'I, too, must confess to a certain surprise at seeing the gentleman at Brinkley Court, but no doubt Mrs Travers felt it incumbent upon her to return his hospitality. You will recollect that Sir Watkyn recently entertained Mrs Travers and yourself at Totleigh Towers.'
I winced. Intending, I presumed, merely to refresh my memory, he had touched an exposed nerve. There was some cold coffee left in the pot, and I took a sip to restore my equanimity.
'The word "entertained" is not well chosen, Jeeves. If locking a fellow in his bedroom, as near as a toucher with gyves upon his wrists, and stationing the local police force on the lawn below to ensure that he doesn't nip out of the window at the end of a knotted sheet is your idea of entertaining, it isn't mine, not by a jugful.'
I don't know how well up you are in the Wooster archives, but if you have dipped into them to any extent, you will probably recall the sinister affair of Sir Watkyn Bassett and my visit to his Gloucestershire home. He and my Uncle Tom are rival collectors of what are known as objets d'art, and on one occasion he pinched a silver cow-creamer, as the revolting things are called, from the relation by marriage, and Aunt Dahlia and self went to Totleigh to pinch it back, an enterprise which, though crowned with success, as the expression is, so nearly landed me in the jug that when reminded of that house of horror I still quiver like an aspen, if aspens are the things I'm thinking of.
'Do you ever have nightmares, Jeeves?' I asked, having got through with my bit of wincing.
'Not frequently, sir.'
'Nor me. But when I do, the set-up is always the same. I am back at Totleigh Towers with Sir W. Bassett, his daughter Madeline, Roderick Spode, Stiffy Byng, Gussie Fink-Nottle and the dog Bartholomew, all doing their stuff, and I wake, if you will pardon the expression so soon after breakfast, sweating at every pore. Those were the times that... what, Jeeves?'
'Tried men's souls, sir.'
'They certainly did – in spades. Sir Watkyn Bassett, eh?' I said thoughtfully. 'No wonder Uncle Tom mourned and would not be comforted. In his position I'd have been low-spirited myself. Who else were among those present?'
'Miss Bassett, sir, Miss Byng, Miss Byng's dog and Mr Fink-Nottle.'
'Gosh! Practically the whole Totleigh Towers gang. Not Spode?'
'No, sir. Apparently no invitation had been extended to his lordship.'
'His what?'
'Mr Spode, if you recall, recently succeeded to the title of Lord Sidcup.'
'So he did. I'd forgotten. But Sidcup or no Sidcup, to me he will always be Spode. There's a bad guy, Jeeves.'
'Certainly a somewhat forceful personality, sir.'
'I wouldn't want him in my orbit again.'
'I can readily understand it, sir.'
'Nor would I willingly foregather with Sir Watkyn Bassett, Madeline Bassett, Stiffy Byng and Bartholomew. I don't mind Gussie. He looks like a fish and keeps newts in a glass tank in his bedroom, but one condones that sort of thing in an old schoolfellow, just as one condones in an old Oxford friend such as the Rev. H. P. Pinker the habit of tripping over his feet and upsetting things. How was Gussie? Pretty bobbish?'
'No, sir. Mr Fink-Nottle, too, seemed to me low-spirited.'
'Perhaps one of his newts had got tonsillitis or something.'
'It is conceivable, sir.'
'You've never kept newts, have you?'
'No, sir.'
'Nor have I. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, have Einstein, Jack Dempsey and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to name but three others. Yet Gussie revels in their society and is never happier than when curled up with them. It takes all sorts to make a world, Jeeves.'
'It does, indeed, sir. Will you be lunching in?'
'No, I've a date at the Ritz,' I said, and went off to climb into the outer crust of the English gentleman.
As I dressed, my thoughts returned to the Bassetts, and I was still wondering why on earth Aunt Dahlia had allowed the pure air of Brinkley Court to be polluted by Sir Watkyn and associates, when the telephone rang and I went into the hall to answer it.
'Bertie?'
'Oh, hullo, Aunt Dahlia.'
There had been no mistaking that loved voice. As always when we converse on the telephone, it had nearly fractured my ear-drum. This aunt was at one time a prominent figure in hunting circles, and when in the saddle, so I'm told, could make herself heard not only in the field or meadow where she happened to be, but in several adjoining counties. Retired now from active fox-chivvying, she still tends to address a nephew in the tone of voice previously reserved for rebuking hounds for taking time off to chase rabbits.
'So you're up and about, are you?' she boomed. 'I thought you'd be in bed, snoring your head off.'
'It is a little unusual for me to be in circulation at this hour,' I agreed, 'but I rose today with the lark and, I think, the snail. Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Didn't you tell me once that snails were early risers?'
'Yes, sir. The poet Browning in his Pippa Passes, having established that the hour is seven a.m., goes on to say, "The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn."'
'Thank you, Jeeves. I was right, Aunt Dahlia. When I slid from between the sheets, the lark was on the wing, the snail on the thorn.'
'What the devil are you babbling about?'
'Don't ask me, ask the poet Browning. I was merely apprising you that I was up betimes. I thought it was the least I could do to celebrate Jeeves's return.'
'He got back all right, did he?'
'Looking bronzed and fit.'
'He was in rare form here. Bassett was terrifically impressed.'
I was glad to have this opportunity of solving the puzzle which had been perplexing me.
'Now there,' I said, 'you have touched on something I'd very much like to have information re. What on earth made you invite Pop Bassett to Brinkley?'
'I did it for the wife and kiddies.'
I eh-what-ed. 'You wouldn't care to amplify that?' I said. 'It got past me to some extent.'
'For Tom's sake, I mean,' she replied with a hearty laugh that rocked me to my foundations. 'Tom's been feeling rather low of late because of what he calls iniquitous taxation. You know how he hates to give up.'
I did, indeed. If Uncle Tom had his way, the Revenue authorities wouldn't get so much as a glimpse of his money.
'Well, I thought having to fraternize with Bassett would take his mind off it – show him that there are worse things in this world than income tax. Our doctor here gave me the idea. He was telling me about a thing called Hodgkin's Disease that you cure by giving the patient arsenic. The principle's the same. That Bassett really is the limit. When I see you, I'll tell you the story of the black amber statuette. It's a thing he's just bought for his collection. He was showing it to Tom when he was here, gloating over it. Tom suffered agonies, poor old buzzard.'
'Jeeves told me he was low-spirited.'
'So would you be, if you were a collector and another collector you particularly disliked had got hold of a thing you'd have given your eye-teeth to have in your own collection.'
'I see what you mean,' I said, marvelling, as I had often done before, that Uncle Tom could attach so much value to objects which I personally would have preferred not to be found dead in a ditch with. The cow-creamer I mentioned earlier was one of them, being a milk jug shaped like a cow, of all ghastly ideas. I have always maintained fearlessly that the spiritual home of all these fellows who collect things is a padded cell in a loony bin.
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