Jeeves in the Offing by P.G. Wodehouse Read Free Book Online

me?’
‘That’s what you’re here for. Didn’t your aunt tell you? She wants you to follow Wilbert Cream and Phyllis about everywhere and see that he doesn’t get a chance of proposing.’
‘You mean that I’m to be a sort of private eye or shamus, tailing them up? I don’t like it,’ I said dubiously.
‘You don’t have to like it,’ said Bobbie. ‘You just do it.’

5
Wax in the hands of the other sex, as the expression is, I went and broke it up as directed, but not blithely. It is never pleasant for a man of sensibility to find himself regarded as a buttinski and a trailing arbutus, and it was thus, I could see at a g., that Wilbert Cream was pencilling me in. At the moment of my arrival he had suspended the poetry reading and had taken Phyllis’s hand in his, evidently saying or about to say something of an intimate and tender nature. Hearing my ‘What ho’, he turned, hurriedly released the fin and directed at me a look very similar to the one I had recently received from Aubrey Upjohn. He muttered something under his breath about someone, whose name I did not catch, apparently having been paid to haunt the place.
‘Oh, it’s you again,’ he said.
Well, it was, of course. No argument about that.
‘Kind of at a loose end?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you settle down somewhere with a good book?’
I explained that I had just popped in to tell them that tea was now being served on the main lawn, and Phyllis squeaked a bit, as if agitated.
‘Oh, dear!’ she said. ‘I must run. Daddy doesn’t like me to be late for tea. He says it’s not respectful to my elders.’
I could see trembling on Wilbert Cream’s lips a suggestion as to where Daddy could stick himself and his views on respect to elders, but with a powerful effort he held it back.
‘I shall take Poppet for a walk,’ he said, chirruping to the dachshund, who was sniffing at my legs, filling his lungs with the delicious Wooster bouquet.
‘No tea?’ I said.
‘No.’
‘There are muffins.’
‘Tchah!’ he ejaculated, if that’s the word, and strode off, followed by the low-slung dog, and it was borne in upon me that here was another source from which I could expect no present at Yule-Tide. His whole demeanour made it plain that I had not added to my little circle of friends. Though going like a breeze with dachshunds, I had failed signally to click with Wilbert Cream.
When Phyllis and I reached the lawn, only Bobbie was at the tea table, and this surprised us both.
‘Where’s Daddy?’ Phyllis asked.
‘He suddenly decided to go to London,’ said Bobbie.
‘To London?’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t tell me.’
‘I must go and see him,’ said Phyllis, and buzzed off.
Bobbie seemed to be musing.
‘Do you know what I think, Bertie?’
‘What?’
‘Well, when Upjohn came out just now, he was all of a doodah, and he had this week’s Thursday Review in his hand. Came by the afternoon post, I suppose. I think he had been reading Reggie’s comment on his book.’
This seemed plausible. I number several authors among my aquaintance - the name of Boko Fittleworth is one that springs to the mind - and they invariably become all of a doodah when they read a stinker in the press about their latest effort.
‘Oh, you know about that thing Kipper wrote?’
‘Yes, he showed it to me one day when we were having lunch together.’
‘Very mordant, I gathered from what he told me. But I don’t see why that should make Upjohn bound up to London.’
‘I suppose he wants to ask the editor who wrote the thing, so that he can horsewhip him on the steps of his club. But of course they won’t tell him, and it wasn’t signed so … Oh, hullo, Mrs Cream.’
The woman she was addressing was tall and thin with a hawk-like face that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. She had an ink spot on her nose, the result of working on her novel of suspense. It is virtually impossible to write a novel of suspense without getting a certain