Thank You, Jeeves

'When did he get back?'

'Last night.'

'Shall we be lunching alone?'

'No.'

'Who's going to be there?'

'Mother and me and some people.'

'A party? I'd better go back and put on another suit.'

'No.'

'You think this one looks all right?'

'No, I don't. I think it looks rotten. But there isn't time.'

This point settled, he passed into the silence for awhile. A brooding kid. He came out of it to give me some local gossip.

'Mother and I are living at the Hall again.'

'What!'

'Yes. There's a smell at the Dower House.'

'Even though you've left it?' I said, in my keen way.

He was not amused.

'You needn't try to be funny. If you really want to know, I expect it's my mice.'

'Your what?'

'I've started breeding mice and puppies. And, of course, they niff a bit,' he added in a dispassionate sort of way. 'But mother thinks it's the drains. Can you give me five shillings?'

I simply couldn't follow his train of thought. The way his conversation flitted about gave me that feeling you get in dreams sometimes.

'Five shillings?'

'Five shillings.'

'What do you mean, five shillings?'

'I mean five shillings.'

'I dare say. But what I want to know is how have we suddenly got on to the subject? We were discussing mice, and you introduce this five shillings motif

'I want five shillings.'

'Admitting that you may possibly want that sum, why the dickens should I give it to you?'

'For protection.'

'What!'

'Protection.'

'What from?'

'Just protection.'

'You don't get any five shillings out of me.'

'Oh, all right.'

He sat silent for a space.

'Things happen to guys that don't kick in their protection money,' he said dreamily.

And on this note of mystery the conversation concluded, for we were moving up the drive of the Hall and on the steps I perceived Chuffy standing. I stopped the car and got out.

'Hallo, Bertie,' said Chuffy.

'Welcome to Chuffnell Hall,' I replied. I looked round. The kid had vanished. 'I say, Chuffy,' I said, 'young blighted Seabury. What about him?'

'What about him?'

'Well, if you ask me, I should say he had gone off his rocker. He's just been trying to touch me for five bob and babbling about protection.'

Chuffy laughed heartily, looking bronzed and fit.

'Oh, that. That's his latest idea.'

'How do you mean?'

'He's been seeing gangster films.'

The scales fell from my eyes.

'He's turned racketeer?'

'Yes. Rather amusing. He goes round collecting protection money from everybody according to their means. Makes a good thing out of it, too. Enterprising kid. I'd pay up if I were you. I have.'

I was shocked. Not so much at the information that the foul child had given this additional evidence of a diseased mind as that Chuffy should be exhibiting this attitude of amused tolerance. I eyed him keenly. Right from the start this morning I had thought his manner strange. Usually, when you meet him, he is brooding over his financial situation and is rather apt to greet you with the lack-lustre eye and the careworn frown. He had been like that five days ago in London. What, then, had caused him to beam all over the place like this and even to go so far as to speak of little Seabury with what amounted to something perilously near to indulgent affection? I sensed a mystery and decided to apply the acid test.

'How is your Aunt Myrtle?'

'She's fine.'

'Living at the Hall now, I hear.'

'Yes.'

'Indefinitely?'

'Oh, yes.'

It was enough.

One of the things, I must mention, which have always made poor old Chuffy's lot so hard is his aunt's attitude towards him. She has never quite been able to get over that matter of the succession. Seabury, you see, was not the son of Chuffy's late uncle, the fourth Baron: he was simply something Lady Chuffnell had picked up en route in the course of a former marriage and, consequently, did not come under the head of what the Peerage calls 'issue'. And, in matters of succession, if you aren't issue, you haven't a hope. When the fourth Baron pegged out, accordingly, it was Chuffy who copped the title and estates. All perfectly square and above board, of course, but you can't get women to see these things, and the relict's manner, Chuffy has often told me, was consistently unpleasant. She had a way of clasping Seabury in her arms and looking reproachfully at Chuffy as if he had slipped over a fast one on mother and child. Nothing actually said, you understand, but her whole attitude that of a woman who considers she has been the victim of sharp practice.

The result of this had been that the Dowager Lady Chuffnell was not one of Chuffy's best-loved buddies. Their relations had always been definitely strained, and what I'm driving at is that usually, when you mention her name, a look of pain comes into Chuffy's clean-cut face and he winces a little, as if you had probed an old wound.

Now he was actually smiling. Even that remark of mine about her living at the Hall had not jarred him. Obviously, there were mysteries here. Something was being kept from Bertram.

I tackled him squarely.

'Chuffy,' I said, 'what does this mean?'

'What does what mean?'

'This bally cheeriness. You can't deceive me. Not old Hawk-Eye Wooster. Come clean, my lad, something is up. What is all the ruddy happiness about?'

He hesitated. For a moment he eyed me narrowly.

'Can you keep a secret?'

'No.'

'Well, it doesn't much matter, because it'll be in the Morning Post in a day or two. Bertie,' said Chuffy, in a hushed voice, 'do you know what's happened? I'm getting Aunt Myrtle off this season.'

'You mean somebody wants to marry her?'

'I do.'

'Who is this half-wit?'

'Your old friend, Sir Roderick Glossop.'

I was stupefied.

'What!'

'I was surprised, too.'

'But old Glossop can't be contemplating matrimony.'

'Why not? He's been a widower more than two years.'

'Oh, I dare say it's possible to make up some kind of a story for him. But what I mean is, he doesn't seem to go with orange blossoms and wedding cake.'

'Well, there it is.'

'Well, I'm dashed!'

'Yes.'

'Well, there's one thing, Chuffy, old man. This means that little Seabury will be getting a really testing stepfather and old Glossop just the stepson I could have wished him. Both have been asking for something on these lines for years. But fancy any woman being mad enough to link her lot with his. Our Humble Heroines!'

'I wouldn't say the heroism was all on one side. About fifty-fifty, I should call it. There is lots of good in this Glossop, Bertie.'

I could not accept this. It seemed to me loose thinking.

'Aren't you going a bit far, old man? Admitted that he is taking your Aunt Myrtle off your hands

'And Seabury'

'And Seabury, true. But, even so, would you really say there was good in the old pest? Remember all the stories I've told you about him from time to time. They show him in a very dubious light.'

'Well, he's doing me a bit of good, anyway. Do you know what it was he wanted to see me about so urgently that day in London?'

'What?'

'He's found an American he thinks he can sell the Hall to.'

'Not really?'

'Yes. If all goes well, I shall at last get rid of this blasted barracks and have a bit of money in my pocket. And all the credit will be due to Uncle Roderick, as I like to think of him. So you will kindly refrain, Bertie, from nasty cracks at his expense and, in particular, from mentioning him in the same breath with young Seabury. You must learn to love Uncle Roddie for my sake.'