But as I approached the instrument and unhooked the thing you unhook, I was far from being at my most nonchalant, and when I heard Upjohn are-you-there-ing at the other end my manly spirit definitely blew a fuse. For I could tell by his voice that he was in the testiest of moods. Not even when conferring with me at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, on the occasion when I put sherbet in the ink had I sensed in him a more marked stirred-up-ness.

  'Hullo? Hullo? Hullo? Are you there? Will you kindly answer me? This is Mr Upjohn speaking.'

  They always say that when the nervous system isn't all it should be the thing to do is to take a couple of deep breaths. I took six, which of course occupied a certain amount of time, and the delay noticeably increased his umbrage. Even at this distance one could spot what I believe is called the deleterious animal magnetism.

  'Is that Brinkley Court?'

  I could put him straight there. None other, I told him.

  'Who are you?'

  I had to think for a moment. Then I remembered.

  'This is Wooster, Mr Upjohn.'

  'Well, listen to me carefully, Wooster.'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn. How do you like the "Bull and Bush"? Everything pretty snug?'

  'What did you say?'

  'I was asking if you like the "Bull and Bush".'

  'Never mind the "Bull and Bush".'

  'No, Mr Upjohn.'

  'This is of vital importance. I wish to speak to the man who packed my things.'

  Jeeves.'

  'What?'

  Jeeves.'

  'What do you mean by Jeeves?'

  Jeeves.'

  'You keep saying "Jeeves" and it makes no sense. Who packed my belongings?'

  Jeeves.'

  'Oh, Jeeves is the man's name?'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'

  'Well, he carelessly omitted to pack the notes for my speech at Market Snodsbury Grammar School tomorrow.'

  'No, really! I don't wonder you're sore.'

  'Saw whom?'

  'Sore with an r.'

  'What?'

  'No, sorry. I mean with an o-r-e.'

  'Wooster!'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn?'

  'Are you intoxicated?'

  'No, Mr Upjohn.'

  'Then you are drivelling. Stop drivelling, Wooster.'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'

  'Send for this man Jeeves immediately and ask him what he did with the notes for my speech.'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'

  'At once! Don't stand there saying "Yes, Mr Upjohn."'

  'No, Mr Upjohn.'

  'It is imperative that I have them in my possession immediately.'

  'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'

  Well, I suppose, looking at it squarely, I hadn't made much real progress and a not too close observer might quite possibly have got the impression that I had lost my nerve and was shirking the issue, but that didn't in my opinion justify Bobbie at this point in snatching the receiver from my grasp and bellowing the word 'Worm!' at me.

  'What did you call me?' said Upjohn.

  'I didn't call you anything,' I said. 'Somebody called me something.'

  'I wish to speak to this man Jeeves.'

  'You do, do you?' said Bobbie. 'Well, you're going to speak to me. This is Roberta Wickham, Upjohn. If I might have your kind attention for a moment.'

  I must say that, much as I disapproved in many ways of this carrot-topped Jezebel, as she was sometimes called, there was no getting away from it that she had mastered the art of talking to retired preparatory schoolmasters. The golden words came pouring out like syrup. Of course, she wasn't handicapped, as I had been, by having sojourned for some years beneath the roof of Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, and having at a malleable age associated with this old Frankenstein's monster when he was going good, but even so her performance deserved credit.

  Beginning with a curt 'Listen, Buster,' she proceeded to sketch out with admirable clearness the salient points in the situation as she envisaged it, and judging from the loud buzzing noises that came over the wire, clearly audible to me though now standing in the background, it was evident that the nub was not escaping him. They were the buzzing noises of a man slowly coming to the realization that a woman's hand had got him by the short hairs.

  Presently they died away, and Bobbie spoke.

  'That's fine,' she said. 'I was sure you'd come round to our view. Then I will be with you shortly. Mind there's plenty of ink in your fountain pen.'

  She hung up and legged it from the room, once more giving vent to those animal cries, and I turned to Jeeves as I had so often turned to him before when musing on the activities of the other sex.

