lanation. I love Magnolia.' 'I thought you loved Florence.' 'So did I. But you know how apt one is to make mistakes.' 'Of course.' 'When you're looking for the ideal girl, I mean.' 'Quite.' 'I dare say you've had the same experience yourself.' 'From time to time.' 'Happens to everybody, I expect.' 'I shouldn't wonder.' 'Where one goes wrong when looking for the ideal girl is in making one's selection before walking the full length of the counter. You meet someone with a perfect profile, platinum-blonde hair and a willowy figure, and you think your search is over. "Bingo!" you say to yourself. "This is the one. Accept no substitutes." Little knowing that you are linking your lot with that of a female sergeant-major with strong views on the subject of discipline, and that if you'd only gone on a bit further you would have found the sweetest, kindest, gentlest girl that ever took down outgoing mail in shorthand, who would love you and cherish you and would never dream of giving you hell, no matter what the circumstances. I allude to Magnolia Glendennon.' 'I thought you did.' 'I can't tell you how I feel about her, Bertie.' 'Don't try.' 'Ever since we came down here I've had a lurking suspicion that she was the mate for me and that in signing on the dotted line with Florence I had made the boner of a lifetime. Just now my last doubts were dispelled.' 'What happened just now?' 'She rubbed the back of my neck. My interview with Florence, coming on top of that ghastly Chamber of Commerce lunch, had given me a splitting headache, and she rubbed the back of my neck. Then I knew. As those soft fingers touched my skin like dainty butterflies hovering over a flower -' 'Right-ho.' 'It was a revelation, Bertie. I knew that I had come to journey's end. I said to myself, "This is a good thing. Push it along." I turned. I grasped her hand. I gazed into her eyes. She gazed into mine. I told her I loved her. She said so she did me. She fell into my arms. I grabbed her. We stood murmuring endearments, and for a while everything was fine. Couldn't have been better. Then a thought struck me. There was a snag. You've probably spotted it.' 'Florence?' 'Exactly. Bossy though she is, plain-spoken though she may be when anything displeases her, and I wish you could have heard her after that Chamber of Commerce lunch, I am still engaged to her. And while girls can break engagements till the cows come home, men can't.' I followed his train of thought. It was evident that he, like me, aimed at being a preux chevalier, and you simply can't be preux or anything like it if you go about the place getting betrothed and then telling the party of the second part it's all off. It seemed to me that the snag which had raised its ugly head was one of formidable -you might say king-size - dimensions, well calculated to make the current of whatever he proposed to do about it turn awry and lose the name of action. But when I put this to him with a sympathetic tremor in my voice, and I'm not sure I didn't clasp his hand, he surprised me by chuckling like a leaky radiator. 'That's all right,' he said. 'It would, I admit, appear to be a tricky situation, but I can handle it. I'm going to get Florence to break the engagement.' He spoke with such a gay, confident ring in his voice, so like the old ancestor predicting what she was going to do to L.P. Runkle in the playing-on-a-stringed-instrument line, that I was loath, if that's the word I want, to say anything to depress him, but the question had to be asked. 'How?' I said, asking it. 'Quite simple. We agreed, I think, that she has no use for a loser. I propose to lose this election.' Well, it was a thought of course, and I was in complete agreement with his supposition that if the McCorkadale nosed ahead of him in the voting, Florence would in all probability hand him the pink slip, but where it seemed to me that the current went awry was that he had no means of knowing that the electorate would put him in second place. Of course voters are like aunts, you never know what they will be up to from one day to the next, but it was a thing you couldn't count on. I mentioned this to him, and he repeated his impersonation of a leaky radiator. 'Don't you worry, Bertie. I have the situation well in hand. Something happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch which justifies my confidence.' 'What happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch?' 'Well, the first thing that happened after lunch was that Florence got hold of me and became extremely personal. It was then that I realized that it would be the act of a fathead to marry her.' I nodded adhesion to this sentiment. That time when she had broken her engagement with me my spirits had soared and I had gone about singing like a relieved nightingale. One thing rather puzzled me and seemed to call for explanatory notes. 