thed  in shame and confusion, and Upjohn thanks me brokenly and  says
if there is anything he can do for me, I have only to name it.'
     'I still think you ought to knock him down.'
     'Having endeared myself to him thus -'
     'Much more box-office.'
     'Having endeared myself to him thus, I lead the conversation  round
to the libel suit.'
     'One good punch in the eye would do it.'
     'I  say  that I have seen the current issue of the Thursday Review,
and  I  can  quite  understand him wanting  to  mulct  the  journal  in
substantial damages, but "Don't forget, Mr Upjohn," I say, "that when a
weekly paper loses a chunk of money, it has to retrench, and the way it
retrenches  is by getting rid of the more junior members of its  staff.
You  wouldn't want me to lose my job, would you, Mr Upjohn?" He starts.
"Are  you on the staff of the Thursday Review?" he says. "For the  time
being,  yes,"  I say. "But if you bring that suit, I shall  be  selling
pencils  in the street." This is the crucial moment. Looking  into  his
eyes, I can see that he is thinking of that five thousand quid, and for
an instant quite naturally he hesitates. Then his better self prevails.
His  eyes soften. They fill with tears. He clasps my hand. He tells  me
he  could use five thousand quid as well as the next man, but no  money
in  the world would make him dream of doing an injury to the fellow who
championed him so stoutly against the louse Wooster, and the scene ends
with  our going off together to Swordfish's pantry for a drop of  port,
probably  with  our arms round each other's waists, and that  night  he
writes  a  letter to his lawyer telling him to call the suit  off.  Any
questions?'
     'Not from me. It isn't as if he could find out that it was you  who
wrote that review. It wasn't signed.'
     'No, thank heaven for the editorial austerity that prevented that.'
     'I  can't  see a flaw in the scenario. He'll have to  withdraw  the
suit.'
     'In common decency, one would think. The only thing that remains is
to choose a time and place for Bertie to operate.'
     'No time like the present.'
     'But how do we locate Upjohn?'
     'He's in Mr Travers's study. I saw him through the french window.'
     'Excellent. Then, Bertie, if you're ready...'
     It will probably have been noticed that during these exchanges I had
taken  no  part  in  the conversation. This was  because  I  was  fully
occupied with envisaging the horror that lay before me. I knew that  it
did lie before me, of course, for where the ordinary man would have met
the  suggestion they had made with a firm nolle prosequi, I was  barred
from  doing  this  by  the code of the Woosters, which,  as  is  pretty
generally known, renders it impossible for me to let a pal down. If the
only way of saving a boyhood friend from having to sell pencils in  the
street  -  though I should have thought that blood oranges  would  have
been  a far more lucrative line - was by wagging my finger in the  face
of  Aubrey Upjohn and calling him names, that finger would have  to  be
wagged and those names called. The ordeal would whiten my hair from the
roots  up and leave me a mere shell of my former self, but it  was  one
that I must go through. Mine not to reason why, as the fellow said.
     So I uttered a rather husky 'Right-ho' and tried not to think of how
the Upjohn face looked without its moustache. For what chilled the feet
most  was  the mental picture of that bare upper lip which  he  had  so
often  twitched  at me in what are called days of yore.  Dimly,  as  we
started  off for the arena, I could hear Bobbie saying 'My  hero!'  and
Kipper asking anxiously if I was in good voice, but it would have taken
a  fat lot more than my-hero-ing and solicitude about my vocal cords to
restore tone to Bertram's nervous system. I was, in short, feeling like
an  inexperienced novice going up against the heavyweight champion when
in due course I drew up at the study door, opened it and tottered in. I
could  not forget that an Aubrey Upjohn who for years had been  looking
strong parents in the eye and making them wilt, and whose toughness was
a  byword  in Bramley-on-Sea, was not a man lightly to wag a finger  in
the face of.
     Uncle Tom's study was a place I seldom entered during my visits  to
Brinkley  Court, because when I did go there he always grabbed  me  and
started  to talk about old silver, whereas if he caught me in the  open
he  often touched on other topics, and the way I looked at it was  that
there was no sense in sticking one's neck out. It was more than a  year
since  I  had  been  inside  this sanctum,  and  I  had  forgotten  how
extraordinarily like its interior was to that of Aubrey  Upjohn's  lair
at  Malvern House. Discovering this now and seeing Aubrey Upjohn seated
at the desk as I had so often seen him sit on the occasions when he had
sent  for me to discuss some recent departure of mine from the straight
and narrow path, I found what little was left of my sang froid expiring
with  a  pop. And at the same time I spotted the flaw in this scheme  I
had  undertaken to sit in on - viz. that you can't just charge  into  a
room and start calling someone names - out of a blue sky, as it were  -
you  have  to lead up to the thing. Pourparlers, in short, are  of  the
essence.
