaving a small assortment of neckties on
+the mantelpiece, sir, for you to select according to your preference. I
+should recommend the blue with the red domino pattern, sir."
+
+Then he streamed imperceptibly toward the door and flowed silently out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I've often heard that chappies, after some great shock or loss, have a
+habit, after they've been on the floor for a while wondering what hit
+them, of picking themselves up and piecing themselves together, and
+sort of taking a whirl at beginning a new life. Time, the great healer,
+and Nature, adjusting itself, and so on and so forth. There's a lot in
+it. I know, because in my own case, after a day or two of what you
+might call prostration, I began to recover. The frightful loss of
+Jeeves made any thought of pleasure more or less a mockery, but at
+least I found that I was able to have a dash at enjoying life again.
+What I mean is, I was braced up to the extent of going round the cabarets
+once more, so as to try to forget, if only for the moment.
+
+New York's a small place when it comes to the part of it that wakes up
+just as the rest is going to bed, and it wasn't long before my tracks
+began to cross old Rocky's. I saw him once at Peale's, and again at
+Frolics on the roof. There wasn't anybody with him either time except
+the aunt, and, though he was trying to look as if he had struck the
+ideal life, it wasn't difficult for me, knowing the circumstances, to
+see that beneath the mask the poor chap was suffering. My heart bled
+for the fellow. At least, what there was of it that wasn't bleeding for
+myself bled for him. He had the air of one who was about to crack under
+the strain.
+
+It seemed to me that the aunt was looking slightly upset also. I took
+it that she was beginning to wonder when the celebrities were going to
+surge round, and what had suddenly become of all those wild, careless
+spirits Rocky used to mix with in his letters. I didn't blame her. I
+had only read a couple of his letters, but they certainly gave the
+impression that poor old Rocky was by way of being the hub of New York
+night life, and that, if by any chance he failed to show up at a
+cabaret, the management said: "What's the use?" and put up the
+shutters.
+
+The next two nights I didn't come across them, but the night after that
+I was sitting by myself at the Maison Pierre when somebody tapped me on
+the shoulder-blade, and I found Rocky standing beside me, with a sort
+of mixed expression of wistfulness and apoplexy on his face. How the
+chappie had contrived to wear my evening clothes so many times without
+disaster was a mystery to me. He confided later that early in the
+proceedings he had slit the waistcoat up the back and that that had
+helped a bit.
+
+For a moment I had the idea that he had managed to get away from his
+aunt for the evening; but, looking past him, I saw that she was in
+again. She was at a table over by the wall, looking at me as if I were
+something the management ought to be complained to about.
+
+"Bertie, old scout," said Rocky, in a quiet, sort of crushed voice,
+"we've always been pals, haven't we? I mean, you know I'd do you a good
+turn if you asked me?"
+
+"My dear old lad," I said. The man had moved me.
+
+"Then, for Heaven's sake, come over and sit at our table for the rest
+of the evening."
+
+Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
+
+"My dear chap," I said, "you know I'd do anything in reason; but----"
+
+"You must come, Bertie. You've got to. Something's got to be done to
+divert her mind. She's brooding about something. She's been like that
+for the last two days. I think she's beginning to suspect. She can't
+understand why we never seem to meet anyone I know at these joints. A
+few nights ago I happened to run into two newspaper men I used to know
+fairly well. That kept me going for a while. I introduced them to Aunt
+Isabel as David Belasco and Jim Corbett, and it went well. But the effect
+has worn off now, and she's beginning to wonder again. Something's got to
+be done, or she will find out everything, and if she does I'd take a
+nickel for my chance of getting a cent from her later on. So, for the
+love of Mike, come across to our table and help things along."
+
+I went along. One has to rally round a pal in distress. Aunt Isabel was
+sitting bolt upright, as usual. It certainly did seem as if she had
+lost a bit of the zest with which she had started out to explore
+Broadway. She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
+rather unpleasant things.
+
+"You've met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?" said Rocky.
+
+"I have."
+
+There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
+
+"Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?"
+
+"Take a seat, Bertie. What'll you have?" said Rocky.
+
+And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
+bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
+then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
+wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
+of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
+gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
+home with ropes.
+
+It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
+
+"You'll come along, won't you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?"
+
+I had a feeling that this wasn't in the contract, but there wasn't
+anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
+the woman, so I went along.
+
+Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
+feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
+massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and,
+though Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his
+best to supply dialogue, we weren't a chatty party.
+
+I had a glimpse of Jeeves as we went into the flat, sitting in his
+lair, and I wished I could have called to him to rally round. Something
+told me that I was about to need him.
+
+The stuff was on the table in the sitting-room. Rocky took up the
+decanter.
+
+"Say when, Bertie."
+
+"Stop!" barked the aunt, and he dropped it.
+
+I caught Rocky's eye as he stooped to pick up the ruins. It was the eye
+of one who sees it coming.
+
+"Leave it there, Rockmetteller!" said Aunt Isabel; and Rocky left it
+there.
+
+"The time has come to speak," she said. "I cannot stand idly by and see
+a young man going to perdition!"
+
+Poor old Rocky gave a sort of gurgle, a kind of sound rather like the
+whisky had made running out of the decanter on to my carpet.
+
+"Eh?" he said, blinking.
+
+The aunt proceeded.
+
+"The fault," she said, "was mine. I had not then seen the light. But
+now my eyes are open. I see the hideous mistake I have made. I shudder
+at the thought of the wrong I did you, Rockmetteller, by urging you
+into contact with this wicked city."
+
+I saw Rocky grope feebly for the table. His fingers touched it, and a
+look of relief came into the poor chappie's face. I understood his
+feelings.
