At this point he suddenly stopped.
“I suppose she really does love me?”
“Dash it, old man, didn’t she say so?”
“She said so, yes. Yes, she said so. But can you believe what a girl says?”
“My dear chap!”
“Well, she may have been fooling me.”
“Stop it, laddie.”
He had left me. It had been a strenuous day. I felt restless.
“I shall dine out, Brinkley,” I said.
This man had been sent down by the agency in London, and I want to say he wasn’t the fellow I’d have selected if I had had time to make a choice in person. Not at all the man of my dreams. A melancholy blighter, with a long, thin, face and deep eyes. I had been trying to establish cordial relations ever since he had arrived, but with no success. Outwardly he was all respectfulness, but inwardly you could see that he was a man who was dreaming about the Social Revolution and looked on Bertram as a tyrant and an oppressor.
“Yes, Brinkley, I shall dine out.”
He said nothing, merely looking at me.
I went round to the garage and got the car out. It was only a matter of thirty miles or so to Bristol, and I got there to watch a musical comedy. I was feeling rested and refreshed when I started back home.
As I opened the door of my room, I dropped the candle. Pauline Stoker in my heliotrope pyjamas was sitting on my bed.
7
A Visitor for Bertie
The attitude of fellows towards finding girls in their bedroom after midnight varies. Some like it. Some don’t. I didn’t.
“What—What—What—?”
“It’s all right.”
“All right?”
“Quite all right.”
“Oh?” I said. I stooped to pick up the candle, and the next moment I had uttered a cry.
“Don’t make such a noise!”
“But there’s a corpse on the floor.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is, I tell you. I was looking about for the candle, and my fingers touched something cold and still and wet.”
“Oh, that’s my swimming suit.”
“Your swimming suit?”
“Well, do you think I came ashore by aeroplane?”
“You swam here from the yacht?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You know, Bertie, steps should be taken about you.”
“Eh?”
“You ought to be in some sort of a home.”
“I am,” I replied coldly and rather cleverly. “My own. But what are you doing in it?”
She did not answer.
“Why did you want to kiss me in front of father? I can quite understand now why Sir Roderick told father that you ought to be under restraint.”
“The incident to which you allude is readily explained. I thought he was Chuffy.”
“Thought who was Chuffy?”
“Your father.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” she replied coldly.
I explained.
“The idea was to let Chuffy observe you in my embrace. To force him act speedily.”
“That was very sweet of you.”
“We Woosters are sweet, exceedingly sweet, when a pal’s happiness is spoken about.”
“I can see now why I accepted you that night in New York,” she said meditatively. “If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could easily marry you, Bertie.”
“No, no,” I said, with some alarm. “Don’t dream of it. I mean to say—”
“Oh, it’s all right. I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Marmaduke; that’s why I’m here.”
“And now,” I said, “we’ve come right back to it. You say you swam ashore from the yacht? Why? You came here. Why?”
“Because I wanted somewhere to go till I could get clothes, of course. I can’t go to the Hall in a swimming suit.”
“Oh, you swam ashore to get to Chuffy?”
“Of course. Father was keeping me a prisoner on board the yacht, and this evening Jeeves arrived with an early letter from Marmaduke. Oh! I cried six pints when I read it. It was beautiful. It throbbed with poetry.”
“It did?”
“Yes.”
“This letter?”
“Yes.”
“Chuffy’s letter?”
“Yes. You seem surprised.”
I was a bit.
“I felt I couldn’t wait another day without seeing him,” she continued. “And, talking of Jeeves, what a man!”
“Oh, you confided in Jeeves?[59]“
“Yes. And told him what I was going to do.”
“And he didn’t try to stop you?”
“Stop me? He was all for it.”
“He was, was he?”
“You should have seen him. Such a kind smile. He said you would be delighted to help me.”
“He did, eh?”
