I whistled a bar or two.
'Then that thing I picked up for you this morning was a dud?'
'Cultured stuff.'
'Golly!' I said. 'You aunts do live!' I hesitated. I was loath to bruise that gentle spirit, especially at a moment when she was worried about something, but it seemed to me a nephew's duty to point out the snag. 'And when... I'm afraid this is going to spoil your day, but what happens when Uncle Tom finds out?'
'That's exactly the trouble.'
'I thought it might be.'
She gulped like a third stricken bull pup.
'If it hadn't been for a foul bit of bad luck, he wouldn't have found out in a million years. I don't suppose Tom, bless him, would know the difference between the Koh-i-noor and something from Woolworth's.'
I saw her point. Uncle Tom, as I have indicated, is a red-hot collector of old silver and there is nothing you can teach him about sconces, foliation, scrolls and ribbon wreaths, but jewellery is to him, as to most of the male sex, a sealed book.
'But he's going to find out tomorrow evening, and I'll tell you why. I told you he came to my room just now. Well, we had been kidding back and forth for a few moments, all very pleasant and matey, when he suddenly... Oh, my God!'
I administered another sympathetic pat on the bean.
'Pull yourself together, old relative. What did he suddenly do?'
'He suddenly told me that this Lord Sidcup who is coming tomorrow is not only an old-silver hound but an expert on jewellery, and he was going to ask him, while here, to take a look at my necklace.'
'Gosh!'
'He said he had often had a suspicion that the bandits who sold it to him had taken advantage of his innocence and charged him a lot too much. Sidcup, he said, would be able to put him straight about it.'
'Golly!'
'"Gosh!" is right, and so is "Golly!"'
'Then that's why you clutched the top of your head and tottered?'
'That's why. How long do you suppose it will take this fiend in human shape to see through that dud string of pearls and spill the beans? Just about ten seconds, if not less. And then what? Can you blame me for tottering?'
I certainly couldn't. In her place, I would have tottered myself and tottered like nobody's business. A far duller man that Bertram Wooster would have been able to appreciate that this aunt who sat before me clutching feverishly at her perm was an aunt who was in the dickens of a spot. A crisis had been precipitated in her affairs which threatened, unless some pretty adroit staff-work was pulled by her friends and well-wishers, to put the home right plumb spang in the melting-pot.
I have made a rather close study of the married state, and I know what happens when one turtle dove gets the goods on the other turtle dove. Bingo Little has often told me that if Mrs Bingo had managed to get on him some of the things it seemed likely she was going to get, the moon would have been turned to blood and Civilization shaken to its foundations. I have heard much the same thing from other husbands of my acquaintance, and, of course, similar upheavals occur when it is the little woman who is caught bending.
Always up to now Aunt Dahlia had been the boss of Brinkley Court, maintaining a strong centralized government, but let Uncle Tom discover that she had pawned her pearl necklace in order to buy a serial story for what for some reason he always alluded to as Madame's Nightshirt, a periodical which from the very start he had never liked, and she would be in much the same position as one of those monarchs or dictators who wake up one morning to find that the populace has risen against them and is saying it with bombs. Uncle Tom is a kindly old bimbo, but even kindly old bimbos can make themselves dashed unpleasant when the conditions are right.
'Egad!' I said, fingering the chin. This is not so good.'
'It's the end of all things.'
'You say this Sidcup bird will be here tomorrow? It doesn't give you much time to put your affairs in order. No wonder you're sending out SOSs for Jeeves.'
'Only he can save me from the fate that is worse than death.'
'But can even Jeeves adjust matters?'
'I'm banking on him. After all, he's a hell of an adjuster.'
'True.'
'He's got you out of some deepish holes in his time.'
'Quite. I often say there is none like him, none. He should be with us at any moment now. He stepped out to get me a tankard of the old familiar juice.'
Her eyes gleamed with a strange light.
'Bags I first go at it!'
I patted her hand.
