Pelham Wodehouse - Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Practically all of this floated past me.

'How do you mean, the revelation Pop Bassett made to Stiffy?'

'It occurred shortly after luncheon, sir. Miss Byng informs me that she decided to approach Sir Watkyn and make a last appeal to his better feelings. As you are aware, the matter of the statuette has always been one that affected her deeply. She thought that if she reproached Sir Watkyn with sufficient vehemence, something constructive might result. Greatly to her astonishment, she had hardly begun to speak when Sir Watkyn, chuckling heartily, asked her if she could keep a secret. He then revealed that there was no foundation for the story he had told Mr. Travers and that in actual fact he had paid Major Plank a thousand pounds for the object.'

It took me perhaps a quarter of a minute to sort all this out.

'A thousand quid?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Not a fiver?'

'No, sir.'

'You mean he lied to Uncle Tom?'

'Yes, sir.'

'What on earth did he do that for?'

I thought he would say he hadn't a notion, but he didn't.

'I think Sir Watkyn's motive was obvious, sir.'

'Not to me.'

'He acted from a desire to exasperate Mr. Travers. Mr. Travers is a collector, and collectors are never pleased when they learn that a rival collector has acquired at an insignificant price an objet d'art of great value.'

It penetrated. I saw what he meant. The discovery that Pop Bassett had got hold of a thousand-quid thingummy for practically nothing would have been gall and w. to Uncle Tom. Stiffy had described him as writhing like an egg whisk, and I could well believe it. It must have been agony for the poor old buster.

'You've hit it, Jeeves. It's just what Pop Bassett would do. Nothing would please him better than to spoil Uncle Tom's day. What a man, Jeeves!'

'Yes, sir.'

'Would you like to have a mind like his?'

'No, sir.'

'Nor me. It just shows how being a magistrate saps the moral fibre. I remember thinking as I stood before him in the dock that he had a shifty eye and that I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw an elephant. I suppose all magistrates are like that.'

'There may be exceptions, sir.'

'I doubt it. Twisters, every one of them. So my errand was . . . what, Jeeves?'

'Bootless, sir.'

'Bootless? It doesn't sound right, but I suppose you know. Well, I wish the news you've just sprung could have broken before I presented myself chez Plank. I would have been spared a testing ordeal.'

'I can appreciate the nervous strain you must have undergone, sir. It is unfortunate that I was not able to arrive earlier.'

'How did you arrive at all? That's what's puzzling me. You can't have walked.'

'No, sir. I borrowed Miss Byng's car. I left it some little distance down the road and proceeded to the house on foot. Hearing voices, I approached the French window and listened, and was thus enabled to intervene at the crucial moment.'

'Very resourceful.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'I should like to express my gratitude. And when I say gratitude, I mean heartfelt gratitude.'

'Not at all, sir. It was a pleasure.'

'But for you, Plank would have had me in the local calaboose in a matter of minutes. Who is he, by the way? I got the impression that he was an explorer of sorts.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Pretty far-flung, I gathered.'

'Extremely, sir. He has recently returned from an expedition into the interior of Brazil. He inherited the house where he resides from a deceased godfather. He breeds cocker spaniels, suffers somewhat from malaria and eats only non-fattening protein bread.'

'You seem to have got him taped all right.'

'I made inquiries at the post office, sir. The person behind the counter was most informative. I also learned that Major Plank is an enthusiast on Rugby football and is hoping to make Hockley-cum-Meston invincible on the field.'

'Yes, so he was telling me. You aren't a prop forward, are you, Jeeves?'

'No, sir. Indeed, I do not know what the term signifies.'

'I don't, either, except that it's something a team has to have if it's hoping to do down the opposition at Rugby football. Plank, I believe, has searched high and low for one, but his errand has been bootless. Rather sad, when you come to think of it. All that money, all those cocker spaniels, all that protein bread, but no prop forward. Still, that's life.'

'Yes indeed, sir.'

I slid behind the steering wheel, and told him to hop in.

'But I was forgetting. You've got Stiffy's car. Then I'll be driving on. The sooner I get this statuette thing back into her custody, the better.'

He didn't shake his head, because he never shakes his head, but he raised the south-east corner of a warning eyebrow.

'If you will pardon the suggestion, sir, I think it would be more advisable for me to take the object to Miss Byng. It would scarcely be prudent for you to enter the environs of Totleigh Towers with it on your person. You might encounter his lordship . . . I should say Mr. Spode.'

I well-I'll-be-dashed. He had surprised me.

'Surely you aren't suggesting that he would frisk me?'

'I think it highly possible, sir. In the conversation which I overheard, Mr. Spode gave me the impression of being prepared to stop at nothing. If you will give me the object, I will see that Miss Byng restores it to the collection room at the earliest possible moment.'

I mused, but not for long. I was only too pleased to get rid of the beastly thing.

'Very well, if you say so. Here you are. Though I think you're wronging Spode.'

'I think not, sir.'

And blow me tight if he wasn't right. Scarcely had I steered the car into the stable yard, when a solid body darkened the horizon, and there was Spode, looking like Chief Inspector Witherspoon about to make a pinch.

'Wooster!' he said.

'Speaking,' I said.

'Get out of that car,' he said. 'I'm going to search it.'

I was conscious of a thrill of thankfulness for Jeeves's prescience, if prescience is the word I want. I mean that uncanny knack he has of peering into the future and forming his plans and schemes well ahead of time. But for his thoughtful diagnosis of the perils that lay before me, I should at this juncture have been deep in the mulligatawny and no hope of striking for the shore. As it was, I was able to be nonchalant, insouciant and debonair. I was like the fellow I once heard Jeeves speak of who was armed so strong in honesty that somebody's threats passed by him as the idle wind, which he respected not. I think if Spode had been about three feet shorter and not so wide across the shoulders, I would have laughed a mocking laugh and quite possibly have flicked my cambric handkerchief in his face.

He was eyeing me piercingly, little knowing what an ass he was going to feel before yonder sun had set. 'I have just searched your room.'

'You have? You surprise me. Looking for something, were you?'

'You know what I'm looking for. That amber statuette you said your uncle would be so glad to have.'

'Oh, that? I understood it was in the collection room.'

'Who told you that?'

'A usually well-informed source.'

'Well, it is no longer in the collection room. Somebody has removed it.'

'Most extraordinary.'

'And when I say "somebody", I mean a slimy sneak thief of the name of Wooster. The thing isn't in your bedroom, so if it is not in your car, you must have it on you. Turn out your pockets.'

I humoured his request, largely influenced by the fact that there was so much of him. A Singer midget would have found me far less obliging. The contents having been placed before him, he snorted in a disappointed way, as if he had hoped for better things, and dived into the car, opening drawers and looking under cushions. And Stiffy, coming along at this moment, drank in his vast trouser seat with a curious eye.