The inimitable Jeeves

beginning to show signs of cracking under the strain. He had been looking his symptoms up in a medical dictionary, and he thought he had got ‘clergyman’s throat’. But against this you had to set the fact that he was making an undoubted hit in the right quarter, and also that after the evening’s reading he always stayed on to dinner; and, from what he told me, the dinners turned out by old Little’s cook had to be tasted to be believed. There were tears in the old blighter’s eyes as he got on the subject of the clear soup. I suppose to a fellow who for weeks had been tackling macaroons and limado it must have been like Heaven.
    Old Little wasn’t able to give any practical assistance at these banquets, but Bingo said that he came to the table and had his whack of arrowroot, and sniffed the dishes, and told stories of entrees he had had in the past, and sketched out scenarios of what he was going to do to the bill of fare in the future, when the doctor put him in shape; so I suppose he enjoyed himself, too, in a way. Anyhow, things seemed to be buzzing along quite satisfactorily, and Bingo said he had got an idea which, he thought, was going to clinch the thing. He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but he said it was a pippin.
    ‘We make progress, Jeeves,’ I said.
    ‘That is very satisfactory, sir.’
    ‘Mr Little tells me that when he came to the big scene in Only a Factory Girl, his uncle gulped like a stricken bullpup.’
    ‘Indeed, sir?’
    ‘Where Lord Claude takes the girl in his arms, you know, and says -‘
    ‘I am familiar with the passage, sir. It is distinctly moving. It was a great favourite of my aunt’s.’
    ‘I think we’re on the right track.’
    ‘It would seem so, sir.’
    ‘In fact, this looks like being another of your successes. I’ve always said, and I always shall say, that for sheer brains, Jeeves, you stand alone. All the other great thinkers of the age are simply in the crowd, watching you go by.’
    ‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’
    About a week after this, Bingo blew in with the news that his uncle’s gout had ceased to trouble him, and that on the morrow he would be back at the old stand working away with knife and fork as before.
    ‘And, by the way,’ said Bingo, ‘he wants you to lunch with him tomorrow.’
    ‘Me? Why me? He doesn’t know I exist.’
    ‘Oh, yes, he does. I’ve told him about you.’
    ‘What have you told him?’
    ‘Oh, various things. Anyhow, he wants to meet you. And take my tip, laddie - you go! I should think lunch tomorrow would be something special.’
    I don’t know why it was, but even then it struck me that there was something dashed odd - almost sinister, if you know what I mean - about young Bingo’s manner. The old egg had the air of one who has something up his sleeve.
    ‘There is more in this than meets the eye,’ I said. ‘Why should your uncle ask a fellow to lunch whom he’s never seen?’
    ‘My dear old fathead, haven’t I just said that I’ve been telling him all about you - that you’re my best pal - at school together, and all that sort of thing?’
    ‘But even then - and another thing. Why are you so dashed keen on my going?’
    Bingo hesitated for a moment.
    ‘Well, I told you I’d got an idea. This is it. I want you to spring the news on him. I haven’t the nerve myself.’
    ‘What! I’m hanged if I do!’
    ‘And you call yourself a pal of mine!’
    ‘Yes, I know; but there are limits.’
    ‘Bertie,’ said Bingo reproachfully, ‘I saved your life once.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Didn’t I? It must have been some other fellow, then. Well, anyway, we were boys together and all that. You can’t let me down.’
    ‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘But, when you say you haven’t nerve enough for any dashed thing in the world, you misjudge yourself. A fellow who-‘
    ‘Cheerio!’ said young Bingo. ‘One-thirty tomorrow. Don’t be late.’

    I’m bound to say that the more I contemplated the binge, the less I liked it. It was all very well for Bingo to say that I was slated for a magnificent lunch; but what good is the best possible lunch to a fellow if he is slung out into the street on his ear during the soup course? However, the word of a Wooster is his bond and all that sort of rot, so at one-thirty next day I tottered up the steps of No. 16, Pounceby Gardens, and punched the bell. And half a minute later I was in the drawing-room, shaking hands with the fattest man I