Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

after you left he developed a mal au foie or whatever he called it and took to his bed.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘So was Tom. He was looking forward gloomily to a dinner cooked by the kitchen maid, who, though a girl of many sterling merits, always adopts the scorched earth policy when preparing a meal, and you know what his digestion’s like. Conditions looked dark, and then Spink-Bottle suddenly revealed that this Pekinese of his was an experienced chef, and she’s taken over. Who is she? Do you know anything about her?’
    I was, of course, able to supply the desired information.
    ‘She’s the daughter of a well-to-do American millionaire called Stoker, who, I imagine, will be full of strange oaths when he hears she’s married Gussie, the latter being, as you will concede, not everybody’s cup of tea.’
    ‘So he isn’t going to marry Madeline Bassett?’
    ‘No, the fixture has been scratched.’
    ‘That’s definite, is it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You can’t have been much success as a raisonneur.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, I think she’ll make Spink-Bottle a good wife. Seems a very nice girl.’
    ‘Few better.’
    ‘But this leaves you in rather a spot, doesn’t it? If Madeline Bassett is now at large, won’t she expect you to fill in?’
    ‘That, aged relative, is the fear that haunts me.’
    ‘Has Jeeves nothing to suggest?’
    ‘He says he hasn’t. But I’ve known him on previous occasions to be temporarily baffled and then suddenly to wave his magic wand and fix everything up. So I haven’t entirely lost hope.’
    ‘No, I expect you’ll wriggle out of it somehow, as you always do. I wish I had a fiver for every time you’ve been within a step of the altar rails and have managed to escape unscathed. I remember you telling me once that you had faith in your star.’
    ‘Quite. Still, it’s no good trying to pretend that peril doesn’t loom. It looms like the dickens. The corner in which I find myself is tight.’
    ‘And you would like to get that way, too, I suppose? All right, you can get back to your orgy when I’ve told you why I rang you up.’
    ‘Haven’t you?’ I said, surprised.
    ‘Certainly not. You don’t catch me wasting time and money chatting with you about your amours. Here is the nub. You know that black amber thing of Bassett’s?’
    ‘The statuette? Of course.’
    ‘I want to buy it for Tom. I’ve come into a bit of money. The reason I went to London today was to see my lawyer about a legacy someone’s left me. Old school friend, if that’s of any interest to you. It works out at about a couple of thousand quid, and I want you to get that statuette for me.’
    ‘It’s going to be pretty hard to get away with it.’
    ‘Oh, you’ll manage. Go as high as fifteen hundred pounds, if you have to. I suppose you couldn’t just slip it in your pocket? It would save a lot of overhead. But probably that’s asking too much of you, so tackle Bassett and get him to sell it.’
    ‘Well, I’ll do my best. I know how much Uncle Tom covets that statuette. Rely on me, Aunt Dahlia.’
    ‘That’s my boy.’
    I returned to the drawing-room in somewhat pensive mood, for my relations with Pop Bassett were such that it was going to be embarrassing trying to do business with him, but I was relieved that the aged relative had dismissed the idea of purloining the thing. Surprised, too, as well as relieved, because the stern lesson association with her over the years has taught me is that when she wants to do a loved husband a good turn, she is seldom fussy about the methods employed to that end. It was she who had initiated, if that’s the word I want, the theft of the cow-creamer, and you would have thought she would have wanted to save money on the current deal. Her view has always been that if a collector pinches something from another collector, it doesn’t count as stealing, and of course there may be something in it. Pop Bassett, when at Brinkley, would unquestionably have looted Uncle Tom’s collection, had he not been closely watched. These collectors have about as much conscience as the smash-and-grab fellows for whom the police are always spreading dragnets.
    I was musing along these lines and trying to think what would be the best way of approaching Pop, handicapped as I would be by the fact that he shuddered like a jelly in a high wind every time he saw me and preferred when in my presence to sit and stare before him without uttering, when the door opened, and