'Why did Florence draw you into a dark corner when planning to become personal?' I asked. 'I wouldn't have credited her with so much tact and consideration. As a rule, when she's telling people what she thinks of them, an audience seems to stimulate her. I recall one occasion when she ticked me off in the presence of seventeen Girl Guides, all listening with their ears flapping, and she had never spoken more fluently.' He put me straight on the point I had raised. He said he had misled me. 'It wasn't Florence who drew me into the dark comer, it was Bingley.' 'Bingley?' 'A fellow who worked for me once.' 'He worked for me once.' 'Really? It's a small world, isn't it.' 'Pretty small. Did you know he'd come into money?' 'He'll soon be coming into some more.' 'But you were saying he drew you into the dark corner. Why did he do that?' 'Because he had a proposition to make to me which demanded privacy. He ... but before going on I must lay a proper foundation. You know in those Perry Mason stories how whenever Perry says anything while cross-examining a witness, the District Attorney jumps up and yells "Objection, your honour. The SOB has laid no proper foundation". Well, then, you must know that this man Bingley belongs to a butlers and valets club in London called the Junior Ganymede, and one of the rules there is that members have to record the doings of their employers in the club book.' I would have told him I knew all too well about that, but he carried on before I could speak. 'Such a book, as you can imagine, contains a lot of damaging stuff, and he told me he had been obliged to contribute several pages about me which, if revealed, would lose me so many votes that the election would be a gift to my opponent. He added that some men in his place would have sold it to the opposition and made a lot of money, but he wouldn't do a thing like that because it would be low and in the short time we were together he had come to have a great affection for me. I had never realized before what an extraordinarily good chap he was. I had always thought him a bit of a squirt. Shows how wrong you can be about people.' Again I would have spoken, but he rolled over me like a tidal wave. 'I should have explained that the committee of the Junior Ganymede, recognizing the importance of this book, had entrusted it to him with instructions to guard it with his life, and his constant fear was that bad men would get wind of this and try to steal it. So what would remove a great burden from his mind, he said, would be if I took it into my possession. Then I could be sure that its contents wouldn't be used against me. I could return it to him after the election and slip him a few quid, if I wished, as a token of my gratitude. You can picture me smiling my subtle smile as he said this. He little knew that my first act would be to send the thing by messenger to the offices of the Market Snodsbury Argus-Reminder, thereby handing the election on a plate to the McCorkadale and enabling me to free myself from my honourable obligations to Florence, who would of course, on reading the stuff, recoil from me in horror. Do you know the Argus-Reminder? Very far to the left. Can't stand Conservatives. It had a cartoon of me last week showing me with my hands dripping with the blood of the martyred proletariat. I don't know where they get these ideas. I've never spilled a drop of anybody's blood except when boxing, and then the other chap was spilling mine - wholesome give and take. So it wasn't long before Bingley and I had everything all fixed up. He couldn't give me the book then, as he had left it at home, and he wouldn't come and have a drink with me because he had to hurry back because he thought Jeeves might be calling and he didn't want to miss him. Apparently Jeeves is a pal of his - old club crony, that sort of thing. We're meeting tomorrow. I shall reward him with a purse of gold, he will give me the book, and five minutes later, if I can find some brown paper and string, it will be on its way to the Argus-Reminder. The material should be in print the day after tomorrow. Allow an hour or so for Florence to get hold of a copy and say twenty minutes for a chat with her after she's read it, and I ought to be a free man well before lunch. About how much gold do you think I should reward Bingley with? Figures were not named, but I thought at least a hundred quid, because he certainly deserves something substantial for his scrupulous high-mindedness. As he said, some men in his place would have sold the book to the opposition and cleaned up big.' By what I have always thought an odd coincidence he paused at this point and asked me why I was looking like something the cat brought in, precisely as the aged relative had asked me after my interview with Ma McCorkadale. I don't know what cats bring into houses, but one assumes that it is something not very jaunty, and apparently, when in the grip of any strong emotion, I resemble their treasure trove. I could well understand that I was looking like that now. I find it distasteful to have to shatter a long-time buddy's hopes and dreams, and no doubt this shows on the surface. There was no sense in beating about bushes. It was another of those cases of if it were done, then 'twere well 'twere done quickly. 