Jeeves Stories P. G. Wodehouse (websites to read books for free txt) 📖

come to lunch with you and found your bedroom full up with cats and fish, and how you had pinched his hat while you were driving past his car in a taxi, and all that, you know. It just rounded the whole thing off nicely. I always say, and I always shall say, that you’ve only got to stand on Jeeves, and fate can’t touch you.”

I can stand a good deal, but there are limits.

“Well, of all the dashed bits of nerve I ever.⁠ ⁠…”

Bingo looked at me astonished.

“You aren’t annoyed?” he said.

“Annoyed! At having half London going about under the impression that I’m off my chump? Dash it all.⁠ ⁠…”

“Bertie,” said Bingo, “you amaze and wound me. If I had dreamed that you would object to doing a trifling good turn to a fellow who’s been a pal of yours for fifteen years.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, but, look here.⁠ ⁠…”

“Have you forgotten,” said young Bingo, “that we were at school together?”

I pushed on to the old flat, seething like the dickens. One thing I was jolly certain of, and that was that this was where Jeeves and I parted company. A topping valet, of course, none better in London, but I wasn’t going to allow that to weaken me. I buzzed into the flat like an east wind⁠ ⁠… and there was the box of cigarettes on the small table and the illustrated weekly papers on the big table and my slippers on the floor, and every dashed thing so bally right, if you know what I mean, that I started to calm down in the first two seconds. It was like one of those moments in a play where the chappie, about to steep himself in crime, suddenly hears the soft, appealing strains of the old melody he learned at his mother’s knee. Softened, I mean to say. That’s the word I want. I was softened.

And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients, and there was something about the mere look of the man.⁠ ⁠…

However, I steeled the old heart and had a stab at it.

“I have just met Mr. Little, Jeeves,” I said.

“Indeed, sir?”

“He⁠—er⁠—he told me you had been helping him.”

“I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?”

“Thanks. Er⁠—Jeeves.”

“Sir?”

“Another time.⁠ ⁠…”

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing.⁠ ⁠… Not all the soda, Jeeves.”

“Very good, sir.”

He started to drift out.

“Oh, Jeeves!”

“Sir?”

“I wish⁠ ⁠… that is⁠ ⁠… I think⁠ ⁠… I mean.⁠ ⁠… Oh, nothing!”

“Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?”

“No. I’ll dine in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Jeeves!”

“Sir?”

“Oh, nothing!” I said.

“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.

The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy

“Jeeves,” I said, emerging from the old tub, “rally round.”

“Yes, sir.”

I beamed on the man with no little geniality. I was putting in a week or two in Paris at the moment, and there’s something about Paris that always makes me feel fairly full of espièglerie and joie de vivre.

“Lay out our gent’s medium-smart raiment, suitable for Bohemian revels,” I said. “I am lunching with an artist bloke on the other side of the river.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And if anybody calls for me, Jeeves, say that I shall be back towards the quiet evenfall.”

“Yes, sir. Mr. Biffen rang up on the telephone while you were in your bath.”

“Mr. Biffen? Good heavens!”

Amazing how one’s always running across fellows in foreign cities⁠—birds, I mean, whom you haven’t seen for ages and would have betted weren’t anywhere in the neighbourhood. Paris was the last place where I should have expected to find old Biffy popping up. There was a time when he and I had been lads about town together, lunching and dining together practically every day; but some eighteen months back his old godmother had died and left him that place in Herefordshire, and he had retired there to wear gaiters and prod cows in the ribs and generally be the country gentleman and landed proprietor. Since then I had hardly seen him.

“Old Biffy in Paris? What’s he doing here?”

“He did not confide in me, sir,” said Jeeves⁠—a trifle frostily, I thought. It sounded somehow as if he didn’t like Biffy. And yet they had always been matey enough in the old days.

“Where’s he staying?”

“At the Hotel Avenida, Rue du Colisée, sir. He informed me that he was about to take a walk and would call this afternoon.”

“Well, if he comes when I’m out, tell him to wait. And now, Jeeves, mes gants, mon chapeau, et le whangee de monsieur. I must be popping.”

It was such a corking day and I had so much time in hand that near the Sorbonne I stopped my cab, deciding to walk the rest of the way. And I had hardly gone three steps and a half when there on the pavement before me stood old Biffy in person. If I had completed the last step I should have rammed him.

“Biffy!” I cried. “Well, well, well!”

He peered at me in a blinking kind of way, rather like one of his Herefordshire cows prodded unexpectedly while lunching.

“Bertie!” he gurgled, in a devout sort of tone. “Thank God!” He clutched my arm. “Don’t leave me, Bertie. I’m lost.”

“What do you mean, lost?”

“I came out for a walk and suddenly discovered after a mile or two that I didn’t know where on earth I was. I’ve been wandering round in circles for hours.”

“Why didn’t you ask the way?”

“I can’t speak a word of French.”

“Well, why didn’t you call a taxi?”

“I suddenly discovered I’d left all my money at my hotel.”

“You could have taken a cab and paid it when you got to the hotel.”

“Yes, but suddenly I discovered, dash it, that I’d forgotten its name.”

And there in a nutshell you have Charles Edward Biffen. As vague and woolen-headed a blighter as ever bit a sandwich. Goodness knows⁠—and my Aunt Agatha will bear me out in this⁠—I’m no mastermind myself;