So I stayed where I was. I hitched myself into position forty-six in the hope that it would be easier on the f.p's than the last forty-five, and had another shot at the dreamless.
The thing that always beats me is how on these occasions one ever gets to sleep at all. Personally, I abandoned all idea of it at an early stage, and no one, accordingly, could have been more surprised than myself when, just as I was endeavouring to give the miss to a leopard which was biting me rather shrewdly in the seat of the trousers, I suddenly awoke to discover that it had been but a dream, that in reality no leopards were to be noticed among those present, that the sun was up and another day had begun, and that on the greensward without the early bird was already breakfasting and making the dickens of a noise about it, too.
I went to the door and looked out. I could hardly believe that it was really morning. But it was, and a dashed good morning, at that. The air was cool and fresh, there were long shadows across the lawn, and everything combined to give the soul such a kick that many fellows in my position would have taken off their socks and done rhythmic dances in the dew. I did not actually do that, but I certainly felt uplifted to no little extent, and you might say that I was simply so much pure spirit, without any material side to me whatsoever, when suddenly it was as if the old turn had come out of a trance with a jerk, and the next moment I was feeling that nothing mattered in this world or the next except about a quart of coffee and all the eggs and b. you could cram on to a dish.
It's a rummy thing about breakfast. When you've only to press a bell to have the domestic staff racing in with everything on the menu from oatmeal to jams, marmalades, and potted meats, you find that all you can look at is a glass of soda water and a rusk. When you can't get it, you feel like a python when the Zoo officials have just started to bang the luncheon gong. Speaking for myself, I have, as a rule, to be more or less lured to the feast. I mean to say, I don't as a general thing become what you might call breakfast-conscious till I've had my morning tea and rather thought things over a bit. And I can give no better indication of the extraordinary change which had come over my viewpoint now than by mentioning that there was a young fowl of sorts not far away engaged in getting outside a large, pink worm, and I could willingly have joined it at the board. In fact, I would have taken pot luck at this juncture with a buzzard.
My watch had stopped, so I couldn't tell what time it was: and another thing I didn't know was when Jeeves was planning to go to the Dower House to keep our tryst. The thought that he might even now be on his way there and that, if he didn't find me, he would give the thing up as a bad job and retire to some impregnable fastness in the back parts of the Hall gave me a very nasty turn. I left the summer-house and, taking to the bushes, began to work my way through them, treading like a Red Indian on the trail and keeping well under cover throughout.
And I was just navigating round the side of the house and making ready for the dash into the open, when through the French window of the morning-room I saw a spectacle which affected me profoundly. In fact, you'd be about right if you said that it seemed to speak to my very depths.
Inside the room, a parlourmaid was placing a large tray on a table.
The sunlight, streaming in, lit up this parlourmaid's hair: and, noting its auburn hue, I deduced that she must be Mary, the betrothed of Constable Dobson: and at any other time the fact would have been of interest. But I was in no mood now to subject the girl to a critical scrutiny with a view to ascertaining whether the constable had picked a winner or not. My whole attention was earmarked for that tray.
It was a well-laden tray. There was a coffee-pot on it, also toast in considerable quantity, and furthermore a covered dish. It was this last that touched the spot. Under that cover there might be eggs, there might be bacon, there might be sausages, there might be kidneys, or there might be kippers. I could not tell. But whatever there was it was all right with Bertram.
For I had laid my plans and formed my schemes. The girl was on her way out by this time, and I estimated that I had possibly fifty seconds for the stern task before me. Allow twenty for nipping in, three for snaffling the works, and another twenty-five for getting back into the bushes again, and one had all the makings of a successful enterprise.
The moment the door closed I was speeding on my way. I recked little whether anybody saw me, and I should imagine that, had there been eyewitnesses, all they would have seen would have been a sort of blur. I did the first leg of the journey well inside the estimated time, and I had just laid hand on the tray and was about to lift and remove, when there came from outside the door the sound of footsteps.
It was a moment for swift thought, and such moments find Bertram Wooster at his best.
This morning-room, I should mention, was not the small morning-room where Dwight and little Seabury had had their epoch-making turn-up. In fact, I am rather misleading my public in alluding to it as a morning-room at all. It was really a study or office, being the place where Chuffy did his estate business, totted up his bills, brooded over the growing cost of agricultural apparatus, and gave the tenants the bird when they called to ask him to knock a bit off their rent. And as you can't get very far with that sort of thing unless you have a pretty good-sized desk, Chuffy had most fortunately had one put in. It stood across one whole corner of the room, and it seemed to beckon to me.
Two and a half seconds later, I was behind it, crouching on the carpet and trying to breathe solely through the pores.
The next moment, the door opened and somebody came in. Feet crossed the floor, right up to the desk, and I heard the click as the hidden hand removed the telephone receiver.
'Chuffnell Regis, two-niyun-four,' said a voice, and conceive the sudden rush of relief when I recognized it as one that I had many a time shaken hands with in the past – the voice, in short, of a friend in need.
'Oh, Jeeves,' I said, popping up like a jack-in-the-box.
You can't rattle Jeeves. Where scullery-maids had had hysterics and members of the Peerage had leaped and quivered, he simply regarded me with respectful serenity and, after a civil good morning, went on with the job in hand. He is a fellow who likes to do things in their proper order.
'Chuffnell Regis two-niyun-four? The Seaview Hotel? Could you inform me if Sir Roderick Glossop is in his room? ... Not yet returned? ... Thank you.'
He hung up the receiver, and was now at liberty to give the late young master a spot of attention.
'Good morning, sir,' he said again. 'I was not expecting to see you here.'
'I know, but ...'
'I had supposed that the arrangement was that we should meet at the Dower House.'
I shuddered a bit.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'one brief word about the Dower House, and then I should like the subject shelved indefinitely. I know you meant well. I know that when you sent me there your motives were pure to the last drop. But the fact remains that you were dispatching me to a nasty salient. Do you know who was lurking in that House of Fear? Brinkley. Complete with chopper.'
'I am very sorry to hear that, sir. Then I assume that you did not sleep there last night?'
'No, Jeeves, I did not. I slept – if you can call it sleeping – in a summer-house. And I was just creeping round through the bushes to try to find you, when I saw that parlourmaid setting out food on the table in here.'