‘So I was right!’
‘Eh?’
‘In my suspicions.’
‘Eh?’ ‘
‘They have been confirmed.’
‘Eh?’
‘Stop saying “Eh?”, you miserable worm, and listen to me.’
I humoured him. You might have supposed that having so recently seen him knocked base over apex by the Rev. H.P. Pinker and subsequently laid out cold by Emerald Stoker and her basin of beans I would have regarded him with contempt as pretty small-time stuff and rebuked him sharply for calling me a miserable worm, but the idea never so much as crossed my mind. He had suffered reverses, true, but they had left him with his spirit unbroken and the muscles of his brawny arms just as much like iron bands as they had always been, and the way I looked at it was that if he wanted me to go easy on the word ‘Eh?’ he had only to say so.
Continuing to pierce me with the eye that was still on duty, he said:
‘I happened to be passing through the hall just now.’
‘Oh?’
‘I heard you talking on the telephone.’
‘Oh?’
‘You were speaking to your aunt.’
‘Oh?’
‘Don’t keep saying “Oh?”, blast you.’
Well, these restrictions were making it a bit hard for me to hold up my end of the conversation, but there seemed nothing to be done about it. I maintained a rather dignified silence, and he resumed his remarks.
‘Your aunt was urging you to steal Sir Watkyn’s amber statuette.’
‘She wasn’t!’
‘Pardon me. I thought you would try to deny the charge, so I took the precaution of jotting down your actual words. The statuette was mentioned and you said “It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it.” She then presumably urged you to spare no effort, for you said “Well, I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette. Rely on me, Aunt Dahlia.” What the devil are you gargling about?’
‘Not gargling,’ I corrected. ‘Laughing lightly. Because you’ve got the whole thing wrong, though I must say the way you’ve managed to record the dialogue does you a good deal of credit. Do you use shorthand?’
‘How do you mean I’ve got it wrong?’
‘Aunt Dahlia was asking me to try to buy the thing from Sir Watkyn.’
He snorted and said ‘Ha!’ and I thought it a bit unjust that he should say ‘Ha!’ if I wasn’t allowed to say ‘Eh?’ and ‘Oh?’ There should always be a certain give and take in these matters, or where are you?
‘Do you expect me to believe that?’
‘Don’t you believe it?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m not an ass.’
This, of course, was a debatable point, as I once heard Jeeves describe it, but I didn’t press it.
‘I know that aunt of yours,’ he proceeded. ‘She would steal the filling out of your back teeth if she thought she could do it without detection.’ He paused for a moment, and I knew that he was thinking of the cow-creamer. He had always – and, I must admit, not without reason – suspected the old flesh-and-blood of being the motive force behind its disappearance, and I imagine it had been a nasty knock to him that nothing could be proved. ‘Well, I strongly advise you, Wooster, not to let her make a catspaw of you this time, because if you’re caught, as you certainly will be, you’ll be for it. Don’t think that Sir Watkyn will hush the thing up to avoid a scandal. You’ll go to prison, that’s where you’ll go. He dislikes you intensely, and nothing would please him more than to be able to give you a long stretch without the option.’
I thought this showed a vindictive spirit in the old wart hog and one that I deplored, but I felt it would be injudicious to say so. I merely nodded understandingly. I was thankful that there was no danger of this contingency, as Jeeves would have called it, arising. Strong in the knowledge that nothing would induce me to pinch their ruddy statuette, I was able to remain calm and nonchalant, or as calm and nonchalant as you can be when a fellow eight foot six in height with one eye bunged up and the other behaving like an oxyacetylene blowpipe is glaring at you.