     So I said 'Oh, hullo,' which seemed to me about as good a pourparler
as  you  could  have by way of an opener. I should imagine  that  those
statesmen  of  whom  I was speaking always edge into their  conferences
conducted  in  an  atmosphere of the utmost  cordiality  in  some  such
manner.
     'Reading?' I said.
     He lowered his book - one of Ma Cream's, I noticed -and flashed  an
upper lip at me.
     'Your powers of observation have not led you astray, Wooster. I  am
reading.'
     'Interesting book?'
     'Very.  I  am counting the minutes until I can resume  its  perusal
undisturbed.'
     I'm pretty quick, and I at once spotted that the atmosphere was not
of the utmost cordiality. He hadn't spoken matily, and he wasn't eyeing
me  matily. His whole manner seemed to suggest that he felt that I  was
taking  up space in the room which could have been better employed  for
other purposes.
     However, I persevered.
     'I see you've shaved off your moustache.'
     'I have. You do not feel, I hope, that I pursued a mistaken course?'
     'Oh no, rather not. I grew a moustache myself last year, but had to
get rid of it.'
     'Indeed?'
     'Public sentiment was against it.'
     'I  see.  Well,  I  should  be  delighted  to  hear  more  of  your
reminiscences,  Wooster, but at the moment I am expecting  a  telephone
call from my lawyer.'
     'I thought you'd had one.'
     'I beg your pardon?'
     'When you were down by the lake, didn't you go off to talk to him?'
     'I  did.  But when I reached the telephone, he had grown  tired  of
waiting  and had rung off. I should never have allowed Miss Wickham  to
take me away from the house.'
     'She wanted you to see the big fish.'
     'So I understood her to say.'
     'Talking of fish, you must have been surprised to find Kipper here.'
     'Kipper?'
     'Herring.'
     'Oh,  Herring,' he said, and one spotted the almost total  lack  of
animation in his voice. And conversation had started to flag, when  the
door  flew  open  and  the goof Phyllis bounded  in,  full  of  girlish
excitement.
     'Oh, Daddy,' she burbled, 'are you busy?'
     'No, my dear.'
     'Can I speak to you about something?'
     'Certainly. Goodbye, Wooster.'
     I  saw what this meant. He didn't want me around. There was nothing
for  it but to ooze out through the french window, so I oozed, and  had
hardly got outside when Bobbie sprang at me like a leopardess.
     'What  on  earth are you fooling about for like this, Bertie?'  she
stage-whispered.  'All that rot about moustaches. I  thought  you'd  be
well into it by this time.'
     I pointed out that as yet Aubrey Upjohn had not given me a cue.
     'You and your cues!'
     'All  right,  me  and my cues. But I've got to  sort  of  lead  the
conversation in the right direction, haven't I?'
     'I see what Bertie means, darling,' said Kipper. 'He wants -'
     'A point d'appui.'
     'A what?' said Bobbie.
     'Sort of jumping-off place.'
     The beasel snorted.
     'If you ask me, he's lost his nerve. I knew this would happen.  The
worm has got cold feet.'
     I  could have crushed her by drawing her attention to the fact that
worms  don't have feet, cold or piping hot, but I had no wish to  bandy
words.
     'I  must ask you, Kipper,' I said with frigid dignity, 'to  request
your  girl friend to preserve the decencies of debate. My feet are  not
cold.  I  am as intrepid as a lion and only too anxious to get down  to
brass  tacks, but just as I was working round to the res, Phyllis  came
in. She said she had something she wanted to speak to him about.'
     Bobbie snorted again, this time in a despairing sort of way.
     'She'll be there for hours. It's no good waiting.'
     'No,'  said Kipper. 'May as well call it off for the moment.  We'll
let you know time and place of next fixture, Bertie.'
     'Oh, thanks,' I said, and they drifted away.
     And  about a couple of minutes later, as I stood there brooding  on
Kipper's  sad case, Aunt Dahlia came along. I was glad to  see  her.  I
thought  she  might  possibly come across with  aid  and  comfort,  for
though,  like  the female in the poem I was mentioning,  she  sometimes
inclined to be a toughish egg in hours of ease, she could generally  be
relied  on  to be there with the soothing solace when one had  anything
wrong with one's brow.
     As  she approached, I got the impression that her own brow had  for
some reason taken it on the chin. Quite a good deal of that upon-which-
all-the-ends-of-the-earth-are-come stuff, it seemed to me.
     Nor was I mistaken.
     'Bertie,' she said, heaving to beside me and waving a trowel in  an
overwrought manner, 'do you know what?'
     'No, what?'
     'I'll  tell you what,' said the aged relative, rapping out a  sharp
monosyllable  such as she might have uttered in her Quorn and  Pytchley
days  on observing a unit of the pack of hounds chasing a rabbit. 'That
ass Phyllis has gone and got engaged to Wilbert Cream!'


