Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (7 page)

‘Think
of Groucho Marx and you will get the idea. One gag after another, and all at my
expense. I was just the straight man, and I found the experience most
unpleasant, particularly as I had had no breakfast that any conscientious
gourmet could call breakfast. Have you ever passed the night in chokey,
Jeeves?’

‘No,
sir. I have been fortunate in that respect.’

‘It
renders the appetite unusually keen. So rally round, if you don’t mind, and
busy yourself with the skillet. We have eggs on the premises, I presume?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘I
shall need about fifty, fried, with perhaps the same number of pounds of bacon.
Toast, also. Four loaves will probably be sufficient, but stand by to weigh in
with more if necessary. And don’t forget the coffee — say sixteen pots.’

‘Very
good, sir.’

‘And
after that,’ I said with a touch of bitterness, ‘I suppose you will go racing
round to the Junior Ganymede to enter this spot of bother of mine in the club
book.’

‘I fear
I have no alternative, sir. Rule Eleven is very strict.’

‘Well,
if you must, you must, I suppose. I wouldn’t want you to be hauled up in a
hollow square of butlers and have your buttons snipped off. That club book,
Jeeves. You’re absolutely sure there’s nothing in it in the C’s under “Cheesewright”?’

‘Nothing
but what I outlined last night, sir.’

‘And a
lot of help that is!’ I said moodily. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Jeeves, that
this Cheesewright has become a menace.’

‘Indeed,
sir?’

‘And I
had hoped that you might have found something in the club book which would have
enabled me to spike his guns. Still, if you can’t, you can’t, of course. All
right, rush along and dish up that breakfast.’

I had
slept but fitfully on the plank bed which was all that Vinton Street Gestapo
had seen their way to provide for the use of clients, so after partaking of a
hearty meal I turned in between the sheets. Like Rollo Beaminster, I wanted to
forget. It must have been well after the luncheon hour when the sound of the
telephone jerked me out of the dreamless. Feeling a good deal refreshed, I
shoved on a dressing-gown and went to the instrument.

It was
Florence.

‘Bertie?’
she yipped.

‘Hullo?
I thought you said you were going to Brinkley today.’

‘I’m
just starting. I rang up to ask how you got on after I left last night.’

I
laughed a mirthless laugh.

‘Not so
frightfully well,’ I replied. ‘I was scooped in by the constabulary.’

‘What!
You told me they didn’t arrest you.’

‘They
don’t. But they did.’

‘Are
you all right now?’

‘Well,
I have a pinched look.’

‘But I
don’t understand. Why did they arrest you?’

‘It’s a
long story. Cutting it down to the gist, I noticed that you were anxious to
leave, so, observing that a rozzer was after you hell for leather, I put a foot
out, tripping him up and causing him to lose interest in the chase.’

‘Good
gracious!’

‘It
seemed to me the prudent policy to pursue. Another moment and he would have had
you by the seat of the pants, and of course we can’t have that sort of thing
going on. The upshot of the affair was that I spent the night in a prison cell
and had rather a testing morning with the magistrate at Vinton Street police
court. However, I’m pulling round all right.’

‘Oh,
Bertie!’ Seeming deeply moved, she thanked me brokenly, and I said Don’t
mention it. Then she gasped a sudden gasp, as if she had received a punch on
the third waistcoat button. ‘Did you say Vinton Street?’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Oh, my
goodness! Do you know who that magistrate was?’

‘I
couldn’t tell you. No cards were exchanged. We boys in court called him Your
Worship.’

‘He’s
D’Arcy’s uncle!’

I
goshed. It had startled me not a little.

‘You
don’t mean that?’

‘Yes.’

‘What,
the one who likes soup?’

‘Yes.
Just imagine if after having dinner with him last night I had appeared before
him in the dock this morning!’

‘Embarrassing.
Difficult to know what to say. ‘‘D’Arcy would never have forgiven me. ‘‘Eh?’

‘He
would have broken the engagement. ‘I didn’t get this.

‘How do
you mean?’

‘How do
I mean what?’

‘How do
you mean he would have broken the engagement? I thought it was off already.’

She
gave what I believe is usually called a rippling laugh.

‘Oh,
no. He rang me up this morning and climbed down. And I forgave him. He’s
starting to grow a moustache today.’

I was
profoundly relieved.

‘Well,
that’s splendid,’ I said, and when she Oh—Bertied and I asked her what she was
Oh-Bertying about, she explained that what she had had in mind was the fact
that I was so chivalrous and generous.

‘Not
many men in your place, feeling as you do about me, would behave like this.’

‘Quite
all right.’

‘I’m
very touched.’

‘Don’t
give it another thought. It’s really all on again, is it?’

‘Yes.
So mind you don’t breathe a word to him about my being at that place with you.’

‘Of
course not.’

‘D’Arcy
is so jealous.’

‘Exactly.
He must never know.’

‘Never.
Why, if he even found out I was telephoning to you now, he would have a fit.’

I was
about to laugh indulgently and say that this was what Jeeves calls a remote
contingency, because how the dickens could he ever learn that we had been
chewing the fat, when my eye was attracted by a large object just within my
range of vision. Slewing the old bean round a couple of inches, I was enabled
to perceive that this large 0 was the bulging form of G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. I
hadn’t heard the door bell ring, and I hadn’t seen him come in, but there
unquestionably he was, haunting the place once more like a resident spectre.

7

It was a moment for quick
thinking. One doesn’t want fellows having fits all over one’s sitting-room. I
was extremely dubious, moreover, as to whether, should he ascertain who was at
the other end of the wire, he would confine himself to fits.

