Thank You, Jeeves

'I could. I could. I shall never forgive myself. If it had not been for me, he would never have gone out of the house with that black stuff on his face.'

I was really sorry for poor old Stoker. One thing after another, I mean to say. His eyes came out of his head like a snail's.

'Black stuff?' he gurgled faintly.

'He had covered his face with burnt cork to amuse Seabury'

Old Stoker tottered to a chair and sank into it. He seemed to be thinking that this was one of those stories you could listen to better sitting down.

'You can only remove the horrible stuff with butter ...'

'And petrol, so the cognoscenti tell me,' I couldn't help putting in. I like to keep these things straight. 'You support me, Jeeves? Petrol does the trick?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, petrol, then. Petrol or butter. At any rate, it was to get something that would take the stuff off that he must have broken into this house. And now...!'

She cheesed it in mid-sentence, deeply moved. Not, however, any more deeply than old Stoker, who seemed to be more or less passing through the furnace.

'This is the finish,' he said, in a sort of pale voice. 'This is where I drop fifty million dollars and try to like it. A lot of use any testimony in a lunacy case is going to be from a fellow who gets himself pinched while wandering around the country in black face. Why, there isn't a judge in America who wouldn't rule out anything he said on the ground that he was crazy himself.'

Lady Chuffnell quivered.

'But he did it to please my son.'

'Anybody who would do anything to please a young hound like that,' said old Stoker, 'must have been crazy.'

He emitted a mirthless laugh.

'Well, the joke's on me, all right. Yes, the joke's certainly on me. I stake everything on the evidence of this man Glossop. I rely on him to save my fifty million by testifying that old George wasn't loco. And two minutes after I've put him on the stand, the other side'll come right back at me by showing that my expert is a loony himself, loonier than ever old George could have been if he'd tried for a thousand years. It's funny when you come to think of it. Ironical. Reminds one of that thing about Lo somebody's name led all the rest.'

Jeeves coughed. He had that informative gleam of his in his eyes.

'Abou ben Adhem, sir.'

'Have I what? said old Stoker, puzzled.

'The poem to which you allude relates to a certain Abou ben Adhem, who, according to the story, awoke one night from a deep dream of peace to find an angel ...'

'Get out!' said old Stoker, very quietly.

'Sir?'

'Get out of this room before I murder you.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And take your angels with you.'

'Very good, sir.'

The door closed. Old Stoker puffed out his breath in a stricken sort of way.

'Angels!' he said. At a time like this!'

I felt it only fair to stick up for Jeeves.

'He was perfectly right,' I said. 'I used to know the thing by heart at school. This cove found an angel sitting by his bed, writing in a book, don't you know, an the upshot of the whole affair was ... Oh, all right, if you don't want to hear.'

I withdrew to a corner of the room and picked up a photograph album. A Wooster does not thrust his conversation upon the unwilling.

From some time after this there was a good deal of what you might call mixed chatter, in which – through dudgeon – I took no part. Everybody talked at once, and nobody said anything that you could have described as being in the least constructive. Except old Stoker, who proved that I had been right in thinking that he must at one time have been a pirate of the Spanish or some other Main by coming boldly out with a suggestion for a rescue party.

'What's the matter,' he wanted to know, 'with going and breaking the door down and getting him out and smuggling him away and hiding him somewhere and letting these darned cops run circles round themselves, trying to find him?'

Chuffy demurred.

'We couldn't.'

'Why not?'

'You heard Jeeves say Dobson was on guard.'

'Bat him over the head with a shovel.'

Chuffy didn't seem to like this idea much. I suppose, if you're a JP, you have to be careful what you do. Bat policemen over the head with shovels, and the County looks askance.

'Well, darn it, then, bribe him.'

'You can't bribe an English policeman.'

'You mean that?'

'Not a chance.'

'My God, what a country!' said old Stoker, with a sort of whistling groan, and you could see that he would never be able to feel quite the same towards England again.

My dudgeon melted. We Woosters are human, and the spectacle of so much anguish in a moderately sized room was too much for me. I crossed to the fire-place and pressed the bell. With the result that just as old Stoker was beginning to say what he thought about the English policeman, the door opened and there was Jeeves.

Old Stoker eyed him balefully.

'You back?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well?'

'Sir?'

'What do you want?'

'The bell rang, sir.'

Chuffy did another spot of hand-waving.

'No, no, Jeeves. Nobody rang.'

I stepped forward.

'I rang, Chuffy.'

'What for?'

'For Jeeves.'

'We don't want Jeeves.'

'Chuffy, old man,' I said, and those present were, no doubt, thrilled by the quiet gravity of my tone, 'if there could ever be a time when you wanted Jeeves more than you do now, I ...' I lost the thread of my remarks, and had to start again. 'Chuffy,' I said, 'what I'm driving at is that there is only one man who can get you out of this mess. He stands before you. I mean Jeeves,' I said, to make the thing clearer. 'You know as well as I do that on these occasions Jeeves always finds the way.'

Chuffy was plainly impressed. I could see that memory had begun to stir, and that he was recalling some of the man's triumphs.

'By Jove, yes. That's right. He does, doesn't he?'

'He does, indeed.'

I shot a quelling glance at old Stoker, who had started to say something about angels, and turned to the man.

'Jeeves,' I said, 'we require your co-operation and advice.'

'Very good, sir.'

'To begin with, let me give you a brief synopsis ... do I mean synopsis?'

'Yes, sir. Synopsis is perfectly correct.'

'... a brief synopsis, then, of the position of affairs. I have no doubt that you recall the late Mr George Stoker. That cable you brought just now was to say that his will, under the terms of which Mr Stoker here has benefited so considerably, is being contested on the ground that the testator was as goofy as a coot.'

'Yes, sir.'

'In rebuttal of this, Mr Stoker had intended to bung Sir Roderick Glossop into the witness box to testify as an expert that old George was Grade A in the sanity line. Not a gibber in him, if you see what I mean. And in ordinary circs this move could not have failed. It would have brought home the bacon infallibly.'

'Yes, sir.'

'But, and this is the nub of the thing, Jeeves – Sir Roderick is now in the potting-shed – the larger potting-shed – with his face covered with burnt cork and a sharp sentence for burglary staring him in the eyeball. You see how this weakens him as a force?'

'Yes, sir.'

'In this world, Jeeves, you can do one of two things. You can set yourself up as a final authority on whether your fellow man is sane or not, or you can go blacking your face and getting put in potting-sheds. You cannot do both. So what is to be done, Jeeves?'

'I would suggest removing Sir Roderick from the shed, sir.'

I turned to the meeting.

'There! Didn't I tell you Jeeves would find the way?'

One dissentient voice. Old Stoker's. He seemed bent on heckling.