Expecting Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online Page B

I snaffled three excellent cats all in the first hour. We were fearfully braced, I can tell you. And then the difficulty was to know where to park the things till our train went. You look so beastly conspicuous, you know, tooling about London with a fish and a lot of cats. And then Eustace remembered you, and we all came on here in a cab. You were out, but your man said it would be all right. When we met you, you were in such a hurry that we hadn’t time to explain. Well, I think I’ll be taking the hat, if you don’t mind.”
    â€œIt’s gone.”
    â€œGone?”
    â€œThe fellow you pinched it from happened to be the man who was lunching here. He took it away with him.”
    â€œOh, I say! Poor old Claude will be upset. Well, how about the goodish salmon or something?”
    â€œWould you care to view the remains?” He seemed all broken up when he saw the wreckage.
    â€œI doubt if the committee would accept that,” he said sadly. “There isn’t a frightful lot of it left, what?”
    â€œThe cats ate the rest.”
    He sighed deeply.
    â€œNo cats, no fish, no hat. We’ve had all our trouble for nothing. I do call that hard! And on top of that — I say, I hate to ask you, but you couldn’t lend me a tenner, could you?”
    â€œA tenner? What for?”
    â€œWell, the fact is, I’ve got to pop round and bail Claude and Eustace out. They’ve been arrested.”
    â€œArrested!”
    â€œYes. You see, what with the excitement of collaring the hat and the salmon or something, added to the fact that we had rather a festive lunch, they got a bit above themselves, poor chaps, and tried to pinch a motor-lorry. Silly, of course, because I don’t see how they could have got the thing to Oxford and shown it to the committee. Still, there wasn’t any reasoning with them, and when the driver started making a fuss, there was a bit of a mix-up, and Claude and Eustace are more or less languishing in Vine Street police-station till I pop round and bail them out. So if you could manage a tenner — Oh, thanks, that’s fearfully good of you. It would have been too bad to leave them there, what? I mean, they’re both such frightfully good chaps, you know. Everybody likes them up at the ’Varsity. They’re fearfully popular.”
    â€œI bet they are!” I said.
    âˆ—
    When Jeeves came back, I was waiting for him on the mat. I wanted speech with the blighter.
    â€œWell?” I said.
    â€œSir Roderick asked me a number of questions, sir, respecting your habits and mode of life, to which I replied guardedly.”
    â€œI don’t care about that. What I want to know is why you didn’t explain the whole thing to him right at the start? A word from you would have put everything clear.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œNow he’s gone off thinking me a looney.”
    â€œI should not be surprised, from his conversation with me, sir, if some such idea had not entered his head.”
    I was just starting in to speak, when the telephone bell rang. Jeeves answered it.
    â€œNo, madam, Mr. Wooster is not in. No, madam, I do not know when he will return. No, madam, he left no message. Yes, madam, I will inform him.” He put back the receiver. “Mrs. Gregson, sir.”
    Aunt Agatha! I had been expecting it. Ever since the luncheon-party had blown out a fuse, her shadow had been hanging over me, so to speak.
    â€œDoes she know? Already?”
    â€œI gather that Sir Roderick has been speaking to her on the telephone, sir, and —”
    â€œNo wedding bells for me, what?”
    Jeeves coughed.
    â€œMrs. Gregson did not actually confide in me, sir, but I fancy that some such thing may have occurred. She seemed decidedly agitated, sir.”
    It’s a rummy thing, but I’d been so snootered by the old boy and the cats and the fish and the hat and the pink-faced chappie and all the rest of it that