Stinker said he didn’t know how to thank him, and Plank said that was all right, no need of any thanks.
‘I’m the one who ought to be grateful. We’re all right at half-back and three-quarters, but we lost to Upper Bleaching last year simply because our prop forward proved a broken reed. This year we’ll show ’em. Amazing bit of luck finding you, and I could never have done it if it hadn’t been for a friend of mine, a Chief Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard. He phoned me just now and told me you were to be found at Totleigh-in-the-Wold. He said if I called at Totleigh Towers, they would give me your address. Extraordinary how these Scotland Yard fellows nose things out. The result of years of practise, I suppose. What was that noise?’ Stinker said he had heard nothing.
‘Sort of gasping noise. Seemed to come from behind that sofa. Take a look.’
I was aware for a moment of Stinker’s face peering down at me; then he turned away.
‘There’s nothing behind the sofa,’ he said, very decently imperilling his immortal soul by falsifying the facts on behalf of a pal.
‘Thought it might be a dog being sick,’ said Plank.
And I suppose it had sounded rather like that. The revelation of Jeeves’s black treachery had shaken me to my foundations, causing me
to forget that in the existing circs silence was golden. A silly thing to do, of course, to gasp like that, but, dash it, if for years you have nursed a gentleman’s personal gentleman in your bosom and out of a blue sky you find that he has deliberately sicked Brazilian explorers on to you, I maintain that you’re fully entitled to behave like a dog in the throes of nausea. I could make nothing of his scurvy conduct, and was so stunned that for a minute or two I lost the thread of the conversation. When the mists cleared, Plank was speaking, and the subject had been changed.
‘I wonder how Bassett is getting on with that daughter of his. Do you know anything of this chap Wooster?’
‘He’s one of my best friends.’
‘Bassett doesn’t seem too fond of him.’
‘No.’
‘Ah well, we all have our likes and dislikes. Which of the two girls is this Madeline he was speaking of? I’ve never met them, but I’ve seen them around. Is she the little squirt with the large blue eyes?’
I should imagine Stinker didn’t care overmuch for hearing his loved one described as a little squirt, though reason must have told him that that was precisely what she was, but he replied without heat. ‘No, that’s Sir Watkyn’s niece, Stephanie Byng.’
‘Byng? Now why does that name seem to ring a bell? Oh yes, of course. Old Johnny Byng, who was with me on one of my expeditions. Red-haired fellow, haven’t seen him for years. He was bitten by a puma, poor chap, and they tell me he still hesitates in a rather noticeable manner before sitting down. Stephanie Byng, eh? You know her, of course?’
‘Very well.’
‘Nice girl?’
‘That’s how she seems to me, and if you don’t mind, I’ll be going and telling her the good news.’
‘What good news?’
‘About the vicarage.’
‘Oh, ah, yes. You think she’ll be interested?’
‘I’m sure she will. We’re going to be married.’
‘Good God! No chance of getting out of it?’
‘I don’t want to get out of it.’
‘Amazing! I once hitch-hiked all the way from Johannesburg to Cape Town to avoid getting married, and here you are seeming quite pleased at the prospect. Oh well, no accounting for tastes. All right, you run along. And I suppose I’d better have a word with Bassett before I leave. Fellow bores me stiff, but one has to be civil.’
The door closed and silence fell, and after waiting a few minutes, just n case I felt u was safe to surface. And I had just done so and was hmbenng up the limbs, which had become somewhat cramped when the door opened and Jeeves came in carrying a tray.
21
‘Good evening, sir,’ he said. ‘Would you care for an appetizer? I was obliging Mr. Butterfield by bringing them. He is engaged at the moment in listening at the door of the room where Sir Watkyn is in conference with Miss Bassett. He tells me he is compiling his Memoirs, never misses an opportunity of gathering suitable material.’