Joy in the Morning (10 page)

You can if you use gunpowder.’

‘Gunpowder?’

‘He appears to have touched off a keg or two in the kitchen chimney, to correct a disposition on its part to harbour soot.’

Well, I had naturally supposed, as anyone would have supposed, that this frank explanation would have set me right, causing him to dismiss me without a stain on my character, and that the rather personal note which had crept into his remarks would instantly have been switched off. What I had anticipated was that he would issue an apology for that crack of his about lunatics, which I would gracefully accept, and that we would then get together like two old buddies and shake our heads over the impulsiveness of the younger generation.

Not a bit of it, however. He continued to bend upon me the accusing gaze which I had disliked so much from the start.

‘Why the devil did you give the boy gunpowder?’

I saw that he had still got the wrong angle.

‘I didn’t give the boy gunpowder.’

‘Only a congenital idiot would give a boy gunpowder. There’s not a man in England, except you, who wouldn’t know what would happen if you gave a boy gunpowder. Do you realize what you have done? The sole reason for your coming here was that I should have a place where I could meet an old friend and discuss certain matters of interest, and now look at it. I ask you. Look at it.’

‘Not too good,’ I was forced to concede, as the roof fell in, sending up a shower of sparks and causing a genial glow to play about our cheeks.

‘I suppose it never occurred to you to throw water on the flames?’

‘It did to Edwin. Only he used paraffin.’

He started, staring at me incredulously.

‘You tried to put the fire out with paraffin? You ought to be certified, and as soon as I can collect a couple of doctors, I’ll have it seen to.’

What was making this conversation so difficult was, as you have probably spotted, the apparent impossibility of getting the old ass to sort out the principals in the affair and assign to each his respective role. He was one of those men you meet sometimes who only listen to about two words of any observation addressed to them. I suppose he had got that way through presiding at board meetings and constantly chipping in and squelching shareholders in the middle of sentences.

Once more, I tried to drive it home to him that it was Edwin who had done all the what you might call heavy work, Bertram having been throughout merely an innocent bystander, but it didn’t penetrate. He was left with the settled conviction that I and the child had got together, forming a quorum, and after touching off the place with gunpowder had nursed the conflagration along with careful injections of paraffin, each encouraging each, as you might say, on the principle that it is team-work that tells.

When he finally pushed off, instructing me to send Jeeves along to him the moment he arrived, he was reiterating the opinion that I ought not to be at large, and wishing – though here I definitely could not see eye to eye with him – that I was ten years younger, so that he could have got after me with that hunting crop of his. He then withdrew, leaving me to my meditations.

These, as you may suppose, were not of the juiciest. However, they didn’t last long, for I don’t suppose I had been meditating more than about a couple of minutes when a wheezing, rattling sound made itself heard off-stage and there entered left upper centre a vehicle which could only have been a station taxi. There was luggage on it, and looking more closely I saw Jeeves protruding from the side window.

The weird old object – the cab, I mean, not Jeeves – came to a halt at the gate. Jeeves paid it off, the luggage was dumped by the roadside, and he was at liberty to get into conference with the young master, not an instant too soon for the latter. I had need of his sympathy, encouragement and advice. I also wanted to tick him off a bit for letting me in for all this.

CHAPTER 11

‘
J
eeves,’ I said, getting right down to it in the old Wooster way, ‘here’s a nice state of things!’

‘Sir?’

‘Hell’s foundations have been quivering.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘The curse has come upon me. As I warned you it would, if I ever visited Steeple Bumpleigh. You have long been familiar with my views on this leper colony. Have I not repeatedly said that, what though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Steeple Bumpleigh, the undersigned deemed it wisest to give it the complete miss in baulk?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very well, Jeeves. Perhaps you will listen to me another time. However, let us flit lightly over the recriminations and confine ourselves to the facts. You notice our little home has been gutted?’

Yes, sir. I was just observing it.’

