man up and endeavour to fraternize with him. I had even reached the stage of toying with the idea of a nice little lunch, with him on one side of the table and me on the other, sucking down some good, dry vintage wine and chatting like old friends, when I found that I had arrived at the outskirts of the Dower House.
This bin or depository for the widows of deceased Lords Chuffnell was a medium-sized sort of shack standing in what the advertisements describe as spacious and commodious grounds. You entered by a five-barred gate set in a box hedge and approached by a short gravel drive – unless you were planning to break in through a lower window, in which case you sneaked along a grass border, skipping silently from tree to tree.
This is what I did, though at a casual glance it didn't seem really necessary. The place looked deserted. Still, so far, of course, I had only seen the front of it: and if the gardener in charge had changed his policy of going down to the local pub for a refresher at this hour and was still on the premises, he would be round at the back. It was thither, therefore, that I now directed the footsteps, making them as snaky as possible.
I can't say I liked the prospect before me. Jeeves had spoken airily – or glibly – of busting in and making myself at home for the night; but my experience has been that whenever I try to do a bit of burgling something always goes wrong. I had not yet forgotten that time Bingo Little persuaded me to break into his house and pinch the dictaphone record of the mushy article his wife,
So it was with a pretty goodish amount of caution that I now sidled round to the back: and when the first thing the eye fell on was the kitchen door standing ajar, I did not rush in with the vim I would have displayed a year or so earlier, before Life had made me the grim, suspicious man I am today: but stood there cocking a wary eye at it. It might be all right. On the other hand, it might not be all right. Time alone could tell.
The next moment, I was dashed glad I had held off, because I suddenly heard someone whistling in the house, and I saw what that meant. It meant that the gardener bloke, instead of going down to the 'Chuffnell Arms' for a snifter, had decided to stay home and have a quiet evening among his books. So much for Jeeves's authoritative inside information.
I drew back into the shadows like a leopard, feeling pretty peeved. I felt that Jeeves had no right to say that fellows went down to the village for a spot at such and such a time when they didn't.
And then suddenly something happened that threw an entirely new light on the position of affairs, and I saw that I had misjudged the honest fellow. The whistling stopped, there was a single, brief hiccough, and then from inside came the sound of somebody singing 'Lead, Kindly Light'.
The occupant of the Dower House was no mere gardener. It was Moscow's Pride, the unspeakable Brinkley, who lurked therein.
The situation seemed to me to call for careful, unhurried thought.
The whole trouble with fellows like Brinkley is that in dealing with them you cannot go by the form book. They are such in-and-out performers. To-night, for instance, within the space of little more than an hour, I had seen this man ravening to and fro with a carving knife and also tolerantly submitting to having himself kicked by Chuffy practically the whole length of the Chuffnell Hall drive. It all seemed to be a question of what mood he happened to be in at the time. If, therefore, I was compelled to ask myself, I were to walk boldly into the Dower House now, which manifestation of this many-sided man would greet me? Should I find a deferential lover of peace whom it would be both simple and agreeable to take by the slack of the trousers and bung out? Or should I have to spend the remainder of the night racing up and downstairs with him a short head behind me?
And, arising out of this, what had become of that carving knife of his? As far as I could ascertain, he did not appear to have it on his person during the interview with Chuffy. But then, on the other hand, he might simply have left it somewhere and collected it again by now.
Reviewing the matter from every angle, I decided to remain where I was; and the next moment the trend of events showed that the decision had been a wise one. He had just got as far as that bit about 'The night is dark' and seemed to be going strong, though a little uncertain in the lower register, when he suddenly broke off. And the next thing I heard was a most frightful outbreak of shoutings and clumping and hangings. What had set him off, I could not, of course, say; but the sounds left little room for doubt that for some reason or other the fellow had abruptly returned to what I might call the carving-knife phase.
One of the advantages of being in the country, if you belong, like Brinkley, to the more aggressive type of loony, is that you have great freedom of movement. The sort of row he was making now, if made in, let us say, Grosvenor Square or Cadogan Terrace, would infallibly have produced posses of policemen within the first two minutes. Windows would have been raised, whistles blown. But in the peaceful seclusion of the Dower House, Chuffnell Regis, he was granted the widest scope for self-expression. Except for the Hall, there wasn't another house within a mile: and even the Hall was too far away for the ghastly uproar he was making to be more than a faint murmur.
As to what he thought he was chasing, there again one could make no certain pronouncement. It might be that the gardener-caretaker had not gone to the village, after all, and was now wishing that he had. Or it might be, of course, that a fellow in Brinkley's sozzled condition did not require a definite object of the chase, but simply chased rainbows, so to speak, for the sake of the exercise.
I was inclining to this latter view, and wondering a little wistfully if there mightn't be a chance of him falling downstairs and breaking his neck, when I found that I had been wrong. For some minutes the noise had grown somewhat fainter, activities seeming to have shifted to some distant part of the house; but now it suddenly hotted up again. I heard feet clattering downstairs. Then there was a terrific crash. And immediately after that the back door was burst open, and out shot a human form. It whizzed rapidly in my direction, tripped over something, and came a purler almost at my feet. And I was about to commend my soul to God and jump on its gizzard, hoping for the best, when something in the tone of the comments it was making – a sort of educated profanity which seemed to give evidence of a better bringing-up than Brinkley could possibly have had – made me pause.
I bent down. My diagnosis had been correct. It was Sir Roderick Glossop.
I was just going to introduce myself and institute inquiries, when the back door swung open again and another figure appeared.
'And stay out!' it observed, with a good deal of bitterness.
The voice was Brinkley's. It was some small pleasure to me at a none too festive time to note that he was rubbing his left shin.
The door slammed, and I heard the bolts shot. The next moment, a tenor voice rendering 'Rock of Ages' showed that, as far as Brinkley was concerned, the episode was concluded.
Sir Roderick had scrambled to his feet, and was standing puffing a good bit, as if touched in the wind. I was not surprised, for the going had been fast.
It struck me as a good moment to start the dialogue.
'What ho, what ho!' I said.
It seemed to be rather my fate on this particular night to stir up my fellow man, not to mention my fellow scullery-maid. But, judging by results, the magnetic force of my personality appeared to be a bit on the wane. I mean to say, while the scullery-maid had had hysterics and Chuffy had jumped a foot, this Glossop merely quivered like something in aspic when joggled on the dish. But this, of course, may have been because that was all he was physically able to do. These breathers with Brinkley take it out of a man.
'It's all right,' I continued, anxious to set him at his ease and remove the impression that what was murmuring in his ear was some fearful creature of the night. 'Only B. Wooster—'
'Mr Wooster!'
'Absolutely.'
'Good God!' he said, becoming a little more tranquil, though still far from the life and soul of the party. 'Woof!'
And there the matter rested, while he took in a supply of life-giving air. I remained silent. We Woosters do not intrude at such a time.
Presently the puffing died away to a soft whiffle. He took about another minute and a half off. And, when he spoke, there was something so subdued, so what you might call quavering, about his voice that I came within a toucher of placing a kindly arm round his shoulder and telling him to cheer up.