'Ginger,' I said, 'I'm afraid I have a bit of bad news for you. That book is no longer among those present. Jeeves called on Bingley, gave him a Mickey Finn and got it away from him. He now has it among his archives.' He didn't get it at first, and I had to explain. 'Bingley is not the man of integrity you think him. He is on the contrary a louse of the first water. You might describe him as a slimy slinking slug. He pinched that book from the Junior Ganymede and tried to sell it to the McCorkadale. She sent him away with a flea in his ear because she was a fair fighter, and he tried to sell it to you. But meanwhile Jeeves nipped in and obtained it.' It took him perhaps a minute to absorb this, but to my surprise he wasn't a bit upset. 'Well, that's all right. Jeeves can take it to the Argus- Reminder.' I shook the loaf sadly, for I knew that this time those hopes and dreams of his were really due for a sock in the eye. 'He wouldn't do it, Ginger. To Jeeves that club book is sacred. I've gone after him a dozen times, urging him to destroy the pages concerning me, but he always remains as unco-operative as Balaam's ass, who, you may remember, dug his feet in and firmly refused to play ball. He'll never let it out of his hands.' He took it, as I had foreseen, big. He spluttered a good deal. He also kicked the table and would have splintered it if it hadn't been made of marble. It must have hurt like sin, but what disturbed him, I deduced, was not so much the pain of a bruised toe as spiritual anguish. His eyes glittered, his nose wiggled, and if he was not gnashing his teeth I don't know a gnashed tooth when I hear one. 'Oh, won't he?' he said, going back into the old cinnamon bear routine. 'He won't, won't he? We'll see about that. Pop off, Bertie. I want to think.' I popped off, glad to do so. These displays of naked emotion take it out of one. 14 The shortest way to the house was across the lawn, but I didn't take it. Instead, I made for the back door. It was imperative, I felt, that I should see Jeeves without delay and tell him of the passions he had unchained and warn him, until the hot blood had had time to cool, to keep out of Ginger's way. I hadn't at all liked the sound of the latter's 'We'll see about that', nor the clashing of those gnashed teeth. I didn't of course suppose that, however much on the boil, he would inflict personal violence on Jeeves - sock him, if you prefer the expression - but he would certainly say things to him which would wound his feelings and cause their relations, so pleasant up to now, to deteriorate. And naturally I didn't want that to happen. Jeeves was in a deck-chair outside the back door, reading Spinoza with the cat Augustus on his lap. I had given him the Spinoza at Christmas and he was constantly immersed in it. I hadn't dipped into it myself, but he tells me it is good ripe stuff, well worth perusal. He would have risen at my approach, but I begged him to remain seated, for I knew that Augustus, like L. P. Runkle, resented being woken suddenly, and one always wants to consider a cat's feelings. 'Jeeves,' I said, 'a somewhat peculiar situation has popped up out of a trap, and I would be happy to have your comments on it. I am sorry to butt in when you are absorbed in your Spinoza and have probably just got to the part where the second corpse is discovered, but what I have to say is of great pith and moment, so listen attentively.' 'Very good, sir.' 'The facts are these,' I said, and without further preamble or whatever they call it I embarked on my narrative. 'Such,' I concluded some minutes later, 'is the position of affairs, and I think you will agree that the problem confronting us presents certain points of interest.' 'Undeniably, sir.' 'Somehow Ginger has got to lose the election.' 'Precisely, sir.' 'But how?' 'It is difficult to say on the spur of the moment, sir. The tide of popular opinion appears to be swaying in Mr Winship's direction. Lord Sidcup's eloquence is having a marked effect on the electorate and may well prove the deciding factor. Mr Seppings, who obliged as an extra waiter at the luncheon, reports that his lordship's address to the members of the Market Snodsbury Chamber of Commerce was sensational in its brilliance. He tells me that, owing entirely to his lordship, the odds to be obtained in the various public houses, which at one time favoured Mrs McCorkadale at ten to six, have now sunk to evens.' 