'Well, I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather --'
'Flock together ? '
'Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something about L. P. Runkle.'
'Right ho.'
'We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode's, is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done anything lately to incur his displeasure?'
This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every confidence that an aunt's condolences would result.
'There was this gnat.'
'I don't follow you.'
'I had to rally round.'
'You've still lost me.'
'Spode didn't like it.'
'So he doesn't like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning and carrying on to the end.'
'Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.'
I told her about the gnat in Madeline's eye, the part I had played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.
'I wouldn't do that sort of thing again,' she said.
'If the necessity arose I would have no option.'
'Then you'd better get one as soon as possible. Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline's eye, you may have to marry the girl.'
'But surely the peril has passed now that she's engaged to Spode.'
'I don't know so much. I think there's some trouble between Spode and Madeline.'
I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these frightful words I confess that I went into my old aspen routine even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together with the relict of the late McCorkadale.
And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults was something that couldn't be broken or even cracked. He, on his own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she, as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.
'Trouble?' I whispered hoarsely. 'You mean there's a what-d'you-call-it? '
'What would that be?'
'A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music mute. Not my own, Jeeves's.'
'The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I noticed that he was refusing Anatole's best, while she looked wan and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole's best, what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes that Tuppy will soon be in the money.'
I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle's millions, but this was no time to change the subject.
'Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.' 'Wilberforce,' she murmured, as far as a woman of her outstanding lung power could murmur. 'Did I ever tell you how you got that label? It was your father's doing. The day before you were lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name. Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom's second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being christened Phyllis.'
I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper knife of Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are always getting stabbed in the back with.
'Don't wander from the res. The fact that you nearly got christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography, but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a fuse.'
'You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to fill the vacuum?'
'Exactly.'
'She won't. Not a chance.'
'But you said-'
'I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on taking gnats out of Madeline's eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.'
'You chilled me to the marrow.'
'Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn't worry. They've only had a lovers' tiff such as occurs with the mushiest
