Much Obliged, Jeeves

and locked the door, I went back to the aged relative and found her with Jeeves. She expressed relief at seeing me.
    ‘Oh, there you are, my beautiful bounding Bertie. Thank goodness you didn’t go to Runkle’s room. Jeeves tells me Seppings met Runkle on the stairs and he asked him to bring him a cup of tea in half an hour. He said he was going to lie down. You might have run right into him.
    ‘ I laughed one of those hollow, mirthless ones.
    ‘Jeeves speaks too late, old ancestor. I did run into him.’
    ‘You mean he was there?’
    ‘With his hair in a braid.’ ‘What did you do?’
    ‘I told him you had asked me to ask him to come and take some photographs.’
    ‘Quick thinking.’
    ‘I always think like lightning.
    ‘ ‘And did he swallow it?’
    ‘He appeared to. He said he would be right down.’
    ‘Well, I’m damned if I’m going to smile.’ Whether I would have pleaded with her to modify this stern resolve and at least show a portion of her front teeth when Runkle pressed the button, I cannot say, for as she spoke my thoughts were diverted. A sudden query presented itself. What, I asked myself, was keeping L. P. Runkle? He had said he would be right down, but quite a time had elapsed and no sign of him. I was toying with the idea that on a warm afternoon like this a man of his build might have had a fit of some kind, when there came from the stairs the sound of clumping feet, and he was with us.
    But a very different L. P. Runkle from the man who had told me he would be right down. Then he had been all sunny and beaming, the amateur photographer who was not only going to make a pest of himself by taking photographs but had actually been asked to make a pest of himself in this manner, which seldom happens to amateur photographers. Now he was cold and hard like a picnic egg, and he couldn’t have looked at me with more loathing if I really had trodden on his Panama hat.
    ‘Mrs. Travers ! ‘ His voice had rung out with the clarion note of a costermonger seeking to draw the attention of the purchasing public to his blood oranges and Brussels sprouts. I saw the ancestor stiffen, and I knew she was about to go into her grande dame act. This relative, though in ordinary circs so genial and matey, can on occasion turn in a flash into a carbon copy of a Duchess of the old school reducing an underling to a spot of grease, and what is so remarkable is that she doesn’t have to use a lorgnette, just does it all with the power of the human eye. I think girls in her day used to learn the trick at their finishing schools.
    ‘Will you kindly not bellow at me, Mr. Runkle. I am not deaf. What is it?’
    The aristocratic ice in her tone sent a cold shiver down my spine, but in L. P. Runkle she had picked a tough customer to try to freeze. He apologized for having bellowed, but briefly and with no real contrition. He then proceeded to deal with her query as to what it was, and with a powerful effort forced himself to speak quite quietly. Not exactly like a cooing pigeon, but quietly.
    ‘I wonder if you remember, Mrs. Travers, a silver porringer I showed you on my arrival here.’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Very valuable.’
    ‘So you told me.’
    ‘I kept it in the top lefthand drawer of the chest of drawers in my bedroom. It did not occur to me that there was any necessity to hide it. I took the honesty of everybody under your roof for granted.’
    ‘Naturally.’
    ‘Even when I found that Mr. Wooster was one of my fellow guests I took no precautions. It was a fatal blunder. He has just stolen it.’
    I suppose it’s pretty much of a strain to keep up that grande dame stuff for any length of time, involving as it does rigidity of the facial muscles and the spinal column, for at these words the ancestor called it a day and reverted to the Quorn-and-Pytchleyness of her youth.
    ‘Don’t be a damned fool, Runkle. You’re talking rot. Bertie would never dream of doing such a thing, would you, Bertie?’
    ‘Not in a million years.’
    ‘The man’s an ass.’
    ‘One might almost say a silly ass.’
    ‘Comes of sleeping all the time.
    ‘ ‘I believe that’s the trouble.’
    ‘Addles the brain.’
    ‘Must, I imagine. It’s the same thing with Gus the cat. I love Gus like a brother, but after years of non-stop sleep he’s got about a,s much genuine intelligence as a Cabinet minister.’
    ‘I hope Runkle hasn’t annoyed you with his preposterous allegations?’
    ‘No, no, old ancestor, I’m not