Thank You, Jeeves

'I beg your pardon?'

'Where's my daughter?'

'Your daughter Pauline?'

'I have only one daughter.'

'And you ask me where this one daughter is?'

'I know where she is.'

'Then why did you ask?'

'She's here.'

'Then give me my pyjama jacket and tell her to come in,' I said.

I've never actually seen a man grind his teeth, so I wouldn't care to state definitely that this is what J. Washburn Stoker did at this juncture. He may have done. He may not have done. All I can say authoritatively is that the muscles stood out on his cheeks and his jaws began to work as if he were chewing gum. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but thanks to the fact that I had mixed that whisky and splash particularly strong so as to facilitate sleep I was enabled to endure it with fortitude and phlegm.

'She's in this house!' he said, continuing to grind, if he was grinding.

'What makes you think that?'

'I'll tell you what makes me think that. I went to her stateroom half an hour ago, and it was empty.'

'But why on earth should you suppose she's come here?'

'Because I know she's infatuated with you.'

'Not at all. She regards me as a sister.'

'I am going to search this house.'

'Charge right ahead.'

He dashed upstairs and I returned to my spot. Not the same spot. Another one. I felt that in the circumstances a repeat was justified. And presently my visitor, who had gone up like a lion, came down like a lamb. I suppose a parent who has barged into a comparative stranger's cottage in the small hours in search of a missing daughter and finds the place completely free from daughters, feels more or less of a silly ass. I know I should, and apparently this Stoker did, for he shuffled a bit and I could see that a lot of the steam or motive force had gone out of him.

'I owe you an apology, Mr Wooster.'

'Don't give it a thought.'

'I took it for granted when I found Pauline gone ...'

'Dismiss the whole thing from your mind. Might have happened to anybody. Faults on both sides and so forth. You'll have a certain something before you go?'

It seemed to me that it would be a prudent move to detain him on the premises for as long as possible, so as to give Pauline plenty of time to get back to the old boat. But he wouldn't be tempted. His mind was evidently too occupied for spots.

'It beats me where she can have gone,' he said, and you would have been astounded at the mildness and even chummy pathos with which he spoke. It was as if Bertram had been some wise old friend to whom he was bringing his little troubles. The man seemed positively punctured. A child could have played with him.

I endeavoured to throw out a word of cheer.

'I expect she's gone for a swim.'

'At this time of night?'

'Girls do rummy things.'

'And she's a curious girl. This infatuation of hers for you, for instance.'

This seemed to me lacking in tact, and I would have frowned slightly, had I not remembered that I wished to disabuse him, if disabuse is what I'm driving at, of the idea that any such infatuation existed.

'Correct this notion that Miss Stoker is under my fatal spell,' I urged him. 'She laughs herself sick at the sight of me.'

'I did not get that impression this afternoon.'

'Oh, that? Just brother and sister stuff. It shan't occur again.'

'It had better not,' he said, returning for a moment to what I might call his earlier manner. 'Well, I won't keep you up, Mr Wooster. I apologize again for making a darned fool of myself

I did not quite slap him on the back, but I made a sort of back-slapping gesture.

'Not at all,' I said. 'Not at all. I wish I had a quid for every time I've made a darned fool of myself.'

And on these cordial terms we parted. He went down the garden path, and I, having waited up about ten minutes on the chance that somebody else might come paying a social call, drained my glass and popped up to bed.

Something attempted, something done, had earned a night's repose, or as near as you can get to a night's repose in a place full of Stokers and Paulines and Vouleses and Chuffys and Dobsons. It was not long before the weary eyelids closed and I was off.

It seems almost incredible, considering what the night life of Chuffnell Regis was like, but the next thing that woke me was not a girl leaping out from under the bed, her father bounding in with blood in his eye, or a police sergeant playing ragtime on the knocker, but actually the birds outside my window heralding in a new day.

Well, when I say heralding, it was about ten-thirty of a fine summer morning, and the sunshine streaming in through the window seemed to be calling to me to get up and see what I could do to an egg, a rasher, and the good old pot of coff.

I had a hasty bath and shave and trotted down to the kitchen, full of joie de vivre.

11 SINISTER BEHAVIOUR OF A

YACHT-OWNER

It was not until I had finished breakfast and was playing the banjolele in the front garden that something seemed to whisper reproachfully in my ear that I had no right to be feeling as perky as this on what was so essentially the morning after. Dirty work had been perpetrated overnight. Tragedy had stalked through the home. Scarcely ten hours earlier I had been a witness of a scene which, if I were the man of fine fibre I liked to think myself, should have removed all the sunshine from my life. Two loving hearts, one of which I had been at school and Oxford with, had gone to the mat together in my presence and having chewed holes in one another had parted in anger, never – according to present schedule – to meet again. And here I was, carefree and callous, playing 'I Lift Up My Finger And I Say Tweet-Tweet' on the banjolele.

All wrong. I switched to 'Body and Soul', and a sober sadness came upon me.

Something, I felt, must be done. Steps must be taken and avenues explored.

But I could not conceal from myself that the situation was complex. Usually, in my experience, when one of my pals has broken off diplomatic relations with a girl or vice versa they have been staying in a country house together or at least living in London, where it wasn't so dashed difficult to arrange a meeting and join their hands with a benevolent smile. But in this matter of Chuffy and Pauline Stoker, consider the facts. She was on the yacht, virtually in irons. He was at the Hall, three miles inland. And anybody who wanted to do any hand-joining had got to be a much more mobile force than I was. True, my standing with old Stoker had improved a bit overnight, but there had been no hint on his part of any disposition to give me the run of his yacht. I seemed to have about as much chance of getting in touch with Pauline and endeavouring to reason with her as if she had never come over from America at all.

Quite a prob, I mean to say, and I was still brooding on it when the garden gate clicked and I perceived Jeeves walking up the path.

'Ah, Jeeves,' I said.

My manner probably seemed to him a little distant, and I jolly well meant it to. What Pauline had told me about his loose and unconsidered remarks with reference to my mentality had piqued me considerably. It was not the first time he had said that sort of thing, and one has one's feelings.

But if he sensed the hauteur, he affected to ignore it. His bearing continued placid and unmoved.

'Good morning, sir.'

'Have you come from the yacht?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Was Miss Stoker there?'

'Yes, sir. She appeared at the breakfast table. I was somewhat surprised to see her. I had assumed that it was her intention to remain ashore and establish communication with his lordship.'