Thank You, Jeeves

'What a home!' I said sympathetically. 'Add little Seabury, and what a home! How about the mice?'

'They came later. Allow me, if you will, to adhere to the chronological sequence of my misadventures, or I shall be unable to relate the story coherently. The room in which I next found myself appeared to be completely filled with small dogs. They pounced upon me, snuffling and biting at me. I escaped and entered another room. Here at last, I was saying to myself, even in this sinister and ill-omened house, there must be peace. Mr Wooster, I had hardly framed the thought when something ran up my right trouser leg. I sprang to one side, and in so doing upset what appeared to be a box or cage of some kind. I found myself in a sea of mice. I detest the creatures. I endeavoured to brush them off. They clung the more. I fled from the room, and I had scarcely reached the stairs when this lunatic appeared and pursued me. He pursued me up and down stairs, Mr Wooster!'

I nodded understandingly.

'We all go through it,' I said. 'I had the same experience.'

'You?'

'Rather. He nearly got me with a carving knife.'

'As far as I could discern, the weapon he carried was more of the order of a chopper.'

'He varies,' I explained. 'Now the carving knife, anon the chopper. Versatile chap. It's the artistic temperament, I suppose.'

'You speak as if you knew this man.'

'I do more than know him. I employ him. He's my valet.'

'Your valet?'

'Fellow named Brinkley. He won't be my valet long, mind you. If he ever simmers down enough for me to get near him and give him the sack. Ironical, that, when you come to think of it,' I said, for I was in philosophic mood. 'I mean, do you realize that I'm giving this chap a salary all this time? In other words, he's actually being paid to chivy me about with carving knives. If that's not Life,' I said thoughtfully, 'what is?'

It seemed to take the old boy a moment or two to drink this in.

'Your valet? Then what is he doing in the Dower House?'

'Oh, he's a mobile sort of fellow, you know. Now here, now there. He flits. He was at the Hall not long ago.'

'I never heard of such a thing.'

'New to me, too, I must confess. Well, you're certainly having a lively night. This'll last you, what? I mean, you won't need any more excitement for months and months and months.'

'Mr Wooster, my earnest hope is that the entire remainder of my existence will be one round of unruffled monotony. To-night I have seemed to sense the underlying horror of life. You do not suppose that there could possibly be mice on my person still?'

'You must have shaken them off, I should say. You were pretty active, you know. I could only hear you, of course, but you seemed to be leaping from crag to crag, as it were.'

'Certainly I spared no effort to elude this man Brinkley. It was merely that I fancied I felt something nibbling at my left shoulder blade.'

'You've had quite a night, haven't you?'

'A truly terrible night. I shall not readily recover a normal tranquillity of mind. My pulse is still high, and I do not like the way my heart is beating. However, by a merciful good fortune, all has ended well. You will be able to give me the shelter I so sorely need in your cottage. And there with the assistance of a little soap and water I shall be able to wash off this distasteful blacking.'

I saw that this was where I had to start breaking things gently to him.

'You can't get that stuff off with soap and water. I've tried. You have to have butter.'

'The point strikes me as immaterial. You can provide butter, no doubt?'

'Sorry. No butter.'

'There must be butter in your cottage.'

'There isn't. And why? Because there isn't a cottage.'

'I cannot understand you.'

'It's burned down.'

'What?'

'Yes. Brinkley did it.'

'Good God!'

'A nuisance in many ways, I must confess.'

He was silent for a space. Turning the thing over in his mind. Looking at it from this angle and that.

'Your cottage is really burned down?'

'Heap of ashes.'

'Then what is to be done?'

It seemed time to point out the silver lining.

'Be of good cheer,' I said. 'We may not be so well off for cottages, but the butter situation, I am happy to say, is reasonably bright. We can't get any to-night, but it cometh in the morning, so to speak. Jeeves is going to bring me some as soon as the dairyman delivers.'

'But I cannot remain in this condition till morning.'

'Only course to pursue, I'm afraid.'

He brooded. Hard to see in the darkness, but discontentedly, I thought, as if his haughty spirit fretted somewhat. He must have been doing some good, solid thinking, too, because suddenly he came to life with an idea.

'This cottage of yours – had it a garage?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Was that burned down also?'

'No, I fancy it escaped the holocaust. It was well away from the scene of conflagration.'

'Is there petrol in it?'

'Oh, yes. Lots of petrol.'

'Why, then all is well, Mr Wooster. I am convinced that petrol will prove a cleansing agent equally as efficacious as butter.'

'But, dash it, you can't go to my garage.'

'Why not, pray?'

'Well, yes, you could, if you liked, I suppose. Not me, though. For reasons which I am not prepared to divulge, I propose to spend the rest of the night in the summer-house on the main lawn of the Hall.'

'You will not accompany me?'

'Sorry. No.'

'Then good night, Mr Wooster. I will not keep you any longer from your rest. I am greatly obliged to you for the assistance you have accorded me in a trying situation. We must see more of one another. Let us lunch together one of these days. How do I obtain access to this garage of yours?'

'You'll have to bust a window.'

'I will do so.'

He pushed off, full of buck and determination, and I, with a dubious shake of the old onion, trickled along towards the summer-house.

17 BREAKFAST-TIME AT THE HALL

I don't know if you have ever spent the night in a summer-house. If not, avoid making the experiment. It's not a thing I would advise any friend of mine to do. On the subject of sleeping in summer-houses I will speak out fearlessly. As far as I have been able to ascertain, such a binge doesn't present a single attractive feature. Apart from the inevitable discomfort in the fleshy parts, there's the cold, and apart from the cold there's the mental anguish. All the ghost stories you've ever read go flitting through the mind, particularly any you know where fellows are found next morning absolutely dead, without a mark on them but with such a look of horror and fear in their eyes that the search party draw in their breath a bit and gaze at each other as much as to say 'What ho!' Things creak. You fancy you hear stealthy footsteps. You receive the impression that a goodish quota of skinny hands are reaching out for you in the darkness. And, as I say, the cold extremely severe and much discomfort in the fleshy parts. The whole constituting a pretty sticky experience and one to be avoided by the knowledgeable.

And what made the thing so dashed poignant in my case was the thought that if I had only had the nerve to accompany intrepid old Glossop to the garage there would have been no need for me to stay marooned in this smelly structure, listening to the wind howling through the chinks in the woodwork. Once at the garage, I mean to say, I could not only have scoured the face but could have hopped into the old two-seater, which was champing at its bit there, and tooled off to London by road, singing a gipsy song, as it were.

And I simply couldn't muster up the nerve to take a pop at it. The garage, I reflected, was right in the danger zone, well inside the Voules and Dobson belt, and I absolutely could not face the possibility of running into Police Sergeant Voules and being detained and questioned. Those meetings with him the night before had shattered my moral, causing me to look upon this hellhound of the Law as a sleepless prowler who rambled incessantly and was bound to appear out of a trap just at the moment when you could best have done without him.