Thank You, Jeeves

'I'll have to see him,' I said.

'Well, be careful.'

'How do you mean, careful?'

'Oh, just careful. Still, of course, he may not have a gun.'

I swallowed a trifle.

'What exactly would you say the odds were, for and against?'

She mused awhile.

'I'm trying to remember if father is a Southerner or not.'

'A what?'

'I know he was born at a place called Carterville, but I can't recollect if it was Carterville, Kentucky, or Carterville, Massachusetts.'

'What the dickens difference does it make?'

'Well, if you smirch the honour of a Southerner's family, he's apt to shoot.'

'Would your father consider it smirched the family honour, your being here?'

'Bound to, I should think.'

I couldn't help agreeing with her. It did seem to me offhand that a purist might consider the smirching pretty good, but I hadn't time to weigh the point, because the knocker got going again with renewed vim.

'Well, dash it,' I said, 'wherever this ghastly parent of yours was born, I shall have to go down and talk to him. That door will be splitting asunder soon.'

'Don't get closer to him than you can help.'

'I won't.'

'He was a great wrestler when he was a young man.'

'You needn't tell me any more about your father.'

'I only meant, I wouldn't let him get hold of you, if you can help. Is there anywhere I can hide?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I don't know why not,' I replied, a little curtly. 'They don't build these country cottages with secret rooms and underground passages. When you hear me open the front door, stop breathing.'

'Do you want me to suffocate?'

Well, of course, a Wooster does not put such thoughts into words, but I'm bound to say this struck me as a jolly good idea. Forbearing to reply, I hurried down the stairs and flung open the front door. Well, when I say flung, I opened it a matter of six inches, not omitting to keep it on the chain.

'Hallo?' I said. 'Yes?'

I don't know when I've felt such a chunk of relief as surged over me the next moment.

'Oy!' said a voice. 'Taken your time, haven't you? What's the matter with you, young man? Deaf or something?'

It wasn't in its essentials a musical voice, being on the thick side and a shade roopy. If I'd been its owner, I'd have given more than a little thought to the subject of tonsils. But it had one supreme merit which outweighed all its defects. It wasn't the voice of J. Washburn Stoker.

'Frightfully sorry,' I said. 'I was thinking of this and that. Sort of reverie, if you know what I mean.'

The voice spoke again, not without a pretty goodish modicum of suavity this time.

'Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you was the young man Brinkley'

'Brinkley's out,' I said, feeling that if he ever returned I would have a word to say to him about the hours at which his pals paid social calls. 'Who are you?'

'Sergeant Voules, sir.'

I opened the door. It was pretty dark outside, but I could recognize the arm of the Law all right. This Voules was a bird built rather on the lines of the Albert Hall, round in the middle and not much above. He always looked to me as if Nature had really intended to make two police sergeants and had forgotten to split them up.

'Ah, Sergeant!' I said.

Careless, debonair. Not a thing on Bertram's mind, you would have supposed, but his hair.

'Anything I can do for you, Sergeant?'

My eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness by this time, and I was enabled to spot certain objects of interest by the wayside. The principal one was another policeman. Tall and lean and stringy, this one.

'This is my young nephew, sir. Constable Dobson.'

Well, I wasn't exactly in the mood for a social reunion, and I could have wished that the sergeant, if he wanted to make me one of the family and all pals together, so to speak, had selected some other time, but I inclined the bean gracefully in the constable's direction and uttered a kindly 'Ah, Dobson!' I rather think, if I remember, that I also said something about its being a fine night.

But apparently this wasn't just one of those chummy gatherings which recall the old-time salon.

'Are you aware, sir, that there's a window broke at the back of your residence? My young nephew here spotted it and thought best to wake me up and have me investigate. A ground-floor window, sir, with a whole pane of glass gone from it.'

I simpered slightly.

'Oh, that? Yes, Brinkley did that yesterday. Silly ass!'

'You knew about it, then, sir?'

'Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Quite all right, Sergeant.'

'Well, you know best if it's quite all right, sir, but I should say there was a danger of marauders getting through.'

And at this juncture the chump of a constable, who had hitherto not spoken, shoved his oar in.

'I thought I did see a marauder getting through, Uncle Ted.'

'What! Then why didn't you tell me before, you young muttonhead? And don't call me Uncle Ted when we're on duty.'

'No, Uncle Ted.'

'You'd best let us make a search of the 'ouse, sir,' said Sergeant Voules.

Well, I put the presidential veto on this pretty quick.

'Certainly not, Sergeant,' I said. 'Quite out of the q.'

'It would be wiser, sir.'

'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but it can't be done.'

He seemed piqued and discontented.

'Well, please yourself, sir, but you're shackling the police, that's what you're doing. There's too much shackling of the police these days. There was a piece in the Mail about it yesterday. Perhaps you read it?'

'No.'

'On the middle page. Unshackle the police, it said, because public alarm is growing in Great Britain owing to the continuous increase of crime in the lonely rural districts. I clipped it out to paste in my album. The number of indictable offences, it said, has rose from one three four five eight one in 1929 to one four seven nought three one in 1930, with a marked increase of seven per cent in crimes of violence, and is this disturbing state of things due to slackness on the part of the police, it said? No, it said, it's not. It's because the police are shackled.'

The man was obviously cut to the quick. Dashed awkward.

'Well, I'm sorry,' I said.

'Yes, sir, and you're going to be sorrier when you go upstairs to your bedroom and a marauder cuts your throat from ear to ear.'

'Fight against these gloomy views, my dear old police sergeant,' I said. 'I anticipate no such contingency. I've just come from upstairs, and I give you my word there were no marauders.'

'Probably lurking, sir.'

'Biding their time,' suggested Constable Dobson.

Sergeant Voules sighed heavily.

'I wouldn't like nothing to happen to you, sir, seein' you're a close friend of his lordship's. But as you prove