The whole family appeared to be present and correct as I came down to
the drawing-room a couple of nights later. The Prof, Mrs Prof, the two
Exhibits and the girl Heloise were scattered about at intervals. The
cat slept on the rug, the canary in its cage. There was nothing, in
short, to indicate that this was not just one of our ordinary evenings.
'Well, well, well!' I said cheerily. 'Hullo-ullo-ullo!'
I always like to make something in the nature of an entrance speech, it
seeming to me to lend a chummy tone to the proceedings.
The girl Heloise looked at me reproachfully.
'Where have you been all day?' she asked.
'I went to my room after lunch.'
'You weren't there at five.'
'No. After putting in a spell of work on the good old colleges I went
for a stroll. Fellow must have exercise if he means to keep fit.'
'_Mens sana in corpore sano_,' observed the prof.
'I shouldn't wonder,' I said cordially.
At this point, when everything was going as sweet as a nut and I was
feeling on top of my form, Mrs Pringle suddenly socked me on the base
of the skull with a sandbag. Not actually, I don't mean. No, no. I
speak figuratively, as it were.
'Roderick is very late,' she said.
You may think it strange that the sound of that name should have
sloshed into my nerve centres like a half-brick. But, take it from me,
to a man who has had any dealings with Sir Roderick Glossop there is
only one Roderick in the world--and that is one too many.
'Roderick?' I gurgled.
'My brother-in-law, Sir Roderick Glossop, comes to Cambridge tonight,'
said the prof. 'He lectures at St Luke's tomorrow. He is coming here to
dinner.'
And while I stood there, feeling like the hero when he discovers that
he is trapped in the den of the Secret Nine, the door opened.
'Sir Roderick Glossop,' announced the maid or some such person, and in
he came.
One of the things that get this old crumb so generally disliked among
the better element of the community is the fact that he has a head like
the dome of St Paul's and eyebrows that want bobbing or shingling to
reduce them to anything like reasonable size. It is a nasty experience
to see this bald and bushy bloke advancing on you when you haven't
prepared the strategic railways in your rear.
As he came into the room I backed behind a sofa and commended my soul
to God. I didn't need to have my hand read to know that trouble was
coming to me through a dark man.
He didn't spot me at first. He shook hands with the prof and wife,
kissed Heloise and waggled his head at the Exhibits.
'I fear I am somewhat late,' he said. 'A slight accident on the road,
affecting what my chauffeur termed the--'
And then he saw me lurking on the outskirts and gave a startled grunt,
as if I hurt him a good deal internally.
'This--' began the prof, waving in my direction.
'I am already acquainted with Mr Wooster.'
'This,' went on the prof, 'is Miss Sipperley's nephew, Oliver. You
remember Miss Sipperley?'
'What do you mean?' barked Sir Roderick. Having had so much to do
with loonies has given him a rather sharp and authoritative manner on
occasion. 'This is that wretched young man, Bertram Wooster. What is
all this nonsense about Olivers and Sipperleys?'
The prof was eyeing me with some natural surprise. So were the others.
I beamed a bit weakly.
'Well, as a matter of fact--' I said.
The prof was wrestling with the situation. You could hear his brain
buzzing.
'He said he was Oliver Sipperley,' he moaned.
'Come here!' bellowed Sir Roderick. 'Am I to understand that you have
inflicted yourself on this household under the pretence of being the
nephew of an old friend?'
It seemed a pretty accurate description of the facts.
'Well--er--yes,' I said.
Sir Roderick shot an eye at me. It entered the body somewhere about the
top stud, roamed around inside for a bit and went out at the back.
'Insane! Quite insane, as I knew from the first moment I saw him.'
'What did he say?' asked Aunt Jane.
'Roderick says this young man is insane,' roared the prof.
'Ah!' said Aunt Jane, nodding. 'I thought so. He climbs down
water-pipes.'
'Does what?'
'I've seen him--ah, many a time!'
Sir Roderick snorted violently.
'He ought to be under proper restraint. It is abominable that a person
in his mental condition should be permitted to roam the world at large.
The next stage may quite easily be homicidal.'
It seemed to me that, even at the expense of giving old Sippy away, I
must be cleared of this frightful charge. After all, Sippy's number was
up anyway.
'Let me explain,' I said. 'Sippy asked me to come here.'
'What do you mean?'
'He couldn't come himself, because he was jugged for biffing a cop on
Boat-Race Night.'
Well, it wasn't easy to make them get the hang of the story, and even
when I'd done it it didn't seem to make them any chummier towards me.
A certain coldness about expresses it, and when dinner was announced I
counted myself out and pushed off rapidly to my room. I could have done
with a bit of dinner, but the atmosphere didn't seem just right.
'Jeeves,' I said, having shot in and pressed the bell, 'we're sunk.'
'Sir?'
'Hell's foundations are quivering and the game is up.'
He listened attentively.
'The contingency was one always to have been anticipated as a
possibility, sir. It only remains to take the obvious step.'
'What's that?'
'Go and see Miss Sipperley, sir.'
'What on earth for?'
'I think it would be judicious to apprise her of the facts yourself,
sir, instead of allowing her to hear of them through the medium of a
letter from Professor Pringle. That is to say, if you are still anxious
to do all in your power to assist Mr Sipperley.'
