P. Wodehouse - Much obliged, Jeeves

'Together?'

'Yes, in his car.'

'But Spode told me she had given him the push.'

'She did, but everything's all right again. He's not going to give up his title and stand for Parliament. Getting hit in the eye with that potato changed his plans completely. It made him feel that if that was the sort of thing you have to go through to get elected to the House of Commons, he preferred to play it safe and stick to the House of Lords. And she, of course, assured that there was going to be no funny business and that she would become the Countess of Sidcup all right, withdrew her objections to marrying him. Now you're puffing like Tom when he goes upstairs too fast. Why is this?'

Actually, I had breathed deeply, not puffed, and certainly not like Uncle Tom when he goes upstairs too fast, but I suppose to an aunt there isn't much difference between a deep-breathing nephew and a puffing nephew, and anyway I was in no mood to discuss the point.

'You don't know who it was who threw that potato, do you?' I asked.

'The one that hit Spode? I don't. It sort of came out of the void. Why?'

'Because if I knew who it was, I would send camels bearing apes, ivory and peacocks to his address. He saved me from the fate that is worse than death. I allude to marriage with the Bassett disaster.'

'Was she going to marry you?'

'According to Spode.'

A look almost of awe came into the ancestor's face.

'How right you were,' she said, 'when you told me once that you had faith in your star. I've lost count of the number of times you've been definitely headed for the altar with apparently no hope of evading the firing squad, and every time something has happened which enabled you to wriggle out of it. It's uncanny.'

She would, I think, have gone deeper into the matter, for already she had begun to pay a marked tribute to my guardian angel, who, she said, plainly knew his job from soup to nuts, but at this moment Seppings appeared and asked her if she would have a word with Jeeves, and she went out to have it.

And I had just put my feet up on the chaise longue and was starting to muse ecstatically on the astounding bit of luck which had removed the Bassett menace from my life, when my mood of what the French call bien etre was given the sleeve across the windpipe by the entrance of L. P. Runkle, the mere sight of whom, circs being what they were, was enough to freeze the blood and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, as I have heard Jeeves put it.

I wasn't glad to see him, but he seemed glad to see me.

'Oh, there you are,' he said. 'They told me you had skipped. Very sensible of you to come back. It's never any good going on the run, because the police are sure to get you sooner or later, and it makes it all the worse for you if you've done a bolt.'

With cold dignity I said I had had to go up to London on business. He paid no attention to this. He was scrutinizing me rather in the manner of the halibut on the fishmonger's slab to which the ancestor had referred in our recent conversation.

'The odd thing is,' he said, continuing to scan me closely, 'that you haven't a criminal face. It's a silly, fatuous face, but not criminal. You remind me of one of those fellows who do dances with the soubrette in musical comedy.'

Come, come, I said to myself, this is better. Spode had compared me to a member of the ensemble. In the view of L. P. Runkle I was at any rate one of the principals. Moving up in the world.

'Must be a great help to you in your business. Lulls people into a false security. They think there can't be any danger from someone who looks like you, they're off their guard, and wham! you've got away with their umbrellas and cameras. No doubt you owe all your successes to this. But you know the old saying about the pitcher going too often to the well. This time you're for it. This time –'

He broke off, not because he had come to an end of his very offensive remarks but because Florence had joined us, and her appearance immediately claimed his attention. She was far from being dapper. It was plain that she had been in the forefront of the late battle, for whereas Ginger had merely had egg in his hair', she was, as it were, festooned in egg. She had evidently been right in the centre of the barrage. In all political meetings of the stormier kind these things are largely a matter of luck. A escapes unscathed, B becomes a human omelette.

A more tactful man than L. P. Runkle would have affected not to notice this, but I don't suppose it ever occurred to him to affect not to notice things.

'Hullo!' he said. 'You've got egg all over you.'

Florence replied rather acidly that she was aware of this.

'Better change your dress.'

'I intend to. Would you mind, Mr Runkle, if I had a word with Mr Wooster alone?'

I think Runkle was on the point of saying 'What about?', but on catching her eye he had prudent second thoughts. He lumbered off, and she proceeded to have . the word she had mentioned.

She kept it crisp. None of the 'Er' stuff which was such a feature of Ginger's oratory. Even Demosthenes would have been slower in coming to the nub, though he, of course, would been handicapped by having to speak in Greek.

'I'm glad I found you, Bertie.'

A civil 'Oh, ah' was all the reply I could think of.

'I have been thinking things over, and I have made up my mind. Harold Winship is a mere lout, and I am having nothing more to do with him. I see now that I made a great mistake when I broke off my engagement to you. You have your faults, but they are easily corrected. I have decided to marry you, and I think we shall be very happy.'

'But not immediately,' said L. P. Runkle, rejoining us. I described him a moment ago as lumbering off, but a man like that never lumbers far if there is a chance of hearing what somebody has to say to somebody else in private. 'He'll first have to do a longish stretch in prison.'

His reappearance had caused Florence to stiffen. She now stiffened further, her aspect similar to that of the old ancestor when about to go into her grande dame act.

'Mr Runkle!'

'I'm here.'

'I thought you had gone.'

'I hadn't.'

'How dare you listen to a private conversation!'

'They're the only things worth listening to. I owe much of my large fortune to listening to private conversations.'

'What is this nonsense about prison?'

'Wooster won't find it nonsense. He has sneaked a valuable silver porringer of mine, a thing I paid nine thousand pounds for, and I am expecting a man any minute now who will produce the evidence necessary to convict. It's an open and shut case.'

'Is this true, Bertie?' said Florence with that touch of the prosecuting District Attorney I remembered so vividly, and all I could say was 'Well… I… er … well.'

With a guardian angel like mine working overtime, it was enough. She delivered judgment instantaneously.

'I shall not marry you,' she said, and went off haughtily to de– egg herself.

'Very sensible of her,' said L. P. Runkle. 'The right course to take. A man like you, bound to be in and out of prison, couldn't possibly be a good husband. How is a wife to make her plans … dinner parties, holidays, Christmas treats for the children, the hundred and one things a woman has to think of … when she doesn't know from one day to another whether the head of the house won't be telephoning to say he's been arrested again and no bail allowed? Yes?' said Runkle, and I saw that Seppings had appeared in the offing.

'A Mr Bingley has called to see you, sir.'

'Ah, yes, I was expecting him.'

He popped off, and scarcely had he ceased to pollute the atmosphere when the old ancestor blew in.

She was plainly agitated, the resemblance to a cat on hot bricks being very marked. She panted a good deal, and her face had taken on the rather pretty mauve colour it always does when the soul is not at rest.