‘ Actually, I had breathed deeply, not puffed, and certainly not like Uncle Tom when he goes upstairs too fast, but I suppose to an aunt there isn’t much difference between a deep-breathing nephew and a puffing nephew, and anyway I was in no mood to discuss the point.
‘You don’t know who it was who threw that potato, do you?’ I asked.
‘The one that hit Spode? I don’t. It sort of came out of the void. Why?’
‘Because if I knew who it was, I would send camels bearing apes, ivory and peacocks to his address. He saved me from the fate that is worse than death. I allude to marriage with the Bassett disaster.’
‘Was she going to marry you?’
‘According to Spode.’
A look almost of awe came into the ancestor’s face.
‘How right you were,’ she said, ‘when you told me once that you had faith in your star. I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve been definitely headed for the altar with apparently no hope of evading the firing squad, and every time something has happened which enabled you to wriggle out of it. It’s uncanny.’
She would, I think, have gone deeper into the matter, for already she had begun to pay a marked tribute to my guardian angel, who, she said, plainly knew his job from soup to nuts, but at this moment Seppings appeared and asked her if she would have a word with Jeeves, and she went out to have it.
And I had just put my feet up on the chaise longue and was starting to muse ecstatically on the astounding bit of luck which had removed the Bassett menace from my life, when my mood of what the French call bien etre was given the sleeve across the windpipe by the entrance of L. P. Runkle, the mere sight of whom, circs being what they were, was enough to freeze the blood and make each particular hair stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, as I have heard Jeeves put it.
I wasn’t glad to see him, but he seemed glad to see me.
‘Oh, there you are,’ he said. ‘They told me you had skipped. Very sensible of you to come back. It’s never any good going on the run, because the police are sure to get you sooner, or later, and it makes it all the worse for you if you’ve done a bolt.’
With cold dignity I said I had had to go up to London on business. He paid no attention to this. He was scrutinizing me rather in the manner of the halibut on the fishmonger’s slab to which the ancestor had referred m our recent conversation.
‘The odd thing is,’ he said, continuing to scan me closely, ‘that you haven’t a criminal face. It’s a silly, fatuous face, but not criminal. You remind me of one of those fellows who do dances with the soubrette in musical comedy.’
Come, come, I said to myself, this is better. Spode had compared me to a member of the ensemble. In the view of L. P. Runkle I was at any rate one of the principals. Moving up in the world.
‘Must be a great help to you in your business. Lulls people into a false security. They think there can’t be any danger from someone who looks like you, they’re off their guard, and wham! you’ve got away with their umbrellas and cameras. No doubt you owe all your successes to this. But you know the old saying about the pitcher going too often to the well. This time you’re for it. This time –‘
He broke off, not because he had come to an end of his very offensive remarks but because Florence had joined us, and her appearance immediately claimed his attention. She was far from being dapper. It was plain that she had been in the forefront of the late battle, for whereas Ginger had merely had egg in his hair, she was, as it were, festooned in egg. She had evidently been right in the centre of the barrage. In all political meetings of the stormier kind these things are largely a matter of luck. A escapes unscathed, B becomes a human omelette. A more tactful man than L. P. Runkle would have affected not to notice this, but I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him to affect not to notice things.