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

and he was wandering through the crowd at my side with gleaming eyes, hesitating between having his fortune told and taking a whirl at the Wheel of Joy, when he suddenly grabbed my arm and uttered a sharp animal cry.

“Bertie!”

“Now what?”

He was pointing at a large sign over a building.

“Look! Palace of Beauty!”

I tried to choke him off. I was getting a bit weary by this time. Not so young as I was.

“You don’t want to go in there,” I said. “A fellow at the club was telling me about that. It’s only a lot of girls. You don’t want to see a lot of girls.”

“I do want to see a lot of girls,” said Biffy, firmly. “Dozens of girls, and the more unlike Honoria they are, the better. Besides, I’ve suddenly remembered that that’s the place Jeeves told me to be sure and visit. It all comes back to me. ‘Mr. Biffen,’ he said, ‘I strongly advise you to visit the Palace of Beauty.’ Now, what the man was driving at or what his motive was, I don’t know; but I ask you, Bertie, is it wise, is it safe, is it judicious ever to ignore Jeeves’s lightest word? We enter by the door on the left.”

I don’t know if you know this Palace of Beauty place? It’s a sort of aquarium full of the delicately-nurtured instead of fishes. You go in, and there is a kind of cage with a female goggling out at you through a sheet of plate glass. She’s dressed in some weird kind of costume, and over the cage is written “Helen of Troy.” You pass on to the next, and there’s another one doing jiujitsu with a snake. Subtitle, Cleopatra. You get the idea⁠—Famous Women Through the Ages and all that. I can’t say it fascinated me to any great extent. I maintain that lovely woman loses a lot of her charm if you have to stare at her in a tank. Moreover, it gave me a rummy sort of feeling of having wandered into the wrong bedroom at a country house, and I was flying past at a fair rate of speed, anxious to get it over, when Biffy suddenly went off his rocker.

At least, it looked like that. He let out a piercing yell, grabbed my arm with a sudden clutch that felt like the bite of a crocodile, and stood there gibbering.

“Wuk!” ejaculated Biffy, or words to that general import.

A large and interested crowd had gathered round. I think they thought the girls were going to be fed or something. But Biffy paid no attention to them. He was pointing in a loony manner at one of the cages. I forget which it was, but the female inside wore a ruff, so it may have been Queen Elizabeth or Boadicea or someone of that period. She was rather a nice-looking girl, and she was staring at Biffy in much the same pop-eyed way as he was staring at her.

“Mabel!” yelled Biffy, going off in my ear like a bomb.

I can’t say I was feeling my chirpiest. Drama is all very well, but I hate getting mixed up in it in a public spot; and I had not realized before how dashed public this spot was. The crowd seemed to have doubled itself in the last five seconds, and, while most of them had their eye on Biffy, quite a goodish few were looking at me as if they thought I was an important principal in the scene and might be expected at any moment to give of my best in the way of wholesome entertainment for the masses.

Biffy was jumping about like a lamb in the springtime⁠—and, what is more, a feebleminded lamb.

“Bertie! It’s her! It’s she!” He looked about him wildly. “Where the deuce is the stage-door?” he cried. “Where’s the manager? I want to see the house-manager immediately.”

And then he suddenly bounded forward and began hammering on the glass with his stick.

“I say, old lad!” I began, but he shook me off.

These fellows who live in the country are apt to go in for fairly sizeable clubs instead of the light canes which your well-dressed man about town considers suitable for metropolitan use; and down in Herefordshire, apparently, something in the nature of a knobkerrie is de rigueur. Biffy’s first slosh smashed the glass all to hash. Three more cleared the way for him to go into the cage without cutting himself. And, before the crowd had time to realize what a wonderful bob’s-worth it was getting in exchange for its entrance-fee, he was inside, engaging the girl in earnest conversation. And at the same moment two large policemen rolled up.

You can’t make policemen take the romantic view. Not a tear did these two blighters stop to brush away. They were inside the cage and out of it and marching Biffy through the crowd before you had time to blink. I hurried after them, to do what I could in the way of soothing Biffy’s last moments, and the poor old lad turned a glowing face in my direction.

“Chiswick, 60873,” he bellowed in a voice charged with emotion. “Write it down, Bertie, or I shall forget it. Chiswick, 60873. Her telephone number.”

And then he disappeared, accompanied by about eleven thousand sightseers, and a voice spoke at my elbow.

“Mr. Wooster! What⁠—what⁠—what is the meaning of this?”

Sir Roderick, with bigger eyebrows than ever, was standing at my side.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Poor old Biffy’s only gone off his crumpet.”

He tottered.

“What?”

“Had a sort of fit or seizure, you know.”

“Another!” Sir Roderick drew a deep breath. “And this is the man I was about to allow my daughter to marry!” I heard him mutter.

I tapped him in a kindly spirit on the shoulder. It took some doing, mark you, but I did it.

“If I were you,” I said, “I should call that off. Scratch the fixture. Wash it out absolutely, is my advice.”

He gave me a nasty look.

“I do not require your advice,