‘He’s looking for you. He has a strange story to relate. You know about Plank?’
‘What about him?’
Til tell you what about him. Plank to you hitherto has been merely a shadowy figure who hangs out at Hockley-cum-Meston and sells black amber statuettes to people, but he has another side to him.’
She betrayed a certain impatience.
‘If you think I’m interested in Plank -‘
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You will be. He has, as I was saying, another side to him. He is a landed proprietor with vicarages in his gift, and to cut a long story down to a short-short, as one always likes to do when possible, he has just given one to Stinker.’
I had been right in supposing that the information would have a marked effect on her dark mood. I have never actually seen a corpse spring from its bier and start being the life and soul of the party, but I should imagine that its deportment would closely resemble that of this young Byng as the impact of my words came home to her. A sudden light shot into her eyes, which, as Plank had correctly said, were large and blue, and an ecstatic ‘Well, Lord love a duck!’ escaped her. Then doubts seemed to creep in, for the eyes clouded over again.
‘Is this true?’
‘Absolutely official.’
‘You aren’t pulling my leg?’
I drew myself up rather haughtily.
‘I wouldn’t dream of pulling your leg. Do you think Bertram Wooster is the sort of chap who thinks it funny to raise people’s hopes, only to … what, Jeeves?’
‘Dash them to the ground, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
‘You may take this information as coming straight from the mouth of the stable cat. I was present when the deal went through. Behind the sofa, but present.’
She still seemed at a loss.
‘But I don’t understand. Plank has never met Harold.’
‘Jeeves brought them together.’
‘Did you, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘ ‘At-a-boy!’
‘Thank you, miss.’
‘And he’s really given Harold a vicarage?’
‘The vicarage of Hockley-cum-Meston. He’s embodying it in the form of a letter tonight. At the moment there’s a vicar still vicking, but he’s infirm and old and wants to turn it up as soon as they can put on an understudy. The way things look, I should imagine that we shall be able to unleash Stinker on the Hockley-cum-Meston souls in the course of the next few days.’
My simple words and earnest manner had resolved the last of her doubts. The misgivings she may have had as to whether this was the real ginger vanished. Her eyes shone more like twin stars than anything, and she uttered animal cries and danced a few dance steps. Presently she paused, and put a question.
‘What’s Plank like?’
‘How do you mean, what’s he like?’
‘He hasn’t a beard, has he?’
‘No, no beard.’
‘That’s good, because I want to kiss him, and if he had a beard, it would give me pause.’
‘Dismiss the notion,’ I urged, for Plank’s psychology was an open book to me. The whole trend of that confirmed bachelor’s conversation had left me with the impression that he would find it infinitely preferable to be spiked in the leg with a native dagger than to have popsies covering his upturned face with kisses. ‘He’d have a fit.’
‘Well, I must kiss somebody. Shall I kiss you, Jeeves?’
‘No, thank you, miss.’
‘You, Bertie?’
Td rather you didn’t.’
‘Then I’ve a good mind to go and kiss Uncle Watkyn, louse of the first water though he has recently shown himself.’
‘How do you mean, recently?’
‘And having kissed him I shall tell him the news and taunt him vigorously with having let a good thing get away from him. I shall tell him that when he declined to avail himself of Harold’s services he was like the Indian.’
I did not get her drift.
‘What Indian?’
‘The base one my governesses used to make me read about, the poor simp whose hand . . . How does it go, Jeeves?’
‘Threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe, miss.’
‘That’s right. And I shall tell him I hope the vicar he does get will be a weed of a man who has a chronic cold in the head and bleats. Oh, by the way, talking of Uncle Watkyn reminds me. I shan’t have any use for this now.’