“Ripping!” I said. “Is Lord Pershore in, Jeeves?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you expect him back to dinner?”
“No, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“In prison, sir.”
Have you ever trodden on a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you? That’s how I felt then.
“In prison!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t mean—in prison?”
“Yes, sir.”
I lowered myself into a chair.
“Why?” I said.
“He assaulted a constable, sir.”
“Lord Pershore assaulted a constable!”
“Yes, sir.”
I digested this.
“But, Jeeves, I say! This is frightful!”
“Sir?”
“What will Lady Malvern say when she finds out?”
“I do not fancy that her ladyship will find out, sir.”
“But she’ll come back and want to know where he is.”
“I rather fancy, sir, that his lordship’s bit of time will have run out by then.”
“But supposing it hasn’t?”
“In that event, sir, it may be judicious to prevaricate a little.”
“How?”
“If I might make the suggestion, sir, I should inform her ladyship that his lordship has left for a short visit to Boston.”
“Why Boston?”
“Very interesting and respectable centre, sir.”
“Jeeves, I believe you’ve hit it.”
“I fancy so, sir.”
“Why, this is really the best thing that could have happened. If this hadn’t turned up to prevent him, young Motty would have been in a sanatorium by the time Lady Malvern got back.”
“Exactly, sir.”
The more I looked at it in that way, the sounder this prison wheeze seemed to me. There was no doubt in the world that prison was just what the doctor ordered for Motty. It was the only thing that could have pulled him up. I was sorry for the poor blighter, but, after all, I reflected, a chappie who had lived all his life with Lady Malvern, in a small village in the interior of Shropshire, wouldn’t have much to kick at in a prison. Altogether, I began to feel absolutely braced again. Life became like what the poet Johnnie says—one grand, sweet song. Things went on so comfortably and peacefully for a couple of weeks that I give you my word that I’d almost forgotten such a person as Motty existed. The only flaw in the scheme of things was that Jeeves was still pained and distant. It wasn’t anything he said or did, mind you, but there was a rummy something about him all the time. Once when I was tying the pink tie I caught sight of him in the looking-glass. There was a kind of grieved look in his eye.
And then Lady Malvern came back, a good bit ahead of schedule. I hadn’t been expecting her for days. I’d forgotten how time had been slipping along. She turned up one morning while I was still in bed sipping tea and thinking of this and that. Jeeves flowed in with the announcement that he had just loosed her into the sitting-room. I draped a few garments round me and went in.
There she was, sitting in the same arm-chair, looking as massive as ever. The only difference was that she didn’t uncover the teeth, as she had done the first time.
“Good morning,” I said. “So you’ve got back, what?”
“I have got back.”
There was something sort of bleak about her tone, rather as if she had swallowed an east wind. This I took to be due to the fact that she probably hadn’t breakfasted. It’s only after a bit of breakfast that I’m able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I’m never much of a lad till I’ve engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.
“I suppose you haven’t breakfasted?”
“I have not yet breakfasted.”
“Won’t you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?”
“No, thank you.”
She spoke as if she belonged to an anti-sausage society or a league for the suppression of eggs. There was a bit of a silence.
“I called on you last night,” she said, “but you were out.”
“Awfully sorry! Had a pleasant trip?”
“Extremely, thank you.”
“See everything? Niag’ra Falls, Yellowstone Park, and the jolly old Grand Canyon, and what-not?”
“I saw a great deal.”