'I don't like that, Jeeves.' 'No, sir, it is ominous.' 'Of course, if you were to release the club book ...' 'I fear I cannot do that, sir.' 'No, I told Ginger you regarded it as a sacred trust. Then nothing can be done except to urge you to get the old brain working.' 'I will certainly do my utmost, sir.' 'No doubt something will eventually emerge. Keep eating lots of fish. And meanwhile stay away from Ginger as much as possible, for he is in ugly mood.' 'I quite understand, sir. Stockish, hard and full of rage.' 'Shakespeare?' 'Yes, sir. His merchant of Venice.' I left him then, pleased at having got one right for a change, and headed for the drawing-room, hoping for another quiet go at the Rex Stout which the swirling rush of events had forced me to abandon. I was, however, too late. The old ancestor was on the chaise longue with it in her grasp, and I knew that I had small chance of wresting it from her. No one who has got his or her hooks on a Rex Stout lightly lets it go. Her presence there surprised me. I had supposed that she was still brooding over the hammock and its contents. 'Hullo,' I said, 'have you finished with Runkle?' She looked up, and I noted a trace of annoyance in her demeanour. I assumed that Nero Wolfe had come down from the orchid room and told Archie Goodwin to phone Saul Panzar and Orrie what's his name and things were starting to warm up. In which event she would naturally resent the intrusion of even a loved nephew whom she had often dandled on her knee - not recently, I don't mean, but when I was a bit younger. 'Oh, it's you,' she said, which it was of course. 'No, I haven't finished with Runkle. I haven't even begun. He's still asleep.' She gave me the impression of being not much in the mood for chit-chat, but one has to say something on these occasions. I brought up a subject which I felt presented certain points of interest. 'Have you ever noticed the remarkable resemblance between L. P. Runkle's daily habits and those of the cat Augustus? They seem to spend all their time sleeping. Do you think they've got traumatic symplegia?' 'What on earth's that?' 'I happened to come on it in a medical book I was reading. It's a disease that makes you sleep all the time. Has Runkle shown no signs of waking?' 'Yes, he did, and just as he was beginning to stir Madeline Bassett came along. She said could she speak to me, so I had to let her. It wasn't easy to follow what she was saying, because she was sobbing all the time, but I got it at last. It was all about the rift with Spode. I told you they had had a tiff. It turns out to be more serious than that. You remember me telling you he couldn't be a Member of Parliament because he was a peer. Well, he wants to give up his title so that he will be eligible.' 'Can a fellow with a title give it up? I thought he was stuck with it.' 'He couldn't at one time, at least only by being guilty of treason, but they've changed the rules and apparently it's quite the posh thing to do nowadays.' 'Sounds silly.' 'That's the view Madeline takes.' 'Did she say what put the idea into Spode's fat head?' 'No, but I can see what did. He has made such a smash hit with his speeches down here that he's saying to himself "Why am I sweating like this on behalf of somebody else? Why not go into business for myself ?" Who was it said someone was intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity?' 'I don't know.' 'Jeeves would. It was Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain or Jack Dempsey or somebody. Anyway, that's Spode. He's all puffed up and feels he needs a wider scope. He sees himself holding the House of Commons spellbound.' 'Why can't he hold the House of Lords spellbound?' 'It wouldn't be the same thing. It would be like playing in the Market Snodsbury tennis tournament instead of electrifying one and all on the centre court at Wimbledon. I can see his point.' 'I can't.' 'Nor can Madeline. She's all worked up about it, and I can understand how she feels. No joke for a girl who thinks she's going to be the Countess of Sidcup to have the fellow say "April fool, my little chickadee. What you're going to be is Mrs Spode." If I had been told at Madeline's age that Tom had been made a peer and I then learned that he was going to back out of it and I wouldn't be able to call myself Lady Market Snodsbury after all, I'd have kicked like a mule. Titles to a girl are like catnip to a cat.' 'Can nothing be done?' 'The best plan would be for you to go to him and tell him how much we all admire him for being Lord Sidcup and what a pity it would be for him to go back to a ghastly name like Spode.' 'What's the next best plan?' 