I reached out a hand from under the blankets and rang the bell for Jeeves. "Good evening, Jeeves." "Good morning, sir." This surprised me. "Is it morning?" "Yes, sir." "Are you sure? It seems very dark outside." "There is a fog, sir. If you will recollect, we are now in autumn -- season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." "Oh? Yes. Yes, I see. Well, be that as it may, get me one of those bracers of yours, will you?" "I have one in readiness, sir, in the icebox." "He shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you're going to die in about five minutes. On the previous night, I had given a little dinner at the Drones to Gussie Fink-Nottle as a friendly send-off before his approaching nuptials with Madeline, only daughter of Sir Watkyn Bassett, C.B.E., and these things take their toll. Indeed, just before Jeeves came in, I had been dreaming that some bounder was driving spikes through my head not just ordinary spikes, as used by Jael the wife of Heber, but red-hot ones. He returned with the tissue restorer. I loosed it down the hatch and, after undergoing the passing discomfort, unavoidable when you drink Jeeves's patent morning revivers, of having the top of the skull fly up to the ceiling and the eyes shoot out of their sockets and rebound from the opposite wall like racquet balls, felt better. It would have been overstating it to say that even now Bertram was back again in midseason form, but I had at least slid into the convalescent class and was equal to a spot in conversation. "Ha!" I said, retrieving the eyeballs and replacing them in position. "Well, Jeeves, what goes on in the great world? Is that the paper you have there?" "No, sir. It is some literature from the Travel Bureau. I thought you might care to glance at it." "Oh?" I said. "You did, did you?" And there was a brief and -- if that's the word I want -- pregnant silence. I suppose that when two men of iron will live in close association with one another, there are bound to be occasional clashes, and one of these had recently peppered up in the Wooster home. Jeeves was trying to get me to go on a round-the-world cruise, and I would have none of it. But in spite of my firm statements to this effect, scarcely a day passed without him bringing to me a sheaf ot nosegay of those illustrated folders which the Ho-for-the-open-spaces birds send out in the hope of drumming up to custom. His whole attitude recalled irresistibly to the mind that of some assiduous hound who will persist in laying a dead rat on the drawing room carpet, thoough repeatedly apprised by word and gesture that the market for same is sluggish or even nonexistent. "Jeeves," I said, "this nuisance must now cease." "Travel is highly educational, sir." "I can't do with any more education. I was full up years ago. No, Jeeves, I know what's the matter with you. That old Viking strain of yours has come out again. You yearn for the tang of the salt breezes. You see yourself walking the deck in a yachting cap. Possibly someone has been telling you about the Dancing Girls of Bali. I understand, and I sympathize. But not for me. I refuse to be decanted into any blasted ocean-going liner and lugged off round the world." "Very good, sir." He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject. * * * "Very well, then. You agree with me that the situation is a lulu?" "Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in your affairs would appear to have been precipitated, sir." * * * "Why did you come? Oh, I know what you are going to say. You felt that, cost what it might, you had to see me again, just once. You could not resist the urge to take away with you one last memory, which you could cherish down the lonely years. Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel." The name was new to me. "Rudel?" "The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge." I shook my head. "Never met him, I'm afraid. Pal of yours?" "He lived in the Middle ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli." I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean. "For years he loved her, and at last could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore." "Not feeling so good?" I said, groping. "Rough crossing?" "He was dying. Of love." "Oh, ah." "They bore him into the Lady Melisande's presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out nd touch her hnd. Then he died." She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued. "Terrific", I said, feeling that I had to say something, though personally I didn't think the story a patch on the one about the travelling salesman and the farmer's daughter. Different, of course, if one had known the chap. * * * I saw what she meant. "Oh, ah, yes, of course, definitely." I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. "A sensitive plant, what?" "Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie." "Oh, am I?" * * * Gussie was straddling the hearthrug with his legs apart, warming himself at the blaze which should, one would have said, been reserved for the trouser-seat of the master of the house, and I saw immediately what Madeline Bassett had meant when she said that Gussie had lost his diffidence. Even across the room one could see that, when it came to self-confidence, Mussolini could have taken his correspondence course. * * * I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I had set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself "What ho! A Dictator!" and a Dictator he had proved to be. I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham. * * * "What a man!" she said. "We're engaged, you know." "Oh, are you?" "Yes, but don't tell a soul. It's frightfully secret. Uncle Watkyn mustn't know about it till he has been well sweetened." "And who is this Harold?" "The curate down in the village." She turned to the dog Bartholomew. "Is lovely kind curate going to pinch bad, ugly policeman's helmet for his muzzer, zen, and