“Why was the door locked?” demanded Tuppy.
I was in pretty good eyebrow-raising form by now, so I gave him a touch of it.
“Is one to have no privacy, Glossop?” I said coldly. “I instructed Jeeves to lock the door because I was about to disrobe.”
“A likely story!” said Tuppy, and I’m not sure he didn’t add “Forsooth!” “You needn’t try to make me believe that you’re afraid people are going to run excursion trains to see you in your underwear. You locked that door because you’ve got the snake Fink-Nottle concealed in here. I suspected it the moment I’d left, and I decided to come back and investigate. I’m going to search this room from end to end. I believe he’s in that cupboard. … What’s in this cupboard?”
“Just clothes,” I said, having another stab at the nonchalant, though extremely dubious as to whether it would come off. “The usual wardrobe of the English gentleman paying a country-house visit.”
“You’re lying!”
Well, I wouldn’t have been if he had only waited a minute before speaking, because the words were hardly out of his mouth before Gussie was out of the cupboard. I have commented on the speed with which he had gone in. It was as nothing to the speed with which he emerged. There was a sort of whir and blur, and he was no longer with us.
I think Tuppy was surprised. In fact, I’m sure he was. Despite the confidence with which he had stated his view that the cupboard contained Fink-Nottles, it plainly disconcerted him to have the chap fizzing out at him like this. He gargled sharply, and jumped back about five feet. The next moment, however, he had recovered his poise and was galloping down the corridor in pursuit. It only needed Aunt Dahlia after them, shouting “Yoicks!” or whatever is customary on these occasions, to complete the resemblance to a brisk run with the Quorn.
I sank into a handy chair. I am not a man whom it is easy to discourage, but it seemed to me that things had at last begun to get too complex for Bertram.
“Jeeves,” I said, “all this is a bit thick.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The head rather swims.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think you had better leave me, Jeeves. I shall need to devote the very closest thought to the situation which has arisen.”
“Very good, sir.”
The door closed. I lit a cigarette and began to ponder.
XIX
Most chaps in my position, I imagine, would have pondered all the rest of the evening without getting a bite, but we Woosters have an uncanny knack of going straight to the heart of things, and I don’t suppose it was much more than ten minutes after I had started pondering before I saw what had to be done.
What was needed to straighten matters out, I perceived, was a heart-to-heart talk with Angela. She had caused all the trouble by her mutton-headed behaviour in saying “Yes” instead of “No” when Gussie, in the grip of mixed drinks and cerebral excitement, had suggested teaming up. She must obviously be properly ticked off and made to return him to store. A quarter of an hour later, I had tracked her down to the summerhouse in which she was taking a cooler and was seating myself by her side.
“Angela,” I said, and if my voice was stern, well, whose wouldn’t have been, “this is all perfect drivel.”
She seemed to come out of a reverie. She looked at me inquiringly.
“I’m sorry, Bertie, I didn’t hear. What were you talking drivel about?”
“I was not talking drivel.”
“Oh, sorry, I thought you said you were.”
“Is it likely that I would come out here in order to talk drivel?”
“Very likely.”
I thought it best to haul off and approach the matter from another angle.
“I’ve just been seeing Tuppy.”
“Oh?”
“And Gussie Fink-Nottle.”
“Oh, yes?”
“It appears that you have gone and got engaged to the latter.”
“Quite right.”
“Well, that’s what I meant when I said it was all perfect drivel. You can’t possibly love a chap like Gussie.”
“Why not?”
“You simply can’t.”
Well, I mean to say, of course she couldn’t. Nobody could love a freak like Gussie except a similar freak like the Bassett. The shot wasn’t on the board. A splendid chap, of course, in many ways—courteous, amiable, and just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands—but quite obviously not of Mendelssohn’s March timber. I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic.
I put this to her, and she was forced to admit the justice of it.
“All right, then. Perhaps I don’t.”
“Then what,” I said keenly, “did you want to go and get engaged to him for, you unreasonable young fathead?”
“I thought it would be fun.”
“Fun!”
“And so it has been. I’ve had a lot of fun out of it. You should have seen Tuppy’s face when I told him.”
A sudden bright light shone upon me.
“Ha! A gesture!”
“What?”
“You got engaged to Gussie just to score off Tuppy?”
“I did.”
“Well, then, that was what I was saying. It was a gesture.”
“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
“And I’ll tell you something else I’ll call it—viz. a dashed low trick. I’m surprised at you, young Angela.”
“I don’t see why.”
I curled the lip about half an inch. “Being a female, you wouldn’t. You gentler sexes are like that. You pull off the rawest stuff without a pang. You pride yourselves on it. Look at Jael, the wife of Heber.”
“Where did you ever hear of Jael, the wife of Heber?”
“Possibly you are not aware that I once won a Scripture-knowledge prize at school?”
“Oh, yes. I remember Augustus mentioning it in his speech.”
“Quite,” I said, a little hurriedly. I had no wish to be reminded of Augustus’s speech. “Well, as I say, look at Jael, the wife of Heber. Dug spikes into the guest’s coconut while he