'Ah, that wants thinking out.' We fell into a thoughtful silence, on my part an uneasy one. I didn't at this juncture fully appreciate the peril that lurked, but anything in the nature of a rift within the lute between Spode and Madeline was always calculated to make me purse the lips to some extent. I was still trying to hit on some plan which would be more to my taste than telling Spode what a pity it would be for him to stop being the Earl of Sidcup and go back to a ghastly name like his, when my reverie was broken by the entry through the French window of the cat Augustus, for once awake and in full possession of his faculties, such as they were. No doubt in a misty dreamlike sort of way he had seen me when I was talking to Jeeves and had followed me on my departure, feeling, after those breakfasts of ours together, that association with me was pretty well bound to culminate in kippers. A vain hope, of course. The well-dressed man does not go around with kippered herrings in his pocket. But one of the lessons life teaches us is that cats will be cats. As is my unvarying policy when closeted with one of these fauna, I made chirruping noises and bent down to tickle the back of the dumb chum's left ear, but my heart was not in the tickling. The more I mused on the recent conversation, the less I liked what the aged relative had revealed. Telling Augustus that I would be back with him in a moment, I straightened myself and was about to ask her for further details, when I discovered that she was no longer in my midst. She must suddenly have decided to have another pop at L. P. Runkle and was presumably even now putting Tuppy's case before him. Well, best of luck to her, of course, and nice to think she had a fine day for it, but I regretted her absence. When your mind is weighed down with matters of great pith and moment, it gives you a sort of sinking feeling to be alone. No doubt the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled had this experience. However, I wasn't alone for long. Scarcely had Augustus sprung on to my lap and started catching up with his sleep when the door opened and Spode came in. I leaped to my feet, causing Augustus to fall to earth I knew not where, as the fellow said. I was a prey to the liveliest apprehensions. My relations with Spode had been for long so consistently strained that I never saw him nowadays without a lurking fear that he was going to sock me in the eye. Obviously I wasn't to be blamed if he and Madeline had been having trouble, but that wouldn't stop him blaming me. It was like the story of the chap who was in prison and a friend calls and asks him why and the chap tells him and the friend says But they can't put you in prison for that and the chap says I know they can't, but they have. Spode didn't have to have logical reasons for setting about people he wasn't fond of, and it might be that he was like Florence and would work off his grouch on the first available innocent bystander. Putting it in a nutshell, my frame of mind was approximately that of the fellows in the hymn who got such a start when they looked over their shoulders and saw the troops of Midian prowling and prowling around. It was with profound relief, therefore, that I suddenly got on to it that his demeanour was free from hostility. He was looking like somebody who has just seen the horse on which he had put all his savings, plus whatever he had been able to lift from his employer's till, beaten by a short head. His face, nothing to write home about at the best of times, was drawn and contorted, but with pain rather than the urge to commit mayhem. And while one would always prefer him not to be present, a drawn-and-contorted-with- pain Spode was certainly the next best thing. My greeting, in consequence, had the real ring of cordiality in it. 'Oh, hullo, Spode, hullo. There you are, what? Splendid.' 'Can I have a word with you, Wooster?' 'Of course, of course. Have several.' He did not speak for a minute or so, filling in the time by subjecting me to a close scrutiny. Then he gave a sigh and shook his head. 'I can't understand it,' he said. 'What can't you understand, Spode old man or rather Lord Sidcup old man?' I asked in a kind voice, for I was only too willing to help this new and improved Spode solve any little problem that was puzzling him. 