make her very, very happy?" she said. Or words to that general trend. I can't do the dialect, of course. * * * I pondered. It didn't sound much to go on. "You're quite sure you can't go a bit deeper into the subject?" "Quite sure, sir. Were I to do so, it is proable that my resignation would be called for." "Well, I wouldn't want that to happen of course," I hated to think of a squad of butlers forming a hollow square while the Committee snipped his buttons off. "Still, you really are sure that if I look Spode in the eye and spring this gag, he will be baffled? Let's get this quite clear. Suppose you're Spode, and I walk up to you and say, `Spode, I know all about Eulalie,' that would make you wilt?" "Yes, sir. The subject of Eulalie, sir, is one which thegentleman, occupying the position he does in the public eye, would I am convinced, be most reluctant to have ventilated." I practised this for a bit. I walked up to the chest of drawers with my hands in my pockets, and said, "Spode, I know all about Eulalie." I tried afain, waggling my finger this time. I then had a go with folded arms, and I must say it still didn't sound too convincing. * * * He asked me if I had called him a slob, and I said I had. "A fat slob?" "A fat slob. It is about time," I proceeded, "that some public-spirited person came along and told you where you got off. The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting `Heil Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make the bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: `Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perisher?" He did what is known as struggling for utterance. "Oh?", he said. "Ha! Well, I will attend to you later." "And I," I retorted, quick as a flash, "will attend to you now." I lit a cigarette. "Spode," I said, unmasking my batteries, "I know your secret!" "Eh?" "I know all about --" "All about what?" It was to ask myself precisely that question that I had paused. For, believe me or believe me not, in this tense moment, when I so sorely needed it, the name which Jeeves had mentioned to me as the magic formula for coping with this blister had completely passed from my mind. I couldn't even remember what letter it began with. It's an extraordinary thing about names. You've probably noticed it yourself. You think you've got them, I mean to say, and they simply slither away. I've often wished I had a quid for every time some bird with a perfectly familiar map has come to me and Hullo-Woostered, and had me gasping for air because I couldn't put a label to him. This always makes one feel at a loss, but on no previous occasion had I felt so much at a loss as I did now. * * * "I must ask you to leave us, madam," he said. "But I've only just come," said Aunt Dahlia. "I am going to thrash this man within an inch of his life." It was quite the wrong tone to take with the aged relative. She has a very clannish spirit and, as I have said, is fond of Bertram. Her brow darkened. "You don't touch a nephew of mine." "I am going to break every bone in his body." "You aren't going to do anything of the sort. The idea! ... Here, you!" She raised her voice sharply as she spoke the concluding words, and what had caused her to do so was the fact that Spode at this moment had made a sudden movement in my direction. Considering the manner in which his eyes were gleaming and his moustache bristling, not to mention the gritting teeth and the sinister twiddling of the fingers, it was a move which might have been expected to send me flitting away like an adagio dancer. And had it occurred somewhat earlier, I would have done so. But I did not flit. I stood where I was, calm and collected. Whether I folded my arms or not, I cannot recall, but I remember that there was a faint, amused smile on my lips. For that brief monosyllable `you' had accomplished what a quarter of an hour's research had been unable to do -- viz., the unsealing of the fount of memory. Jeeves's words came back to me with a rush. One moment, the mind a blank: the next, the fount of memory spouting like nobody's business. It often happens this way. "One minute, Spode," I said quietly. "Just one minute. Before you start getting above yourself, it may interest you to learn that I know all about Eulalie." It was stupendous. I felt like one of those chaps who press buttonsand explode mines. If it hadn't been that my implicit faith in Jeeves had led me to expect solid results, I should have been astounded at the effect of this pronoouncement on the man. You could see that it had got right in amongst him and churned him up like an egg-whisk. He recoiled as if he had run into something hot, and a look of horror and alarm spread slowly over his face. * * * "Are you afraid of a tiny little dog, Jeeves?" He corrected me respectfully, giving it as his opinion that the undersigned was not a tiny little dog, but well above the average in muscular development. In particular, he drew my attention to the animal's teeth. I reassured him. "I think you would find that if you were to make a sudden spring, his teeth would not enter into the matter. You could leap on to the bed, snatch up a sheet, roll him up in it before he knew what was happening, and there we would be." "Yes, sir." "Well, are you going to make a sudden spring?" "No, sir." * * * It is never pleasant for a chap who has been doing the dominant male to change his stance and sink to ignoble pleadings, but I could see no other course. My voice, which had been firm and resonant, took on a melting tremolo. ``But, Stiffy, dash it! You wouldn't do that?'' ``Yes, I would, if you don't go and sweeten Uncle Watkyn.'' ``But how can I go and sweeten him? Stiffy, you can't subject me to this fearful ordeal.'' ``Yes, I can. And what's so fearful abut it? He can't eat you.'' I conceded this. ``True. But that's about the best you can say.'' ``It won't be any worse than a visit to the dentist.'' ``It'll be worse than six