Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online Page B

example, generally call myself
Ephraim Gadsby of The Nasturtiums, Jubilee Road, Streatham Common. I don’t know
why. Just a whim. You, if you will be guided by me, will be Matilda Bott of 365
Churchill Avenue, East Dulwich. These formalities concluded, we shall be free
to depart, leaving the proprietor to face the awful majesty of Justice.’
    She
refused to be consoled. The resemblance to a cat on hot bricks became more
marked. Though instructed by the foghorn chap to keep her seat, she shot up as
if a spike had come through it.
    ‘I’m
sure that’s not what happens.’
    ‘It is,
unless they’ve changed the rules.’
    ‘You
have to appear in court.’
    ‘No,
no.’
    ‘Well,
I’m not going to risk it. Good night.’
    And
getting smoothly off the mark she made a dash for the service door, which was
not far from where we sat. And an adjacent constable, baying like a bloodhound,
started off in hot pursuit.
    Whether
I acted judiciously at this point is a question which I have never been able to
decide. Sometimes I think yes, reflecting that the Chevalier Bayard in my place
would have done the same, sometimes no. Briefly what occurred was that as the
gendarme came galloping by, I shoved out a foot, causing him to take the toss
of a lifetime. Florence withdrew, and the guardian of the peace, having removed
his left boot from his right ear, with which it had become temporarily
entangled, rose and informed me that I was in custody.
    As at
the moment he was grasping the scruff of my neck with one hand and the seat of
my trousers with the other, I saw no reason to doubt the honest fellow.

 
     
     
    6
     
     
    I spent the night in what
is called durance vile, and bright and early next day was haled before the beak
at Vinton Street police court, charged with assaulting an officer of the Law
and impeding him in the execution of his duties, which I suppose was a fairly
neat way of putting it. I was extremely hungry and needed a shave.
    It was
the first time I had met the Vinton Street chap, always hitherto having
patronized his trade rival at Bosher Street, but Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, who
was introduced to him on the morning of January the first one year, had told me
he was a man to avoid, and the truth of this was now borne in upon me in no uncertain
manner. It seemed to me, as I stood listening to the cop running through the
story sequence, that Barmy, in describing this Solon as a twenty-minute egg
with many of the less lovable qualities of some high-up official of the Spanish
Inquisition, had understated rather than exaggerated the facts.
    I
didn’t like the look of the old blister at all. His manner was austere, and as
the tale proceeded his face, such as it was, grew hard and dark with menace. He
kept shooting quick glances at me through his pince-nez, and the dullest eye
could see that the constable was getting all the sympathy of the audience and
that the citizen cast for the role of Heavy in this treatment was the prisoner
Gadsby. More and more the feeling stole over me that the prisoner Gadsby was
about to get it in the gizzard and would be lucky if he didn’t fetch up on
Devil’s Island.
    However,
when the J’accuse stuff was over and I was asked if I had anything to
say, I did my best. I admitted that on the occasion about which we had been chatting
I had extended a foot causing the officer to go base over apex, but protested
that it had been a pure accident without any arrière-pensée on my part.
I said I had been feeling cramped after a longish sojourn at the table and had
merely desired to unlimber the leg muscles.
    ‘You
know how sometimes you want a stretch,’ I said.
    ‘I am
strongly inclined,’ responded the beak, ‘to give you one. A good long stretch.’
    Rightly
recognizing this as comedy, I uttered a cordial guffaw to show that my heart
was in the right place, and an officious blighter in the well of the court
shouted ‘Silence!’ I tried to explain that I was convulsed by His