“Jeeves! You haven’t got an idea?”
“Yes, madam.”
“That great brain of yours has really clicked as ever in the hour of need?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Jeeves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a shaking voice, “I am sorry I spoke so abruptly. I was not myself. I might have known that you would not come simply trying to make conversation. Tell us this idea of yours, Jeeves. Join our little group of thinkers and let us hear what you have to say. Make yourself at home, Jeeves, and give us the good word. Can you really get us out of this mess?”
“Yes, madam, if one of the gentlemen would be willing to ride a bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
“There is a bicycle in the gardener’s shed in the kitchen garden, madam. Possibly one of the gentlemen might feel disposed to ride over to Kingham Manor and procure the back-door key from Mr. Seppings.”
“Splendid, Jeeves!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Wonderful!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Attila!” said Aunt Dahlia, turning and speaking in a quiet, authoritative manner.
I had been expecting it. From the very moment those ill-judged words had passed the fellow’s lips, I had had a presentiment that a determined effort would be made to elect me as the goat, and I braced myself to resist and obstruct.
And as I was about to do so, while I was in the very act of summoning up all my eloquence to protest that I didn’t know how to ride a bike and couldn’t possibly learn in the brief time at my disposal, I’m dashed if the man didn’t go and nip me in the bud.
“Yes, madam, Mr. Wooster would perform the task admirably. He is an expert cyclist. He has often boasted to me of his triumphs on the wheel.”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything of the sort. It’s simply monstrous how one’s words get twisted. All I had ever done was to mention to him—casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race—that at the age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys’ Handicap at the local school treat.
A different thing from boasting of one’s triumphs on the wheel.
I mean, he was a man of the world and must have known that the form of school treats is never of the hottest. And, if I’m not mistaken, I had specifically told him that on the occasion referred to I had received half a lap start and that Willie Punting, the odds-on favourite to whom the race was expected to be a gift, had been forced to retire, owing to having pinched his elder brother’s machine without asking the elder brother, and the elder brother coming along just as the pistol went and giving him one on the side of the head and taking it away from him, thus rendering him a scratched-at-the-post non-starter. Yet, from the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or whatever it is.
And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
“That’s right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he used to go too.”
“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes…. And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”
I found speech:
“But I haven’t ridden for years.”
“Then it’s high time you began again.”
“I’ve probably forgotten how to ride.”