"Precisely, m'lord. Your lordship has sustained a severe shock. Happening to be in the vicinity of the ruined chapel at about the hour of midnight, your lordship observed the wraith of Lady Agatha and was much overcome. How your lordship contrived to totter back to your room, your lordship will never know, but I found your lordship there in a what appeared to be a coma and immediately applied to Mrs. Spottsworth for the loan of her smelling salts."
Bill was still at a loss.
"I don't get the gist, Jeeves."
"If I might elucidate my meaning still further, m'lord. The thought I had in mind was that, learning that Lady Agatha was, if I may so term it, on the wing, Mrs. Spottsworth's immediate reaction would be an intense desire to hasten to the ruined chapel in order to observe the manifestation for herself. I would offer to escort her thither, and during her absence ..."
It is never immediately that the ordinary man, stunned by some revelation of genius, is able to find words with which to express his emotion. When Alexander Graham Bell, meeting a friend one morning in the year 1876, said "Oh, hullo, George, heard the latest? I invented the telephone yesterday", it is probable that the friend merely shuffled his feet in silence. It was the same with Bill now. He could not speak. He lay there dumbly, while remorse flooded over him that he could ever have doubted this man. It was just as Bertie Wooster had so often said. Let this fish-fed mastermind get his teeth into the psychology of the individual, and it was all over except chucking your hat in the air and doing Spring dances.
"Jeeves," he began, at length finding speech, but Jeeves was shimmering through the door.
"Your smelling salts, m'lord," he said, turning his head on the threshold. "If your lordship will excuse me."
It was perhaps two minutes, though to Bill it seemed longer, before he returned, bearing a small bottle.
"Well?" said Bill eagerly.
"Everything has gone according to plan, m'lord. The lady's reactions were substantially as I had anticipated. Mrs. Spottsworth, on receiving my communication, displayed immediate interest. Is your lordship familiar with the expression "Jiminy Christmas!"?"
"No, I don't think I ever heard it. You don't mean "Merry Christmas"?"
"No, m'lord. "Jiminy Christmas!" It was what Mrs. Spottsworth observed on receiving the information that the phantasm of Lady Agatha was to be seen in the ruined chapel. The words, I gathered, were intended to convey surprise and elation.
She assured me that it would take her but a brief time to hop into a dressing-gown and that at the conclusion of that period she would be with me with, I understood her to say, her hair in a braid. I am to return in a moment and accompany her to the scene of the manifestation. I will leave the door open a few inches, so that your lordship, by applying your lordship's eye to the crack, may be able to see us depart. As soon as we have descended the staircase, I would advocate instant action, for I need scarcely remind your lordship that time is—"
"Of the essence? No, you certainly don't have to tell me that. You remember what you were saying about cheetahs?"
"With reference to their speed of foot, m'lord?"
"That's right. Half a mile in forty-five seconds, I think you said?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Well, the way I shall move would leave the nippiest cheetah standing at the post."
"That will be highly satisfactory, m'lord.
I, on my side, may mention that on the dressing-table in Mrs. Spottsworth's room I observed a small jewel-case, which I have no doubt contains the pendant. The dressing-table is immediately beneath the window. Your lordship will have no difficulty in locating it."
He was right, as always. It was the first thing that Bill saw when, having watched the little procession of two out of sight down the stairs, he hastened along the corridor to the Queen Elizabeth Room. There, as Jeeves had stated, was the dressing-table. On it was the small jewel-case of which he had spoken. And in that jewel-case, as he opened it with shaking hands, Bill saw the pendant. Hastily he slipped it into the pocket of his pyjamas, and was turning to leave, when the silence, which had been complete but for his heavy breathing, was shattered by a series of dreadful screams.
Reference has been made earlier to the practice of the dog Pomona of shrieking loudly to express the ecstasy she always felt on beholding a friend or even what looked to her like a congenial stranger. It was ecstasy that was animating her now. In the course of that session on the rustic seat, when Bill had done his cooing, she had taken an immediate fancy to her host, as all dogs did. Meeting him now in this informal fashion, just at a moment when she had been trying to reconcile herself to the solitude which she so disliked, she made no attempt to place any bounds on her self-expression.
Screams sufficient in number and volume to have equipped a dozen Baronets stabbed in the back in libraries burst from her lips and their effect on Bill was devastating. The author of The Hunting Of The Snark says of one of his protagonists in a powerful passage:
"So great was his fright That his waistcoat turned white"
and the experience through which he was passing nearly caused Bill's mauve pyjamas to do the same.
Though fond of Pomona, he did not linger to fraternize. He shot out of the door at a speed which would have had the most athletic cheetah shrugging its shoulders helplessly, and arrived in the corridor just as Jill, roused from sleep by those awful cries, came out of the Clock Room.
She watched him steal softly into the Henry the Eighth Room, and thought in bitter mood that a more suitable spot for him could scarcely have been found.
It was some quarter of an hour later, as Bill, lying in bed, was murmuring "Nine hundred and ninety-eight ... Nine hundred and ninety-nine ... One thousand ..." that Jeeves entered.
He was carrying a salver.
On that salver was a ring.
"I encountered Miss Wyvern in the corridor a few moments ago, m'lord," he said. "She desired me to give this to your lordship."
Wyvern Hall, the residence of Colonel Aubrey Wyvern, father of Jill and Chief Constable of the county of Southmoltonshire, lay across the river from Rowcester Abbey, and on the following afternoon Colonel Wyvern, having worked his way scowlingly through a most inferior lunch, stumped out of the dining room and went to his study and rang for his butler. And in due course the butler entered, tripping over the rug with a muffled "Whoops!", his invariable practice when crossing any threshold.
Colonel Wyvern was short and stout, and this annoyed him, for he would have preferred to be tall and slender. But if his personal appearance gave him pangs of discomfort from time to time, they were as nothing compared to the pangs the personal appearance of his butler gave him. In England today the householder in the country has to take what he can get in the way of domestic help, and all Colonel Wyvern had been able to get was the scrapings and scourings of the local parish school.
Bulstrode, the major-domo of Wyvern Hall, was a skinny stripling of some sixteen summers, on whom Nature in her bounty had bestowed so many pimples that there was scarcely room on his face for the vacant grin which habitually adorned it.
He was grinning now, and once again, as always happened at these staff conferences, his overlord was struck by the closeness of the lad's resemblance to a half-witted goldfish peering out of a bowl.
"Bulstrode," he said, with a parade-ground rasp in his voice.
"Yus?" replied the butler affably.
At another moment, Colonel Wyvern would have had something to say on the subject of this unconventional verbal approach but today he was after bigger game. His stomach was still sending up complaints to the front office about the lunch, and he wanted to see the cook.
"Bulstrode," he said, "bring the cook to me."