        17
     Her  words  gave  me  quite a wallop. I don't  say  I  reeled,  and
everything  didn't actually go black, but I was shaken, as what  nephew
would not have been. When a loved aunt has sweated herself to the  bone
trying  to  save her god-child from the clutches of a New York  playboy
and  learns that all her well-meant efforts have gone blue on her, it's
only natural for her late brother's son to shudder in sympathy.
     'You don't mean that?' I said. 'Who told you?'
     'She did.'
     'In person?'
     'In the flesh. She came skipping to me just now, clapping her little
hands  and  bleating  about how very, very  happy  she  was,  dear  Mrs
Travers.  The  silly  young geezer. I nearly conked  her  one  with  my
trowel. I'd always thought her half-baked, but now I think they  didn't
even put her in the oven.'
     'But how did it happen?'
     'Apparently that dog of hers joined you in the water.'
     'Yes, that's right, he took his dip with the rest of us. But what's
that got to do with it?'
     'Wilbert Cream dived in and saved him.'
     'He  could have got ashore perfectly well under his own  steam.  In
fact,  he  was already on his way, doing what looked like an Australian
crawl.'
     'That wouldn't occur to a pinhead like Phyllis. To her Wilbert Cream
is  the  man  who rescued her dachshund from a watery grave.  So  she's
going to marry him.'
     'But you don't marry fellows because they rescue dachshunds.'
     'You do, if you've a mentality like hers.'
     'Seems odd.'
     'And  is. But that's how it goes. Girls like Phyllis Mills  are  an
open  book to me. For four years I was, if you remember, the proprietor
and  editress  of  a weekly paper for women.' She was alluding  to  the
periodical entitled Milady's Boudoir, to the Husbands and Brothers page
of  which  I once contributed an article or 'piece' on What  The  Well-
Dressed Man Is Wearing. It had recently been sold to a mug up Liverpool
way,  and I have never seen Uncle Tom look chirpier than when the  deal
went through, he for those four years having had to foot the bills.
     'I  don't suppose,' she continued, 'that you were a regular reader,
so for your information there appeared in each issue a short story, and
in  seventy per cent of those short stories the hero won the  heroine's
heart  by  saving  her dog or her cat or her canary  or  whatever  foul
animal  she happened to possess. Well, Phyllis didn't write  all  those
stories,  but she easily might have done, for that's the way  her  mind
works.  When  I  say mind,' said the blood relation, 'I  refer  to  the
quarter-teaspoonful of brain which you might possibly find in her  head
if you sank an artesian well. Poor Jane!'
     'Poor who?'
     'Her mother. Jane Mills.'
     'Oh, ah, yes. She was a pal of yours, you told me.'
     'The best I ever had, and she was always saying to me "Dahlia,  old
girl, if I pop off before you, for heaven's sake look after Phyllis and
see  that she doesn't marry some ghastly outsider. She's sure  to  want
to.  Girls always do, goodness knows why," she said, and I knew she was
thinking  of her first husband, who was a heel to end all heels  and  a
constant  pain  in  the neck to her till one night he most  fortunately
walked into the River Thames while under the influence of the sauce and
didn't come up for days. "Do stop her," she said, and I said "Jane, you
can rely on me." And now this happens.'
     I endeavoured to soothe.
     'You can't blame yourself.'
     'Yes, I can.'
     'It isn't your fault.'
     'I invited Wilbert Cream here.'
     'Merely from a wifely desire to do Uncle Tom a bit of good.'
     'And I let Upjohn stick around, always at her elbow egging her on.'
     'Yes, Upjohn's the bird I blame.'
     'Me, too.'
     'But  for  his - undue influence, do they call it? - Phyllis  would
have  remained a bachelor or spinster or whatever it is. "Thou art  the
man,  Upjohn!" seems to me the way to sum it up. He ought to be ashamed
of himself.'
     'And  am  I going to tell him so! I'd give a tenner to have  Aubrey
Upjohn here at this moment.'
     'You can get him for nothing. He's in Uncle Tom's study.'
     Her face lit up.
     'He  is?' She threw her head back and inflated the lungs. 'UPJOHN!'
she  boomed,  rather like someone calling the cattle  home  across  the
sands of Dee, and I issued a kindly word of warning.
     'Watch that blood pressure, old ancestor.'
     'Never you mind my blood pressure. You let it alone, and it'll leave
you alone. UPJOHN!'
     He appeared in the french window, looking cold and severe, as I had
so often seen him look when hobnobbing with him in his study at Malvern
House, self not there as a willing guest but because I'd been sent for.
('I  should  like to see Wooster in my study immediately after  morning
prayers' was the formula.)
     'Who is making that abominable noise? Oh, it's you, Dahlia.'
     'Yes, it's me.'
     'You wished to see me?'
     'Yes, but not the way you're looking now. I'd have preferred you to
have fractured your spine or at least to have broken a couple of ankles
and got a touch of leprosy.'
