You know, the longer I live, the more clearly I see that half the
trouble in this bally world is caused by the light-hearted and
thoughtless way in which chappies dash off letters of introduction and
hand them to other chappies to deliver to chappies of the third part.
It's one of those things that make you wish you were living in the
Stone Age. What I mean to say is, if a fellow in those days wanted to
give anyone a letter of introduction, he had to spend a month or so
carving it on a large-sized boulder, and the chances were that the
other chappie got so sick of lugging the thing round in the hot sun
that he dropped it after the first mile. But nowadays it's so easy to
write letters of introduction that everybody does it without a second
thought, with the result that some perfectly harmless cove like myself
gets in the soup.
Mark you, all the above is what you might call the result of my riper
experience. I don't mind admitting that in the first flush of the
thing, so to speak, when Jeeves told me--this would be about three
weeks after I'd landed in America--that a blighter called Cyril
Bassington-Bassington had arrived and I found that he had brought a
letter of introduction to me from Aunt Agatha ... where was I? Oh,
yes ... I don't mind admitting, I was saying, that just at first I was
rather bucked. You see, after the painful events which had resulted in
my leaving England I hadn't expected to get any sort of letter from
Aunt Agatha which would pass the censor, so to speak. And it was a
pleasant surprise to open this one and find it almost civil. Chilly,
perhaps, in parts, but on the whole quite tolerably polite. I looked on
the thing as a hopeful sign. Sort of olive-branch, you know. Or do I
mean orange blossom? What I'm getting at is that the fact that Aunt
Agatha was writing to me without calling me names seemed, more or less,
like a step in the direction of peace.
And I was all for peace, and that right speedily. I'm not saying a word
against New York, mind you. I liked the place, and was having quite a
ripe time there. But the fact remains that a fellow who's been used to
London all his life does get a trifle homesick on a foreign strand, and
I wanted to pop back to the cosy old flat in Berkeley Street--which
could only be done when Aunt Agatha had simmered down and got over the
Glossop episode. I know that London is a biggish city, but, believe me,
it isn't half big enough for any fellow to live in with Aunt Agatha
when she's after him with the old hatchet. And so I'm bound to say I
looked on this chump Bassington-Bassington, when he arrived, more or
less as a Dove of Peace, and was all for him.
He would seem from contemporary accounts to have blown in one morning
at seven-forty-five, that being the ghastly sort of hour they shoot you
off the liner in New York. He was given the respectful raspberry by
Jeeves, and told to try again about three hours later, when there would
be a sporting chance of my having sprung from my bed with a glad cry to
welcome another day and all that sort of thing. Which was rather decent
of Jeeves, by the way, for it so happened that there was a slight
estrangement, a touch of coldness, a bit of a row in other words,
between us at the moment because of some rather priceless purple socks
which I was wearing against his wishes: and a lesser man might easily
have snatched at the chance of getting back at me a bit by loosing
Cyril into my bedchamber at a moment when I couldn't have stood a
two-minutes' conversation with my dearest pal. For until I have had my
early cup of tea and have brooded on life for a bit absolutely
undisturbed, I'm not much of a lad for the merry chit-chat.
So Jeeves very sportingly shot Cyril out into the crisp morning air,
and didn't let me know of his existence till he brought his card in
with the Bohea.
"And what might all this be, Jeeves?" I said, giving the thing the
glassy gaze.
"The gentleman has arrived from England, I understand, sir. He called
to see you earlier in the day."
"Good Lord, Jeeves! You don't mean to say the day starts earlier than
this?"
"He desired me to say he would return later, sir."
"I've never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?"
"I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are
three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family--the Shropshire
Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the
Kent Bassington-Bassingtons."
"England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons."
"Tolerably so, sir."
"No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?"
"Presumably not, sir."
"And what sort of a specimen is this one?"
"I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance."
"Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you
have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an
excrescence?"
"No, sir. I should not care to venture such liberal odds."
"I knew it. Well, the only thing that remains to be discovered is what
kind of a blighter he is."
"Time will tell, sir. The gentleman brought a letter for you, sir."
"Oh, he did, did he?" I said, and grasped the communication. And then I
recognised the handwriting. "I say, Jeeves, this is from my Aunt
Agatha!"
"Indeed, sir?"
"Don't dismiss it in that light way. Don't you see what this means? She
says she wants me to look after this excrescence while he's in New
York. By Jove, Jeeves, if I only fawn on him a bit, so that he sends
back a favourable report to head-quarters, I may yet be able to get
back to England in time for Goodwood. Now is certainly the time for all
good men to come to the aid of the party, Jeeves. We must rally round
and cosset this cove in no uncertain manner."
"Yes, sir."
"He isn't going to stay in New York long," I said, taking another look
at the letter. "He's headed for Washington. Going to give the nibs
there the once-over, apparently, before taking a whirl at the
Diplomatic Service. I should say that we can win this lad's esteem and
affection with a lunch and a couple of dinners, what?"
"I fancy that should be entirely adequate, sir."
"This is the jolliest thing that's happened since we left England. It
looks to me as if the sun were breaking through the clouds."
"Very possibly, sir."
He started to put out my things, and there was an awkward sort of
silence.
"Not those socks, Jeeves," I said, gulping a bit but having a dash at
the careless, off-hand tone. "Give me the purple ones."
