'What are you doing with that knife?' he inquired.
Nothing could have been more civil and deferential than Brinkley's response.
'I caught it up to attack the Devil, sir.'
'What devil?' asked Sergeant Voules, taking the next point in rotation.
'A black devil, sir.'
'Black?'
'Yes, sir. He is in this room, murdering Mr Wooster.'
Now that he had at last got round to it, Sergeant Voules seemed interested.
'In this room?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Murdering Mr Wooster?'
'Yes, sir.'
'We can't have that sort of thing,' said Sergeant Voules, rather austerely. And I heard him click his tongue.
There was an authoritative rap on the door.
'Oy!'
I preserved a prudent silence.
'Excuse me, sir,' I heard Brinkley say, and from the sound of feet on the stairs I took it that he was leaving our little symposium. Possibly to have another go at the clock.
Knuckles smote the woodwork again.
'In there. Oy!'
I made no remark.
'Are you in there, Mr Wooster?'
I was beginning to feel that this conversation was a bit one- sided, but I didn't see what could be done about it. I moved to the window and looked out, more with the idea of just doing something to pass the time than anything else, and it was now – and only now, if you'll believe me – that the idea came to me that it might be possible to edge away from this distasteful scene. It wasn't so much of a drop to the ground, and with a good deal of relief I started to tie knots in a sheet with a view to the getaway.
It was at this moment that I heard Sergeant Voules suddenly give tongue.
'Oy!'
And from down below Brinkley's voice.
'Sir?'
'Look out what you're doing with that lamp.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You'll upset it.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Oy!'
'Sir?'
'You'll set the house on fire.'
'Yes, sir.'
And then there came a far-off crash of glass, and the sergeant went bounding down the stairs. This was followed by a sound which gave me the impression that Brinkley, feeling that he had done his bit, had galloped to the front door and slammed it after him. And after that another slam, as if the sergeant, too, had made a break for the open. And then, filtering through the keyhole, came a little puff of smoke.
I don't suppose there is anything that makes much better burning than one of these old country cottages. You just put a match to them – or upset a lamp in the hall, as the case may be – and up they go. It couldn't have been more than half a minute before a merry crackling came to my ears and a bit of the floor over in the corner suddenly burst into a cheerful flame.
It was enough for Bertram. A moment before, I had been messing about with knotted sheets with a view to what you might call the departure de luxe and generally loafing about and taking my time over the thing. I now quickened up quite a good deal. It was borne in upon me that anything in the nature of leisurely comfort was off. In the next thirty seconds cats on hot bricks could have picked up hints from me.
I remember reading in a paper once one of those Interesting Problem things about Suppose You were in a Burning House, what would you save? If I recollect rightly, a baby entered into it. Also a priceless picture and, if I am not mistaken, a bedridden aunt. I know there was a wide choice, and you were supposed to knit the brow and think the thing out from every angle.
On the present occasion I did not hesitate. I looked round immediately for my banjolele. Conceive my dismay when I remembered that I had left it in the sitting-room.
Well, I wasn't going down to that sitting-room even for the faithful old musical instrument. Already it was beginning to be a very moot point whether I wouldn't get cooked to a crisp, because that genial glow over in the corner had now spread not a little. With a regretful sigh I hopped hurriedly to the window, and the next moment I was dropping like the gentle dew upon the place beneath.
Or is it rain? I always forget.
Jeeves would know.
I made a smooth landing and shot silently through the hedge at the junction between my back garden and Sergeant Voules's little bit, and continued to leg it till I was in a sort of wood – I suppose about half a mile from the pulsing centre of affairs. The sky was all lit up, and in the distance I could hear the sound of the local fire brigade going about its duties.
I sat down on a stump, and took time off to pass the situation under review.
Wasn't it Robinson Crusoe or someone who, when things were working out a bit messily for him, used to draw up a sort of Credit and Debit account, in order to see exactly where he stood and ascertain whether he was behind or ahead of the game at that particular moment? I know it was someone, and I had always thought it rather a sound idea.
