‘I wonder if you remember, Mrs. Travers, a silver porringer I showed you on my arrival here.’
‘I do.’
‘Very valuable.’
‘So you told me.’
‘I kept it in the top left-hand drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedroom. It did not occur to me that there was any necessity to hide it. I took the honesty of everybody under your roof for granted.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Even when I found that Mr. Wooster was one of my fellow guests I took no precautions. It was a fatal blunder. He has just stolen it.’
I suppose it’s pretty much of a strain to keep up that grande dame stuff for any length of time, involving as it does rigidity of the facial muscles and the spinal column, for at these words the ancestor called it a day and reverted to the Quorn-and-Pytchleyness of her youth.
‘Don’t be a damned fool, Runkle. You’re talking rot. Bertie would never dream of doing such a thing, would you, Bertie?’
‘Not in a million years.’
‘The man’s an ass.’
‘One might almost say a silly ass.’
‘Comes of sleeping all the time.
‘ ‘I believe that’s the trouble.’
‘Addles the brain.’
‘Must, I imagine. It’s the same thing with Gus the cat. I love Gus like a brother, but after years of non- stop sleep he’s got about a,s much genuine intelligence as a Cabinet minister.’
‘I hope Runkle hasn’t annoyed you with his preposterous allegations?’
‘No, no, old ancestor, I’m not angry, just terribly terribly hurt.’
You’d have thought all this would have rendered Runkle a spent force and a mere shell of his former self, but his eye was not dimmed nor his natural force abated. Turning to the door, he paused there to add a few words.
‘I disagree with you, Mrs. Travers, in the view you take of your nephew’s honesty. I prefer to be guided by Lord Sidcup, who assures me that Mr. Wooster invariably steals anything that is not firmly fastened to the floor. It was only by the merest chance, Lord Sidcup tells me, that at their first meeting he did not make away with an umbrella belonging to Sir Watkyn Bassett, and from there he has, as one might put it, gone from strength to strength. Umbrellas, cow creamers, amber statuettes, cameras, all are grist to his mill. I was unfortunately asleep when he crept into my room, and he had plenty of time before I woke to do what he had come for. It was only some minutes after he had slunk out that it occurred to me to look in the top lefthand drawer of my chest of drawers. My suspicions were confirmed. The drawer was empty. He had got away with the swag. But I am a man of action. I have sent your butler to the police station to bring a constable to search Wooster’s room. I, until he arrives, propose to stand outside it, making sure that he does not go in and tamper with the evidence.’
Having said which in the most unpleasant of vocal deliveries, L. P. Runkle became conspic by his a, and the ancestor spoke with considerable eloquence on the subject of fat slobs of dubious parentage who had the immortal crust to send her butler on errands. I, too, was exercised by the concluding portion of his remarks.
‘I don’t like that,’ I said, addressing Jeeves, who during the recent proceedings had been standing in the background giving a lifelike impersonation of somebody who wasn’t there.
‘Sir?’
‘If the fuzz search my room, I’m sunk.’
‘Have no anxiety, sir. A police officer is not permitted to enter private property without authority, nor do the regulations allow him to ask the owner of such property for permission to enter.’
‘You’re sure of that? ‘
‘Yes, sir.’ Well, that was a crumb of comfort, but it would be deceiving my public if I said that Bertram Wooster was his usual nonchalant self. Too many things had been happening one on top of the other for him to be the carefree boulevardier one likes to see. If I hoped to clarify the various situations which were giving me the pip and erase the dark circles already beginning to form beneath the eyes, it would, I saw, be necessary for me to marshal my thoughts.