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

may mention that Anatole is at the top of his form just now.’
    I started. If this was so, it would clearly be madness not to be one of the company ranged around the festive board.
    I have touched so far only lightly on this Anatole, and I take the opportunity now of saying that his was an output which had to be tasted to be believed, mere words being inadequate to convey the full facts with regard to his amazing virtuosity. After one of Anatole’s lunches has melted in the mouth, you unbutton the waistcoat and loll back, breathing heavily and feeling that life has no more to offer, and then, before you know where you are, along comes one of his dinners, with even more on the ball, the whole lay-out constituting something about as near Heaven as any reasonable man could wish.
    I felt, accordingly, that no matter how vehemently Stilton might express and fulfil himself on discovering me … well, not perhaps exactly cheek by jowl with the woman he loved but certainly hovering in her vicinity, the risk of rousing the fiend within him was one that must be taken. It cannot ever, of course, be agreeable to find yourself torn into a thousand pieces with a fourteen-stone Othello doing a ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo’ on the scattered fragments, but if you are full at the time of Anatole’s
Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane
, the discomfort unquestionably becomes modified.
    ‘I’ll come,’ I said.
    ‘Good boy. With you taking Percy off my neck, I shall be free to concentrate on Trotter. And every ounce of concentration will be needed, if I’m to put this deal through.’
    ‘What is the deal? You never told me. Who is this Trotter, if any?’
    ‘I met him at Agatha’s. He’s a friend of hers. He owns a lot of papers up in Liverpool and wants to establish a beach-head in London. So I’m trying to get him to buy the
Boudoir
.’
    I was amazed. Absolutely the last thing I would have expected. I had always supposed
Milady’s Boudoir
to be her ewe lamb. To learn that she contemplated selling it stunned me. It was like hearing that Rodgers had decided to sell Hammerstein.
    ‘But why on earth? I thought you loved it like a son.’
    ‘I do, but the strain of having to keep going to Tom and trying to get money out of him for its support has got me down. Every time I start pleading with him for another cheque, he says “But isn’t it paying its way yet?” and I say “No, darling, it is not paying its way yet”, and he says “H’m!”, adding that if this sort of thing goes on, we shall all be on the dole by next Christmas. It’s become too much for me. It makes me feel like one of those women who lug babies around in the streets and want you to buy white heather. So when I met Trotter at Agatha’s, I decided that he was the man who was going to take over, if human ingenuity could work it. What did you say?’
    ‘I said “Oh, ah”. I was about to add that it was a pity.’
    ‘Yes, quite a pity, but unavoidable. Tom gets more difficult to touch daily. He says he loves me dearly, but enough is sufficient. Well, I’ll expect you tomorrow, then. Don’t forget the necklace.’
    ‘I’ll send Jeeves over for it in the morning.’
    ‘Right.’
    I think she would have spoken further, but at this moment a female voice off-stage said ‘Three-ee-ee minutes’, and she hung up with the sharp cry of a woman who fears she is going to be soaked for another couple of bob or whatever it is.
    Jeeves came trickling in.
    ‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we shall be heading for Brinkley tomorrow.’
    ‘Very good, sir.’
    ‘Aunt Dahlia wants me there to infuse a bit of the party spirit into our old pal Percy Gorringe, who is at the moment infesting the joint.’
    ‘Indeed, sir? I wonder, sir, if it would be possible for you to allow me to return to London next week for the afternoon?’
    ‘Certainly, Jeeves, certainly. You have some beano in prospect?’
    ‘It is the monthly luncheon of the Junior Ganymede Club, sir. I have been asked