     'My dear Dahlia!'
     'I'm  not your dear Dahlia. I'm a seething volcano. Have  you  seen
Phyllis?'
     'She has just left me.'
     'Did she tell you?'
     'That she was engaged to Wilbert Cream? Certainly.'
     'And I suppose you're delighted?'
     'Of course I am.'
     'Yes,  of course you are! I can well imagine that it's your dearest
wish to see that unfortunate muttonheaded girl become the wife of a man
who  lets off stink bombs in night clubs and pinches the spoons and has
had three divorces already and who, if the authorities play their cards
right,  will  end up cracking rocks in Sing-Sing. That  is  unless  the
loony-bin  gets  its  bid in first. Just a Prince Charming,  you  might
say.'
     'I don't understand you.'
     'Then you're an ass.'
     'Well, really!' said Aubrey Upjohn, and there was a dangerous  note
in  his  voice. I could see that the relative's manner, which  was  not
affectionate, and her words, which lacked cordiality, were peeving him.
It looked like an odds-on shot that in about another two ticks he would
be  giving her the Collect for the Day to write out ten times  or  even
instructing her to bend over while he fetched his whangee. You can push
these preparatory schoolmasters just so far.
     'A fine way for Jane's daughter to end up. Mrs Broadway Willie!'
     'Broadway Willie?'
     'That's  what  he's called in the circles in which he  moves,  into
which  he  will now introduce Phyllis. "Meet the moll," he'll say,  and
then  he'll  teach her in twelve easy lessons how to make stink  bombs,
and the children, if and when, will be trained to pick people's pockets
as  they  dandle them on their knee. And you'll be responsible,  Aubrey
Upjohn!'
     I  didn't  like the way things were trending. Admittedly  the  aged
relative was putting up a great show and it was a pleasure to listen to
her,  but  I  had  seen  Upjohn's lip twitch  and  that  look  of  smug
satisfaction come into his face which I had so often seen when  he  had
been  counsel for the prosecution in some case in which I was  involved
and  had spotted a damaging flaw in my testimony. The occasion  when  I
was  on  trial for having broken the drawing-room window with a cricket
ball  springs to the mind. It was plain to an eye as discerning as mine
that  he  was about to put it across the old flesh-and-blood  properly,
making her wish she hadn't spoken. I couldn't see how, but the symptoms
were all there.
     I was right. That twitching lip had not misled me.
     'If  I might be allowed to make a remark, my dear Dahlia,' he said,
'I  think we are talking at cross purposes. You appear to be under  the
impression that Phyllis is marrying Wilbert's younger brother  Wilfred,
the  notorious playboy whose escapades have caused the family  so  much
distress  and  who,  as  you are correct in saying,  is  known  to  his
disreputable friends as Broadway Willie. Wilfred, I agree, would make -
and  on  three  successive  occasions has made  -  a  most  undesirable
husband,  but no one to my knowledge has ever spoken a derogatory  word
of  Wilbert. I know few young men who are more generally respected.  He
is   a   member  of  the  faculty  of  one  of  the  greatest  American
universities,  over  in  this  country on his  sabbatical.  He  teaches
romance languages.'
     Stop  me  if I've told you this before, I rather fancy I have,  but
once when I was up at Oxford and chatting on the river bank with a girl
called  something that's slipped my mind there was a sound  of  barking
and  a  great  hefty  dog  of the Hound of the Baskervilles  type  came
galloping at me, obviously intent on mayhem, its whole aspect that of a
dog that has no use for Woosters. And I was just commending my soul  to
God  and thinking that this was where my new flannel trousers got about
thirty  bobs' worth of value bitten out of them, when the girl, waiting
till  she  saw the whites of its eyes, with extraordinary  presence  of
mind  opened  a coloured Japanese umbrella in the animal's  face.  Upon
which,  with  a startled exclamation it did three back somersaults  and
retired into private life.
     And the reason I bring this up now is that, barring the somersaults,
Aunt  Dahlia's reaction to this communique was precisely  that  of  the
above hound to the Japanese umbrella. The same visible taken-abackness.
She  has since told me that her emotions were identical with those  she
had  experienced when she was out with the Pytchley and riding  over  a
ploughed  field  in rainy weather, and the horse of a  sports-lover  in
front of her suddenly kicked three pounds of wet mud into her face.
     She  gulped like a bulldog trying to swallow a sirloin  steak  many
sizes too large for its thoracic cavity.
     'You mean there are two of them?'
     'Exactly.'
     'And Wilbert isn't the one I thought he was?'