This was what I did now. In my head, of course, and keeping a wary eye out for possible pursuers.
The thing came out about as follows:
Credit Debit
Well, here I am, what? Yes, but your bally house has burned down.
Not mine. Chuffy's. Yes, I know, but all your things are in it.
Nothing of value. How about the banjolele?
Oh, my gosh! That's true. I thought that would make you think a bit.
You needn't rub it in. I'm not rubbing it in. I am merely saying that your banjolele has been reduced to a heap of ashes.
Well, I'd have looked a damn sight sillier if it had been me. A footling bit of reasoning.
Well, anyway, I've got away from old Stoker. How do you know you have?
He hasn't caught me yet. No, but he may.
I've still time to get that 10.21 train. My poor ass, you can't go getting on trains with your face all black.
Butter will remove the blacking Yes, but you have no butter.
I can buy some. How? Got any money on you?
Well, no. Ah!
Why shouldn't I get someone to give me butter? Who?
Why, Jeeves, of course. All I have to do is to go to the Hall and put the whole case before Jeeves and tell him to rally round, and there I'll be, as right as rain, with nothing more to worry about. Jeeves will know where to lay his hand on seas of butter. You see! It's perfectly simple if you think it out and don't lose your head.
And, by Jove, there didn't seem a single Debit to shove against that. I examined the position thoroughly, trying to find one, but at the end of five minutes I saw that I had got the Debit account stymied. I had baffled it. It hadn't a thing to say.
Of course, I mused, I ought to have thought of this solution right from the start. Dashed obvious, the whole thing, when you came to think of it. I mean, Jeeves would be back at the Hall by now. I had only to go and get in touch with him and he would bring out pounds of butter on a lordly dish. And not only that, but he would lend me enough of the needful to pay my fare to London and possibly even to purchase a packet of milk chocolate from the slot machine at the station. The thing was a walk-over.
I rose from my stump, braced to a degree, and started off. In the race for life, as you might term it, I had lost my bearings a bit, but I pretty soon hit the main road, and I don't suppose it was more than a quarter of an hour later that I was rapping at the back door of the Hall.
It was opened by a small female – a scullery-maid of sorts, I put her down as – who, on observing me, gaped for a moment with a sort of shocked horror, and then with a piercing squeal keeled over and started to roll about and drum her heels on the floor. And I'm not so dashed sure she wasn't frothing at the mouth.
14 THE BUTTER SITUATION
I must admit it was a fairly nasty shock. I had never realized before what an important part one's complexion plays in life. I mean to say, a Bertram Wooster with merely a pretty tan calling at the back door of Chuffnell Hall would have been received with respect and deference. Indeed, I shouldn't wonder i
f a girl of the social standing of a scullery-maid might not actually have curtsied. And I don't suppose matters would have been so substantially different if I had had an interesting pallor or pimples. But purely and simply because there happened to be a little boot polish on my face, here was this female tying herself in knots on the doormat and throwing fits up and down the passage.
Well, there was only one thing to do, of course. Already voices from along the corridor were making inquiries, and in another half-second I presumed that I might expect a regular susurration of domestics on the scene. I picked up the feet and pushed off. And, taking it that the neighbourhood of the back door was liable to be searched pretty soon, I hared round to the front and came to roost in a patch of bushes not far from the main entrance.
Here I paused. It seemed to me that before going any further, I had better try to analyse the situation and find out what to do next.
In other circs – if, let us say, I had been reclining in a deck chair with a cigarette, instead of squatting in a beastly jungle with beetles falling down my neck – I should probably have got a good deal of entertainment and uplift out of the scene and surroundings generally. I've always been rather a lad for the peace of the old-world English garden round about the time between the end of dinner and the mixing of the bedtime spot. From where I sat, I could see the great mass of the Hall standing out against the sky, and very impressive it was, too. Birds were rustling in the trees, and I think there must have been a flower bed fairly close by with stocks and tobacco plant in it, for the air was full of a pretty goodish sort of smell. Add the perfect stillness of a summer night, and there you are.
