I mean to say, I know how moments when they’re faced with a hideous
fate affect chaps. I remember Freddie Widgeon, one of the most
chivalrous birds in the Drones, telling me how there was an alarm of
fire once at a seaside hotel where he was staying and, so far from
rushing about saving women, he was down the escape within ten seconds
of the kick-off, his mind concerned with but one thing--viz., the
personal well-being of F. Widgeon.
As far as any idea of doing the delicately nurtured a bit of good went,
he tells me, he was prepared to stand underneath and catch them in
blankets, but no more.
Why, then, should this not be so with Augustus Fink-Nottle and
Hildebrand Glossop?
Such were my thoughts as I stood toying with the rope, and I believe
I should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this
juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing
that bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it
would probably startle her into a decline.
And so agreeable was this reflection that I waited no longer, but
seized the rope, braced the feet and snapped into it.
Well, as I say, I hadn’t been expecting that bell to hush things up to
any great extent. Nor did it. The last time I had heard it, I had been
in my room on the other side of the house, and even so it had hoiked
me out of bed as if something had exploded under me. Standing close to
it like this, I got the full force and meaning of the thing, and I’ve
never heard anything like it in my puff.
I rather enjoy a bit of noise, as a general rule. I remember Cats-meat
Potter-Pirbright bringing a police rattle into the Drones one night and
loosing it off behind my chair, and I just lay back and closed my eyes
with a pleasant smile, like someone in a box at the opera. And the same
applies to the time when my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos., put a match
to the parcel of Guy Fawkes Day fireworks to see what would happen.
But the Brinkley Court fire bell was too much for me. I gave about half
a dozen tugs, and then, feeling that enough was enough, sauntered round
to the front lawn to ascertain what solid results had been achieved.
Brinkley Court had given of its best. A glance told me that we were
playing to capacity. The eye, roving to and fro, noted here Uncle
Tom in a purple dressing gown, there Aunt Dahlia in the old blue and
yellow. It also fell upon Anatole, Tuppy, Gussie, Angela, the Bassett
and Jeeves, in the order named. There they all were, present and
correct.
But--and this was what caused me immediate concern--I could detect no
sign whatever that there had been any rescue work going on.
What I had been hoping, of course, was to see Tuppy bending
solicitously over Angela in one corner, while Gussie fanned the Bassett
with a towel in the other. Instead of which, the Bassett was one of the
group which included Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom and seemed to be busy
trying to make Anatole see the bright side, while Angela and Gussie
were, respectively, leaning against the sundial with a peeved look and
sitting on the grass rubbing a barked shin. Tuppy was walking up and
down the path, all by himself.
A disturbing picture, you will admit. It was with a rather imperious
gesture that I summoned Jeeves to my side.
“Well, Jeeves?”
“Sir?”