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

rang
themselves in.’
    ‘I see.
What they call a package deal.’ I broke off, aghast. Memory had returned to its
throne, and I knew now why that stuff about short side—whiskers had seemed to
have a familiar ring. ‘Trotter?’ I cried.
    She
whooped censoriously.
    ‘Don’t
yell like that. You nearly broke my ear-drum.’
    ‘But
did you say Trotter?’
    ‘Of
course I said Trotter.’
    ‘This
Percy’s name isn’t Gorringe?’
    ‘That’s
what it unquestionably is. He admits it.’
    ‘Then
I’m frightfully sorry, old thing, but I can’t possibly come. It was only the
other day that the above Gorringe was trying to nick me for a thousand quid to
put into this play he’s made of Florence’s book, and I turned him down like a
bedspread. You can readily see, then, how fraught with embarrassment a meeting
in the flesh would be. I shouldn’t know which way to look.’
    ‘If
that’s all that’s worrying you, forget it. Florence tells me he has raised that
thousand elsewhere.’
    ‘Well,
I’m dashed. Where did he get it?’
    ‘She
doesn’t know. He’s secretive about it. He just said it was all right, he had
got the stuff and they could go ahead. So you needn’t be shy about meeting him.
What if he does think you the world’s premier louse? Don’t we all?’
    ‘Something
in that.’
    ‘Then
you’ll come?’
    I
chewed the lower lip dubiously. I was thinking of Stilton.
    ‘Well,
speak up, dumb-bell,’ said the relative with asperity. ‘What’s all the silence
about?’
    ‘I was
musing.’
    ‘Then
stop musing and give me the good word. If it will help to influence your
decision, I 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