Right Ho, Jeeves

reasonable.”
    “Whereupon Mr. Glossop will hasten to save Miss Angela, while Mr. Fink-Nottle performs the same office for Miss Bassett.”
    “Is that based on psychology?”
    “Yes, sir. Possibly you may recollect that it was an axiom of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, that the instinct of everyone, upon an alarm of fire, is to save the object dearest to them.”
    “It seems to me that there is a grave danger of seeing Tuppy come out carrying a steak-and-kidney pie, but resume, Jeeves, resume. You think that this would clean everything up?”
    “The relations of the two young couples could scarcely continue distant after such an occurrence, sir.”
    “Perhaps you’re right. But, dash it, if we go ringing fire bells in the night watches, shan’t we scare half the domestic staff into fits? There is one of the housemaids—Jane, I believe—who already skips like the high hills if I so much as come on her unexpectedly round a corner.”
    “A neurotic girl, sir, I agree. I have noticed her. But by acting promptly we should avoid such a contingency. The entire staff, with the exception of Monsieur Anatole, will be at the ball at Kingham Manor tonight.”
    “Of course. That just shows the condition this thing has reduced me to. Forget my own name next. Well, then, let’s just try to envisage. Bong goes the bell. Gussie rushes and grabs the Bassett…. Wait. Why shouldn’t she simply walk downstairs?”
    “You are overlooking the effect of sudden alarm on the feminine temperament, sir.”
    “That’s true.”
    “Miss Bassett’s impulse, I would imagine, sir, would be to leap from her window.”
    “Well, that’s worse. We don’t want her spread out in a sort of _puree_ on the lawn. It seems to me that the flaw in this scheme of yours, Jeeves, is that it’s going to litter the garden with mangled corpses.”
    “No, sir. You will recall that Mr. Travers’s fear of burglars has caused him to have stout bars fixed to all the windows.”
    “Of course, yes. Well, it sounds all right,” I said, though still a bit doubtfully. “Quite possibly it may come off. But I have a feeling that it will slip up somewhere. However, I am in no position to cavil at even a 100 to 1 shot. I will adopt this policy of yours, Jeeves, though, as I say, with misgivings. At what hour would you suggest bonging the bell?”
    “Not before midnight, sir.”
    “That is to say, some time after midnight.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Right-ho, then. At 12.30 on the dot, I will bong.”
    “Very good, sir.”

    -22-
    I Don’t know why it is, but there’s something about the rural districts after dark that always has a rummy effect on me. In London I can stay out till all hours and come home with the milk without a tremor, but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me. The night wind stirs the tree-tops, twigs crack, bushes rustle, and before I know where I am, the morale has gone phut and I’m expecting the family ghost to come sneaking up behind me, making groaning noises. Dashed unpleasant, the whole thing, and if you think it improves matters to know that you are shortly about to ring the loudest fire bell in England and start an all-hands-to-the-pumps panic in that quiet, darkened house, you err.
    I knew all about the Brinkley Court fire bell. The dickens of a row it makes. Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that might give you heart failure, but which you couldn’t possibly mistake for the drowsy chirping of a sparrow in the ivy.
    When I was a kid and spent my holidays at Brinkley, we used to have fire drills after closing time, and many is the night I’ve had it jerk me out of the dreamless like the Last Trump.
    I confess that the recollection of what this bell could do when it buckled down to it gave me pause as I stood that night at 12.30 p.m. prompt beside the outhouse where it was located. The sight of the rope against the whitewashed wall and the thought of the bloodsome uproar which was about to smash the peace of the night into hash served to deepen that rummy feeling to which I have alluded.
    Moreover, now that I had had time to meditate upon it, I was more than ever defeatist about this