     'You  have  grasped the position of affairs to a nicety.  You  will
appreciate  now, my dear Dahlia,' said Upjohn, speaking with  the  same
unction,  if  that's the word, with which he had spoken when  unmasking
his  batteries and presenting unshakable proof that yours was the hand,
Wooster, which propelled this cricket ball, 'that your concern,  though
doing  you the greatest credit, has been needless. I could wish Phyllis
no  better  husband.  Wilbert  has looks,  brains,  character  ...  and
excellent prospects,' he added, rolling the words round his tongue like
vintage  port. 'His father, I should imagine, would be worth  at  least
twenty  million  dollars,  and Wilbert is  the  elder  son.  Yes,  most
satisfactory, most...'
     As he spoke, the telephone rang, and with a quick 'Ha!' he shot back
into the study like a homing rabbit.


        18
     For perhaps a quarter of a minute after he had passed from the scene
the  aged relative stood struggling for utterance. At the end  of  this
period she found speech.
     'Of all the damn silly fatheaded things!' she vociferated, if that's
the  word.  'With  a  million ruddy names to choose from,  these  ruddy
Creams call one ruddy son Wilbert and the other ruddy son Wilfred,  and
both these ruddy sons are known as Willie. Just going out of their  way
to  mislead the innocent bystander. You'd think people would have  more
consideration.'
     Again I begged her to keep an eye on her blood pressure and not get
so  worked up, and once more she brushed me off, this time with a  curt
request that I would go and boil my head.
     'You'd  be  worked  up if you had just been scored  off  by  Aubrey
Upjohn, with that loathsome self-satisfied look on his face as if  he'd
been  rebuking  a pimply pupil at his beastly school for shuffling  his
feet in church.'
     'Odd, that,' I said, struck by the coincidence. 'He once rebuked me
for that very reason. And I had pimples.'
     'Pompous ass!'
     'Shows what a small world it is.'
     'What's he doing here anyway? I didn't invite him.'
     'Bung  him  out.  I  took this point up with  you  before,  if  you
remember. Cast him into the outer darkness, where there is wailing  and
gnashing of teeth.'
     'I will, if he gives me any more of his lip.'
     'I can see you're in a dangerous mood.'
     'You bet I'm in a dangerous ... My God! He's with us again!'
     And A. Upjohn was indeed filtering through the french window. But he
had  lost the look of which the ancestor had complained, the one he was
wearing now seeming to suggest that since last heard from something had
occurred to wake the fiend that slept in him.
     'Dahlia!'  he  ... yes better make it vociferated  once  more,  I'm
pretty sure it's the word I want.
     The  fiend that slept in Aunt Dahlia was also up on its  toes.  She
gave him a look which, if directed at an erring member of the personnel
of  the  Quorn or Pytchley hound ensemble, would have had  that  member
sticking his tail between his legs and resolving for the future to lead
a better life.
     'Now what?'
     Just as Aunt Dahlia had done, Aubrey Upjohn struggled for utterance.
Quite  a bit of utterance-struggling there had been around these  parts
this summer afternoon.
     'I have just been speaking to my lawyer on the telephone,' he said,
getting  going  after  a short stage wait. 'I had  asked  him  to  make
inquiries and ascertain the name of the author of that libellous attack
on  me  in the columns of the Thursday Review. He did so, and  has  now
informed me that it was the work of my former pupil, Reginald Herring.'
     He  paused  at this point, to let us chew it over, and  the  heart
sank.  Mine,  I mean. Aunt Dahlia's seemed to be carrying  on  much  as
usual. She scratched her chin with her trowel, and said:
     'Oh, yes?'
     Upjohn  blinked, as if he had been expecting something better  than
this in the way of sympathy and concern.
     'Is that all you can say?'
     That's the lot.'
     'Oh? Well, I am suing the paper for heavy damages, and furthermore,
I  refuse to remain in the same house with Reginald Herring. Either  he
goes, or I go.'
     There was the sort of silence which I believe cyclones drop into for
a  second  or  two before getting down to it and starting to  give  the
populace the works. Throbbing? Yes, throbbing wouldn't be a bad word to
describe  it. Nor would electric, for the matter of that,  and  if  you
care to call it ominous, it will be all right with me. It was a silence
of the type that makes the toes curl and sends a shiver down the spinal
cord  as  you  stand  waiting for the bang. I  could  see  Aunt  Dahlia
swelling slowly like a chunk of bubble gum, and a less prudent man than
Bertram Wooster would have warned her again about her blood pressure.
     'I beg your pardon?' she said.
     He repeated the key words.
     'Oh?' said the relative, and went off with a pop. I could have told
Upjohn  he  was asking for it. Normally as genial a soul as ever  broke
biscuit, this aunt, when stirred, can become the haughtiest of  grandes
dames  before  whose wrath the stoutest quail, and  she  doesn't,  like
some, have to use a lorgnette to reduce the citizenry to pulp, she does
it  all  with  the naked eye. 'Oh?' she said. 'So you have  decided  to
revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the - the -'
     I saw she needed helping out.
     'Audacity,' I said, throwing her the line.
     'The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.'
