Jeeves Stories by P. G. Wodehouse (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📕

“Roderick says this young man is insane,” roared the Prof.

“Ah!” said Aunt Jane, nodding, “I thought as much. He climbs down water-pipes.”

“Does what?”

“I’ve seen him⁠—ah, many a time.”

Sir Roderick snorted violently.

“He ought to be under proper restraint. It is abominable that a person in his mental condition should be permitted to roam the world at large. The next stage may quite easily be homicidal.”

It seemed to me that, even at the expense of giving old Sippy away, I must be cleared of this frightful charge. After all, Sippy’s number was up, anyway.

“Let me explain,” I said. “Sippy asked me to come here.”

“What do you mean?”

“He couldn’t come himself, because he was jugged for biffing a cop on Boat Race Night.”

Well, it wasn’t easy to make them get the hang of the story, and even when I’d done it, it didn’t seem to make them any chummier towards me. A certain coldness about expresses it, and when dinner was announced I counted myself out and pushed off rapidly to my room. I could have done with a bit of dinner, but the atmosphere didn’t seem just right.

“Jeeves,” I said, having shot in and pressed the bell, “we’re sunk.”

“Sir?”

“Hell’s foundations are quivering and the game is up.”

He listened attentively.

“The contingency was one always to have been anticipated as a possibility, sir. It only remains to take the obvious step.”

“What’s that?”

“Go and see Miss Sipperley, sir.”

“What on earth for?”

“I think it would be judicious to apprise her of the facts yourself, sir, instead of allowing her to hear of them through the medium of a letter from Professor Pringle. That is to say, if you are still anxious to do all that is in your power to assist Mr. Sipperley.”

“I can’t let old Sippy down. If you think it’s any good⁠—”

“We can but try it, sir. I have an idea, sir, that we may find Miss Sipperley disposed to look leniently upon Mr. Sipperley’s misdemeanour.”

“What makes you think that?”

“It is just a feeling that I have, sir.”

“Well, if you think it would be worth trying⁠—How do we get there?”

“The distance is about a hundred and fifty miles, sir. Our best plan would be to hire a car.”

“Get it at once,” I said.

The idea of being a hundred and fifty miles away from Heloise Pringle, not to mention Aunt Jane and Sir Roderick Glossop, sounded about as good to me as anything I had ever heard.

The Paddock, Beckley-on-the-Moor, was about a couple of parasangs from the village, and I set out for it next morning, after partaking of a hearty breakfast at the local inn, practically without a tremor. I suppose when a fellow has been through it as I had in the last two weeks, his system becomes hardened. After all, I felt, whatever this aunt of Sippy’s might be like, she wasn’t Sir Roderick Glossop, so I was that much on velvet from the start.

The Paddock was one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit of very tidy garden and a carefully-rolled gravel drive curving past a shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back from the dry-cleaner⁠—the sort of a house you take one look at and say to yourself, “Somebody’s aunt lives there.” I pushed on up the drive, and as I turned the bend I observed in the middle distance a woman messing about by a flowerbed with a trowel in her hand. If this wasn’t the female I was after, I was very much mistaken, so I halted, cleared the throat, and gave tongue.

“Miss Sipperley?”

She had had her back to me, and at the sound of my voice she executed a sort of leap or bound, not unlike a barefoot dancer who steps on a tin-tack halfway through the Vision of Salome. She came to earth and goggled at me in a rather goofy manner. A large, stout female with a reddish face.

“Hope I didn’t startle you?” I said.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Wooster. I’m a pal of your nephew Oliver.” Her breathing had become more regular.

“Oh?” she said. “When I heard your voice, I thought you were someone else.”

“No, that’s who I am. I came up here to tell you about Oliver.”

“What about him?”

I hesitated. Now that we were approaching what you might call the nub or crux of the situation a good deal of my breezy confidence seemed to have slipped from me.

“Well, it’s rather a painful tale, I must warn you.”

“Oliver isn’t ill? He hasn’t had an accident?”

She spoke anxiously, and I was pleased at this evidence of human feeling. I decided to shoot the works with no more delay.

“Oh, no, he isn’t ill,” I said, “and, as regards having accidents, it depends what you call an accident. He’s in chokey.”

“In what?”

“In prison.”

“In prison!”

“It was entirely my fault. We were strolling along on Boat Race Night, and I advised him to pinch a policeman’s helmet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, he seemed depressed, don’t you know, and rightly or wrongly I thought it might cheer him up if he stepped across the street and collared a policeman’s helmet. He thought it a good idea, too, so he started doing it, and the man made a fuss, and Oliver sloshed him.”

“Sloshed him?”

“Biffed him⁠—smote him a blow⁠—in the stomach.”

“My nephew Oliver hit a policeman in the stomach?”

“Absolutely in the stomach. And next morning the beak sent him to the Bastille for thirty days without the option.”

I was looking at her a bit anxiously all this while, to see how she was taking the thing, and at this moment her face seemed suddenly to split in half. For an instant she appeared to be all mouth, and then she was staggering about the grass, shouting with happy laughter and waving the trowel madly.

It seemed to me a bit of luck for her that Sir Roderick Glossop wasn’t on the spot. He would have been sitting on her head and calling for the strait-waistcoat in the first half-minute.

“You aren’t annoyed?” I said.

“Annoyed?” She chuckled happily. “I’ve never heard