Money in the Bank by P. G. Wodehouse

easy distance of London, and my uncle wanted to let his, so I fixed everything up. It seemed all right to me. You see, I know Cakebread."
    "I don't. Who is he?"
    "The butler."
    "His name is really Cakebread?"
    "Why not?"
    "It sounds too obviously butlerine. As if he had adopted it as a ruse, to lure employers into a false confidence. You're sure he's all right?"
    "Quite."
    "As pure as the driven snow?"
    "Purer."
    "Then why does he rummage in rooms?"
    "Well---"
    "Yes?"
    "I don't know."
    Jeff permitted himself a moment's severity. It was, he felt, what J. Sheringham Adair would have done, had he been conducting this inquisition.
    "Miss Benedick, do you ever read detective stories?"
    "Of course."
    "Then you will be familiar with something that happens with unfailing regularity in all of them. There is always a point, you will have noticed, where the detective turns a bit sniffy and says he cannot possibly undertake this case unless he has his client's full confidence.' You are keeping something back from me,' he says. Miss Benedick, I put it to you that you are keeping something back from me. What is it?"
    He stared keenly across the desk. Anne had fallen into thought. A little wrinkle had appeared in her forehead, and the tip of her nose wiggled like a rabbit's. Very attractive, Jeff thought it, and so it was.
    "I have just been working it out in my mind," said Lord Uffenham, rejoining them after having preserved for some five minutes the appearance of being one of those loved ones far away, of whom the hymnal speaks, "and I find that I could put the whole dashed human race into a pit half a mile wide by half a mile deep."
    "I wouldn't," said Jeff.
    "No, don't," said Anne. "Think how squashy it would be for the ones at the bottom."
    "True," admitted Lord Uffenham, after consideration. "Yerss. Yerss, I see what you mean. Still, it's an interesting thought."
    He ceased, and Jeff, who had waited courteously for him to continue, realising after a pause that nothing more was coming and that this was apparently just another of the obiter dicta which it was his lordship's custom to throw out from time to time in a take-it-or-leave-it spirit, like the lady in Dickens who used to speak of milestones on the Dover road, turned to Anne again.
    "What are you keeping from me, Miss Benedick?"
    "What makes you think I'm keeping something from you?"
    "My trained instinct. I'm a detective."
    "A very odd one."
    "Odd?"
    "You aren't at all my idea of a detective. I thought they were cold and sniffy, like solicitors."
    "I know what you mean," said Jeff. Association with Mr. Shoesmith had taught him a lot about the coldness and sniffiness of solicitors. " But in my case you feel---? "
    "—as if I could tell you things without you raising your eyebrows."
    "Good Lord! Of course, you can. I may put the tips of my fingers together, but I wouldn't dream of raising my eyebrows. Confide in me without a qualm. I knew there was something on your mind, something that would throw a light on this butler business. You have special knowledge, have you not, which will bring faithful old Cakebread out of the thing without a stain on his character? Let's have the inside story."
    "I wonder."
    "Don't weaken."
    "Tell him," boomed Lord Uffenham, abruptly coming to life in that surprising way of his. "You came here to tell him, didn't you? You brought me along, so that I could be present when you told him, didn't you? Well, then. Lord-love-a-duck, what's the use of coming thirty miles to tell a feller something and then not telling him?"
    "But it makes you look such a chump, darling."
    "It does not make me look a chump, at all. I acted from the first with the best and soundest motives, and this young feller is a broadminded young feller who will recognise the fact."
    "Well, all right.  You could help us a lot, of course," said Anne, turning to Jeff. "I mean, I suppose, as a detective, you're always looking for things, aren't you?"
    "Always. Clues, Maharajah's rubies,