     It should have been 'whom', but I let it go.
     'You have the -'
     'Crust.'
     '-  the  immortal rind,' she amended, and I had  to  admit  it  was
stronger,  'to  tell me whom' - she got it right that  time  -  'I  may
entertain  at Brinkley Court and who' - wrong again - 'I may not.  Very
well,  if  you  feel unable to breathe the same air as my friends,  you
must please yourself. I believe the "Bull and Bush" in Market Snodsbury
is quite comfortable.'
     'Well spoken of in the Automobile Guide,' I said.
     'I  shall go there,' said Upjohn. 'I shall go there as soon  as  my
things  are packed. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell your butler
to pack them.'
     He  strode  off, and she went into Uncle Tom's study, me following,
she still snorting. She rang the bell.
     Jeeves appeared.
     'Jeeves?' said the relative, surprised. 'I was ringing for-'
     'It is Sir Roderick's afternoon off, madam.'
     'Oh? Well, would you mind packing Mr Upjohn's things, Jeeves? He is
leaving us.'
     'Very good, madam.'
     'And you can drive him to Market Snodsbury, Bertie.'
     'Right-ho,' I said, not much liking the assignment, but liking less
the  idea  of  endeavouring  to thwart this incandescent  aunt  in  her
current frame of mind.
     Safety first, is the Wooster slogan.


        19
     It isn't much of a run from Brinkley Court to Market Snodsbury and I
deposited  Upjohn  at  the  'Bull and Bush'  and  started  m.-p.-h.-ing
homeward  in  what  you might call a trice. We parted,  of  course,  on
rather distant terms, but the great thing when you've got an Upjohn  on
your books is to part and not be fussy about how it's done, and had  it
not  been  for all this worry about Kipper, for whom I was now mourning
in spirit more than ever, I should have been feeling fine.
     I  could see no happy issue for him from the soup in which  he  was
immersed.  No words had been exchanged between Upjohn and self  on  the
journey out, but the glimpses I had caught of his face from the  corner
of  the  eyes had told me that he was grim and resolute, his supply  of
the  milk of human kindness plainly short by several gallons. No  hope,
it seemed to me, of turning him from his fell purpose.
     I  garaged  the car and went to Aunt Dahlia's sanctum to  ascertain
whether she had cooled off at all since I had left her, for I was still
anxious about that blood pressure of hers. One doesn't want aunts going
up in a sheet of flame all over the place.
     She wasn't there, having, I learned later, withdrawn to her room to
bathe  her temples with eau de Cologne and do Yogi deep-breathing,  but
Bobbie  was,  and  not  only  Bobbie but Jeeves.  He  was  handing  her
something in an envelope, and she was saying 'Oh, Jeeves, you've  saved
a  human  life,'  and he was saying 'Not at all, miss.'  The  gist,  of
course, escaped me, but I had no leisure to probe into gists.
     'Where's Kipper?' I asked, and was surprised to note that Bobbie was
dancing  round the room on the tips of her toes uttering animal  cries,
apparently ecstatic in their nature.
     'Reggie?' she said, suspending the farmyard imitations for a moment.
'He went for a walk.'
     'Does he know that Upjohn's found out he wrote that thing?'
     'Yes, your aunt told him.'
     'Then we ought to be in conference.'
     'About Upjohn's libel action? It's all right about that. Jeeves has
pinched his speech.'
     I could make nothing of this. It seemed to me that the beasel spoke
in riddles.
     'Have you an impediment in your speech, Jeeves?'
     'No, sir.'
     'Then what, if anything, does the young prune mean?'
     'Miss Wickham's allusion is to the typescript of the speech which Mr
Upjohn  is  to  deliver tomorrow to the scholars  of  Market  Snodsbury
Grammar School, sir.'
     'She said you'd pinched it.'
     'Precisely, sir.'
     I started.
     'You don't mean -'
     'Yes,  he  does,' said Bobbie, resuming the Ballet Russe movements.
'Your  aunt told him to pack Upjohn's bags, and the first thing he  saw
when he smacked into it was the speech. He trousered it and brought  it
along to me.'
     I raised an eyebrow.
     'Well, really, Jeeves!'
     'I deemed it best, sir.'
     'And  did you deem right!' said Bobbie, executing a Nijinsky  what-
ever-it's-called. 'Either Upjohn agrees to drop that libel suit  or  he
doesn't get these notes, as he calls them, and without them he won't be
able  to utter a word. He'll have to come across with the price of  the
papers. Won't he, Jeeves?'
     'He would appear to have no alternative, miss.'
     'Unless he wants to get up on that platform and stand there opening
and shutting his mouth like a goldfish. We've got him cold.'
     'Yes, but half a second,' I said.
     I spoke reluctantly. I didn't want to damp the young ball of worsted
in her hour of joy, but a thought had occurred to me.