‘Certainly,
Catsmeat,’ I said. ‘Of course, Catsmeat. I quite understand, Catsmeat. But
I’ll have to ring off now, Catsmeat, as our mutual friend Cheesewright has just
come in. Good-bye, Catsmeat.’ I hung up the receiver and turned to Stilton.
‘That was Catsmeat,’ I said.

He made
no comment on this information, but stood glowering darkly. Now that I had been
apprised of the ties of blood linking him with mine host of Vinton Street, I
could see the family resemblance. Both uncle and nephew had the same way of
narrowing their gaze and letting you have it from beneath the overhanging
eyebrow. The only difference was that whereas the former pierced you to the roots
of the soul through rimless pince-nez, with the latter you got the eye nude.

For a
moment I was under the impression that my visitor’s emotion was due to his
having found me at this advanced hour in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, a costume
which, if worn at three o’clock in the afternoon, is always liable to start a
train of thought. But it seemed that this was not so. More serious matters were
on the agenda paper.

‘Wooster,’
he said, in a rumbling voice like the Cornish express going through a tunnel,
‘where were you last night?’

I own
the question rattled me. For an instant, indeed, I rocked on my base. Then I
reminded myself that nothing could be proved against me, and was strong again.

‘Ah,
Stilton,’ I said cheerily, ‘come in, come in. Oh, you are in, aren’t you? Well,
take a seat and tell me all your news. A lovely day, is it not? You’ll find a
lot of people who don’t like July in London, but I am all for it myself. It
always seems to me there’s a certain sort of something about it.’

He
appeared to be one of those fellows who are not interested in July in London,
for he showed no disposition to pursue the subject, merely giving one of those
snorts of his.

‘Where
were you last night, you blighted louse?’ he said, and I noticed that the face
was suffused, the cheek muscles twitching and the eyes, like stars, starting
from their spheres.

I had a
pop at being cool and nonchalant.

‘Last
night?’ I said, musing. ‘Let me see, that would be the night of July the
twenty-second, would it not? H’m. Ha. The night of —‘

He
swallowed a couple of times.

‘I see
you have forgotten. Let me assist your memory. You were in a low night club
with Florence Craye, my fiancée.’

‘Who,
me?’

‘Yes,
you. And this morning you were in the dock at Vinton Street police court.’

‘You’re
sure you mean me?’

‘Quite
sure. I had the information from my uncle, who is the magistrate there. He came
to lunch at my flat today, and as he was leaving he caught sight of your
photograph on the wall.’

‘I
didn’t know you kept my photograph on your wall, Stilton. I’m touched.’

He
continued to ferment.

‘It was
a group photograph,’ he said curtly, ‘and you happened to be in it. He looked
at it, sniffed sharply and said “Do you know this young man?” I explained that
we belonged to the same club, so it was not always possible to avoid you, but
that was the extent of our association. I was going on to say that, left to myself,
I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, when he proceeded. Still sniffing,
he said he was glad I was not a close friend of yours, because you weren’t at
all the sort of fellow he liked to think of any nephew of his being matey with.
He said you had been up before him this morning, charged with assaulting a
policeman, who stated that he had arrested you for tripping him up while he was
chasing a girl with platinum hair in a night club.’

I
pursed the lips. Or, rather, I tried to, but something seemed to have gone
wrong with the machinery. Still, I spoke boldly and with spirit.

‘Indeed?’
I said. ‘Personally I would be inclined to attach little credence to the word
of the sort of policeman who spends his time chasing platinum-haired girls in
night clubs. And as for this uncle of yours, with his wild stories of me having
been up before him — well, you know what magistrates are. The lowest form of
pond life. When a fellow hasn’t the brains and initiative to sell jellied eels,
they make him a magistrate.’

‘You
mean that when he said that about your photograph he was deceived by some
slight resemblance?’

I waved
a hand.

‘Not
necessarily a slight resemblance. London’s full of chaps who look like me. I’m
a very common type. People have told me that there is a fellow called Ephraim
Gadsby — one of the Streatham Common Gadsbys — who is positively my double. I
shall, of course, take this into consideration when weighing the question of
bringing an action for slander and defamation of character against this uncle
of yours, and shall probably decide to let justice be tempered with mercy. But
it would be a kindly act to warn the old son of a bachelor to be more careful
in future how he allows his tongue to run away with him. There are limits to
one’s forbearance.’

He
brooded darkly for about forty-five seconds.

‘Platinum
hair, the policeman said,’ he observed at the end of this lull. ‘This girl had
platinum hair.’

‘No
doubt very becoming.’

‘I find
it extremely significant that Florence has platinum hair.’

‘I
don’t see why. Hundreds of girls have. My dear Stilton, ask yourself if it is
likely that Florence would have been at a night club like the… what did you
say the name was?’

‘I
didn’t. But I believe it was called The Mottled Oyster.’

‘Ah,
yes, I have heard of it. Not a very nice place, I understand. Quite incredible
that she would have gone to a joint like that. A fastidious, intellectual girl
like Florence? No, no.’

He
pondered. It seemed to me that I had him going.

‘She
wanted me to take her to a night club last night,’ he said. ‘Something to do
with getting material for her new book.’

‘But
you very properly refused?’

‘No, as
a matter of fact, I said I would. Then we had that bit of trouble, so of course
it was off.’

‘And
she, of course, went home to bed. What else would any pure, sweet English girl
have done? It amazes me that you can suppose even for a moment that she would
have gone to one of these dubious establishments without you. Especially a
place where, as I understand your story, squads of policemen are incessantly
chasing platinum-haired girls hither and thither, and probably even worse
things happening as the long night wears on. No, Stilton, dismiss these
thoughts — which, if you will allow me to say so, are unworthy of you — and …
Ah, here is Jeeves,’ I said, noting with relief that the sterling fellow, who
had just oozed in, was carrying the old familiar shaker. ‘What have you there,
Jeeves? Some of your specials?’