It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away. The sun was sinking over the hills and the gnats were fooling about all over the place, and everything smelled rather topping — what with the falling dew and so on — and I was just beginning to feel a little soothed by the peace of it all when suddenly I heard my name spoken.
‘It’s about Bertie.’
It was the loathsome voice of young blighted Edwin! For a moment I couldn’t locate it. Then I realized that it came from the library. My stroll had taken me within a few yards of the open window.
I had often wondered how those Johnnies in books did it — I mean the fellows with whom it was the work of a moment to do about a dozen things that ought to have taken them about ten minutes. But, as a matter of fact, it was the work of a moment with me to chuck away my cigarette, swear a bit, leap about ten yards, dive into a bush that stood near the library window, and stand there with my ears flapping. I was as certain as I’ve ever been of anything that all sorts of rotten things were in the offing.
‘About Bertie?’ I heard Uncle Willoughby say.
‘About Bertie and your parcel. I heard you talking to him just now. I believe he’s got it.’
When I tell you that just as I heard these frightful words a fairly substantial beetle of sorts dropped from the bush down the back of my neck, and I couldn’t even stir to squash the same, you will understand that I felt pretty rotten. Everything seemed against me.
‘What do you mean, boy? I was discussing the disappearance of my manuscript with Bertie only a moment back, and lie professed himself as perplexed by the mystery as myself.’
‘Well, I was in his room yesterday afternoon, doing him an act of kindness, and he came in with a parcel. I could see it, though he tried to keep it behind his back. And then he asked me to go to the smoking-room and snip some cigars for him; and about two minutes afterwards he came down – and he wasn’t carrying anything. So it must be in his room.’
I understand they deliberately teach these dashed Boy Scouts to cultivate their powers of observation and deduction and what not. Devilish thoughtless and inconsiderate of them, I call it. Look at the trouble it causes.
‘It sounds incredible,’ said Uncle Willoughby, thereby bucking me up a trifle.
‘Shall I go and look in his room?’ asked young blighted Edwin. ‘ I’m sure the parcel’s there.’
‘But what could be his motive for perpetrating this extraordinary theft?’
‘Perhaps he’s a – what you said just now.’
‘A kleptomaniac? Impossible!’
‘It might have been Bertie who took all those things from the very start,’ suggested the little brute hopefully. ‘He may be like Raffles.’
‘Raffles?’
‘He’s a chap in a book who went about pinching things.’
‘I cannot believe that Bertie would — ah — go about pinching things.’
‘Well, I’m sure he’s got the parcel. I’ll tell you what you might do. You might say that Mr Berkeley wired that he had left something here. He had Bertie’s room, you know. You might say you wanted to look for it.’
‘That would be possible. I –‘
I didn’t wait to hear any more. Things were getting too hot. I sneaked softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn’t the key. It wasn’t for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it out again.
Where the dickens were my evening things? I had looked all over the place before I remembered that Jeeves must have taken them away to brush. To leap at the bell and ring it was, with me, the work of a moment. I had just rung it when there was a footstep outside, and in came Uncle Willoughby.