“He spoke most highly of you.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. ‘Mr Wooster, miss,’ he said, ‘is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible[60], but he has a heart of gold.’ He was lowering me from the side of the boat by a rope.”
I was chewing the lip in some chagrin.
“What the devil did he mean, ‘mentally negligible’?”
“Oh, you know. Loopy.”
“Tchah!”
“Eh?”
“I said ‘Tchah!’”
“Why?”
“Why? Well, wouldn’t you say ‘Tchah!’ if your late servant was telling people you were mentally negligible?”
“But with a heart of gold.”
“Never mind the heart of gold.”
“Bertie! Are you annoyed?”
“Annoyed!”
“You sound annoyed. And I can’t see why. I thought that you would help me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold.”
“The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Many people have hearts of gold and yet they will be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms at night. The girls who come in, in the middle of the night, and coolly take your pyjamas—”
“You didn’t expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?”
“—and leap into your bed—”
She uttered an exclamation.
“I know what this reminds me of. I’ve been trying to think ever since you came in. The story of the Three Bears. ‘There’s somebody in my bed…’ Wasn’t that what the Big Bear said?”
I frowned doubtfully.
“As I recollect it, it was something about porridge. ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’”
“I’m sure there was a bed in it.”
“Bed? Bed? I can’t remember any bed. What will people say when they find you here?”
“But they won’t find me here.”
“You think so? Ha! What about Brinkley?”
“Who’s he?”
“My new man. At nine tomorrow morning he will bring me tea.”
“But wait a minute. You are talking about Brinkley, but there is no Brinkley.”
“There is Brinkley. One Brinkley. And one Brinkley coming into this room at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and finding you in that bed will start a scandal.”
“I mean, he can’t be in the house.”
“Of course he’s in the house.”
“Well, he must be deaf, then. I made big noise getting in.”
“Did you smash the window?”
“I had to, or I couldn’t have got in. It was the window of some sort of bedroom on the ground floor.”
“Why, dash it, that’s Brinkley’s bedroom.”
“Well, he wasn’t in it.”
“Why not?”
But what she would answer, I did not learn. Somebody was knocking on the front door.
8
Police Persecution
We looked at each other with a wild surmise.
“It’s father!” Pauline gargled, and she doused the candle.
“What did you do that for?” I said. The sudden darkness seemed to make things worse.
“So that he shouldn’t see a light in the window, of course. If he thinks you’re asleep he may go away.”
“What a hope!” I retorted, as the knocking started again.
“Well, I suppose you had better go down,” said the girl. “Or”—she seemed to brighten—“shall we pour water on him from the staircase window?”
I started.
“Don’t dream of it!” I whispered urgently.
I mean to say, dry J. Washburn Stoker was bad enough. But wet J. Washburn Stoker was even worse.
“I’ll have to see him,” I said.
“Well, be careful.”
“How do you mean, careful?”
“Oh, just careful. Still, of course, he may not have a gun.”
“Well, dash it,” I said, “I shall have to go down and talk to him. That door will be splitting asunder soon.”
“Don’t get close to him.”
“I won’t.”
“He was a great wrestler when he was a young man.”
“You needn’t tell me any more about your father.”
“Is there anywhere I can hide?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not,” I replied. “They don’t build these country cottages with secret rooms and underground passages. When you hear me open the front door, stop breathing.”
“Do you want me to suffocate?”
I did not reply and hurried down the stairs and flung open the front door. Well, when I say “flung”, I opened it a matter of six inches.
“Hallo?” I said. “Yes?”
“Oy!” said a voice. “What’s the matter with you, young man? Deaf or something?”
It wasn’t the voice of J. Washburn Stoker.
“Frightfully sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of this and that. Sort of reverie, if you know what I mean.”
The voice spoke again.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you was the young man Brinkley.”
“Brinkley’s out,” I said, “Who are you?”
“Sergeant Voules, sir.”
I opened the door. It was pretty dark outside, but I could recognize the arm of the Law.