Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

to the gist, I noticed that you were anxious to
leave, so, observing that a rozzer was after you hell for leather, I put a foot
out, tripping him up and causing him to lose interest in the chase.’
    ‘Good
gracious!’
    ‘It
seemed to me the prudent policy to pursue. Another moment and he would have had
you by the seat of the pants, and of course we can’t have that sort of thing
going on. The upshot of the affair was that I spent the night in a prison cell
and had rather a testing morning with the magistrate at Vinton Street police
court. However, I’m pulling round all right.’
    ‘Oh,
Bertie!’ Seeming deeply moved, she thanked me brokenly, and I said Don’t
mention it. Then she gasped a sudden gasp, as if she had received a punch on
the third waistcoat button. ‘Did you say Vinton Street?’
    ‘That’s
right.’
    ‘Oh, my
goodness! Do you know who that magistrate was?’
    ‘I
couldn’t tell you. No cards were exchanged. We boys in court called him Your
Worship.’
    ‘He’s
D’Arcy’s uncle!’
    I
goshed. It had startled me not a little.
    ‘You
don’t mean that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What,
the one who likes soup?’
    ‘Yes.
Just imagine if after having dinner with him last night I had appeared before
him in the dock this morning!’
    ‘Embarrassing.
Difficult to know what to say. ‘‘D’Arcy would never have forgiven me. ‘‘Eh?’
    ‘He
would have broken the engagement. ‘I didn’t get this.
    ‘How do
you mean?’
    ‘How do
I mean what?’
    ‘How do
you mean he would have broken the engagement? I thought it was off already.’
    She
gave what I believe is usually called a rippling laugh.
    ‘Oh,
no. He rang me up this morning and climbed down. And I forgave him. He’s
starting to grow a moustache today.’
    I was
profoundly relieved.
    ‘Well,
that’s splendid,’ I said, and when she Oh—Bertied and I asked her what she was
Oh-Bertying about, she explained that what she had had in mind was the fact
that I was so chivalrous and generous.
    ‘Not
many men in your place, feeling as you do about me, would behave like this.’
    ‘Quite
all right.’
    ‘I’m
very touched.’
    ‘Don’t
give it another thought. It’s really all on again, is it?’
    ‘Yes.
So mind you don’t breathe a word to him about my being at that place with you.’
    ‘Of
course not.’
    ‘D’Arcy
is so jealous.’
    ‘Exactly.
He must never know.’
    ‘Never.
Why, if he even found out I was telephoning to you now, he would have a fit.’
    I was
about to laugh indulgently and say that this was what Jeeves calls a remote
contingency, because how the dickens could he ever learn that we had been
chewing the fat, when my eye was attracted by a large object just within my
range of vision. Slewing the old bean round a couple of inches, I was enabled
to perceive that this large 0 was the bulging form of G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. I
hadn’t heard the door bell ring, and I hadn’t seen him come in, but there
unquestionably he was, haunting the place once more like a resident spectre.

 
     
     
    7
     
     
    It was a moment for quick
thinking. One doesn’t want fellows having fits all over one’s sitting-room. I
was extremely dubious, moreover, as to whether, should he ascertain who was at
the other end of the wire, he would confine himself to fits.
    ‘Certainly,
Catsmeat,’ I said. ‘Of course, Catsmeat. I quite understand, Catsmeat. But
I’ll have to ring off now, Catsmeat, as our mutual friend Cheesewright has just
come in. Good-bye, Catsmeat.’ I hung up the receiver and turned to Stilton.
‘That was Catsmeat,’ I said.
    He made
no comment on this information, but stood glowering darkly. Now that I had been
apprised of the ties of blood linking him with mine host of Vinton Street, I
could see the family resemblance. Both uncle and nephew had the same way of
narrowing their gaze and letting you have it from beneath the overhanging
eyebrow. The only difference was that whereas the former pierced you to the