Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

guilty of a social gaffe which would have drawn raised eyebrows from the author of a book of etiquette, but the great lesson we learn from life is to know when and when not to be in the centre of things.

    7
    I haven’t mentioned it till now, having been all tied up with other matters, but during dinner, as you may well imagine, something had been puzzling me not a little - the mystery, to wit, of what on earth had become of Emerald Stoker.
    At that lunch of ours she had told me in no uncertain terms that she was off to Totleigh on the four o’clock train that afternoon, and however leisurely its progress it must have got there by this time, because Gussie had travelled on it and he had fetched up at the joint all right. But I could detect no sign of her on the premises. It seemed to me, sifting the evidence, that only one conclusion could be arrived at, that she had been pulling the Wooster leg.
    But why? With what motive? That was what I was asking myself as I sneaked up the stairs to where Erle Stanley Gardner awaited me. If you had cared to describe me as perplexed and bewildered, you would have been perfectly correct.
    Jeeves was in my room when I got there, going about his gentleman’s gentlemanly duties, and I put my problem up to him. ‘Did you ever see a film called The Vanishing Lady, Jeeves?’
    ‘No, sir. I rarely attend cinematographic performances.’
    ‘Well, it was about a lady who vanished, if you follow what I mean, and the reason I bring it up is that a female friend of mine has apparently disappeared into thin air, leaving not a wrack behind, as I once heard you put it.’
    ‘Highly mysterious, sir.’
    ‘You said it. I seek in vain for a solution. When I gave her lunch yesterday, she told me she was off on the four o’clock train to go and stay at Totleigh Towers, and the point I want to drive home is that she hasn’t arrived. You remember the day I lunched at the Ritz?’
    ‘Yes, sir. You were wearing an Alpine hat.’
    ‘There is no need to dwell on the Alpine hat, Jeeves.’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘If you really want to know, several fellows at the Drones asked me where I had got it.’
    ‘No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.’
    I saw that nothing was to be gained by bandying words. I turned the conversation to a pleasanter and less controversial subject.
    ‘Well, Jeeves, you’ll be glad to hear that everything’s all right.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘About that lute we were speaking of. No rift. Sound as a bell. I have it straight from the horse’s mouth that Miss Bassett and Gussie are sweethearts still. The relief is stupendous.’
    I hadn’t expected him to clap his hands and leap about, because of course he never does, but I wasn’t prepared for the way he took this bit of hot news. He failed altogether to string along with my jocund mood.
    ‘I fear, sir, that you are too sanguine. Miss Bassett’s attitude may well be such as you have described, but on Mr. Fink-Nottle’s side, I am sorry to say there exists no little dissatisfaction and resentment.’
    The smile which had been splitting my face faded. It’s never easy to translate what Jeeves says into basic English, but I had been able to grab this one off the bat, and what I believe the French call a frisson went through me like a dose of salts.
    ‘You mean she’s a sweetheart still, but he isn’t?’
    ‘Precisely, sir. I encountered Mr. Fink-Nottle in the stable yard as I was putting away the car, and he confided his troubles to me. His story occasioned me grave uneasiness.’
    Another frisson passed through my frame. I had the unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that centipedes in large numbers are sauntering up and down your spinal column. I feared the worst.
    ‘But what’s happened?’ I faltered, if faltered’s the word.
    ‘I regret to inform you, sir, that Miss Bassett has insisted on Mr. Fink-Nottle adopting a vegetarian diet. His mood is understandably disgruntled and rebellious.’
    I tottered. In my darkest hour I had never anticipated anything as bad as this. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, because he’s small and shrimplike and never puts on weight, but Gussie loves food. Watching him tucking into his rations at the Drones, a tapeworm would raise its hat respectfully, knowing that it was in the presence of a master. Cut him off, therefore, from the roasts and boileds and particularly from cold steak and kidney pie, a dish of which he is inordinately fond, and you turned him into