‘Edwin did that. There’s a lad, Jeeves. There’s a boy who makes you feel that what this country wants is somebody like King Herod. Started in with gunpowder and carried on with paraffin. Just cast your eye over those smouldering ruins. You would scarcely have thought it possible, would you, that one frail child in a sport shirt and khaki shorts could have accomplished such devastation. Yet he did it, Jeeves, and did it on his head. You understand what this means?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He has properly put the kybosh on the trysting-place of Uncle Percy and his nautical pal. You’ll have to think again.’

‘Yes, sir. His lordship is fully alive to the fact that in the existing circumstances a meeting at Wee Nooke will not be feasible.’

‘You’ve seen him, then?’

‘He was emerging from the lane, as I entered it, sir.’

‘Did he tell you he wants you to go and hobnob with him at your earliest convenience?’

‘Yes, sir. Indeed, he insists on my taking up my residence at the Hall.’

‘So as to be handy, in case you have a sudden inspiration?’

‘No doubt that was in his lordship’s mind, sir.’

‘Was I invited?’

‘No, sir.’

Well, I hadn’t expected to be. Nevertheless, I was conscious of a pang.

‘We part, then, for the nonce, do we?’

‘I fear so, sir.’

‘You taking the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall miss you, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Who was the chap who was always beefing about losing gazelles?’

‘The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well and love him, it was sure to die.’

‘It’s the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don’t mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Well, that’s that, then. I suppose I had better go and stay with Boko.’

‘I was about to suggest it, sir. I am sure Mr Fittleworth will be most happy to accommodate you.’

‘I think so. I hope so. Only recently, he was speaking about killing fatted calves. But to return to Uncle Percy and the old salt from America, have you any ideas on the subject of bringing them together?’

‘Not at the moment, sir.’

‘Well, bend the bean to it, because it’s important. You remember me telling you that Boko and young Nobby were betrothed?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘She can’t marry without Uncle Percy’s consent.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Not till she’s twenty-one. Legal stuff. And here’s the nub, Jeeves. I haven’t time to give you the full details now, but Boko, the silly ass, has been making a silly ass of himself, with the result that he has – what’s the word that means making somebody froth at the mouth and chew pieces out of the carpet?’

‘“Alienate”, sir, is, I think, the verb for which you are groping.’

‘That’s it. Alienate. Well, as I say, I’ve no time to give you the inside story now, but Boko has played the goat and alienated Uncle Percy, and not a smell of a guardian’s blessing is the latter prepared to give him. So you see what I mean about this meeting. It is vital that it takes place at the earliest possible date.’

‘In order that his lordship may be brought to a more amiable frame of mind?’

‘Exactly. If that merger comes off, the milk of human kindness will slosh about in him like the rising tide, swamping all animosity. Or don’t you think so?’

‘Undoubtedly, in my opinion, sir.’

‘That’s what I felt. And that is why you found me moody just now, Jeeves. I had just concluded an unpleasant interview with Uncle Percy, in the course of which he came out openly as not one of my admirers, thinking – incorrectly – that I had played an impressive part in the recent spot of arson.’

‘He wronged you, sir?’

‘Completely. I had nothing to do with it. I was a mere cipher in the affair. Edwin attended to the whole thing. But that was what he thought, and he blinded and stiffed with a will.’

‘Unfortunate, sir.’

‘Most. Of course, for the actual vote of censure that was passed I care little. A few poohs and a tush about cover that. Bertram Wooster is not a man who minds a few harsh words. He laughs lightly and snaps the fingers. It is wholly immaterial to me what the old bounder thinks of me, and in any case he didn’t say a tithe of the things Aunt Agatha would have got off in similar circumstances. But the point is that I had promised Nobby that I would plead for her loved one, and what was saddening me when you came along was the thought that my potentialities in that direction had become greatly diminished. As far as Uncle Percy is concerned, I am not the force I was. So push that meeting along.’

‘I will certainly use every endeavour, sir. I fully appreciate the situation.’

‘Right. Now, what else have I to tell you? Oh, yes. Stilton.’