'I can't let Sippy down. If you think it's any good--'
'We can but try it, sir. I have an idea, sir, that we may find Miss
Sipperley disposed to look leniently upon Mr Sipperley's misdemeanour.'
'What makes you think that?'
'It is just a feeling that I have, sir.'
'Well, if you think it would be worth trying--How do we get there?'
'The distance is about a hundred and fifty miles, sir. Our best plan
would be to hire a car.'
'Get it at once,' I said.
The idea of being a hundred and fifty miles away from Heloise Pringle,
not to mention Aunt Jane and Sir Roderick Glossop, sounded about as
good to me as anything I had ever heard.
* * * * *
The Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, was about a couple of parasangs
from the village, and I set out for it next morning, after partaking
of a hearty breakfast at the local inn, practically without a tremor.
I suppose when a fellow has been through it as I had in the last two
weeks his system becomes hardened. After all, I felt, whatever this
aunt of Sippy's might be like, she wasn't Sir Roderick Glossop, so I
was that much on velvet from the start.
The Paddock was one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit
of very tidy garden and a carefully rolled gravel drive curving past
a shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back from the dry
cleaner--the sort of house you take one look at and say to yourself,
'Somebody's aunt lives there.' I pushed on up the drive, and as I
turned the bend I observed in the middle distance a woman messing about
by a flower-bed with a trowel in her hand. If this wasn't the female I
was after, I was very much mistaken, so I halted, cleared the throat
and gave tongue.
'Miss Sipperley?'
She had had her back to me, and at the sound of my voice she executed
a sort of leap or bound, not unlike a barefoot dancer who steps on a
tin-tack half-way through the Vision of Salome. She came to earth and
goggled at me in a rather goofy manner. A large, stout female with a
reddish face.
'Hope I didn't startle you,' I said.
'Who are you?'
'My name's Wooster. I'm a pal of your nephew, Oliver.'
Her breathing had become more regular.
'Oh?' she said. 'When I heard your voice I thought you were someone
else.'
'No, that's who I am. I came up here to tell you about Oliver.'
'What about him?'
I hesitated. Now that we were approaching what you might call the nub,
or crux, of the situation, a good deal of my breezy confidence seemed
to have slipped from me.
'Well, it's rather a painful tale, I must warn you.'
'Oliver isn't ill? He hasn't had an accident?'
She spoke anxiously, and I was pleased at this evidence of human
feeling. I decided to shoot the works with no more delay.
'Oh, no, he isn't ill,' I said; 'and as regards having accidents, it
depends on what you call an accident. He's in chokey.'
'In what?'
'In prison.'
'In prison!'
'It was entirely my fault. We were strolling along on Boat-Race Night
and I advised him to pinch a policeman's helmet.'
'I don't understand.'
'Well, he seemed depressed, don't you know; and rightly or wrongly,
I thought it might cheer him up if he stepped across the street and
collared a policeman's helmet. He thought it a good idea, too, so he
started doing it, and the man made a fuss and Oliver sloshed him.'
'Sloshed him?'
'Biffed him--smote him a blow--in the stomach.'
'My nephew Oliver hit a policeman in the stomach?'
'Absolutely in the stomach. And next morning the beak sent him to the
bastille for thirty days without the option.'
I was looking at her a bit anxiously all this while to see how she was
taking the thing, and at this moment her face seemed suddenly to split
in half. For an instant she appeared to be all mouth, and then she
was staggering about the grass, shouting with laughter and waving the
trowel madly.
It seemed to me a bit of luck for her that Sir Roderick Glossop wasn't
on the spot. He would have been sitting on her head and calling for the
strait-waistcoat in the first half-minute.
'You aren't annoyed?' I said.
'Annoyed?' She chuckled happily. 'I've never heard such a splendid
thing in my life.'
I was pleased and relieved. I had hoped the news wouldn't upset her too
much, but I had never expected it to go with such a roar as this.
'I'm proud of him,' she said.
'That's fine.'
'If every young man in England went about hitting policemen in the
stomach, it would be a better country to live in.'
I couldn't follow her reasoning, but everything seemed to be all right;
so after a few more cheery words I said good-bye and legged it.
* * * * *
'Jeeves,' I said when I got back to the inn, 'everything's fine. But I
am far from understanding why.'
'What actually occurred when you met Miss Sipperley, sir?'
'I told her Sippy was in the jug for assaulting the police. Upon which
she burst into hearty laughter, waved her trowel in a pleased manner
and said she was proud of him.'
'I think I can explain her apparently eccentric behaviour, sir. I
am informed that Miss Sipperley has had a good deal of annoyance at
the hands of the local constable during the past two weeks. This has
doubtless resulted in a prejudice on her part against the force as a
whole.'
'Really? How was that?'
'The constable has been somewhat over-zealous in the performance of
his duties, sir. On no fewer than three occasions in the last ten days
he has served summonses upon Miss Sipperley--for exceeding the speed
limit in her car; for allowing her dog to appear in public without a
collar; and for failing to abate a smoky chimney. Being in the nature
of an autocrat, if I may use the term, in the village, Miss Sipperley
has been accustomed to do these things in the past with impunity, and
the constable's unexpected zeal has made her somewhat ill-disposed
to policemen as a class and consequently disposed to look upon such
assaults as Mr Sipperley's in a kindly and broadminded spirit.'