Thank You, Jeeves

'The sergeant was worried about you, Bertie. He seemed to think your manner was strange. So he brought me along to have a look at you. Very sensible of you, Voules.'

'Thank you, m'lord.'

'A sound move.'

'Thank you, m'lord.'

'You couldn't have done a wiser thing.'

'Thank you, m'lord.'

It was sickening to hear them.

'So you've got a touch of the sun, Bertie?'

'I have not got a touch of any bally sun.'

'Voules thought so.'

'Voules is an ass.'

The sergeant bridled somewhat.

'Begging your pardon, sir, you informed me that your head throbbed, and I assumed that the brain was addled.'

'Exactly. You must have gone slightly off your rocker, old chap,' said Chuffy gently, 'mustn't you? To be sleeping out here, I mean, what?'

'Why shouldn't I sleep out here?'

I saw Chuffy and the sergeant exchange glances.

'But you've got a bedroom, old fellow. You've got a nice bedroom, haven't you? I should have thought you would have found it so much snugger and jollier in your cosy little bedroom.'

The Woosters have all been pretty quick thinkers. I saw that I had got to make this move of mine seem plausible.

'There's a spider in my bedroom.'

'A spider, eh? Pink?'

'Pinkish.'

'With long legs?'

'Fairly long legs.'

'And hairy, I shouldn't wonder?'

'Very hairy.'

The rays of the lantern were falling on Chuffy's face, and at this point I observed a subtle change come into his expression. A moment before, he had been solicitous old Doctor Chuffnell, gravely concerned about the sorely sick patient whom he had been called in to treat. He now grinned in a most unpleasant manner and, rising, drew Sergeant Voules aside and addressed a remark to him which told me that he had placed an entirely wrong construction on the matter.

'It's all right, Sergeant. Nothing to worry about. He's simply as tight as an owl.'

I think he imagined he was speaking in a tactful undertone, but his words came clearly to my ears, as did the sergeant's reply.

'Is that so, m'lord?' said Sergeant Voules. And his voice was the voice of a sergeant to whom all things have been made clear.

'That's all that's the trouble. Completely boiled. You notice the glassy look in the eyes?'

'Yes, m'lord.'

'I've seen him like this before. Once, after a bump-supper at Oxford, he insisted that he was a mermaid and wanted to dive into the college fountain and play the harp there.'

'Young gents will be young gents,' said Sergeant Voules in a tolerant and broad-minded manner.

'We must put him to bed.'

I jumped up. Horror-stricken. Trembling like a leaf.

'I don't want to go to bed!'

Chuffy stroked my arm soothingly.

'It's all right, Bertie. Quite all right. We understand. No wonder you were frightened. Beastly great spider. Enough to frighten any one. But it's all right now. Voules and I will come up to your room with you and kill it. You aren't scared of spiders, Voules?'

'No, m'lord.'

'You hear that, Bertie? Voules will stand by you. Voules can tackle any spider. How many spiders was it you were telling me you took on in India once, Voules?'

'Ninety-six, m'lord.'

'Big ones, if I remember rightly?'

'Whackers, m'lord.'

'There, Bertie. You see there's nothing to be afraid of. You take this arm, Sergeant. I'll take the other. Just relax, Bertie. We'll hold you up.'

Looking back, I am not certain whether I didn't do the wrong thing at this juncture. It may be that a few well-chosen words would have served me better. But you know how it is about well-chosen words. When you need them most, you can't find any. The sergeant had begun to freeze on to my left arm, and I couldn't think of a single remark. So, in lieu of conversation, I punched him in the tummy and made a dash for the open spaces.

Well, you can't go far at a high rate of speed in a dark shed littered with the belongings of a by-the-day gardener. I suppose there were quite half a dozen things I could have come a purler over. The one which actually caused me to take the toss was a watering-can. I fell with a dull, sickening thud, and when reason returned to her throne I found I was being carried through the summer night in the direction of the house. Chuffy had got me under the arms, and Sergeant Voules was attached to my feet. And, thus linked, we passed through the front door and up the stairs. It wasn't, perhaps, actually the frog's march, but it was quite near enough to it to wound my amour propre.

Not that I was thinking such a frightful lot about my amour propre at the moment. We had reached the bedroom door now, and what I was asking myself was, What would the harvest be when Chuffy opened it and noted the contents?

'Chuffy,' I said, and I spoke earnestly, 'don't go into that room!'

But it's no good speaking earnestly if your head's hanging down and your tongue has got tangled up with your back teeth. All that actually emerged was a sort of gargle, and Chuffy completely misunderstood it.

'I know, I know,' he said. 'Never mind. Soon be in beddy-bye now.'

I considered his manner offensive, and would have said so, but at this moment speech was, so to speak, wiped from my lips, as it were, by amazement. With a quick heave, my bearers had suddenly dumped me on the bed, and all that the frame had encountered was a blanket and pillow. Of anything in the nature of a girl in heliotrope pyjamas there was absolutely no trace.

I lay there, wondering. Chuffy had found the candle and lighted it, and I was now in a position to look about me.

Pauline Stoker had absolutely disappeared. Leaving not a wrack behind, as I remember Jeeves saying once.

Dashed odd.

Chuffy was dismissing his assistant.

'Thanks, Sergeant. I can manage now.'

'You're sure, m'lord?'

'Yes, it's quite all right. He always drops off to sleep on these occasions.'

'Then I think I'll be going, m'lord. It's a bit late for me.'

'Yes, pop off. Good night.'

'Good night, m'lord.'

The sergeant clumped down the stairs, making enough row for two sergeants, and Chuffy, with something of the air of a mother brooding over a sleeping child, took off my boots.

'That's my little man,' he said. 'Now you lie quite quiet, Bertie, and take things easy.'

It is a thing I have often wondered, whether I would or would not have commented upon what I considered the insufferably patronizing note in his voice as he called me his little man. I wanted to, but I saw that it would be fruitless unless I could think of something more than a little biting: and it was while I was searching in my mind for the telling phrase that the door of the hanging cupboard outside the room opened and Pauline Stoker came strolling in as if she hadn't a care in the world. In fact, she seemed distinctly entertained.

'What a night, what a night!' she said amusedly. 'A close call that, Bertie. Who were those men I heard going out?'

And then she suddenly sighted Chuffy, gave a kind of gasping squeak, and the love light came into her eyes as if somebody had pressed a switch.

'Marmaduke!' she cried, and stood there, staring.

But, by Jove, it was the poor old schoolmate who was doing the real staring, in the truest and fullest sense of the word. I've seen starers in my time, many of them, but never one who came within a mile of putting up the performance which Chuffy did then. The eyebrows had shot up, the jaw had fallen, and the eyes were protruding one to two inches from the parent sockets. He also appeared to be trying to say something, but in this he flopped badly. Nothing came through except a rather unpleasant whistling sound, not quite so loud as the row your radio makes when you twiddle the twiddler a bit too hard but in other respects closely resembling it.