"I beg your pardon, sir?"
"Those jolly purple ones."
"Very good, sir."
He lugged them out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a
caterpillar out of the salad. You could see he was feeling deeply.
Deuced painful and all that, this sort of thing, but a chappie has got
to assert himself every now and then. Absolutely.
* * * * *
I was looking for Cyril to show up again any time after breakfast, but
he didn't appear: so towards one o'clock I trickled out to the Lambs
Club, where I had an appointment to feed the Wooster face with a cove
of the name of Caffyn I'd got pally with since my arrival--George
Caffyn, a fellow who wrote plays and what not. I'd made a lot of
friends during my stay in New York, the city being crammed with
bonhomous lads who one and all extended a welcoming hand to the
stranger in their midst.
Caffyn was a bit late, but bobbed up finally, saying that he had been
kept at a rehearsal of his new musical comedy, "Ask Dad"; and we
started in. We had just reached the coffee, when the waiter came up and
said that Jeeves wanted to see me.
Jeeves was in the waiting-room. He gave the socks one pained look as I
came in, then averted his eyes.
"Mr. Bassington-Bassington has just telephoned, sir."
"Oh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he?"
"In prison, sir."
I reeled against the wallpaper. A nice thing to happen to Aunt Agatha's
nominee on his first morning under my wing, I did _not_ think!
"In prison!"
"Yes, sir. He said on the telephone that he had been arrested and would
be glad if you could step round and bail him out."
"Arrested! What for?"
"He did not favour me with his confidence in that respect, sir."
"This is a bit thick, Jeeves."
"Precisely, sir."
I collected old George, who very decently volunteered to stagger along
with me, and we hopped into a taxi. We sat around at the police-station
for a bit on a wooden bench in a sort of ante-room, and presently a
policeman appeared, leading in Cyril.
"Halloa! Halloa! Halloa!" I said. "What?"
My experience is that a fellow never really looks his best just after
he's come out of a cell. When I was up at Oxford, I used to have a
regular job bailing out a pal of mine who never failed to get pinched
every Boat-Race night, and he always looked like something that had
been dug up by the roots. Cyril was in pretty much the same sort of
shape. He had a black eye and a torn collar, and altogether was nothing
to write home about--especially if one was writing to Aunt Agatha. He
was a thin, tall chappie with a lot of light hair and pale-blue goggly
eyes which made him look like one of the rarer kinds of fish.
"I got your message," I said.
"Oh, are you Bertie Wooster?"
"Absolutely. And this is my pal George Caffyn. Writes plays and what
not, don't you know."
We all shook hands, and the policeman, having retrieved a piece of
chewing-gum from the underside of a chair, where he had parked it
against a rainy day, went off into a corner and began to contemplate
the infinite.
"This is a rotten country," said Cyril.
"Oh, I don't know, you know, don't you know!" I said.
"We do our best," said George.
"Old George is an American," I explained. "Writes plays, don't you
know, and what not."
"Of course, I didn't invent the country," said George. "That was
Columbus. But I shall be delighted to consider any improvements you may
suggest and lay them before the proper authorities."
"Well, why don't the policemen in New York dress properly?"
George took a look at the chewing officer across the room.
"I don't see anything missing," he said.
"I mean to say, why don't they wear helmets like they do in London? Why
do they look like postmen? It isn't fair on a fellow. Makes it dashed
confusing. I was simply standing on the pavement, looking at things,
when a fellow who looked like a postman prodded me in the ribs with a
club. I didn't see why I should have postmen prodding me. Why the
dickens should a fellow come three thousand miles to be prodded by
postmen?"
"The point is well taken," said George. "What did you do?"
"I gave him a shove, you know. I've got a frightfully hasty temper, you
know. All the Bassington-Bassingtons have got frightfully hasty
tempers, don't you know! And then he biffed me in the eye and lugged me
off to this beastly place."
"I'll fix it, old son," I said. And I hauled out the bank-roll and went
off to open negotiations, leaving Cyril to talk to George. I don't mind
admitting that I was a bit perturbed. There were furrows in the old
brow, and I had a kind of foreboding feeling. As long as this chump
stayed in New York, I was responsible for him: and he didn't give me
the impression of being the species of cove a reasonable chappie would
care to be responsible for for more than about three minutes.
I mused with a considerable amount of tensity over Cyril that night,
when I had got home and Jeeves had brought me the final whisky. I
couldn't help feeling that this visit of his to America was going to be
one of those times that try men's souls and what not. I hauled out Aunt
Agatha's letter of introduction and re-read it, and there was no
getting away from the fact that she undoubtedly appeared to be somewhat
wrapped up in this blighter and to consider it my mission in life to
shield him from harm while on the premises. I was deuced thankful that
he had taken such a liking for George Caffyn, old George being a steady
sort of cove. After I had got him out of his dungeon-cell, he and old
George had gone off together, as chummy as brothers, to watch the
afternoon rehearsal of "Ask Dad." There was some talk, I gathered, of
their dining together. I felt pretty easy in my mind while George had
his eye on him.
I had got about as far as this in my meditations, when Jeeves came in
with a telegram. At least, it wasn't a telegram: it was a cable--from
Aunt Agatha--and this is what it said:----
Has Cyril Bassington-Bassington called yet? On no account introduce
him into theatrical circles. Vitally important. Letter follows.