P. Wodehouse - Much obliged, Jeeves

'This does it!'

'Fairly serious, I agree.'

'Fairly serious! The merest whisper of such goings-on will be enough to alienate every voter in the town. Ginger's done for.'

'You don't think they might excuse him because his blood was young at the time?'

'Not a hope. They won't be worrying about his ruddy blood. You don't know what these blighters here are like. Most of them are chapel folk with a moral code that would have struck Torquemada as too rigid.'

'Torquemada?'

'The Spanish Inquisition man.'

'Oh, that Torquemada.'

'How many Torquemadas did you think there were?'

I admitted that it was not a common name, and she carried on.

'We must act!'

'But how?'

'Or, rather, you must act. You must go to this man and reason with him.'

I h'med a bit at this. I doubted whether a fellow with Bingley's lust for gold would listen to reason.

'What shall I say?'

'You'll know what to say.'

'Oh, shall I?'

'Appeal to his better instincts.'

'He hasn't got any.'

'Now don't make difficulties, Bertie. That's your besetting sin, always arguing. You want to help Ginger, don't you?'

'Of course I do.'

'Very well, then.'

When an aunt has set her mind on a thing, it's no use trying to put in a nolle prosequi. I turned to the door.

Half-way there a thought occurred to me. I said:

'How about Jeeves?'

'What about him?'

'We ought to spare his feelings as far as possible. I repeatedly warned him that that club book was high-level explosive and ought not to be in existence. What if it fell into the wrong hands, I said, and he said it couldn't possibly fall into the wrong hands. And now it has fallen into about the wrongest hands it could have fallen into. I haven't the heart to say «I told you so» and watch him writhe with shame and confusion. You see, up till now Jeeves has always been right. His agony on finding that he has at last made a floater will be frightful. I shouldn't wonder if he might not swoon. I can't face him. You'll have to tell him.'

'Yes, I'll do it.'

'Try to break it gently.'

'I will. When you were listening outside, did you get this man Bingley's address?'

'I got it.'

'Then off you go.'

So off I went.

Considering how shaky was his moral outlook and how marked his tendency to weave low plots at the drop of a hat, you would have expected Bingley's headquarters to have been one of those sinister underground dens lit by stumps of candles stuck in the mouths of empty beer bottles such as abound, I believe, in places like Whitechapel and Limehouse. But no. Number 5 Ormond Crescent turned out to be quite an expensive-looking joint with a nice little bit of garden in front of it well supplied with geraniums, bird baths and terracotta gnomes, the sort of establishment that might have belonged to a blameless retired Colonel or a saintly stockbroker. Evidently his late uncle hadn't been just an ordinary small town grocer, weighing out potted meats and raisins to a public that had to watch the pennies, but something on a much more impressive scale. I learned later that he had owned a chain of shops, one of them as far afield as Birmingham, and why the ass had gone and left his money to a chap like Bingley is more than I can tell you, though the probability is that Bingley, before bumping him off with some little-known Asiatic poison, had taken the precaution of forging the will.

On the threshold I paused. I remember in my early days at the private school where I won my Scripture Knowledge prize, Arnold Abney MA, the headmaster, would sometimes announce that he wished to see Wooster in his study after morning prayers, and I always halted at the study door, a prey to uneasiness and apprehension, not liking the shape of things to come. It was much the same now. I shrank from the impending interview. But whereas in the case of A. Abney my disinclination to get things moving had been due to the fear that the proceedings were going to lead up to six of the best from a cane that stung like an adder, with Bingley it was a natural reluctance to ask a favour of a fellow I couldn't stand the sight of. I wouldn't say the Woosters were particularly proud, but we do rather jib at having to grovel to the scum of the earth.

However, it had to be done, and, as I heard Jeeves say once, if it were done, then 'twere well 'twere done quickly. Stiffening the sinews and summoning up the blood, to quote another his gags, I pressed the bell.

If I had any doubts as to Bingley now being in the chips, the sight of the butler who opened the door would have dispelled them. In assembling his domestic staff, Bingley had done himself proud, sparing no expense. I don't say his butler was quite in the class of Jeeves's Uncle Charlie Silversmith, but he came so near it that the breath was taken. And like Uncle Charlie he believed in pomp and ceremony when buttling. I asked him if I could see Mr Bingley, and he said coldly that the master was not receiving.

'I think he'll see me. I'm an old friend of his.'

'I will enquire. Your name, sir?'

'Mr Wooster.'

He pushed off, to return some moments later to say that Mr Bingley would be glad if I would join him in the library. Speaking in what seemed to me a disapproving voice, as though to suggest that, while he was compelled to carry out the master's orders however eccentric, he would never have admitted a chap like me if it had been left to him.

'If you would step this way, sir,' he said haughtily.

What with one thing and another I had rather got out of touch lately with that If-you-would-step-this-way-sir stuff, and it was in a somewhat rattled frame of mind that I entered the library and found Bingley in an armchair with his feet up on an occasional table. He greeted me cordially enough, but with that touch of the patronizing so noticeable at our two previous meetings.

'Ah, Wooster, my dear fellow, come in. I told Bastable to tell everyone I was not at home, but of course you're different. Always glad to see an old pal. And what can I do for you, Wooster?'

I had to say for him that he had made it easy for me to introduce the subject I was anxious to discuss. I was about to get going, when he asked me if I would like a drink. I said No, thanks, and he said in an insufferably smug way that I was probably wise.

'I often thought, when I was staying with you at Chuffnell Regis, that you drank too much, Wooster. Remember how you burned that cottage down? A sober man wouldn't have done that. You must have been stewed to the eyebrows, cocky.'

A hot denial trembled on my lips. I mean to say, it's a bit thick to be chided for burning cottages down by the very chap who put them to the flames. But I restrained myself. The man, I reminded myself, had to be kept in with. If that was how he remembered that night of terror at Chuffnell Regis, it was not for me to destroy his illusions. I refrained from comment, and he asked me if I would like a cigar. When I said I wouldn't, he nodded like a father pleased with a favourite son.

'I am glad to see this improvement in you, Wooster. I always thought you smoked too much. Moderation, moderation in all things, that's the only way. But you were going to tell me why you came here. Just for a chat about old times, was it?'

'It's with ref to that book you pinched from the Junior Ganymede.'

He had been drinking a whisky-and-soda as I spoke, and he drained his glass before replying.

'I wish you wouldn't use that word «pinch»,' he said, looking puff-faced. It was plain that I had given offence.

'I simply borrowed it because I needed it in my business. They'll get it back all right.'

'Mrs McCorkadale told my aunt you tried to sell it to her.'

His annoyance increased. His air was that of a man compelled to listen to a tactless oaf who persisted in saying the wrong thing.