Jeeves in the offing

There being no signs as yet of the female star and her companion, I deduced that I was a bit on the early side. I lit a cigarette and stood awaiting their entrance, and was pleased to note that conditions could scarcely have been better for the coming water fete. Too often on an English summer day you find the sun going behind the clouds and a nippy wind springing up from the north-east, but this afternoon was one of those still, sultry afternoons when the slightest movement brings the persp. in beads to the brow, an afternoon, in short, when it would be a positive pleasure to be shoved into a lake. 'Most refreshing,' Upjohn would say to himself as the cool water played about his limbs.

I was standing there running over the stage directions in my mind to see that I had got them all clear, when I beheld Wilbert Cream approaching, the dog Poppet curvetting about his ankles. On seeing me, the hound rushed forward with uncouth cries as was his wont, but on heaving alongside and getting a whiff of Wooster Number Five calmed down, and I was at liberty to attend to Wilbert, who I could see desired speech with me.

He was looking, I noticed, fairly green about the gills, and he conveyed the same suggestion of having just swallowed a bad oyster which I had observed in Kipper on his arrival at Brinkley. It was plain that the loss of Phyllis Mills, goofy though she unquestionably was, had hit him a shrewd wallop, and I presumed that he was coming to me for sympathy and heart balm, which I would have been only too pleased to dish out. I hoped, of course, that he would make it crisp and remove himself at an early date, for when the moment came for the balloon to go up I didn't want to be hampered by an audience. When you're pushing someone into a lake, nothing embarrasses you more than having the front seats filled up with goggling spectators.

It was not, however, on the subject of Phyllis that he proceeded to touch.

'Oh, Wooster,' he said, 'I was talking to my mother a night or two ago.'

'Oh, yes?' I said, with a slight wave of the hand intended to indicate that if he liked to talk to his mother anywhere, all over the house, he had my approval.

'She tells me you are interested in mice.'

I didn't like the trend the conversation was taking, but I preserved my aplomb.

'Why, yes, fairly interested.'

'She says she found you trying to catch one in my bedroom!'

'Yes, that's right.'

'Good of you to bother.'

'Not at all. Always a pleasure.'

'She says you seemed to be making a very thorough search of my room.'

'Oh, well, you know, when one sets one's hand to the plough.'

'You didn't find a mouse?'

'No, no mouse. Sorry.'

'I wonder if by any chance you happened to find an eighteenth� century cow-creamer?'

'Eh?'

'A silver jug shaped like a cow.'

'No. Why, was it on the floor somewhere?'

'It was in a drawer of the bureau.'

'Ah, then I would have missed it.'

'You'd certainly miss it now. It's gone.'

'Gone?'

'Gone.'

'You mean disappeared, as it were?'

'I do.'

'Strange.'

'Very strange.'

'Yes, does seem extremely strange, doesn't it?'

I had spoken with all the old Wooster coolness, and I doubt if a casual observer would have detected that Bertram was not at his ease, but I can assure my public that he wasn't by a wide margin. My heart had leaped in the manner popularized by Kipper Herring and Scarface McColl, crashing against my front teeth with a thud which must have been audible in Market Snodsbury. A far less astute man would have been able to divine what had happened. Not knowing the score owing to having missed the latest stop-press news and looking on the cow-creamer purely in the light of a bit of the swag collected by Wilbert in the course of his larcenous career, Pop Glossop, all zeal, had embarked on the search he had planned to make, and intuition, developed by years of hunt-the� slipper, had led him to the right spot. Too late I regretted sorely that, concentrating so tensely on Operation Upjohn, I had failed to place the facts before him. Had he but known, about summed it up.

'I was going to ask you,' said Wilbert, 'if you think I should inform Mrs Travers.'

The cigarette I was smoking was fortunately one of the kind that make you nonchalant, so it was nonchalantly � or fairly nonchalantly � that I was able to reply.

'Oh, I wouldn't do that.'

'Why not?'

'Might upset her.'

'You consider her a sensitive plant?'

'Oh, very. Rugged exterior, of course, but you can't go by that. No, I'd just wait a while, if I were you. I expect it'll turn out that the thing's somewhere you put it but didn't think you'd put it. I mean, you often put a thing somewhere and think you've put it somewhere else and then find you didn't put it somewhere else but somewhere. I don't know if you follow me?'

'I don't.'

'What I mean is, just stick around and you'll probably find the thing.'

'You think it will return?'

'I do.'

'Like a homing pigeon?'

'That's the idea.'

'Oh?' said Wilbert, and turned away to greet Bobbie and Upjohn, who had just arrived on the boat-house landing stage. I had found his manner a little peculiar, particularly that last 'Oh?' but I was glad that there was no lurking suspicion in his mind that I had taken the bally thing. He might so easily have got the idea that Uncle Tom, regretting having parted with his ewe lamb, had employed me to recover it privily, this being the sort of thing, I believe, that collectors frequently do. Nevertheless, I was still much shaken, and I made a mental note to tell Roddy Glossop to slip it back among his effects at the earliest possible moment.

I shifted over to where Bobbie and Upjohn were standing, and though up and doing with a heart for any fate couldn't help getting that feeling you get at times like this of having swallowed a double portion of butterflies. My emotions were somewhat similar to those I had experienced when I first sang the Yeoman's Wedding Song. In public, I mean, for of course I had long been singing it in my bath.

'Hullo, Bobbie,' I said.

'Hullo, Bertie,' she said.

'Hullo, Upjohn,' I said.

The correct response to this would have been 'Hullo, Wooster', but he blew up in his lines and merely made a noise like a wolf with its big toe caught in a trap. Seemed a bit restive, I thought, as if wishing he were elsewhere.

Bobbie was all girlish animation.

'I've been telling Mr Upjohn about that big fish we saw in the lake yesterday, Bertie.'

'Ah yes, the big fish.'

'It was a whopper, wasn't it?'

'Very well-developed.'

'I brought him down here to show it to him.'

'Quite right. You'll enjoy the big fish, Upjohn.'

I had been perfectly correct in supposing him to be restive. He did his wolf impersonation once more.

'I shall do nothing of the sort,' he said, and you couldn't find a better word than 'testily' to describe the way he spoke. 'It is most inconvenient for me to be away from the house at this time. I am expecting a telephone call from my lawyer.'

'Oh, I wouldn't bother about telephone calls from lawyers,' said heartily. 'These legal birds never say anything worth listening to. Just gab gab gab. You'll never forgive yourself if you miss the big fish. You were saying, Upjohn?' I broke off courteously, for he had spoken.

'I am saying, Mr Wooster, that both you and Miss Wickham are labouring under a singular delusion in supposing that I am interested in fish, whether large or small. I ought never to have left the house. I shall return there at once.'

'Oh, don't go yet,' said.

'Wait for the big fish,' said Bobbie.