‘Mr Cheesewright?’

‘Police Constable Cheesewright, Jeeves. Stilton turns out to be the village bluebottle.’

He seemed surprised, and I didn’t wonder. To him, of course, on the occasion when they had met at the flat, Stilton had been a mere, ordinary, tweed-suited popper-in. I mean, no uniform, no helmet and not a suggestion of any regulation boots.

‘A policeman, sir?’

‘Yes, and a nasty, vindictive policeman, too. With him, also, I have been having an unpleasant interview. He resents my presence here.’

‘I suppose a great many young gentlemen enter the Force nowadays, sir.’

‘I wish one fewer had. It is a tricky business falling foul of the constabulary, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall have to employ ceaseless vigilance, so as to give him no loophole for exercising his official powers. No drunken revels at the village pub.’

‘No, sir.’

‘One false step, and he’ll swoop on me like the – who was it who came down like a wolf on the fold?’

‘The Assyrian, sir.’

‘That’s right. Well, that is what I have been through since I saw you last. First Stilton, then Edwin, then the fire, and finally Uncle Percy – all in about half an hour. It just shows what Steeple Bumpleigh can do, when it starts setting about you. And, oh my gosh, I was forgetting. You know the brooch?’

‘Sir?’

‘Aunt Agatha’s brooch.’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘I lost it. Oh, it’s all right. I found it again. But what I mean is, picture my embarrassment. My heart stood still.’

‘I can readily imagine it, sir. But you have it safely now?’

‘Oh, rather,’ I said, dipping a hand into the pocket. ‘Or, rather,’ I went on, bringing it out again with ashen face and bulging eyes. ‘Oh, rather not. Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you will scarcely credit this, but the bally thing has gone again!’

It occasionally happens, and I have had to tell him off for doing so, that this man receives announcements that the young master’s world is rocking about him with a mere ‘Most disturbing, sir.’ But now it was plain that he recognized that the thing was too big for that. I don’t think he paled, and he certainly didn’t say ‘Golly!’ or anything of that nature, but he came as near as he ever does to what they call in the movies ‘the quick take ‘um’. There was concern in his eyes, and if it hadn’t been that his views are rigid in the matter of the correct etiquette between employee and employer, I have an idea that he would have patted me on the shoulder.

‘This is a serious disaster, sir.’

‘You are informing me, Jeeves!’

‘Her ladyship will be vexed.’

‘I can picture her screaming with annoyance.’

‘Can you think where you could have dropped it, sir?’

‘That’s just what I’m trying to do. Wait, Jeeves,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Let me brood.’

I brooded.

‘Oh, my gosh!’

‘Sir?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘The brooch, sir?’

‘No, Jeeves, not the brooch. I mean I’ve reconstructed the scene and have now spotted where I must have parted company with it. Here’s the sequence. The place caught fire, and I suddenly remembered I had left the small suitcase in the hall. I need scarcely remind you of its contents. My Sindbad the Sailor costume.’

‘Ah, yes, sir.’

‘Don’t say “Ah, yes,” Jeeves. Just keep on listening. I suddenly remembered, I repeat, that I had left the small suitcase in the hall. Well, you know me. To think is to act. I was inside, gathering it up, without a moment’s delay. This involved stooping. This stooping must have caused the thing to fall out of my pocket.’

‘Then it would still be in the hall, sir.’

‘Yes. And take a look at the hall!’

We both took a look at it. I shook my head. He shook his. Wee Nooke was burning lower now, but its interior was still something which only Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego could have entered with any genuine enjoyment.

‘No hope of getting it, if it’s there.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then what’s to be done?’

‘May I brood, sir?’

‘Certainly, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

He passed into the silence, and I filled in the time by thinking of what Aunt Agatha was going to say. I did not look forward to getting in touch with her. In fact, it almost seemed as if another of my quick trips to America would be rendered necessary. About the only advantage of having an aunt like her is that it makes one travel, thus broadening the mind and enabling one to see new faces.