'Of course,' I said, 'of course. You may take that as read. You don't find Bertram Wooster hogging the drink supply when a suffering aunt is at his side with her tongue hanging out. Your need is greater than mine, as whoever-it-was said to the stretcher case. Ah!'
Jeeves had come in bearing the elixir, not a split second before we were ready for it. I took the beaker from him and offered it to the aged relative with a courteous gesture. With a brief 'Mud in your eye' she drank deeply. I then finished what was left at a gulp.
'Oh, Jeeves,' I said.
'Sir?'
'Lend me your ears.'
'Very good, sir.'
It had needed but a glance at my late father's sister to tell me that if there was going to be any lucid exposition of the res, I was the one who would have to attend to it. After moistening her clay she had relapsed into a sort of frozen coma, staring before her with unseeing eyes and showing a disposition to pant like a hart when heated in the chase. Nor was this to be wondered at. Few women would have been in vivacious mood, had Fate touched off beneath them a similar stick of trinitrotoluol. I imagine her emotions after Uncle Tom had said his say must have been of much the same nature as those which she had no doubt frequently experienced in her hunting days when her steed, having bucked her from the saddle, had proceeded to roll on her. And while the blushful Hippocrene of which she had just imbibed her share had been robust and full of inner meaning, it had obviously merely scratched the surface.
A rather tight place has popped up out of a trap, Jeeves, and we should be glad of your counsel and advice. This is the posish. Aunt Dahlia has a pearl necklace, the Christmas gift of Uncle Tom, whose second name, I'll bet you didn't know, is Portarlington. The one you picked up at Aspinall's this morning. Are you with me?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, this is where the plot thickens. It isn't a pearl necklace, if I make my meaning clear. For reasons into which we need not go, she put the Uncle-Tom-Merry-Christmas one up the spout. What is now in her possession is an imitation of little or no intrinsic value.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You don't seem amazed.'
'No, sir. I became aware of the fact when I saw the necklace this morning. I perceived at once that what had been given to me was a cultured replica.'
'Good Lord! Was it as easy to spot as that?'
'Oh, no, sir. I have no doubt that it would deceive the untutored eye. But I spent some months at one time studying jewellery under the auspices of a cousin of mine who is in the trade. The genuine pearl has no core.'
'No what?'
'Core, sir. In its interior. The cultured pearl has. A cultured pearl differs from a real one in this respect, that it is the result of introducing into the oyster a foreign substance designed to irritate it and induce it to coat the substance with layer upon layer of nacre. Nature's own irritant is invariably so small as to be invisible, but the core in the cultured imitation can be discerned, as a rule merely by holding the cultured pearl up before a strong light. This was what I did in the matter of Mrs Travers's necklace. I had no need of the endoscope.'
The what?'
'Endoscope, sir. An instrument which enables one to peer into the cultured pearl's interior and discern the core.'
I was conscious of a passing pang for the oyster world, feeling – and I think correctly – that life for these unfortunate bivalves must be one damn thing after another, but my principal emotion was one of astonishment.
'Great Scott, Jeeves! Do
you know everything?'
'Oh, no, sir. It just happens that jewellery is something of a hobby of mine. With diamonds, of course, the test would be different. To ascertain the genuineness of a diamond it would be necessary to take a sapphire-point gramophone needle – which is, as you are no doubt aware, corundum having a hardness of 9 – and make a small test scratch on the underside of the suspect stone. A genuine diamond, I need scarcely remind you, is the only substance with a hardness of 10 – Moh's scale of hardness. Most of the hard objects we see about us are approximately 7 in the hardness scale. But you were saying, sir?'
I was still blinking a bit. When Jeeves gets going nicely, he often has this effect on me. With a strong effort I pulled myself together and was able to continue.
