‘Yes, Jeeves, it is quite true.’
‘If you will pardon me for saying so, I think you are making a mistake.’
Well spoken, Jeeves, you are on the right lines, I was saying to myself, and I hoped he was going to rub it in. I waited anxiously for Madeline’s reply, a little afraid that she would draw herself to her full height and dismiss him from her presence. But she didn’t. She merely said again that she didn’t understand him.
‘If I might explain, miss. I am loath to criticize my employer, but I feel that you should know that he is a kleptomaniac.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, miss. I had hoped to be able to preserve his little secret, as I have always done hitherto, but he has now gone to lengths which I cannot countenance. In going through his effects this afternoon I discovered this small black figure, concealed beneath his underwear.’
I heard Madeline utter a sound like a dying soda-water syphon.
‘But that belongs to my father!’
‘If I may say so, nothing belongs to anyone if Mr. Wooster takes a fancy to it.’
‘Then Lord Sidcup was right?’
‘Precisely, miss.’
‘He said Mr. Wooster tried to steal my father’s umbrella.’
‘I heard him, and the charge was well founded. Umbrellas, jewellery, statuettes, they are all grist to Mr. Wooster’s mill. I do not think he can help it. It is a form of mental illness. But whether a jury would take that view, I cannot say.’
Madeline went into the soda-syphon routine once more.
‘You mean he might be sent to prison?’
‘It is a contingency that seems to me far from remote.’
Again I felt that he was on the right lines. His trained senses told him that if there’s one thing that puts a girl off marrying a chap, it is the thought that the honeymoon may be spoiled at any moment by the arrival of Inspectors at the love nest, come to scoop him in for larceny. No young bride likes that sort of thing, and you can’t blame her if she finds herself preferring to team up with someone like Spode, who, though a gorilla in fairly human shape, is known to keep strictly on the right side of the law. I could almost hear Madeline’s thoughts turning in this direction, and I applauded Jeeves’s sound grip on the psychology of the individual, as he calls it.
Of course, I could see that all this wasn’t going to make my position in the Bassett home any too good, but there are times when only the surgeon’s knife will serve. And I had the sustaining thought that if ever I got out from behind this sofa I could sneak off to where my car waited champing at the bit and drive off Londonwards without stopping to say goodbye and thanks for a delightful visit. This would obviate – is it obviate? – all unpleasantness.
Madeline continued shaken.
‘Oh dear, Oh dear!’ she said.
‘Yes, miss.’
‘This has come as a great shock.’
‘I can readily appreciate it, miss.’
‘Have you known of this long?’
‘Ever since I entered Mr. Wooster’s employment.’
‘Oh dear, Oh dear! Well, thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, miss.’
I think Jeeves must have shimmered off after this, for silence fell and nothing happened except that my nose began to tickle. I would have given ten quid to have been able to sneeze, but this of course was outside the range of practical politics. I just crouched there, thinking of this and that, and after quite a while the door opened once more, this time to admit something in the nature of a mob scene. I could see three pairs of shoes, and deduced that they were those of Spode, Pop Bassett and Plank. Spode, it will be recalled, had gone to fetch Pop, and Plank presumably had come along for the ride, hoping no doubt for something moist at journey’s end.
Spode was the first to speak, and his voice rang with the triumph that comes into the voices of suitors who have caught a dangerous rival bending.
‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought Sir Watkyn to support my statement that Wooster is a low sneak thief who goes about snapping up everything that isn’t nailed down. You agree, Sir Watkyn?’