+
+"But when I wrote you that letter, Rockmetteller, instructing you to go
+to the city and live its life, I had not had the privilege of hearing
+Mr. Mundy speak on the subject of New York."
+
+"Jimmy Mundy!" I cried.
+
+You know how it is sometimes when everything seems all mixed up and
+you suddenly get a clue. When she mentioned Jimmy Mundy I began to
+understand more or less what had happened. I'd seen it happen before.
+I remember, back in England, the man I had before Jeeves sneaked off
+to a meeting on his evening out and came back and denounced me in front
+of a crowd of chappies I was giving a bit of supper to as a moral leper.
+
+The aunt gave me a withering up and down.
+
+"Yes; Jimmy Mundy!" she said. "I am surprised at a man of your stamp
+having heard of him. There is no music, there are no drunken, dancing
+men, no shameless, flaunting women at his meetings; so for you they would
+have no attraction. But for others, less dead in sin, he has his message.
+He has come to save New York from itself; to force it--in his picturesque
+phrase--to hit the trail. It was three days ago, Rockmetteller, that I
+first heard him. It was an accident that took me to his meeting. How
+often in this life a mere accident may shape our whole future!
+
+"You had been called away by that telephone message from Mr. Belasco;
+so you could not take me to the Hippodrome, as we had arranged. I asked
+your man-servant, Jeeves, to take me there. The man has very little
+intelligence. He seems to have misunderstood me. I am thankful that he
+did. He took me to what I subsequently learned was Madison Square
+Garden, where Mr. Mundy is holding his meetings. He escorted me to a
+seat and then left me. And it was not till the meeting had begun that I
+discovered the mistake which had been made. My seat was in the middle
+of a row. I could not leave without inconveniencing a great many
+people, so I remained."
+
+She gulped.
+
+"Rockmetteller, I have never been so thankful for anything else. Mr.
+Mundy was wonderful! He was like some prophet of old, scourging the
+sins of the people. He leaped about in a frenzy of inspiration till I
+feared he would do himself an injury. Sometimes he expressed himself in
+a somewhat odd manner, but every word carried conviction. He showed me
+New York in its true colours. He showed me the vanity and wickedness of
+sitting in gilded haunts of vice, eating lobster when decent people
+should be in bed.
+
+"He said that the tango and the fox-trot were devices of the devil to
+drag people down into the Bottomless Pit. He said that there was more
+sin in ten minutes with a negro banjo orchestra than in all the ancient
+revels of Nineveh and Babylon. And when he stood on one leg and pointed
+right at where I was sitting and shouted, 'This means you!' I could
+have sunk through the floor. I came away a changed woman. Surely you
+must have noticed the change in me, Rockmetteller? You must have seen
+that I was no longer the careless, thoughtless person who had urged you
+to dance in those places of wickedness?"
+
+Rocky was holding on to the table as if it was his only friend.
+
+"Y-yes," he stammered; "I--I thought something was wrong."
+
+"Wrong? Something was right! Everything was right! Rockmetteller, it is
+not too late for you to be saved. You have only sipped of the evil cup.
+You have not drained it. It will be hard at first, but you will find
+that you can do it if you fight with a stout heart against the glamour
+and fascination of this dreadful city. Won't you, for my sake, try,
+Rockmetteller? Won't you go back to the country to-morrow and begin the
+struggle? Little by little, if you use your will----"
+
+I can't help thinking it must have been that word "will" that roused
+dear old Rocky like a trumpet call. It must have brought home to him
+the realisation that a miracle had come off and saved him from being
+cut out of Aunt Isabel's. At any rate, as she said it he perked up, let
+go of the table, and faced her with gleaming eyes.
+
+"Do you want me to go back to the country, Aunt Isabel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to live in the country?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller."
+
+"Stay in the country all the time, do you mean? Never come to New
+York?"
+
+"Yes, Rockmetteller; I mean just that. It is the only way. Only there
+can you be safe from temptation. Will you do it, Rockmetteller? Will
+you--for my sake?"
+
+Rocky grabbed the table again. He seemed to draw a lot of encouragement
+from that table.
+
+"I will!" he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Jeeves," I said. It was next day, and I was back in the old flat, lying
+in the old arm-chair, with my feet upon the good old table. I had just
+come from seeing dear old Rocky off to his country cottage, and an hour
+before he had seen his aunt off to whatever hamlet it was that she was
+the curse of; so we were alone at last. "Jeeves, there's no place like
+home--what?"
+
+"Very true, sir."
+
+"The jolly old roof-tree, and all that sort of thing--what?"
+
+"Precisely, sir."
+
+I lit another cigarette.
+
+"Jeeves."
+
+"Sir?"
+
+"Do you know, at one point in the business I really thought you were
+baffled."
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"When did you get the idea of taking Miss Rockmetteller to the meeting?
+It was pure genius!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. It came to me a little suddenly, one morning when I
+was thinking of my aunt, sir."
+
+"Your aunt? The hansom cab one?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I recollected that, whenever we observed one of her attacks
+coming on, we used to send for the clergyman of the parish. We always
+found that if he talked to her a while of higher things it diverted her
+mind from hansom cabs. It occurred to me that the same treatment might
+prove efficacious in the case of Miss Rockmetteller."
+
+I was stunned by the man's resource.
+
+"It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that,
+Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat
+a lot of fish, Jeeves?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born
+that way there's no use worrying."
+
+"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves. "If I might make the suggestion, sir, I
+should not continue to wear your present tie. The green shade gives you
+a slightly bilious air. I should strongly advocate the blue with the
+red domino pattern instead, sir."
+
+"All right, Jeeves." I said humbly. "You know!"
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Man Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
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