     'I see the idea, of course. I remember Aunt Dahlia telling me about
this  strange inability of Upjohn's to be silver-tongued unless he  has
the  material  in  his grasp, but suppose he says he's  ill  and  can't
appear.'
     'He won't.'
     'I would.'
     'But  you aren't trying to get the Conservative Association of  the
Market  Snodsbury  division to choose you as  their  candidate  at  the
coming  by-election. Upjohn is, and it's vitally important for  him  to
address the multitude tomorrow and make a good impression, because half
the  selection  committee have sons at the school and  will  be  there,
waiting to judge for themselves how good he is as a speaker. Their last
nominee  stuttered, and they didn't discover it till the time came  for
him  to  dish  it out to the constituents. They don't want  to  make  a
mistake this time.'
     'Yes,  I  get you now,' I said. I remembered that Aunt  Dahlia  had
spoken to me of Upjohn's political ambitions.
     'So that fixes that,' said Bobbie. 'His future hangs on this speech,
and we've got it and he hasn't. We take it from there.'
     'And what exactly is the procedure?'
     'That's  all arranged. He'll be ringing up any moment  now,  making
inquiries.  When  he does, you step to the telephone  and  outline  the
position of affairs to him.'
     'Me?'
     'That's right.'
     'Why me?'
     'Jeeves deems it best.'
     'Well, really, Jeeves! Why not Kipper?'
     'Mr Herring and Mr Upjohn are not on speaking terms, sir.'
     'So  you  can see what would happen if he heard Reggie's voice.  He
would  hang up  haughtily, and all the weary work to do again.  Whereas
he'll drink in your every word.'
     'But, dash it-'
     'And,  anyway, Reggie's gone for a walk and isn't available.  I  do
wish you wouldn't always be so difficult, Bertie. Your aunt tells me it
was  just  the same when you were a child. She'd want you to  eat  your
cereal,  and you would stick your ears back and be stubborn and non-co-
operative, like Jonah's ass in the Bible.'
     I  could  not let this go uncorrected. It's pretty generally  known
that when at school I won a prize for Scripture Knowledge.
     'Balaam's ass. Jonah was the chap who had the whale. Jeeves!'
     'Sir?'
     'To  settle  a bet, wasn't it Balaam's ass that entered  the  nolle
prosequi?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'I told you so,' I said to Bobbie, and would have continued grinding
her  into  the  dust,  had not the telephone at  this  moment  tinkled,
diverting  my  mind from the point at issue. The sound  sent  a  sudden
chill through the Wooster limbs, for I knew what it portended.
     Bobbie, too, was not unmoved.
     'Hullo!' she said. 'This, if I mistake not, is our client  now.  In
you go, Bertie. Over the top and best of luck.'
     I  have  mentioned before that Bertram Wooster, chilled steel  when
dealing with the sterner sex, is always wax in a woman's hands, and the
present case was no
exception  to the r. Short of going over Niagara Falls in a  barrel,  I
could think of nothing I wanted to do less than chat with Aubrey Upjohn
at this juncture, especially along the lines indicated, but having been
requested by one of the delicately nurtured to take on the grim task, I
had  no  option.  I  mean, either a chap's preux or he  isn't,  as  the
Chevalier Bayard used to say.
     But  as  I  approached the instrument and unhooked  the  thing  you
unhook,  I was far from being at my most nonchalant, and when  I  heard
Upjohn  are-you-there-ing at the other end my manly  spirit  definitely
blew  a fuse. For I could tell by his voice that he was in the testiest
of moods. Not even when conferring with me at Malvern House, Bramley-on-
Sea, on the occasion when I put sherbet in the ink, had I sensed in him
a more marked stirred-up-ness.
     'Hullo? Hullo? Hullo? Are you there? Will you kindly answer me? This
is Mr Upjohn speaking.'
     They always say that when the nervous system isn't all it should be
the  thing to do is to take a couple of deep breaths. I took six, which
of  course  occupied a certain amount of time, and the delay noticeably
increased  his  umbrage. Even at this distance one could  spot  what  I
believe is called the deleterious animal magnetism.
     'Is that Brinkley Court?'
     I could put him straight there. None other, I told him.
     'Who are you?'
     I had to think for a moment. Then I remembered.
     'This is Wooster, Mr Upjohn,'
     'Well, listen to me carefully, Wooster.'
     'Yes,  Mr  Upjohn. How do you like the "Bull and Bush"?  Everything
pretty snug?'
     'What did you say?'
     'I was asking if you like the "Bull and Bush".'
     'Never mind the "Bull and Bush".'
     'No, Mr Upjohn.'
     'This is of vital importance. I wish to speak to the man who packed
my things.'
     'Jeeves.'
     'What?'
     'Jeeves.'
     'What do you mean by Jeeves?'
     'Jeeves.'
     'You  keep  saying "Jeeves" and it makes no sense.  Who  packed  my
belongings?'
