Expecting Jeeves Read Free Page B

through the panels I could hear a mixed assortment of voices, with Aunt Agatha’s topping the lot. I knocked, but no one took any notice, so I trickled in. Among those present I noticed a chambermaid in hysterics, Aunt Agatha with her hair bristling, and a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, as no doubt he was, being the proprietor of the hotel.
    â€œOh, hallo,” I said. “I got your note. Aunt Agatha.”
    She waved me away. No welcoming smile for Bertram.
    â€œOh, don’t bother me now,” she snapped, looking at me as if I were more or less the last straw.
    â€œSomething up?”
    â€œ Yes, yes, yes! I’ve lost my pearls.”
    â€œPearls? Pearls? Pearls?” I said. “No, really? Dashed annoying. Where did you see them last?”
    â€œWhat
does
it matter where I saw them last? They have been stolen.”
    Here Wilfred the Whisker-King, who seemed to have been taking a rest between rounds, stepped into the ring again and began to talk rapidly in French. Cut to the quick he seemed. The chambermaid whooped in the corner.
    â€œSure you’ve looked everywhere?” I asked.
    â€œOf course I’ve looked everywhere.”
    â€œWell, you know, I’ve often lost a collar-stud and——”
    â€œDo try not to be so maddening, Bertie! I have enough to bear without your imbecilities. Oh, be quiet! Be quiet!” she shouted in the sort of voice used by sergeant-majors and those who call the cattle home across the Sands of Dee. And such was the magnetism of what Jeeves called her forceful personality that Wilfred subsided as though he had run into a wall. The chambermaid continued to go strong.
    â€œI say,” I said, “I think there’s something the matter with this girl. Isn’t she crying or something?”
    â€œShe stole my pearls! I am convinced of it.”
    This started the whisker-specialist off again, and I left them at it and wandered off on a tour round the room. I slipped the pearls out of the case and decanted them into a drawer. By the time I’d done this and had leisure to observe the free-for-all once more, Aunt Agatha had reached the frozen grande-dame stage and was putting the last of the bandits through it in the voice she usually reserves for snubbing waiters in restaurants.
    â€œI tell you, my good man, for the hundredth time, that I have searched thoroughly—everywhere. Why you should imagine that I have overlooked so elementary——”
    â€œI say,” I said, “don’t want to interrupt you and all that sort of thing, but aren’t these the little chaps?”
    I pulled them out of the drawer and held them up.
    â€œThese look like pearls, what?”
    I don’t know when I’ve had a more juicy moment. It was one of those occasions about which I shall prattle to my grandchil dren— if I ever have any, which at the moment of going to press seems more or less of a hundred-to-one shot. Aunt Agatha simply deflated before my eyes. It reminded me of when I once saw some chappies letting the gas out of a balloon.
    â€œWhere—where—where——?” she gurgled.
    â€œIn this drawer. They’d slid under some paper.”
    â€œOh!” said Aunt Agatha, and there was a bit of a silence.
    I dug out my entire stock of manly courage, breathed a short prayer, and let her have it right in the thorax.
    â€œI must say, Aunt Agatha, dash it,” I said, crisply, “I think you have been a little hasty, what? I mean to say, giving this poor man here so much anxiety and worry and generally biting him in the gizzard. You’ve been very, very unjust to this poor man!”
    â€œYes, yes,” chipped in the poor man.
    â€œAnd this unfortunate girl, what about her? Where does she get off? You’ve accused her of pinching the things on absolutely no evidence. I think she would be jolly well advised to bring an action for—for whatever it is, and soak