  'Women, Jeeves!'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Were you following all that?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'I gather that Upjohn, vowing... How does it go?'

  'Vowing he would ne'er consent, consented, sir.'

  'He's withdrawing the suit.'

  'Yes, sir. And Miss Wickham prudently specified that he do so in writing.'

  'Thus avoiding all ranygazoo?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'She thinks of everything.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'I thought she was splendidly firm.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'It's the red hair that does it, I imagine.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'If anyone had told me that I should live to hear Aubrey Upjohn addressed as "Buster"...'

  I would have spoken further, but before I could get under way the door opened, revealing Ma Cream, and he shimmered silently from the room. Unless expressly desired to remain, he always shimmers off when what is called the Quality arrive.

  CHAPTER 20

  THIS was the first time I had seen Ma Cream today, she having gone off around noon to lunch with some friends in Birmingham, and I would willingly not have seen her now, for something in her manner seemed to suggest that she spelled trouble. She was looking more like Sherlock Holmes than ever. Slap a dressing gown on her and give her a violin, and she could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions asked. Fixing me with a penetrating eye, she said:

  'Oh, there you are, Mr Wooster. I was looking for you.'

  'You wished speech with me?'

  'Yes. I wanted to say that now perhaps you'd believe me.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'About that butler.'

  'What about him?'

  'I'll tell you what about him. I'd sit down, if I were you. It's a long story.'

  I sat down. Glad to, as a matter of fact, for the legs were feeling weak.

  'You remember I told you I mistrusted him from the first?'

  'Oh ah, yes. You did, didn't you?'

  'I said he had a criminal face.'

  'He can't help his face.'

  'He can help being a crook and an impostor. Calls himself a butler, does he? The police could shake that story. He's no more a butler than I am.'

  I did my best.

  'But think of those references of his.'

  'I am thinking of them.'

  'He couldn't have stuck it out as major-domo to a man like Sir Roderick Glossop, if he'd been dishonest.'

  'He didn't.'

  'But Bobbie said –'

  'I remember very clearly what Miss Wickham said. She told me he had been with Sir Roderick Glossop for years.'

  'Well, then.'

  'You think that puts him in the clear?'

  'Certainly.'

  'I don't, and I'll tell you why. Sir Roderick Glossop has a large clinic down in Somersetshire at a place called Chuffnell Regis, and a friend of mine is there. I wrote to her asking her to see Lady Glossop and get all the information she could about a former butler of hers named Swordfish. When I got back from Birmingham just now, I found a letter from her. She says that Lady Glossop told her she had never employed a butler called Swordfish. Try that one on for size.'

  I continued to do my best. The Woosters never give up.

  'You don't know Lady Glossop, do you?'

  'Of course I don't, or I'd have written to her direct.'

  'Charming woman, but with a memory like a sieve. The sort who's always losing one glove at the theatre. Naturally she wouldn't remember a butler's name. She probably thought all along it was Fotheringay or Binks or something. Very common, that sort of mental lapse. I was up at Oxford with a man called Robinson, and I was trying to think of his name the other day and the nearest I could get to it was Fosdyke. It only came back to me when I saw in The Times a few days ago that Herbert Robinson (26) of Grove Road, Ponder's End, had been had up at Bosher Street police court, charged with having stolen a pair of green and yellow checked trousers. Not the same chap, of course, but you get the idea. I've no doubt that one of these fine mornings Lady Glossop will suddenly smack herself on the forehead and cry "Swordfish! Of course! And all this time I've been thinking of the honest fellow as Catbird!"'

  She sniffed. And if I were to say that I liked the way she sniffed, I would be wilfully deceiving my public. It was the sort of sniff Sherlock Holmes would have sniffed when about to clap the darbies on the chap who had swiped the Maharajah's ruby.

