Thank You, Jeeves

'It was Master Seabury, sir. He is a little fractious tonight.'

'What's biting him?'

'He is somewhat acutely disappointed, sir, at having missed the Negro entertainment on the yacht.'

'Absolutely his own fault, the silly little geezer. If he wanted to go to Dwight's birthday party, he shouldn't have started a scrap with him.'

'Just so, sir.'

'To attempt to touch your host for one and sixpence protection money on the eve of a birthday party is the act of a fathead.'

'Very true, sir.'

'What did they do about it? He seems to have stopped yelling. Did they chloroform him?'

'No, sir. I understand that steps are being taken to provide something in the nature of an alternative entertainment for the little fellow.'

'How do you mean, Jeeves? Are they having the niggers up here?'

'No, sir. The expense rules that project out of the sphere of practical politics. But I understand that her ladyship has induced Sir Roderick Glossop to offer his services.'

I could not follow this.

'Old Glossop?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But what can he do?'

'It appears, sir, that he has a pleasing baritone voice and as a younger man – in the days when he was a medical student – was often accustomed to render songs at smoking concerts and similar entertainments.'

'Old Glossop!'

'Yes, sir. I overheard him telling her ladyship so.'

'Well, I would never have thought it.'

'I agree that one would scarcely suspect such a thing from his bearing nowadays, sir. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.'

'Then you mean that he is going to soothe young Seabury with song?'

'Yes, sir. Accompanied by her ladyship on the piano.'

I spotted the snag.

'It won't work, Jeeves. Reason it out for yourself.'

'Sir?'

'Well, here is a kid who has been looking forward to seeing a troupe of nigger minstrels do their stuff. Is he likely to accept as an adequate substitute a white-faced loony-doctor accompanied by his mother on the piano?'

'Not white-faced, sir.'

'What!'

'No, sir. The question was debated, and it was her ladyship's view that something in the nature of a negroid performance was indispensable. The young gentleman, when in his present frame of mind, is always extremely exigent.'

I swallowed a puff of smoke the wrong way in my emotion.

'Old Glossop isn't blacking up?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Jeeves, pull yourself together. This can't be true. He is blacking his face?'

'Yes, sir.'

'It isn't possible.'

'Sir Roderick is very amenable at the moment, sir, you must remember, to any suggestion emanating from her ladyship.'

'You mean he's in love?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And Love conquers all?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But even so.... If you were in love, Jeeves, would you black up to entertain the son of the adored object?'

'No, sir. But we are not all constituted alike.'

'True.'

'Sir Roderick did endeavour to protest, but her ladyship overruled his objections. And, as a matter of fact, sir, I think that, on the whole, it is a good thing that she did. Sir Roderick's kindly act will serve to heal the breach between Master Seabury and himself. I happen to know that the young gentleman has been unsuccessful in his endeavour to extract protection money from Sir Roderick, and was resenting the fact keenly.'

'He tried to gouge the old boy?'

'Yes, sir. For ten shillings. I have the information from the young gentleman himself

'They all confide in you, Jeeves.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And old Glossop wouldn't kick in?'

'No, sir. Instead, he read the young gentleman something of a lecture. What the young gentleman described as "pi-jaw". And I happen to know that hard feelings existed as a consequence on the latter's side. So much so, indeed, that I received the impression that he had been planning something in the nature of a reprisal.'

'He wouldn't have the nerve to do the dirty on a future stepfather, would he?'

'Young gentleman are headstrong, sir.'

'True. One recalls the case of my Aunt Agatha's son, young Thos., and the Cabinet Minister.'

'Yes, sir.'

'In a spirit of ill-will he marooned him on an island in the lake with a swan.'

'Yes, sir.'

'How is the swanning in these parts? I confess that I would like to see old Glossop shinning up something with a bilious bird after him.'

'I fancy that Master Seabury's thoughts turned more towards something on the order of a booby trap, sir.'

'They would. No imagination, that kid. No vision. I've often noticed it. His fancy is – what's the word?'

'Pedestrian, sir?'

'Exactly. With all the limitless opportunities of a large country house at his disposal, he is content to put soot and water on top of the door, a thing you could do in a suburban villa. I have never thought highly of Seabury, and this confirms my low opinion.'

'Not soot and water, sir. I think what the young gentleman had in mind was the old-fashioned butter-slide, sir. He was asking me yesterday where the butter was kept, and referred guardedly to a humorous film he had seen not long ago in Bristol, in which something of that nature occurred.'

I was disgusted. Goodness knows that any outrage perpetrated on the person of a bloke like Sir Roderick Glossop touches a ready chord in Bertram Wooster's bosom, but a butter-slide ... the lowest depths, as you might say. The merest A B C of the booby-trapping art. There isn't a fellow at the Drones who would sink to such a thing.

I started to utter a scornful laugh, then stopped. The word had reminded me that life was stern and earnest and that time was passing.

'Butter, Jeeves! Here we are, standing idly here, talking of butter, and all the time you ought to have been racing to the larder, getting me some.'

'I will go immediately, sir.'

'You know where to lay your hand on it all right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you're sure it will do the trick?'

'Quite sure, sir.'

'Then shift-ho, Jeeves. And don't loiter.'

I sat down on an upturned flower-pot, and resumed my vigil. My feelings were very different now from what they had been when first I had begun to roost on this desirable property. Then, I had been a penniless outcast, so to speak, with nothing much of a future before me. Now, I could see daylight. Presently Jeeves would return with the fixings. Shortly after that, I should be the old pink-cheeked clubman once more. And, in due season, I should be safely inside the 11.50 train, on my way to London and safety.

I was a good deal uplifted. I drank in the night air with a light heart. And it was while I was drinking it in that a sudden uproar proceeded from the house.

Seabury appeared to be contributing most of it. He was yelling his bally head off. From time to time, one caught the fainter, yet penetrating note of the Dowager Lady Chuffnell. She seemed to be reproaching or upbraiding someone. Blending with this, there could be discerned a deeper voice, the unmistakable baritone woofle of Sir Roderick Glossop. The whole appeared to be proceeding from the drawing-room, and, except for one time when I was sauntering in Hyde Park and suddenly found myself mixed up in a Community Singing, I've never heard anything like it.

It couldn't have been very long after this when the front door was suddenly flung open. Somebody emerged. The door slammed. And then the emerger started to stump rapidly down the drive in the direction of the gates.

There had been just a moment when the light from the hall had shone upon this bloke. It had been long enough for me to identify him.

This sudden exiter, who was now padding away into the darkness with every outward sign of being fed to the eye teeth, was none other than Sir Roderick Glossop. And his face, I noted, was as black as the ace of spades.