After the ancestor had said ‘For heaven’s sake! ‘ or ‘Gorblimey’ or whatever it was, indicating that her visitor’s story interested her strongly, the McCorkadale resumed. And what she resumed about unquestionably put the frosting on the cake. Words of doom is the only way I can think of to describe the words she spoke as.
‘The man, it appeared, was a retired valet, and he belonged to a club for butlers and valets in London, one of the rules of which was that all members were obliged to record in the club book information about their employers. My visitor explained that he had been at one time in the employment of Mr. Winship and had duly recorded a number of the latter’s escapades which if made public, would be certain to make the worst impression on the voters of Market Snodsbury.’
This surprised me. I hadn’t had a notion that Bingley had ever worked for Ginger. It just shows the truth of the old saying that half the world doesn’t know how the other three-quarters live.
‘He then told me without a blush of shame that on his latest visit to London he had purloined this book and now had it in his possession.’
I gasped with horror. I don’t know why, but the thought that Bingley must have been pinching the thing at the very moment when Jeeves and I were sipping our snootfuls in the next room seemed to make it so particularly poignant. Not that it wouldn’t have been pretty poignant anyway. For years I had been haunted by the fear that the Junior Ganymede club book, with all the dynamite it contained, would get into the wrong hands, and the hands it had got into couldn’t have been more the sort of hands you would have wished it hadn’t. I don’t know if I make myself clear, but what I’m driving at is that if I had been picking a degraded character to get away with that book, Bingley was the last character I would have picked. I remember Jeeves speaking of someone who was fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and that was Bingley all over. The man was wholly without finer feelings, and when you come up against someone without finer feelings, you’ve had it.
The aged relative was not blind to the drama of the situation. She uttered an awed ‘Lord love a duck!’, and the McCorkadale said she might well say ‘Lord love a duck’, though it was not an expression she would have used herself.
‘What did you do? ‘ the ancestor asked, all agog, and the McCorkadale gave that sniffing snort of hers. It was partly like an escape of steam and partly like two or three cats unexpectedly encountering two or three dogs, with just a suggestion of a cobra waking up cross in the morning. I wondered how it had affected the late Mr. McCorkadale. Probably made him feel that there are worse things than being run over by a municipal tram.
‘I sent him away with a flea in his ear. I pride myself on being a fair fighter, and his proposition revolted me. If you want to have him arrested, though I am afraid I cannot see how it can be done, he lives at 5 Ormond Crescent. He appears to have asked my maid to look in and see his etchings on her afternoon off, and he gave her his address. But, as I say, there would seem not to be sufficient evidence for an arrest. Our conversation was without witnesses, and he would simply have to deny possession of the book. A pity. I would have enjoyed seeing a man like that hanged, drawn and quartered.’
She snorted again, and the ancestor, who always knows what the book of etiquette would advise, came across with the soothing syrup. She said Ma McCorkadale deserved a medal.
‘Not at all.’
‘It was splendid of you to turn the man down.’
‘As I said, I am a fair fighter.’
‘Apart from your revulsion at his proposition, it must have been very annoying for you to be interrupted when you were working on your speech.’
‘Especially as a few moments before this person appeared I had been interrupted by an extraordinary young man who gave me the impression of being halfwitted.’