I was shocked, absolutely shocked.
“My dear chap!” I said reproachfully.
“Do you dress for dinner every night, Bertie?”
“Jeeves,” I said coldly. The man was still standing like a statue by the door. “How many suits of evening clothes have I?”
“We have three suits full of evening dress, sir; two dinner jackets——”
“Three.”
“For practical purposes two only, sir. If you remember we cannot wear the third. We have also seven white waistcoats.”
“And shirts?”
“Four dozen, sir.”
“And white ties?”
“The first two shallow shelves in the chest of drawers are completely filled with our white ties, sir.”
I turned to Rocky.
“You see?”
The chappie writhed like an electric fan.
“I won’t do it! I can’t do it! I’ll be hanged if I’ll do it! How on earth can I dress up like that? Do you realize that most days I don’t get out of my pyjamas till five in the afternoon, and then I just put on an old sweater?”
I saw Jeeves wince, poor chap! This sort of revelation shocked his finest feelings.
“Then, what are you going to do about it?” I said.
“That’s what I want to know.”
“You might write and explain to your aunt.”
“I might—if I wanted her to get round to her lawyer’s in two rapid leaps and cut me out of her will.”
I saw his point.
“What do you suggest, Jeeves?” I said.
Jeeves cleared his throat respectfully.
“The crux of the matter would appear to be, sir, that Mr. Todd is obliged by the conditions under which the money is delivered into his possession to write Miss Rockmetteller long and detailed letters relating to his movements, and the only method by which this can be accomplished, if Mr. Todd adheres to his expressed intention of remaining in the country, is for Mr. Todd to induce some second party to gather the actual experiences which Miss Rockmetteller wishes reported to her, and to convey these to him in the shape of a careful report, on which it would be possible for him, with the aid of his imagination, to base the suggested correspondence.”
Having got which off the old diaphragm, Jeeves was silent. Rocky looked at me in a helpless sort of way. He hasn’t been brought up on Jeeves as I have, and he isn’t on to his curves.
“Could he put it a little clearer, Bertie?” he said. “I thought at the start it was going to make sense, but it kind of flickered. What’s the idea?”
“My dear old man, perfectly simple. I knew we could stand on Jeeves. All you’ve got to do is to get somebody to go round the town for you and take a few notes, and then you work the notes up into letters. That’s it, isn’t it, Jeeves?”
“Precisely, sir.”
The light of hope gleamed in Rocky’s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a startled way, dazed by the man’s vast intellect.
“But who would do it?” he said. “It would have to be a pretty smart sort of man, a man who would notice things.”
“Jeeves!” I said. “Let Jeeves do it.”
“But would he?”
“You would do it, wouldn’t you, Jeeves?”
For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish’s.
“I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have already visited some of New York’s places of interest on my evening out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.”
“Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first, Jeeves, is Reigelheimer’s. It’s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will show you the way.”
Jeeves shook his head.
“Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer’s. The place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.”
“You see?” I said to Rocky. “Leave it to Jeeves. He knows.”
It isn’t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything went absolutely right from the start.