Thank You, Jeeves

I hadn't done a great deal of exploring in these grounds of mine, but it so happened that one morning a sharp shower had driven me to the shelter of a species of shed or outhouse down in the south-west corner of the estate where the gardener-by-the-day stacked his tools and flower-pots and what not. And, unless memory deceived me, there had been in that outhouse or shed a pile of sacking on the floor.

Well, you may say that sacking, considered in the light of a bed, isn't everybody's money, and in saying so you would be perfectly correct. But after half an hour in the seat of a Widgeon Seven, even sacking begins to look pretty good to you. It may be a little hardish on the frame, and it may smell a good deal of mice and the deep-delved earth, but there remains just one point to be put forward in its favour – viz. that it enables one to stretch the limbs. And stretching the limbs was the thing I felt now that I wanted to do most.

In addition to smelling of mice and mould, the particular segment of sacking on which some two minutes later I was reclining had a marked aroma of by-the-day gardener: and there was a moment when I had to ask myself if the mixture wasn't a shade too rich. But these things grow on one in time, and at the end of about a quarter of an hour I was rather enjoying the blend of scents than otherwise. I can recall inflating the lungs and more or less drinking it in. At the end of about half an hour a soothing drowsiness had begun to steal over me.

And at the end of about thirty-five minutes the door flew open and there was the old, familiar lantern shining in again.

'Ah!' said Sergeant Voules.

And Constable Dobson said the same.

I realized that the time had come to strike a forceful note with these two pests. I am all for not shackling the police, but what I maintain is that if the police come dodging about a householder's garden all night, routing him out every time he is on the point of snatching a little repose, they have jolly well got to be shackled.

'Yes?' I said, and there was a touch of the imperious old aristocrat in my manner. 'What is it now?'

Constable Dobson had been saying something in a pretty self-satisfied sort of way about having seen me creeping through the darkness and tracking me like a leopard, and Sergeant Voules, who was a man who believed in keeping nephews in their place, was remarking that he had seen me first and had tracked me just as much like a leopard as Constable Dobson: but at these crisp words a sudden silence fell upon them.

'Is that you again, sir?' inquired the sergeant in rather an awed voice.

'Yes, it is, dash it! What, may I ask, is the meaning of this incessant chivying? Sleep under these conditions becomes impossible.'

'Very sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that it could be you.'

'And why not?'

'Well, sleeping in a shed, sir ...'

'You do not dispute the fact that it is my shed?'

'No, sir. But it sort of seems funny.'

'I see nothing funny in it whatsoever.'

'Uncle Ted means "odd", sir.'

'Not so much of what Uncle Ted means. And don't call me Uncle Ted. What it sort of seemed to us, sir, was peculiar.'

'I cannot subscribe to your opinion, Sergeant,' I said stiffly. 'I have a perfect right, have I not, to sleep where I please?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Exactly. It might be the coal cellar. It might be the front door steps. It happens to be this shed. I will now thank you, Sergeant, to withdraw. At this rate, I shan't drop off till daybreak.'

'Are you intending to remain here the rest of the night, sir?'

'Certainly. Why not?'

I had got him. He was at a loss.

'Well, I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't, if you want to, sir. But it seems

'Odd,' said Constable Dobson.

'Peculiar,' said Sergeant Voules. 'It seems peculiar, having a bed of your own, sir, if I might say so ...'

I had had enough of this.

'I hate beds,' I said curtly. 'Can't stand them. Never could.'

'Very good, sir.' He paused a moment. 'Quite a warm day today, sir.'

'Quite.'

'My young nephew here pretty near got a touch of the sun. Didn't you, Constable?'

'Ah!' said Constable Dobson.

'Made him come over all funny.'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, sir. Sort of seemed to addle the brain.'

I endeavoured without undue brusqueness to convey to this man the idea that I did not consider one in the morning a suitable time for discussing his nephew's addled brain.

'You must give me all the family medical gossip another day,' I said. 'At the moment, I wish to be alone.'

'Yes, sir. Good night, sir.'

'Good night, Sergeant.'

'If I might ask the question, sir, do you feel a sort of burning feeling about the temples?'

'I beg your pardon?'

'Does your head throb, sir?'

'It's beginning to.'

'Ah! Well, good night, sir, again.'

'Good night, Sergeant.'

'Good night, sir.'

'Good night, Constable.'

'Good night, sir.'

The door closed softly. I could hear them whispering for a moment or two, like a couple of specialists holding a conference outside the sick-room. Then they appeared to ooze off, for all became quiet save for the lapping of the waves on the shore. And, by Jove, so sedulously did these waves lap that gradually a drowsiness crept over me and not ten minutes after I had made up my mind that I should never get to sleep again in this world I was off as comfortably as a babe or suckling.

It couldn't last, of course – not in a place like Chuffnell Regis, a hamlet containing more Nosey Parkers to the square foot than any other spot in England. The next thing I remember is someone joggling my arm.

I sat up. There was the good old lantern once more.

'Now, listen ...' I was beginning, with a generous strength, when the words froze on my lips.

The fellow who was joggling my arm was Chuffy.

9 LOVERS' MEETINGS

It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that he is a man who is at all times glad to see his friends and can be relied upon to greet them with a cheery smile and a gay quip. But though in the main this is correct, I make one proviso – viz. that the conditions be right. On the present occasion they were not. When an old schoolmate's fiancée is roosting in your bed in a suit of your personal pyjamas, it is hard to frisk round this old schoolmate with any abandon when he suddenly appears in the immediate vicinity.

I uttered, accordingly, no gay quip. I couldn't even manage the cheery smile. I just sat goggling at the man, wondering how he had got there, how long he proposed to remain, and what the chances were of Pauline Stoker suddenly shoving her head out of window and shouting to me to come and grapple with a mouse or something.

Chuffy was bending over me with a sort of bedside manner. In the background I could see Sergeant Voules hovering with something of the air of a trained nurse. What had become of Constable Dobson, I did not know. It seemed too jolly to think that he was dead, so I took it that he had returned to his beat.

'It's all right, Bertie,' said Chuffy soothingly. 'It's me, old man.'

'I found his lordship by the side of the harbour,' explained the sergeant.

I must say I chafed a bit. I saw what had happened. When you tear a lover of Chuffy's calibre from the girl of his heart, he does not just mix himself a final spot and turn in – he goes and stands beneath her window. And if she's on a yacht, anchored out in the middle of a harbour, this can only be done, of course, by infesting the water-front. All quite in order, no doubt, but in the present circs dashed inconvenient, to use the mildest term. And what was making me chafe was the thought that if only he had got to his parking place a bit earlier he would have been in a position to welcome the girl as she came ashore, thus obviating all the present awkwardness.