At the end of about ten minutes, however, the stillness of the summer night rather sprang a leak. From one of the rooms there proceeded a loud yelling. I recognized the voice of little Seabury, and I remember feeling thankful that he had his troubles, too. After a bit, he cheesed it – I assumed the friction had arisen from the fact that somebody wanted to put him to bed and he didn't want to go – and all was quiet again.
Directly after that there came a sound of footsteps. Somebody was walking up the drive to the front door.
My first idea was that it was Sergeant Voules. Chuffy, you see, is a local Justice of the Peace, and I imagined that one of the first things Voules would do after the affair at the cottage would be to call on the big chief and report. I wedged myself a bit tighter into the bushes.
No, it wasn't Sergeant Voules. I had just got him against a patch of sky and I could see he was taller and not nearly so round. He went up the steps and started knocking at the door.
And when I say knocking I mean knocking. I had thought Voules's performance at the cottage on the previous night a pretty good exhibition of wrist-work, but this chap put it all over him. In a different class, altogether. He was giving that knocker more exercise than I suppose it had ever had since the first Chuffnell, or whoever it was, had it screwed on.
In the intervals of slamming the knocker, he was also singing a hymn in a meditative sort of voice. It was, if I recollect rightly, 'Lead, Kindly Light', and it enabled me to place him. I had heard that reedy tenor before. One of the first things I had had to put my foot down about, on arriving at the cottage, was Brinkley's habit of singing hymns in the kitchen while I was trying to play foxtrots on the banjolele in the sitting-room. There could not be two voices like that in Chuffnell Regis. This nocturnal visitor was none other than my plastered personal attendant, and what he wanted at the Hall was more than I could understand.
Lights flashed up in the house, and the front door was wrenched open. A voice spoke. It was a pretty peevish voice, and it was Chuffy's. As a rule, of course, the Squire of Chuffnell Regis shoves the task of answering the door off on to the domestic staff, but I suppose he felt that a ghastly din like this constituted a special case. Anyway, here he was, and he didn't seem too pleased.
'What on earth are you making that foul noise for?'
'Good evening, sir.'
'What do you mean, good evening? What ...'
I think he would have gone to some length, for he was evidently much stirred, but at this point Brinkley interrupted.
'Is the Devil in?'
It was a simple question, capable of being answered with a Yes or No, but it seemed to take Chuffy aback somewhat.
'Is – who?'
'The Devil, sir.'
I must say I had never looked on old Chuffy as a fellow of very swift intelligence, he having always run rather to thews and sinews than the grey cells, but I'm bound to say that at this juncture he exhibited a keen intuition which did him credit.
'You're tight.'
'Yes, sir.'
Chuffy seemed to explode like a paper bag. I could follow his mental processes, if you know what I mean, pretty clearly. Ever since that unfortunate episode at the cottage, when the girl he loved had handed him the mitten and gone out of his life, I imagine he had been seething and brooding and sizzling and what not like a soul in torment, yearning for some outlet for his repressed emotions, and here he had found one. Ever since that regrettable scene he had been wishing that he could work off the stored-up venom on somebody, and, by Jove, Heaven had sent this knocker-slamming inebriate.
To run Brinkley down the steps and up the drive, kicking him about every other yard, was with the fifth Baron Chuffnell the work of a moment. They passed my little clump of bushes at about forty m.p.h., and rolled away into the distance. And after a while I heard footsteps and the sound of someone whistling as if a bit of a load had been removed from his soul, and Chuffy came legging it back.
Just about opposite my lair he paused to light a cigarette, and it seemed to me that the moment had come to get in touch.
