Jeeves in the offing

'Dahlia!' he � yes better make it vociferated once more, I'm pretty sure it's the word I want.

The fiend that slept in Aunt Dahlia was also up on its toes. She gave him a look which, if directed at an erring member of the personnel of the Quorn or Pytchley hound ensemble, would have had that member sticking his tail between his legs and resolving for the future to lead a better life.

'Now what?'

Just as Aunt Dahlia had done, Aubrey Upjohn struggled for utterance. Quite a bit of utterance-struggling there had been around these parts this summer afternoon.

'I have just been speaking to my lawyer on the telephone,' he said, getting going after a short stage wait. 'I had asked him to make inquiries and ascertain the name of the author of that libellous attack on me in the columns of the Thursday Review. He did so, and has now informed me that it was the work of my former pupil, Reginald Herring.'

He paused at this point, to let us chew it over, and the heart sank. Mine, I mean. Aunt Dahlia's seemed to be carrying on much as usual. She scratched her chin with her trowel, and said:

'Oh, yes?'

Upjohn blinked, as if he had been expecting something better than this in the way of sympathy and concern.

'Is that all you can say?'

That's the lot.'

'Oh? Well, I am suing the paper for heavy damages, and furthermore, I refuse to remain in the same house with Reginald Herring. Either he goes, or I go.'

There was the sort of silence which I believe cyclones drop into for a second or two before getting down to it and starting to give the populace the works. Throbbing? Yes, throbbing wouldn't be a bad word to describe it. Nor would electric, for the matter of that, and if you care to call it ominous, it will be all right with me. It was a silence of the type that makes the toes curl and sends a shiver down the spinal cord as you stand waiting for the bang. I could see Aunt Dahlia swelling slowly like a chunk of bubble gum, and a less prudent man than Bertram Wooster would have warned her again about her blood pressure.

'I beg your pardon?' she said.

He repeated the key words.

'Oh?' said the relative, and went off with a pop. I could have told Upjohn he was asking for it. Normally as genial a soul as ever broke biscuit, this aunt, when stirred, can become the haughtiest of grandes dames before whose wrath the stoutest quail, and she doesn't, like some, have to use a lorgnette to reduce the citizenry to pulp, she does it all with the naked eye. 'Oh?' she said. 'So you have decided to revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the � the �'

I saw she needed helping out.

'Audacity,' I said, throwing her the line.

'The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.'

It should have been 'whom', but I let it go.

'You have the �'

'Crust.'

'� the immortal rind,' she amended, and I had to admit it was stronger, 'to tell me whom' � she got it right that time � 'I may entertain at Brinkley Court and who' � wrong again � 'I may not. Very well, if you feel unable to breathe the same air as my friends, you must please yourself. I believe the �Bull and Bush� in Market Snodsbury is quite comfortable.'

'Well spoken of in the Automobile Guide,' I said.

'I shall go there,' said Upjohn. 'I shall go there as soon as my things are packed. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell your butler to pack them.'

He strode off, and she went into Uncle Tom's study, me following, she still snorting. She rang the bell.

Jeeves appeared.

'Jeeves?' said the relative, surprised. 'I was ringing for-'

'It is Sir Roderick's afternoon off, madam.'

'Oh? Well, would you mind packing Mr Upjohn's things, Jeeves? He is leaving us.'

'Very good, madam.'

'And you can drive him to Market Snodsbury, Bertie.'

'Right-ho,' I said, not much liking the assignment, but liking less the idea of endeavouring to thwart this incandescent aunt in her current frame of mind.

Safety first, is the Wooster slogan.

19

It isn't much of a run from Brinkley Court to Market Snodsbury and I deposited Upjohn at the 'Bull and Bush' and started m.-p.-h.-ing homeward in what you might call a trice. We parted, of course, on rather distant terms, but the great thing when you've got an Upjohn on your books is to part and not be fussy about how it's done, and had it not been for all this worry about Kipper, for whom I was now mourning in spirit more than ever, I should have been feeling fine.

I could see no happy issue for him from the soup in which he was immersed. No words had been exchanged between Upjohn and self on the journey out, but the glimpses I had caught of his face from the corner of the eyes had told me that he was grim and resolute, his supply of the milk of human kindness plainly short by several gallons. No hope, it seemed to me, of turning him from his fell purpose.

I garaged the car and went to Aunt Dahlia's sanctum to ascertain whether she had cooled off at all since I had left her, for I was still anxious about that blood pressure of hers. One doesn't want aunts going up in a sheet of flame all over the place.

She wasn't there, having, I learned later, withdrawn to her room to bathe her temples with eau de Cologne and do Yogi deep-breathing, but Bobbie was, and not only Bobbie but Jeeves. He was handing her something in an envelope, and she was saying 'Oh, Jeeves, you've saved a human life,' and he was saying 'Not at all, miss.' The gist, of course, escaped me, but I had no leisure to probe into gists.

'Where's Kipper?' I asked, and was surprised to note that Bobbie was dancing round the room on the tips of her toes uttering animal cries, apparently ecstatic in their nature.

'Reggie?' she said, suspending the farmyard imitations for a moment. 'He went for a walk.'

'Does he know that Upjohn's found out he wrote that thing?'

'Yes, your aunt told him.'

'Then we ought to be in conference.'

'About Upjohn's libel action? It's all right about that. Jeeves has pinched his speech.'

I could make nothing of this. It seemed to me that the beasel spoke in riddles.

'Have you an impediment in your speech, Jeeves?'

'No, sir.'

'Then what, if anything, does the young prune mean?'

'Miss Wickham's allusion is to the typescript of the speech which Mr Upjohn is to deliver tomorrow to the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, sir.'

'She said you'd pinched it.'

'Precisely, sir.'

I started.

'You don't mean �'

'Yes, he does,' said Bobbie, resuming the Ballet Russe movements. 'Your aunt told him to pack Upjohn's bags, and the first thing he saw when he smacked into it was the speech. He trousered it and brought it along to me.'

I raised an eyebrow.

'Well, really, Jeeves!'

'I deemed it best, sir.'

'And did you deem right!' said Bobbie, executing a Nijinsky what� ever-it's-called. 'Either Upjohn agrees to drop that libel suit or he doesn't get these notes, as he calls them, and without them he won't be able to utter a word. He'll have to come across with the price of the papers. Won't he, Jeeves?'

'He would appear to have no alternative, miss.'

'Unless he wants to get up on that platform and stand there opening and shutting his mouth like a goldfish. We've got him cold.'

'Yes, but half a second,' I said.

I spoke reluctantly. I didn't want to damp the young ball of worsted in her hour of joy, but a thought had occurred to me.

'I see the idea, of course. I remember Aunt Dahlia telling me about this strange inability of Upjohn's to be silver-tongued unless he has the material in his grasp, but suppose he says he's ill and can't appear.'

'He won't.'

'I would.'

'But you aren't trying to get the Conservative Association of the Market Snodsbury division to choose you as their candidate at the coming by-election. Upjohn is, and it's vitally important for him to address the multitude tomorrow and make a good impression, because half the selection committee have sons at the school and will be there, waiting to judge for themselves how good he is as a speaker. Their last nominee stuttered, and they didn't discover it till the time came for him to dish it out to the constituents. They don't want to make a mistake this time.'