     'Jeeves.'
     'Oh, Jeeves is the man's name?'
     'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'
     'Well,  he  carelessly omitted to pack the notes for my  speech  at
Market Snodsbury Grammar School tomorrow.'
     'No, really! I don't wonder you're sore.'
     'Saw whom?'
     'Sore with an r.'
     'What?'
     'No, sorry. I mean with an o-r-e.'
     'Wooster!'
     'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'
     'Are you intoxicated?'
     'No, Mr Upjohn.'
     'Then you are drivelling. Stop drivelling, Wooster.'
     'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'
     'Send for this man Jeeves immediately and ask him what he did  with
the notes for my speech.'
     'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'
     'At once! Don't stand there saying "Yes, Mr Upjohn".'
     'No, Mr Upjohn.'
     'It is imperative that I have them in my possession immediately.'
     'Yes, Mr Upjohn.'
     Well,  I  suppose, looking at it squarely, I hadn't made much  real
progress and a not too close observer might quite possibly have got the
impression  that I had lost my nerve and was shirking  the  issue,  but
that didn't in my opinion justify Bobbie at this point in snatching the
receiver from my grasp and bellowing the word 'Worm!' at me.
     'What did you call me?' said Upjohn.
     'I  didn't  call  you  anything,'  I  said.  'Somebody  called  me
something.'
     'I wish to speak to this man Jeeves.'
     'You do, do you?' said Bobbie. 'Well, you're going to speak to  me.
This  is  Roberta Wickham, Upjohn. If I might have your kind  attention
for a moment.'
     I must say that, much as I disapproved in many ways of this carrot-
topped Jezebel, as she was sometimes called, there was no getting  away
from it that she had mastered the art of talking to retired preparatory
schoolmasters. The golden words came pouring out like syrup. Of course,
she  wasn't  handicapped, as I had been, by having sojourned  for  some
years beneath the roof of Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, and having  at
a malleable age associated with this old Frankenstein's monster when he
was going good, but even so her performance deserved credit.
     Beginning with a curt 'Listen, Buster,' she proceeded to sketch out
with  admirable  clearness the salient points in the situation  as  she
envisaged  it, and judging from the loud buzzing noises that came  over
the  wire, clearly audible to me though now standing in the background,
it was evident that the nub was not escaping him. They were the buzzing
noises  of  a man slowly coming to the realization that a woman's  hand
had got him by the short hairs.
     Presently they died away, and Bobbie spoke.
     'That's fine,' she said. 'I was sure you'd come round to our  view.
Then  I  will be with you shortly. Mind there's plenty of ink  in  your
fountain pen.'
     She  hung up and legged it from the room, once more giving vent  to
those animal cries, and I turned to Jeeves as I had so often turned  to
him before when musing on the activities of the other sex.
     'Women, Jeeves!'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'Were you following all that?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'I gather that Upjohn, vowing ... How does it go?'
     'Vowing he would ne'er consent, consented, sir.'
     'He's withdrawing the suit.'
     'Yes,  sir. And Miss Wickham prudently specified that he do  so  in
writing.'
     'Thus avoiding all rannygazoo?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'She thinks of everything.'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'I thought she was splendidly firm.'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'It's the red hair that does it, I imagine.'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'If  anyone  had told me that I should live to hear  Aubrey  Upjohn
addressed as "Buster" ...'
     I  would have spoken further, but before I could get under way  the
door  opened,  revealing Ma Cream, and he shimmered silently  from  the
room.  Unless expressly desired to remain, he always shimmers off  when
what is called the Quality arrive.


        20
     This was the first time I had seen Ma Cream today, she having  gone
off  around noon to lunch with some friends in Birmingham, and I  would
willingly not have seen her now, for something in her manner seemed  to
suggest  that  she spelled trouble. She was looking more like  Sherlock
Holmes  than ever. Slap a dressing-gown on her and give her  a  violin,
and  she  could have walked straight into Baker Street and no questions
asked. Fixing me with a penetrating eye, she said:
     'Oh, there you are, Mr Wooster. I was looking for you.'
     'You wished speech with me?'
     'Yes. I wanted to say that now perhaps you'd believe me.'
     'I beg your pardon?'
     'About that butler.'
     'What about him?'
     'I'll tell you about him. I'd sit down, if I were you. It's a  long
story.'
     I sat down. Clad to, as a matter of fact, for the legs were feeling
weak.
     'You remember I told you I mistrusted him from the first?'
     'Oh ah, yes. You did, didn't you?'
     'I said he had a criminal face.'
     'He can't help his face.'
     'He can help being a crook and an impostor. Calls himself a butler,
does  he? The police could shake that story. He's no more a butler than
I am.'
     I did my best.
     'But think of those references of his.'
     'I am thinking of them.'
     'He  couldn't  have stuck it out as major-domo to a  man  like  Sir