The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 Read Free Page A

or some similar institution. When we meet, there is always a certain stiffness and what Jeeves would call an imperfect fusion of soul.
    One of the reasons for this is, I think, that Stilton used to be a policeman. He joined the Force on coming down from Oxford with the idea of rising to a position of eminence at Scotland Yard, a thing you find a lot of the fellows you know doing these days. True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.
    Add the fact that this uncle of his wins his bread as a magistrate at one of the London police courts, and you will understand why I avoid him as much as possible and greatly prefer him elsewhere. The man of sensibility shrinks from being closeted with an ex-bluebottle with magistrate blood in him.
    In my demeanour, accordingly, as I rose to greet him, a close observer would have noted more than a touch of that To-what-am-I-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visit stuff. I was at a loss to imagine what he was doing invading my privacy like this, and another thing that had fogged me was why, having invaded it, he was standing staring at me in a stern, censorious sort of way, as if the sight of me had got right in amongst him, revolting his finest feelings. I might have been some dreg of society whom he had caught in the act of slipping a couple of ounces of cocaine to some other dreg.
    ‘Ho!’ he said, and this alone would have been enough to tell an intelligent bystander, had there been one, that he had spent some time in the ranks of the Force. One of the first things the Big Four teach the young recruit is to say ‘Ho!’ ‘I thought as much,’ he went on, knitting the brow. ‘Swilling cocktails, eh?’
    This was the moment when, had conditions been normal, I would no doubt have laughed nervously, fingered the tie and shuffled the feet, but with two of Jeeves’s specials under my belt, still exercising their powerful spell, I not only remained intrepid but retorted with considerable spirit, putting him right in his place.
    ‘I fail to understand you, officer,’ I said coldly. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this is the hour when it is customary for an English gentleman to partake of a short snifter. Will you join me?’
    His lip curled. Most unpleasant. These coppers are bad enough when they leave their lips
in statu quo
.
    ‘No, I won’t,’ he replied, curtly and offensively. ‘
I
don’t want to ruin my constitution. What do you suppose those things are going to do to your eye and your power of control? How can you expect to throw doubles if you persist in stupefying yourself with strong drink? It’s heart-breaking.’
    I saw all. He was thinking of the Darts sweep.
    The annual Darts sweep is one of the high spots of life at the Drones Club. It never fails to stir the sporting instincts of the members, causing them to roll up in dense crowds and purchase tickets at ten bob a go, with the result that the sum in the kitty is always colossal. This time my name had been drawn by Stilton, and as Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, last year’s winner, had gone and got married and at his wife’s suggestion resigned his membership, the thing was pretty generally recognized as a sitter for me, last year’s runner-up. ‘Wooster,’ the word flew to and fro, ‘is the deadest of snips. He throws a beautiful dart.’
    So I suppose it was only natural in a way that, standing, if all went well, to scoop in a matter of fifty-six pounds ten shillings, Stilton should feel that it was his mission in life to see that I kept at the peak of my form. But that didn’t make this incessant surveillance of his easier to