“What the devil do you think you’re talking about?”
I didn’t like his tone. Brusque.
“Correct me if I am wrong,” I said, with a certain stiffness, “but I assumed that you were apologizing for your foul conduct in looping back the last ring that night in the Drones, causing me to plunge into the swimming b. in the full soup and fish.”
“Ass! Not that, at all.”
“Then what?”
“This Bassett business.”
“What Bassett business?”
“Bertie,” said Tuppy, “when you told me last night that you were in love with Madeline Bassett, I gave you the impression that I believed you, but I didn’t. The thing seemed too incredible. However, since then I have made inquiries, and the facts appear to square with your statement. I have now come to apologize for doubting you.”
“Made inquiries?”
“I asked her if you had proposed to her, and she said, yes, you had.”
“Tuppy! You didn’t?”
“I did.”
“Have you no delicacy, no proper feeling?”
“No.”
“Oh? Well, right-ho, of course, but I think you ought to have.”
“Delicacy be dashed. I wanted to be certain that it was not you who stole Angela from me. I now know it wasn’t.”
So long as he knew that, I didn’t so much mind him having no delicacy.
“Ah,” I said. “Well, that’s fine. Hold that thought.”
“I have found out who it was.”
“What?”
He stood brooding for a moment. His eyes were smouldering with a dull fire. His jaw stuck out like the back of Jeeves’s head.
“Bertie,” he said, “do you remember what I swore I would do to the chap who stole Angela from me?”
“As nearly as I recall, you planned to pull him inside out–-”
“—and make him swallow himself. Correct. The programme still holds good.”
“But, Tuppy, I keep assuring you, as a competent eyewitness, that nobody snitched Angela from you during that Cannes trip.”
“No. But they did after she got back.”
“What?”
“Don’t keep saying, ‘What?’ You heard.”
“But she hasn’t seen anybody since she got back.”
“Oh, no? How about that newt bloke?”
“Gussie?”
“Precisely. The serpent Fink-Nottle.”
This seemed to me absolute gibbering.
“But Gussie loves the Bassett.”
“You can’t all love this blighted Bassett. What astonishes me is that anyone can do it. He loves Angela, I tell you. And she loves him.”
“But Angela handed you your hat before Gussie ever got here.”
“No, she didn’t. Couple of hours after.”
“He couldn’t have fallen in love with her in a couple of hours.”
“Why not? I fell in love with her in a couple of minutes. I worshipped her immediately we met, the popeyed little excrescence.”
“But, dash it–-”
“Don’t argue, Bertie. The facts are all docketed. She loves this newt-nuzzling blister.”
“Quite absurd, laddie—quite absurd.”
“Oh?” He ground a heel into the carpet—a thing I’ve often read about, but had never seen done before. “Then perhaps you will explain how it is that she happens to come to be engaged to him?”
You could have knocked me down with a f.
“Engaged to him?”
“She told me herself.”
“She was kidding you.”
“She was not kidding me. Shortly after the conclusion of this afternoon’s binge at Market Snodsbury Grammar School he asked her to marry him, and she appears to have right-hoed without a murmur.”
“There must be some mistake.”
“There was. The snake Fink-Nottle made it, and by now I bet he realizes it. I’ve been chasing him since 5.30.”
“Chasing him?”
“All over the place. I want to pull his head off.”
“I see. Quite.”
“You haven’t seen him, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Well, if you do, say goodbye to him quickly and put in your order for lilies…. Oh, Jeeves.”
“Sir?”
I hadn’t heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn’t have to open doors. He’s like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about—the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he’s not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.