“Yes, that seems reasonable.”
“Whereupon Mr. Glossop will hasten to save Miss Angela, while Mr.
Fink-Nottle performs the same office for Miss Bassett.”
“Is that based on psychology?”
“Yes, sir. Possibly you may recollect that it was an axiom of the late
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, that
the instinct of everyone, upon an alarm of fire, is to save the object
dearest to them.”
“It seems to me that there is a grave danger of seeing Tuppy come out
carrying a steak-and-kidney pie, but resume, Jeeves, resume. You think
that this would clean everything up?”
“The relations of the two young couples could scarcely continue distant
after such an occurrence, sir.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But, dash it, if we go ringing fire bells in the
night watches, shan’t we scare half the domestic staff into fits? There
is one of the housemaids--Jane, I believe--who already skips like the
high hills if I so much as come on her unexpectedly round a corner.”
“A neurotic girl, sir, I agree. I have noticed her. But by acting
promptly we should avoid such a contingency. The entire staff, with the
exception of Monsieur Anatole, will be at the ball at Kingham Manor
tonight.”
“Of course. That just shows the condition this thing has reduced me
to. Forget my own name next. Well, then, let’s just try to envisage.
Bong goes the bell. Gussie rushes and grabs the Bassett.... Wait. Why
shouldn’t she simply walk downstairs?”
“You are overlooking the effect of sudden alarm on the feminine
temperament, sir.”
“That’s true.”
“Miss Bassett’s impulse, I would imagine, sir, would be to leap from
her window.”
“Well, that’s worse. We don’t want her spread out in a sort of _purée_
on the lawn. It seems to me that the flaw in this scheme of yours,
Jeeves, is that it’s going to litter the garden with mangled corpses.”
“No, sir. You will recall that Mr. Travers’s fear of burglars has
caused him to have stout bars fixed to all the windows.”
“Of course, yes. Well, it sounds all right,” I said, though still a
bit doubtfully. “Quite possibly it may come off. But I have a feeling
that it will slip up somewhere. However, I am in no position to cavil
at even a 100 to 1 shot. I will adopt this policy of yours, Jeeves,
though, as I say, with misgivings. At what hour would you suggest
bonging the bell?”
“Not before midnight, sir.”
“That is to say, some time after midnight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right-ho, then. At 12.30 on the dot, I will bong.”
“Very good, sir.”
-22-
I don’t know why it is, but there’s something about the rural districts
after dark that always has a rummy effect on me. In London I can stay
out till all hours and come home with the milk without a tremor,
but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of
the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort
of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me. The night wind stirs the
tree-tops, twigs crack, bushes rustle, and before I know where I am,
the morale has gone phut and I’m expecting the family ghost to come
sneaking up behind me, making groaning noises. Dashed unpleasant, the
whole thing, and if you think it improves matters to know that you are
shortly about to ring the loudest fire bell in England and start an
all-hands-to-the-pumps panic in that quiet, darkened house, you err.
I knew all about the Brinkley Court fire bell. The dickens of a row it
makes. Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who
has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when
he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something
that might give you heart failure, but which you couldn’t possibly
mistake for the drowsy chirping of a sparrow in the ivy.
When I was a kid and spent my holidays at Brinkley, we used to have
fire drills after closing time, and many is the night I’ve had it jerk
me out of the dreamless like the Last Trump.
I confess that the recollection of what this bell could do when it
buckled down to it gave me pause as I stood that night at 12.30 p.m.
prompt beside the outhouse where it was located. The sight of the rope
against the whitewashed wall and the thought of the bloodsome uproar
which was about to smash the peace of the night into hash served to
deepen that rummy feeling to which I have alluded.
Moreover, now that I had had time to meditate upon it, I was more than
ever defeatist about this scheme of Jeeves’s.
Jeeves seemed to take it for granted that Gussie and Tuppy, faced with
a hideous fate, would have no thought beyond saving the Bassett and
Angela.