  'Honest fellow, did you say? Then how do you account for this? I saw Willie just now, and he tells me that a valuable eighteenth-century cow-creamer which he bought from Mr Travers is missing. And where is it, you ask? At this moment it is tucked away in Swordfish's bedroom in a drawer under his clean shirts.'

  In stating that the Woosters never give up, I was in error. These words caught me amidships and took all the fighting spirit out of me, leaving me a spent force.

  'Oh, is it?' I said. Not good, but the best I could do.

  'Yes, sir, that's where it is. Directly Willie told me the thing had gone, I knew where it had gone to. I went to this man Swordfish's room and searched it, and there it was. I've sent for the police.'

  Again I had that feeling of having been spiritually knocked base over apex. I gaped at the woman.

  'You've sent for the police?'

  'I have, and they're sending a sergeant. He ought to be here at any moment. And shall I tell you something? I'm going now to stand outside Swordfish's door, to see that nobody tampers with the evidence. I'm not going to take any chances. I wouldn't want to say anything to suggest that I don't trust you implicitly, Mr Wooster, but I don't like the way you've been sticking up for this fellow. You've been far too sympathetic with him for my taste.'

  'It's just that I think he may have yielded to sudden temptation and all that.'

  'Nonsense. He's probably been acting this way all his life. I'll bet he was swiping things as a small boy.'

  'Only biscuits.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Or crackers you would call them, wouldn't you? He was telling me he occasionally pinched a cracker or two in his salad days.'

  'Well, there you are. You start with crackers and you end up with silver jugs. That's life,' she said, and buzzed off to keep her vigil, leaving me kicking myself because I'd forgotten to say anything about the quality of mercy not being strained. It isn't, as I dare say you know, and a mention of this might just have done the trick.

  I was still brooding on this oversight and wondering what was to be done for the best, when Bobbie and Aunt Dahlia came in, looking like a young female and an elderly female who were sitting on top of the world.

  'Roberta tells me she has got Upjohn to withdraw the libel suit,' said Aunt Dahlia. 'I couldn't be more pleased, but I'm blowed if I can imagine how she did it.'

  'Oh, I just appealed to his better feelings,' said Bobbie, giving me one of those significant glances. I got the message. The ancestor, she was warning me, must never learn that she had achieved her ends by jeopardizing the delivery of the Upjohn speech to the young scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School on the morrow. 'I told him that the quality of mercy... What's the matter, Bertie?'

  'Nothing. Just starting.'

  'What do you want to start for?'

  'I believe Brinkley Court is open for starting in at about this hour, is it not? The quality of mercy, you were saying?'

  'Yes. It isn't strained.'

  'I believe not.'

  'And in case you didn't know, it's twice bless'd and becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown. I drove over to the "Bull and Bush" and put this to Upjohn, and he saw my point. So now everything's fine.'

  I uttered a hacking laugh.

  'No,' I said, in answer to a query from Aunt Dahlia. 'I have not accidentally swallowed my tonsils, I was merely laughing hackingly Ironical that the young blister should say that everything is fine, for at this very moment disaster stares us in the eyeball. I have a story to relate which I think you will agree falls into the fretful porpentine class,' I said, and without further pourparlers I unshipped my tale.

  I had anticipated that it would shake them to their foundation garments, and it did. Aunt Dahlia reeled like an aunt struck behind with the ear with a blunt instrument, and Bobbie tottered like a red-haired girl who hadn't known it was loaded.

  'You see the set-up,' I continued, not wanting to rub it in but feeling that they should be fully briefed. 'Glossop will return from his afternoon off to find the awful majesty of the Law waiting for him, complete with handcuffs. We can hardly expect him to accept an exemplary sentence without a murmur, so his first move will be to establish his innocence by revealing all. "True," he will say, "I did pinch this bally cow-creamer, but merely because I thought Wilbert had pinched it and it ought to be returned to store," and he will go on to explain his position in the house – all this, mind you, in front of Ma Cream. So what ensues? The sergeant removes the gyves from his wrists, and Ma Cream asks you if she may use your telephone for a moment, as she wishes to call her husband on long distance. Pop Cream listens attentively to the tale she tells, and when Uncle Tom looks in on him later, he finds him with folded arms and a forbidding scowl. "Travers," he says, "the deal's off." "Off?" quivers Uncle Tom. "Off," says Cream. "O-ruddy-double-f. I don't do business with guys whose wives bring in loony-doctors to observe my son." A short while ago Ma Cream was urging me to try something on for size. I suggest that you do the same for this.'

