‘Oh, my sainted aunt!’
I spoke as harts do when heated in the chase and panting for cooling streams. It would have been plain to a far less astute mind than mine that this blighted Byng had got me by the short hairs and was in a position to dictate tactics and strategy.
Blackmail, of course, but the gentler sex love blackmail. Not once but on several occasions has my Aunt Dahlia bent me to her will by threatening that if I didn’t play ball she would bar me from her table, thus dashing Anatole’s lunches and dinners from my lips. Show me a delicately nurtured female, and I will show you a ruthless Napoleon of Crime prepared without turning a hair to put the screws on some unfortunate male whose services she happens to be in need of. There ought to be a law.
‘It looks as if the die were cast,’ I said reluctantly.
‘It is,’ she assured me.
‘You’re really adamant?’
‘Couldn’t be more so. My heart bleeds for Plank, and I’m going to
see that justice is done.’
‘Right ho, then. I’ll have a crack at it.’
‘That’s my little man. The whole thing’s so frightfully easy and simple. All you have to do is lift the thing off the dining-room table and smuggle it over to Plank. Think how his face’ll light up when you walk in on him with it. “My hero!” I expect he’ll say.’
And with a laugh which, though silvery, grated on my ear like a squeaking slate pencil, she buzzed off.
10
Proceeding to my room and turning in between the sheets, I composed myself for sleep, but I didn’t get a lot of it and what I did get was much disturbed by dreams of being chased across difficult country by sharks, some of them looking like Stiffy, some like Sir Watkyn Bassett, others like the dog Bartholomew. When Jeeves came shimmering in next morning with the breakfast tray, I lost no time in supplying him with full information re the harrow I found myself the toad under.
‘You see the posish, Jeeves,’ I concluded. ‘When the loss of the thing is discovered and the hue and cry sets in, who will be the immediate suspect? Wooster, Bertram. My name in this house is already mud, and the men up top will never think of looking further for the guilty party. On the other hand, if I refuse to sit in, Stiffy will consider herself scorned, and we all know what happens when you scorn a woman. She’ll tell Madeline Bassett that Gussie has been at the steak and kidney pie, and ruin and desolation will ensue. I see no way of beating the game.’
To my surprise, instead of raising an eyebrow the customary eighth of an inch and saying ‘Most disturbing, sir,’ he came within an ace of smiling. That is to say, the left corner of his mouth quivered almost imperceptibly before returning to position one.
‘You cannot accede to Miss Byng’s request, sir.’
I took an astonished sip of coffee. I couldn’t follow his train of thought. It seemed to me that he couldn’t have been listening.
‘But if I don’t, she’ll squeal to the F.B.I.’
‘No, sir, for the lady will be forced to admit that it is physically impossible for you to carry out her wishes. The statuette is no longer at large. It has been placed in Sir Watkyn’s collection room behind a stout steel door.’
‘Good Lord! How do you know?’
‘I chanced to pass the dining-room, sir, and inadvertently overheard a conversation between Sir Watkyn and his lordship.’
‘Call him Spode.’
‘Very good, sir. Mr. Spode was observing to Sir Watkyn that he had not at all liked the interest you displayed in the figurine at dinner last night.’
‘I was just giving Pop B. the old salve in the hope of sweetening the atmosphere a bit.’
‘Precisely, sir, but your statement that the object was “just the sort of thing Uncle Tom would like to have” made a deep impression on Mr. Spode. Remembering the unfortunate episode of the cow-creamer, which did so much to mar the pleasantness of your previous visit to Totleigh Towers, he informed Sir Watkyn that he had revised his original view that you were here to attempt to lure Miss Bassett from Mr. Fink-Nottle, and that he was now convinced that your motive in coming to the house had to do with the figurine, and that you were planning to purloin it on Mr. Travers’s behalf. Sir Watkyn, who appeared much moved, accepted the theory in toto, all the more readily because of an encounter which he said he had had with you in the early hours of this morning.’