Free The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 by P.G. Wodehouse

here pronto, prepared for lengthy visit. Urgently need you to buck up a blighter with whiskers. Love. Travers.
    I brooded over this for the rest of the morning, and on my way to lunch at the Drones shot off my answer, a brief request for more light:
    Did you say whiskers or whisky? Love. Wooster.
    I found another from her on returning:
    Whiskers, ass. The son of a what-not has short but distinct side-whiskers. Love. Travers.
    It’s an odd thing about memory, it so often just fails to spear the desired object. At the back of my mind there was dodging about a hazy impression that somewhere at some time I heard someone mention short side-whiskers in some connection, but I couldn’t pin it down. It eluded me. So, pursuing the sound old policy of going to the fountain-head for information, I stepped out and dispatched the following:
    What short side-whiskered son of a what-not would this be, and why does he need bucking up? Wire full details, as at present fogged, bewildered and mystified. Love. Wooster.
    She replied with the generous warmth which causes so many of her circle to hold on to their hats when she lets herself go:
    Listen, you foul blot. What’s the idea of making me spend a fortune on telegrams like this? Do you think I am made of money? Never you mind what short side-whiskered son of a what-not it is or why he needs bucking up. You just come as I tell you and look slippy about it. Oh, and by the way, go to Aspinall’s in Bond Street and get pearl necklace of mine they have there and bring it down with you. Have you got that? Aspinall’s. Bond Street. Pearl necklace. Shall expect you tomorrow. Love. Travers.
    A little shaken but still keeping the flag flying, I responded with the ensuing:
    Fully grasp all that Aspinall’s-Bond-Street-pearl-necklace stuff, but what you are overlooking is that coming to Brinkley at present juncture not so jolly simple as you seem to think. There are complications and what not. Wheels within wheels, if you get what I mean. Whole thing calls for deep thought. Will weigh matter carefully and let you know decision. Love. Wooster.
    You see, though Brinkley Court is a home from home and gets five stars in Baedeker as the headquarters of Monsieur Anatole, Aunt Dahlia’s French cook – a place, in short, to which in ordinary circs I race, when invited, with a whoop and a holler – it had taken me but an instant to spot that under existing conditions there were grave objections to going there. I need scarcely say that I allude to the fact that Florence was on the premises and Stilton expected shortly.
    It was this that was giving me pause. Who could say that the latter, finding me in residence on his arrival, would not leap to the conclusion that I had rolled up in pursuit of the former like young Lochinvar coming out of the west? And should this thought flit into his mind, what, I asked myself, would the harvest be? His parting words about my spine were still green in my memory. I knew him to be a man rather careful in his speech, on whose promises one could generally rely, and if he said he was going to break spines in four places, you could be quite sure that four places was precisely what he would break them in.
    I passed a restless and uneasy evening. In no mood for revelry at the Drones, I returned home early and was brushing up on my
Mystery of the Pink Crayfish
when the telephone rang, and so disordered was the nervous system that I shot ceilingwards at the sound. It was as much as I could do to totter across the room and unhook the receiver.
    The voice that floated over the wire was that of Aunt Dahlia.
    Well, when I say floated, possibly ‘thundered’ would be more the
mot juste
. A girlhood and early womanhood spent in chivvying the British fox in all weathers under the auspices of the Quorn and Pytchley have left this aunt brick-red in colour and lent amazing power to her vocal cords. I’ve never pursued foxes myself, but apparently, when you do, you put in a good bit of