Stiff Upper Lip Jeeves

thought. It seemed to me that he couldn’t have been listening.
    ‘But if I don’t, she’ll squeal to the F.B.I.’
    ‘No, sir, for the lady will be forced to admit that it is physically impossible for you to carry out her wishes. The statuette is no longer at large. It has been placed in Sir Watkyn’s collection room behind a stout steel door.’
    ‘Good Lord! How do you know?’
    ‘I chanced to pass the dining-room, sir, and inadvertently overheard a conversation between Sir Watkyn and his lordship.’
    ‘Call him Spode.’
    ‘Very good, sir. Mr. Spode was observing to Sir Watkyn that he had not at all liked the interest you displayed in the figurine at dinner last night.’
    ‘I was just giving Pop B. the old salve in the hope of sweetening the atmosphere a bit.’
    ‘Precisely, sir, but your statement that the object was “just the sort of thing Uncle Tom would like to have” made a deep impression on Mr. Spode. Remembering the unfortunate episode of the cow-creamer, which did so much to mar the pleasantness of your previous visit to Totleigh Towers, he informed Sir Watkyn that he had revised his original view that you were here to attempt to lure Miss Bassett from Mr. Fink-Nottle, and that he was now convinced that your motive in coming to the house had to do with the figurine, and that you were planning to purloin it on Mr. Travers’s behalf. Sir Watkyn, who appeared much moved, accepted the theory in toto, all the more readily because of an encounter which he said he had had with you in the early hours of this morning.’
    I nodded.
    ‘Yes, we got together in the hall at, I suppose, about one a.m. I had gone down to see if I could get a bit of that steak and kidney pie.’
    ‘I quite understand, sir. It was an injudicious thing to do, if I may say so, but the claims of steak and kidney pie are of course paramount. It was immediately after this that Sir Watkyn fell in with Mr. Spode’s suggestion that the statuette be placed under lock and key in the collection room. I presume that it is now there, and when it is explained to Miss Byng that only by means of burglar’s tools or a flask of trinitrotoluol could you obtain access to it and that neither of these is in your possession, I am sure the lady will see reason and recede from her position.’
    Only the circumstance of my being in bed at the moment kept me from dancing a few carefree steps.
    ‘You speak absolute sooth, Jeeves. This lets me out.’
    ‘Completely, sir.’
    ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going and explaining the position of affairs to Stiffy now. You can tell the story so much better than I could, and she ought to be given the low-down as soon as possible. I don’t know where she is at this time of day, but you’ll find her messing about somewhere, I’ve no doubt.’
    ‘I saw Miss Byng in the garden with Mr. Pinker, sir. I think she was trying to prepare him for his approaching ordeal.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘If you recall, sir, owing to the temporary indisposition of the vicar, Mr. Pinker will be in sole charge of the school treat tomorrow, and he views the prospect with not unnatural qualms. There is a somewhat lawless element among the school children of Totleigh-in-the-Wold, and he fears the worst.’
    ‘Well, tell Stiffy to take a couple of minutes off from the pep talk and listen to your communique.’
    ‘Very good, sir.’
    He was absent quite a time - so long, in fact, that I was dressed when he returned.
    ‘I saw Miss Byng, sir.’
    ‘And - ?’
    ‘She is still insistent that you restore the statuette to Mr. Plank.’
    ‘She’s cuckoo. I can’t get into the collection room.’
    ‘No, sir, but Miss Byng can. She informs me that not long ago Sir Watkyn chanced to drop his key, and she picked it up and omitted to apprise him. Sir Watkyn had another key made, but the original remains in Miss Byng’s possession.’
    I clutched the brow.
    ‘You mean she can get into the room any time she feels like it?’
    ‘Precisely, sir. Indeed, she has just done so.’
    And so saying he fished the eyesore from an inner pocket and handed it to me.
    ‘Miss Byng suggests that you take the object to Mr. Plank after luncheon. In her droll way she said the meal - I quote her words -would put the necessary stuffing into you and nerve you for the … It is somewhat early, sir, but shall I get you a little brandy?’
    ‘Not a little, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Fetch the cask.’
    I don’t know how Emerald Stoker was with brush and