'Well, that's the nub of the story,' I said. Aunt Dahlia's necklace, the one now in her possession, is, as your trained senses told you, a seething mass of cores and not worth the paper it's written on. Right. Well, here's the point. If no complications had been introduced into the scenario, all would be well, because Uncle Tom couldn't tell the difference between a real necklace and an imitation one if he tried for months. But a whale of a complication has been introduced. A pal of his is coming tomorrow to look at the thing, and this pal, like you, is an expert on jewellery. You see what will happen the moment he cocks an eye at the worthless substitute. Exposure, ruin, desolation and despair. Uncle Tom, learning the truth, will blow his top, and Aunt Dahlia's prestige will be down among the wines and spirits. You get me, Jeeves?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Then let us have your views.'
'It is disturbing, sir.'
I wouldn't have thought that anything would have been able to rouse that crushed aunt from her trance, but this did the trick. She came up like a rocketing pheasant from the chair into which she had slumped.
'Disturbing! What a word to use!'
I sympathized with her distress, but checked her with an upraised hand.
'Please, old relative! Yes, Jeeves, it is, as you say, a bit on the disturbing side, but one feels that you will probably have something constructive to place before the board. We shall be glad to hear your solution.'
He allowed a muscle at the side of his mouth to twitch regretfully.
'With a problem of such magnitude, sir, I fear I am not able to provide a solution off-hand, if I may use the expression. I should require to give the matter thought. Perhaps if I might be permitted to pace the corridor for awhile?'
'Certainly, Jeeves. Pace all the corridors you wish.'
Thank you, sir. I shall hope to return shortly with some suggestion which will give satisfaction.'
I closed the door behind him and turned to the aged r., who, her face bright purple, was still muttering 'Disturbing'.
'I know just how you feel, old flesh and blood,' I said. 'I ought to have warned you that Jeeves never leaps about and rolls the eyes when you spring something sensational on him, preferring to preserve the calm impassivity of a stuffed frog.'
'"Disturbing"!'
'I have grown not to mind this much myself, though occasionally, as I was about to do tonight, administering a rather stern rebuke, for experience has taught me –'
'"Disturbing", for God's sake! "Disturbing"!'
'I know, I know. That manner of his does afflict the nerve centres quite a bit, does it not? But, as I was saying, experience has taught me that there always follows some ripe solution of whatever the problem may be. As the fellow said, if stuffed frogs come, can ripe solutions be far behind?'
She sat up. I could see the light of hope dawning in her eyes.
'You really think he will find the way?'
'I am convinced of it. He always finds the way. I wish I had a quid for every way he has found since first he started to serve under the Wooster banner. Remember how he enabled me to put it across Roderick Spode at Totleigh Towers.'
'He did, didn't he?'
'He certainly did. One moment, Spode was a dark menace, the next a mere blob of jelly with all his fangs removed, grovelling at my feet. You can rely implicitly on Jeeves. Ah,' I said, as the door opened. 'Here he comes, his head sticking out at the back and his eyes shining with intelligence and what not. You have thought of something, Jeeves?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I knew it. I was saying a moment ago that you always find the way. Well, let us have it.'
'There is a method by means of which Mrs Travers can be extricated from her sea of troubles. Shakespeare.'
I didn't know why he was addressing me as Shakespeare, but I motioned him to continue.
'Proceed, Jeeves.'
He did so, turning now to Aunt Dahlia, who was gazing at him like a bear about to receive a bun.
'If, as Mr Wooster has told me, madam, this jewellery expert is to be with us shortly, it would seem that your best plan is to cause the necklace to disappear before he arrives. If I may make my meaning clearer, madam,' he went on in response to a query from the sizzling woman as to whether he supposed her to be a bally conjuror. 'What I had in mind was something in the nature of a burglarious entry, as the result of which the piece of jewellery would be abstracted. You will readily see, madam, that if the gentleman, coming to examine the necklace, finds that there is no necklace for him to examine –'
'He won't be able to examine it?'
'Precisely, madam. Rem acu tetigisti.'
I shook the lemon. I had expected something better than this. It seemed to me that that great brain had at last come unglued, and this saddened me.
'But, Jeeves,' I said gently, 'where do you get your burglar? From the Army and Navy Stores?'
'I was thinking that you might consent to undertake the task, sir.'