  Aunt Dahlia had sunk into a chair and was starting to turn purple. Strong emotion always has this effect on her.

  'The only thing left, it seems to me,' I said, 'is to put our trust in a higher power.'

  'You're right,' said the relative, fanning her brow. 'Go and fetch Jeeves, Roberta. And what you do, Bertie, is get out that car of yours and scour the countryside for Glossop. It may be possible to head him off. Come on, come on, let's have some service. What are you waiting for?'

  I hadn't exactly been waiting. I'd only been thinking that the enterprise had more than a touch of looking for a needle in a haystack about it. You can't find loony-doctors on their afternoon off just by driving around Worcestershire in a car; you need bloodhounds and handkerchiefs for them to sniff at and all that professional stuff. Still, there it was.

  'Right ho,' I said. 'Anything to oblige.'

  CHAPTER 21

  AND, of course, as I had anticipated from the start, the thing was a wash-out. I stuck it out for about an hour and then, apprised by a hollow feeling in the midriff that the dinner hour was approaching, laid a course for home.

  Arriving there, I found Bobbie in the drawing-room. She had the air of a girl who was waiting for something, and when she told me that the cocktails would be coming along in a moment, I knew what it was.

  'Cocktails, eh? I could do with one or possibly more,' I said. 'My fruitless quest has taken it out of me. I couldn't find Glossop anywhere. He must be somewhere, of course, but Worcestershire hid its secret well.'

  'Glossop?' she said, seeming surprised. 'Oh, he's been back for ages.'

  She wasn't half as surprised as I was. The calm with which she spoke amazed me.

  'Good Lord! This is the end.'

  'What is?'

  'This is. Has he been pinched?'

  'Of course not. He told them who he was and explained everything.'

  'Oh, gosh!'

  'What's the matter? Oh, of course, I was forgetting. You don't know the latest developments. Jeeves solved everything.'

  'He did?'

  'With a wave of the hand. It was so simple, really. One wondered why one hadn't thought of it oneself. On his advice, Glossop revealed his identity and said your aunt had got him down here to observe you.'

  I reeled, and might have fallen, had I not clutched at a photograph on a near-by table of Uncle Tom in the uniform of the East Worcestershire Volunteers.

  'No?' I said.

  'And of course it carried immediate conviction with Mrs Cream. Your aunt explained that she had been uneasy about you for a long time, because you were always doing extraordinary things like sliding down water pipes and keeping twenty-three cats in your bedroom and all that, and Mrs Cream recalled the time when she had found you hunting for mice under her son's dressing table, so she quite agreed that it was high time you were under the observation of an experienced eye like Glossop's. She was greatly relieved when Glossop assured her that he was confident of effecting a cure. She said we must all be very, very kind to you. So everything's nice and smooth. It's extraordinary how things turn out for the best, isn't it?' she said, laughing merrily.

  Whether I would or would not at this juncture have taken her in an iron grasp and shaken her till she frothed is a point on which I can make no definite announcement. The chivalrous spirit of the Woosters would probably have restrained me, much as I resented that merry laughter, but as it happened the matter was not put to the test, for at this moment Jeeves entered, bearing a tray on which were glasses and a substantial shaker filled to the brim with the juice of the juniper berry. Bobbie drained her beaker with all possible speed and left us, saying that if she didn't get dressed, she'd be late for dinner, and Jeeves and I were alone, like a couple of bimbos in one of those movies where two strong men stand face to face and might is the only law.