'How Madeline can contemplate marrying a man like you. She has broken our engagement and says that's what she's going to do. She was quite definite about it. "All is over," she said. "Here is your ring," she said. "I shall marry Bertie Wooster and make him happy," she said. You can't want it plainer than that.' I stiffened from head to f. Even with conditions what they were in this disturbed post-war world I hadn't been expecting to be turned into a pillar of salt again for some considerable time, but this had done it. I don't know how many of my public have ever been slapped between the eyes with a wet fish, but those who have will appreciate my emotions as the seventh Earl of Sidcup delivered this devastating bulletin. Everything started to go all wobbly, and through what is known as a murky mist I seemed to be watching a quivering-at-the-edges seventh Earl performing the sort of gyrations travelled friends have told me the Ouled Nail dancers do in Cairo. I was stunned. It seemed to me incredible that Madeline Bassett should have blown the whistle on their engagement. Then I remembered that at the time when she had plighted her troth Spode was dangling a countess's coronet before her eyes, and the thing became more understandable. I mean, take away the coronet and what had you got? Just Spode. Not good enough, a girl would naturally feel. He, meanwhile, was going on to explain why he found it so bizarre that Madeline should be contemplating marrying me, and almost immediately I saw that I had been mistaken in supposing that he was not hostile. He spoke from between clenched teeth, and that always tells the story. 'As far as I can see, Wooster, you are without attraction of any kind. Intelligence? No. Looks? No. Efficiency? No. You can't even steal an umbrella without getting caught. All that can be said for you is that you don't wear a moustache. They tell me you did grow one once, but mercifully shaved it off. That is to your credit, but it is a small thing to weigh in the balance against all your other defects. When one considers how numerous these are, one can only suppose that it is your shady record of stealing anything you can lay your hands on that appeals to Madeline's romantic soul. She is marrying you in the hope of reforming you, and let me tell you, Wooster, that if you disappoint that hope, you will be sorry. She may have rejected me, but I shall always love her as I have done since she was so high, and I shall do my utmost to see that her gentle heart is not broken by any sneaking son of a what not who looks like a chorus boy in a touring revue playing the small towns and cannot see anything of value without pocketing it. You will probably think you are safe from me when you are doing your stretch in Wormwood Scrubs for larceny, but I shall be waiting for you when you come out and I shall tear you limb from limb. And,' he added, for his was a one-track mind, 'dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots.' He paused, produced his cigarette case, asked me if I had a match, thanked me when I gave him one, and withdrew. He left behind him a Bertram Wooster whom the dullest eye could have spotted as not being at the peak of his form. The prospect of being linked for life to a girl who would come down to breakfast and put her hands over my eyes and say 'Guess who' had given my morale a sickening wallop, reducing me to the level of one of those wee sleekit timorous cowering beasties Jeeves tells me the poet Burns used to write about. It is always my policy in times of crisis to try to look on the bright side, but I make one proviso - viz. that there has to be a bright side to look on, and in the present case there wasn't even the sniff of one. As I sat there draining the bitter cup, there were noises off stage and my meditations were interrupted by the return of the old ancestor. Well, when I say return, she came whizzing in but didn't stop, just whizzed through, and I saw, for I am pretty quick at noticing things, that she was upset about something. Reasoning closely, I deduced that her interview with L. P. Runkle must have gone awry or, as I much prefer to put it, agley. And so it proved when she bobbed up again some little time later. Her first observation was that L. P. Runkle was an illegitimate offspring to end all illegitimate offsprings, and I hastened to commiserate with her. I could have done with a bit of commiseration myself, but Women and Children First is always the Wooster slogan. 'No luck?' I said. 'None.' 'Wouldn't part?' 'Not a penny.' 'You mentioned that without his co-operation Tuppy and Angela's wedding bells would not ring out?' 'Of course I did. And he said it was a great mistake for young people to marry before they knew their own minds.' 'You could have pointed out that Tuppy and Angela have been engaged for two years.' 'I did.' 'What did he say to that?' 'He said "Not nearly long enough".' 'So what are you going to do?' 'I've done it,' said the old ancestor. 'I pinched his porringer.' 15 I goggled at her, one hundred per cent non-plussed. She had spoken with the exuberance of an aunt busily engaged in patting herself between the shoulder-blades for having done something particularly clever, but I could make nothing of her statement. This habit of speaking in riddles seemed to be growing on her. 'You what?' I said. 'You pinched his what?' 