Thank You, Jeeves

'Pedestrian, sir?'

'Exactly. With all the limitless opportunities of a large country house at his disposal, he is content to put soot and water on top of the door, a thing you could do in a suburban villa. I have never thought highly of Seabury, and this confirms my low opinion.'

'Not soot and water, sir. I think what the young gentleman had in mind was the old-fashioned butter-slide, sir. He was asking me yesterday where the butter was kept, and referred guardedly to a humorous film he had seen not long ago in Bristol, in which something of that nature occurred.'

I was disgusted. Goodness knows that any outrage perpetrated on the person of a bloke like Sir Roderick Glossop touches a ready chord in Bertram Wooster's bosom, but a butter-slide ... the lowest depths, as you might say. The merest A B C of the booby-trapping art. There isn't a fellow at the Drones who would sink to such a thing.

I started to utter a scornful laugh, then stopped. The word had reminded me that life was stern and earnest and that time was passing.

'Butter, Jeeves! Here we are, standing idly here, talking of butter, and all the time you ought to have been racing to the larder, getting me some.'

'I will go immediately, sir.'

'You know where to lay your hand on it all right?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you're sure it will do the trick?'

'Quite sure, sir.'

'Then shift-ho, Jeeves. And don't loiter.'

I sat down on an upturned flower-pot, and resumed my vigil. My feelings were very different now from what they had been when first I had begun to roost on this desirable property. Then, I had been a penniless outcast, so to speak, with nothing much of a future before me. Now, I could see daylight. Presently Jeeves would return with the fixings. Shortly after that, I should be the old pink-cheeked clubman once more. And, in due season, I should be safely inside the 11.50 train, on my way to London and safety.

I was a good deal uplifted. I drank in the night air with a light heart. And it was while I was drinking it in that a sudden uproar proceeded from the house.

Seabury appeared to be contributing most of it. He was yelling his bally head off. From time to time, one caught the fainter, yet penetrating note of the Dowager Lady Chuffnell. She seemed to be reproaching or upbraiding someone. Blending with this, there could be discerned a deeper voice, the unmistakable baritone woofle of Sir Roderick Glossop. The whole appeared to be proceeding from the drawing-room, and, except for one time when I was sauntering in Hyde Park and suddenly found myself mixed up in a Community Singing, I've never heard anything like it.

It couldn't have been very long after this when the front door was suddenly flung open. Somebody emerged. The door slammed. And then the emerger started to stump rapidly down the drive in the direction of the gates.

There had been just a moment when the light from the hall had shone upon this bloke. It had been long enough for me to identify him.

This sudden exiter, who was now padding away into the darkness with every outward sign of being fed to the eye teeth, was none other than Sir Roderick Glossop. And his face, I noted, was as black as the ace of spades.

A few moments later, while I was still wondering what it was all about and generally turning the thing over in my mind, I observed Jeeves looming up on the right flank.

I was glad to see him. I desired enlightment.

'What was all that, Jeeves?'

'The disturbance, sir?'

'It sounded as if little Seabury was being murdered. No such luck, I take it?'

'The young gentleman was the victim of a personal assault, sir. At the hands of Sir Roderick Glossop. I was not an actual eyewitness of the episode. I derive my information from Mary, the parlourmaid, who was present in person.'

'Present?'

'Peeping through the door, sir. Sir Roderick's appearance when she encountered him by chance on the stairs seems to have affected the girl powerfully, and she tells me that she had followed him about in a stealthy manner ever since, waiting to see what he would do next. I gather that his aspect fascinated her. She is inclined to be somewhat frivolous in her mental attitude, like so many of these young girls, sir.'

'And what occurred?'

'The affair may be said to have had its inception, sir, when Sir Roderick, passing through the hall, stepped upon the young gentleman's butter-slide.'

'Ah! So he put that project through, did he?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And Sir Roderick came a stinker?'

'He appears to have fallen with some heaviness, sir. The girl Mary spoke of it with a good deal of animation. She compared his descent to the delivery of a ton of coals. I confess the imagery somewhat surprised me, for she is not a highly imaginative girl.'

I smiled appreciatively. The evening, I felt, might have begun rockily, but it was certainly ending well.

'Incensed by this, Sir Roderick appears to have hastened to the drawing-room, where he immediately subjected Master Seabury to a severe castigation. Her ladyship vainly endeavoured to induce him to desist, but he was firm in his refusal. The upshot of the matter was a definite rift between her ladyship and Sir Roderick, the former stating that she never wished to see him again, the latter asseverating that, if he could once get safely out of this pestilential house, he would never darken its doors again.'

'A real mix-up.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And the engagement's off?'

'Yes, sir. The affection which her ladyship felt for Sir Roderick was instantaneously swept away on the tidal wave of injured mother love.'

'Rather well put, Jeeves.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Then Sir Roderick has pushed off for ever?'

'Apparently, sir.'

'A lot of trouble Chuffnell Hall is seeing these days. Almost as if there was a curse on the place.'

'If one were superstitious, one might certainly suppose so, sir.'

'Well, if there wasn't a curse on it before, you can bet there are about fifty-seven now. I heard old Glossop applying them as he passed.'

'He was much moved, I take it, sir?'

'Very much moved, Jeeves.'

'So I should imagine, sir. Or he would scarcely have left the house in that condition.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, sir, if you consider. It will scarcely be feasible for him to return to his hotel in the existing circumstances. His appearance would excite remark. Nor, after what has occurred, can he very well return to the Hall.'

I saw what he was driving at.

'Good Lord, Jeeves! You open up a new line of thought. Let me just review this. He can't go to his hotel – no, I see that, and he can't crawl back to the Dowager Lady C and ask for shelter – no, I see that too. It's a dead stymie. I can't imagine what on earth he'll do.'

'It is something of a problem, sir.'

I was silent for a moment. Pensive. And, oddly enough, for you would have thought my mood would have been one of sober joy, the heart was really rather bleeding a bit.

'Do you know, Jeeves, scurvily as that man has treated me in the past, I can't help feeling sorry for him. I do,