Spode declined to string along with her in this view.
‘Not a bit of it. Life’s fine. At least, it will be if you give this blighter Wooster the push and marry me.’
‘I have always been devoted to you, Roderick.’
‘Well, then?’
‘Give me time to think.’
‘Carry on. Take all the time you need.’
‘I don’t want to break Bertie’s heart.’
‘Why not? Do him good.’
‘He loves me so dearly.’
‘Nonsense. I don’t suppose he has ever loved anything in his life except a dry martini.’
‘How can you say that? Did he not come here because he found it impossible to stay away from me?’
‘No, he jolly well didn’t. Don’t let him fool you on that point. He came here to pinch that black amber statuette of your father’s.’
‘What!’
‘That’s what. In addition to being half-witted, he’s a low thief.’
‘It can’t be true!’
‘Of course it’s true. His uncle wants the thing for his collection. I heard him plotting with his aunt on the telephone not half an hour ago. “It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it,” he was saying, “but I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette.” He’s always stealing things. The very first time I met him, in an antique shop in the Brompton Road, he as near as a toucher got away with your father’s umbrella.’
A monstrous charge, and one which I can readily refute. He and Pop Bassett and I were, I concede, in the antique shop in the Brompton Road to which he had alluded, but the umbrella sequence was purely one of those laughable misunderstandings. Pop Bassett had left the blunt instrument propped against a seventeenth-century chair, and what caused me to take it up was the primeval instinct which makes a man without an umbrella, as I happened to be that morning, reach out unconsciously for the nearest one in sight, like a flower turning to the sun. The whole thing could have been explained in two words, but they hadn’t let me say even one, and the slur had been allowed to rest on me.
‘You shock me, Roderick!’ said Madeline.
‘Yes, I thought it would make you sit up.’
‘If this is really so, if Bertie is really a thief -‘
‘Well?’
‘Naturally I will have nothing more to do with him. But I can’t believe it.’
Til go and fetch Sir Watkyn,’ said Spode. ‘Perhaps you’ll believe him.’
For several minutes after he had clumped out, Madeline must have stood in a reverie, for I didn’t hear a sound out of her. Then the door opened, and the next thing that came across was a cough which I had no difficulty in recognizing.
23
It was that soft cough of Jeeves’s which always reminds me of a very old sheep clearing its throat on a distant mountain top. He coughed it at me, if you remember, on the occasion when I first swam into his ken wearing the Alpine hat. It generally signifies disapproval, but I’ve known it to occur also when he’s about to touch on a topic of a delicate nature. And when he spoke, I knew that that was what he was going to do now, for there was a sort of hushed note in his voice.
‘I wonder if I might have a moment of your time, miss?’
‘Of course, Jeeves.’
‘It is with reference to Mr. Wooster.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I must begin by saying that I chanced to be passing the door when Lord Sidcup was speaking to you and inadvertently overheard his lordship’s observations on the subject of Mr. Wooster. His lordship has a carrying voice. And I find myself in a somewhat equivocal position, torn between loyalty to my employer and a natural desire to do my duty as a citizen.’
‘I don’t understand you, Jeeves,’ said Madeline, which made two of us.
He coughed again.
‘I am anxious not to take a liberty, miss, but if I may speak frankly -‘
‘Please do.’
‘Thank you, miss. His lordship’s words seemed to confirm a rumour which is circulating in the servants’ hall that you are contemplating a matrimonial union with Mr. Wooster. Would it be indiscreet of me if I were to inquire if this is so?’