Mark you, I wasn't any too keen on chatting with old Chuffy, for his manner at our last parting had been far from bonhomous, and had my outlook been a shade rosier I would most certainly have given him a miss. But he was by way of being my last hope. What with platoons of scullery-maids having hysterics every time I went near the back door, it seemed impossible to connect with Jeeves to-night. It was just as impossible to go the round of the neighbourhood, calling on perfect strangers and asking for butter. I mean, you know yourself how you feel when a fellow you've never met drops in at your house with his face all black and tries to touch you for a bit of butter. You just aren't in sympathy.
No, everything pointed to Chuffy as the logical saviour of the situation. He was a man who had butter at his command, and it might be that, now that he had worked off some of the hard feelings on Brinkley, he would be in a frame of mind to oblige an old school friend with a quarter of a pound or so. So I crawled softly out of the undergrowth and came up in his immediate rear.
'Chuffy!' I said.
I can see now it would have been better to have given him a bit more warning of my presence. Nobody likes to have unexpected voices speaking suddenly down the back of their neck, and in calmer mood I should have recognized this. I don't say it was exactly a repetition of the scullery-maid episode, but for a moment it looked like coming very near it. The poor old lad distinctly leaped. The cigarette flew out of his hand, his teeth came together with a snap, and he shook visibly. The whole effect being much as if I had spiked him in the trousering with a gimlet or bodkin. I have seen salmon behave in a rather similar way during the spawning season.
I did my best to lull the storm with soothing words.
'It's only me, Chuffy.'
'Who?'
'Bertie.'
'Bertie?'
'That's right.'
'Oh!'
I didn't much like the sound of that 'Oh!' It hadn't a welcoming ring. One learns to sense when one is popular and when one is not. It was pretty plain to me at this point that I was not, and I thought it might be wise if, before proceeding to the main topic, I were to start off with a stately compliment.
'You put it across that fellow properly, Chuffy,' I said. 'I liked your work. It was particularly agreeable to me to see him so adequately handled, b
ecause I had been wishing I had the nerve to kick him myself
'Who was he?'
'My man, Brinkley'
'What was he doing here?'
'I fancy he was looking for me.'
'Why wasn't he at the cottage, then?'
I had been hoping for a good opportunity of breaking the news.
'I'm afraid you're a cottage short, Chuffy,' I said. 'I regret to report that Brinkley has just burned it down.'
'What!'
'Insured, I trust?'
'He burned the cottage? How? Why?'
'Just a whim. I suppose it seemed a good idea to him at the moment.'
Chuffy took it rather hard. I could see that he was brooding, and I would have liked to allow him to brood all he wanted. But if I was going to catch that 10.21 it was necessary to push along. Time was of the essence.
'Well,' I said, 'I hate to bother you, old man ...'
'Why on earth should he burn a cottage?'
'One cannot attempt to fathom the psychology of blokes like Brinkley. They move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform. Suffice it that he did.'
'Are you sure it wasn't you?'
'My dear chap!'
'It sounds the sort of silly, fat-headed thing you would do,' said Chuffy, and I was distressed to note in his voice much evidence of the old rancour. 'What do you want here, anyway? Who asked you to come? If you think, after what has happened, that you can stroll in and out ...'
'I know, I know. I understand. Painful misunderstanding. Coolness. A disposition to disapprove of Bertram. But ...'
'And where did you spring from just now? I never saw you.'
'I was sitting in a bush.'
'Sitting in a bush?'
The tone in which he said the words told me that, always too prone to misjudge an old friend, he had once more formed a wrong conclusion. I heard a match scratch on its box, and the next moment he was examining me by its light. The light went out, and I heard him breathing deeply in the darkness.
I could follow the workings of his mind. He was evidently struggling with his feelings. The disinclination to have anything more to do with me after last night's painful rift was contending with the reflection that the fact that we had been pals for years carried with it a certain obligation. A chap, he was thinking, may have ceased to be on cordial terms with an old school mate, but he can hardly let him go wandering about the countryside in the condition he supposed I was in.