'His porringer. I told you about it the day you got here. Don't you remember? That silver thing he came to try to sell to Tom.' She had refreshed my memory. I recalled the conversation to which she referred. I had asked her why she was entertaining in her home a waste product like L. P. Runkle, and she had said that he had come hoping to sell Uncle Tom a silver something for his collection and she had got him to stay on in order to soften him up with Anatole's cooking and put to him, when softened up, her request for cash for Tuppy. 'When he turned me down just now, it suddenly occurred to me that if I got hold of the thing and told him he wouldn't get it back unless he made a satisfactory settlement, I would have a valuable bargaining point and we could discuss the matter further at any time that suited him.' I was ap-what-is-it. Forget my own name next. Appalled, that's the word, though shocked to the core would be about as good; nothing much in it, really. I hadn't read any of those etiquette books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two at carrying-ons of this description. The chapter on Hints To Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning them that it wasn't the done thing to invite people to the home and having got them settled in to pinch their porringers. 'But good Lord!' I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it, shocked to the core. 'Now what?' 'The man is under your roof.' 'Did you expect him to be on it?' 'He has eaten your salt.' 'Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor probably forbids it.' 'You can't do this.' 'I know I can't, but I have,' she said, just like the chap in the story, and I saw it would be fruitless or bootless to go on arguing. It rarely is with aunts - if you're their nephew, I mean, because they were at your side all through your formative years and know what an ass you were then and can't believe that anything that you may say later is worth listening to. I shouldn't be at all surprised if Jeeves's three aunts don't shut him up when he starts talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn't know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the ground. Ceasing to expostulate, therefore, if expostulate is the word I want, I went to the bell and pressed it, and when she asked for footnotes throwing a light on why I did this, I told her I proposed to place the matter in the hands of a higher power. 'I'm ringing for Jeeves.' 'You'll only get Seppings.' 'Seppings will provide Jeeves.' 'And what do you think Jeeves can do?' 'Make you see reason.' 'I doubt it.' 'Well, it's worth a try.' Further chit-chat was suspended till Jeeves arrived and silence fell except for the ancestor snorting from time to time and self breathing more heavily than usual, for I was much stirred. It always stirs a nephew to discover that a loved aunt does not know the difference between right and wrong. There is a difference ... at my private school Arnold Abney MA used to rub it into the student body both Sundays and weekdays ... but apparently nobody had told the aged relative about it, with the result that she could purloin people's porringers without a yip from her conscience. Shook me a bit, I confess. When Jeeves blew in, it cheered me to see the way his head stuck out at the back, for that's where the brain is, and what was needed here was a man with plenty of the old grey matter who would put his points so that even a fermenting aunt would have to be guided by him. 'Well, here's Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Tell him the facts and I'll bet he says I've done the only possible thing and can carry on along the lines I sketched out.' I might have risked a fiver on this at say twelve to eight, but it didn't seem fitting. But telling Jeeves the facts was a good idea, and I did so without delay, being careful to lay a proper foundation. 'Jeeves,' I said. 'Sir?' he responded. 'Sorry to interrupt you again. Were you reading Spinoza?' 'No, sir, I was writing a letter to my Uncle Charlie.' 'Charlie Silversmith,' I explained in an aside to the ancestor. 'Butler at Deverill Hall. One of the best.' 'Thank you, sir.' 'I know few men whom I esteem more highly than your Uncle Charlie. Well, we won't keep you long. It's just that another problem presenting certain points of interest has come up. In a recent conversation I revealed to you the situation relating to Tuppy Glossop and L. P. Runkle. You recall?' 'Yes, sir. Madam was hoping to extract a certain sum of money from Mr Runkle on Mr Glossop's behalf.' 'Exactly. Well, it didn't come off.' 'I am sorry to hear that, sir.' 'But not, I imagine, surprised. If I remember, you considered it a hundred to one shot.' 'Approximately that, sir.' 'Runkle being short of bowels of compassion.' 'Precisely, sir. A twenty-minute egg.' Here the ancestor repeated her doubts with regard to L. P. Runkle's legitimacy, and would, I think, have developed the theme had I not shushed her down with a raised hand. 