'Me?'
'Gosh, yes,' said Aunt Dahlia, her dial lighting up like a stage moon. 'How right you are, Jeeves! You wouldn't mind doing a little thing like that for me, would you, Bertie? Of course you wouldn't. You've grasped the idea? You get a ladder, prop it up against my window, pop in, pinch the necklace and streak off with it. And tomorrow I go to Tom in floods of tears and say, "Tom! My pearls! They've gone! Some low bounder sneaked in last night and snitched them as I slept." That's the idea, isn't it, Jeeves?'
'Precisely, madam. It would be a simple task for Mr Wooster. I notice that since my last visit to Brinkley Court the bars which protected the windows have been removed.'
'Yes, I had that done after that time when we were all locked out. You remember?'
'Very vividly, madam.'
'So there's nothing to stop you, Bertie.'
'Nothing but–'
I paused. I had been about to say 'Nothing but my total and absolute refusal to take on the assignment in any shape or form,' but I checked the words before they could pass the lips. I saw that I was exaggerating what I had supposed to be the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise.
After all, I felt, there was nothing so very hazardous about it. A ludicrously simple feat for one of my agility and lissomness. A nuisance, of course, having to turn out at this time of night, but I was quite prepared to do so in order to bring the roses back to the cheeks of a woman who in my bib-and-cradle days had frequently dandled me on her knee, not to mention saving my life on one occasion when I had half-swallowed a rubber comforter.
'Nothing at all,' I replied cordially. 'Nothing whatever. You provide the necklace, and I will do the rest. Which is your room?'
'That last one on the left.'
'Right.'
'Left, fool. I'll be going there now, so as to be in readiness. Golly, Jeeves, you've taken a weight off my mind. I feel a new woman. You won't mind if you hear me singing about the house?'
'Not at all, madam.'
'I shall probably start first thing tomorrow.'
'Any time that suits you, madam.'
He closed the door behind her with an indulgent smile, or something as nearly resembling a smile as he ever allows to appear on his map.
'One is glad to see Mrs Travers so happy, sir.'
'Yes,
you certainly bucked her up like a tonic. No difficulty about finding a ladder, I take it?'
'Oh, no, sir. I chanced to observe one outside the tool-shed by the kitchen garden.'
'So did I, now you mention it. No doubt it's still there, so let's go. If it were ... what's that expression of yours?'
'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly, sir.'
'That's right. No sense in standing humming and hawing.'
'No, sir. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.'
'Exactly,' I said.
I couldn't have put it better myself.
The venture went with gratifying smoothness. I found the ladder, by the tool-shed as foreshadowed, and lugged it across country to the desired spot. I propped it up. I climbed it. In next to no time I was through the window and moving silently across the floor.
Well, not so dashed silently, as a matter of fact, because I collided with a table which happened to be in the fairway and upset it with quite a bit of noise.
'Who's there?' asked a voice from the darkness in a startled sort of way.
This tickled me. Ah,' I said to myself amusedly, Aunt Dahlia throwing herself into her part and giving the thing just the touch it needed to make it box-office.' What an artist, I felt.
Then it said, 'Who's there?' again, and it was as though a well iced hand had been laid upon my heart.
Because the voice was not the voice of any ruddy aunt, it was the voice of Florence Craye. The next moment light flooded the apartment and there she was, sitting up in bed in a pink boudoir cap.
CHAPTER 13
I don't know if you happen to be familiar with a poem called The Charge of the Light Brigade' by the bird Tennyson whom Jeeves had mentioned when speaking of the fellow whose strength was as the strength of ten. It is, I believe, farily well known, and I used to have to recite it at the age of seven or thereabouts when summoned to the drawing-room to give visitors a glimpse of the young Wooster', 'Bertie recites so nicely' my mother used to say – getting her facts twisted, I may mention, because I practically always fluffed my lines – and after trying to duck for safety and being hauled back I would snap into it. And very unpleasant the whole thing was, so people have told me.