Jeeves in the Offing

going up against the heavyweight champion when in due course I drew up at the study door, opened it and tottered in. I could not forget that an Aubrey Upjohn who for years had been looking strong parents in the eye and making them wilt, and whose toughness was a byword in Bramley-on-Sea, was not a man lightly to wag a finger in the face of.
Uncle Tom’s study was a place I seldom entered during my visits to Brinkley Court, because when I did go there he always grabbed me and started to talk about old silver, whereas if he caught me in the open he often touched on other topics, and the way I looked at it was that there was no sense in sticking one’s neck out. It was more than a year since I had been inside this sanctum, and I had forgotten how extraordinarily like its interior was to that of Aubrey Upjohn’s lair at Malvern House. Discovering this now and seeing Aubrey Upjohn seated at the desk as I had so often seen him sit on the occasions when he had sent for me to discuss some recent departure of mine from the straight and narrow path, I found what little was left of my sang froid expiring with a pop. And at the same time I spotted the flaw in this scheme I had undertaken to sit in on - viz. that you can’t just charge into a room and start calling someone names - out of a blue sky, as it were - you have to lead up to the thing. Pourparlers, in short, are of the essence.
So I said ‘Oh, hullo,’ which seemed to me about as good a pourparler as you could have by way of an opener. I should imagine that those statesmen of whom I was speaking always edge into their conferences conducted in an atmosphere of the utmost cordiality in some such manner.
‘Reading?’ I said.
He lowered his book - one of Ma Cream’s, I noticed -and flashed an upper lip at me.
‘Your powers of observation have not led you astray, Wooster. I am reading.’
‘Interesting book?’
‘Very. I am counting the minutes until I can resume its perusal undisturbed.’
I’m pretty quick, and I at once spotted that the atmosphere was not of the utmost cordiality. He hadn’t spoken matily, and he wasn’t eyeing me matily. His whole manner seemed to suggest that he felt that I was taking up space in the room which could have been better employed for other purposes.
However, I persevered.
‘I see you’ve shaved off your moustache.’
‘I have. You do not feel, I hope, that I pursued a mistaken course?’
‘Oh no, rather not. I grew a moustache myself last year, but had to get rid of it.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Public sentiment was against it.’
‘I see. Well, I should be delighted to hear more of your reminiscences, Wooster, but at the moment I am expecting a telephone call from my lawyer.’
‘I thought you’d had one.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘When you were down by the lake, didn’t you go off to talk to him?’
‘I did. But when I reached the telephone, he had grown tired of waiting and had rung off. I should never have allowed Miss Wickham to take me away from the house.’
‘She wanted you to see the big fish.’
‘So I understood her to say.’
‘Talking of fish, you must have been surprised to find Kipper here.’
‘Kipper?’
‘Herring.’
‘Oh, Herring,’ he said, and one spotted the almost total lack of animation in his voice. And conversation had started to flag, when the door flew open and the goof Phyllis bounded in, full of girlish excitement.
‘Oh, Daddy,’ she burbled, ‘are you busy?’
‘No, my dear.’
‘Can I speak to you about something?’
‘Certainly. Goodbye, Wooster.’
I saw what this meant. He didn’t want me around. There was nothing for it but to ooze out through the french window, so I oozed, and had hardly got outside when Bobbie sprang at me like a leopardess.
‘What on earth are you fooling about for like this, Bertie?’ she stage-whispered. ‘All that rot about moustaches. I thought you’d be well into it by this time.’
I pointed out that as yet Aubrey Upjohn had not given me a cue.
‘You and your cues!’
‘All right, me and my cues. But I’ve got to sort of lead the conversation in the right direction, haven’t I?’
‘I see what Bertie means, darling,’ said Kipper. ‘He wants -‘
‘A point d’appui.’
‘A what?’ said Bobbie.
‘Sort of jumping-off place.’
The beasel snorted.
‘If you ask me, he’s lost his nerve. I knew this would happen. The worm has got cold feet.’
I could have crushed her by drawing her attention to the fact that worms don’t have