'She pleaded in vain,' I said. 'He sent her away with a flea in her ear. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he laughed her to scorn.' 'The superfatted old son of a bachelor,' the ancestor interposed, and once more I shushed her down. 'Well, you know what happens when you do that sort of thing to a woman of spirit. Thoughts of reprisals fill her mind. And so, coming to the nub, she decided to purloin Runkle's porringer. But I mustn't mislead you. She did this not as an act of vengeance, if you know what I mean, but in order to have a bargaining point when she renewed her application. "Brass up," she would have said when once more urging him to scare the moths out of his pocketbook, "or you won't get back your porringer". Do I make myself clear?' 'Perfectly clear, sir. I find you very lucid.' 'Now first it will have to be explained to you what a porringer is, and here I am handicapped by not having the foggiest notion myself, except that it's silver and old and the sort of thing Uncle Tom has in his collection. Runkle was hoping to sell it to him. Could you supply any details?' I asked the aged relative. She knitted the brows a bit, and said she couldn't do much in that direction. 'All I know is that it was made in the time of Charles the Second by some Dutchman or other.' 'Then I think I know the porringer to which you allude, sir,' said Jeeves, his face lighting up as much as it ever lights up, he for reasons of his own preferring at all times to preserve the impassivity of a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's. 'It was featured in a Sotheby's catalogue at which I happened to be glancing not long ago. Would it,' he asked the ancestor, 'be a silver-gilt porringer on a circular moulded foot, the lower part chased with acanthus foliage, with beaded scroll handles, the cover surmounted by a foliage on a rosette of swirling acanthus leaves, the stand of tazza form on circular detachable feet with acanthus border joined to a multifoil plate, the palin top with upcurved rim?' He paused for a reply, but the ancestor did not speak immediately, her aspect that of one who has been run over by a municipal tram. Odd, really, because she must have been listening to that sort of thing from Uncle Tom for years. Finally she mumbled that she wouldn't be surprised or she wouldn't wonder or something like that. 'Your guess is as good as mine,' she said. 'I fancy it must be the same, madam. You mentioned a workman of Dutch origin. Would the name be Hans Conrael Brechtel of the Hague?' 'I couldn't tell you. I know it wasn't Smith or Jones or Robinson, and that's as far as I go. But what's all this in aid of ? What does it matter if the stand is of tazza form or if the palin top has an upcurved rim?' 'Exactly,' I said, thoroughly concurring. 'Or if the credit for these tazza forms and palin tops has to be chalked up to Hans Conrael Brechtel of the Hague. The point, Jeeves, is not what particular porringer the ancestor has pinched, but how far she was justified in pinching any porringer at all when its owner was a guest of hers. I hold that it was a breach of hospitality and the thing must be returned. Am I right?' 'Well, sir ...' 'Go on, Jeeves,' said the ancestor. 'Say I'm a crook who ought to be drummed out of the Market Snodsbury Ladies Social and Cultural Garden Club.' 'Not at all, madam.' 'Then what were you going to say when you hesitated?' 'Merely that in my opinion no useful end will be served by retaining the object.' 'I don't follow you. How about that bargaining point?' 'It will, I fear, avail you little, madam. As I understand Mr Wooster, the sum you are hoping to obtain from Mr Runkle amounts to a good many thousand pounds.' 'Fifty at least, if not a hundred.' 'Then I cannot envisage him complying with your demands. Mr Runkle is a shrewd financier -' 'Born out of wedlock.' 'Very possibly you are right, madam, nevertheless he is a man well versed in weighing profit and loss. According to Sotheby's catalogue the price at which the object was sold at the auction sale was nine thousand pounds. He will scarcely disburse a hundred or even fifty thousand in order to recover it.' 'Of course he won't,' I said, as enchanted with his lucidity as he had been with mine. It was the sort of thing you have to pay topnotchers at the Bar a king's ransom for. 'He'll simply say "Easy come, easy go" and write it off as a business loss, possibly consulting his legal adviser as to whether he can deduct it from his income tax. Thank you, Jeeves. You've straightened everything out in your customary masterly manner. You're a ... what were you saying the other day about Daniel somebody?' 'A Daniel come to judgment, sir?' 'That was it. You're a Daniel come to judgment.' 'It is very kind of you to say so, sir.