visits to six dentists.'' ``Well, think how glad you will be when it's over.'' I drew little consolation from this. I looked at her closely, hoping to detect some signs of softening. Not one. She had been as tough as a restaurant steak, and she continued as tough as a restaurant steak. Kipling was right. D. than the m. No getting round it. I made one last appeal. ``You won't recede from your position?'' ``Not a step.'' ``In spite of the fact -- excuse me mentioning it -- that I gave you a dashed good lunch at my flat, no expense spared?'' ``No.'' I shrugged my shoulders, as some Roman gladiator -- one of those chaps who threw knotted sheets over people, for instance -- might have done on hearing the call-boy shouting his number in the wings. ``Very well, then,'' I said. She beamed at me maternally. ``That's the spirit. That's my brave little man.'' At a less preoccupied moment, I might have resented her calling me her brave little man, but in this grim hour it scarcely seemed to matter. ``Where is this frightful uncle of yours?'' ``He's bound to be in the library now.'' ``Very good. Then I will go to him.'' I don't know if you were ever told as a kid that story about the fellow whose dog chewed up the priceless manuscript of the book he was writing. The blow-out, if you remember, was that he gave the animal a pained look and said: ``Oh, Diamond, Diamond, you - or it may have been thou -- little know -- or possibly knowest -- what you -- or thou -- has -- or hast -- done.'' I heard it in the nursery, and it has always lingered in my mind. And why I bring it up now is that this was how I looked at Jeeves as I passed from the room. I didn't actually speak the gag, but I fancy he knew what I was thinking. I could have wished that Stiffy had not said ``Yoicks! Tallyho!'' as I crossed the threshold. It seemed to me in the circumstances flippant and in dubious taste. * * * Before my bulging eyse he produced from his pocket a small, brown, leather-covered notebook. Harking back to Archimedes just once more, Jeeves's description of him discovering the principle of displacement, though brief, had made a deep impression on me, bringing before my eyes a very vivid picture of what must have happened on that occasion. I had been able to see the man testing the bath-water with his toe ... stepping in ... immersing the frame. I had accompanied him in spirit through all the subsequent formalities -- the soaping of the loofah, the shampooing of the head, the burst of song... And then, abruptly, as he climbs towards the high note, there is silence. His voice has died away. Through the streaming suds you can see that his eyes are glowing with a strange light. The loofah falls from his grasp, disregarded. He utters a triumphant cry. ``Got it! What ho! The principle of displacement!'' And out he leaps, feeling like a million dollars. In precisely the same mannerdid the miraculous appearance of this notebook affect me. There was that identical moment of stunned silence, followed by the same triumphant cry. And I have no doubt that, as I stretched out a compelling hand, my eyes were glowing with a strange light. * * * ``Spode,'' I said in a level voice, ``did I or did I not tell you to leave Gussie alone?'' He looked at me pleadingly. ``Couldn't you possibly see your way to letting me do something to him, Wooster? If it was only to kick his spine up through his hat?'' ``Certainly not.'' ``Well, just as you say, of course.'' He scratched his cheek discontentedly. ``Did you read that notebook, Wooster?'' ``No.'' ``He says my moustache is like the faint discoloured smear left by a squashed blackbeetle on the side of a kitchen sink.'' ``He was always a poetic sort of chap.'' ``And that the way I eat asparagus alters one's whole conception of Man as Nature's last word.'' ``Yes, he told me that, I remember. He's about right, too. I was noticing at dinner. What you want to do, Spode, in future is lower the vegetable gently into the abyss. Take it easy. Don't snap at it. Try to remember that you are a human being and not a shark.'' ``Ha, ha! `A human being and not a shark.' Cleverly put, Wooster. Most amusing.'' * * * The gravity of the situash at last impressed itself upon her. She uttered a squeak of dismay, and her eyes became a bit soup-platey. ``Oh, Bertie! Then I'm afraid I've put you in rather a spot.'' ``That covers the facts like a dust-sheet.'' ``I'm sorry now I ever asked Harold to pinch the thing. It was a mistake. I admit it. Still, if after all, even if Uncle Watkyn does come here and find it, it doesn't matter much, does it?'' ``Did you hear that, Jeeves?'' ``Yes, sir.'' ``So did I. I see. It doesn't matter, you feel?'' ``Well, what I mean is your reputation won't really suffer much, will it? Everybody knows that you can't keep your hands off policemen's helmets. This'll be just another one.'' ``Ha! And what leads you to suppose, young Stiffy, that when the Assyrian comes down like a wolf on the fold I shall meekly assume the guilt and not blazon the truth -- what Jeeves?'' ``Forth to the world, sir.'' ``Thank you, Jeeves. What makes you suppose that I shall meekly assume the guilt and not blazon the truth forth to the world?'' I wouldn't have supposed that her eyes could have widened any more, but they did perceptibly. Another dismayed squeak escaped her. Indeed, such was its volume that it might perhaps be better to call it a squeal. * * * ``This is the end of a perfect day, Jeeves. What's that thing of yours about larks?'' ``Sir?'' ``And I rather think, snails.'' ``Oh, yes, sir. `The year's at Spring, the day's at the morn, morning's at seven, the hill-side's dew-pearled ---' '' ``But the larks, Jeeves? The snails? I'm pretty sure larks and snails entered into it.'' ``I am coming to the larks and snails, sir. `The lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn ---' '' ``Now you're talking. And the tab line?'' `` `God's in His heaven, all's right with the world.' '' * * *