Yes, sir. Unless--" " Unless ? " " Well, I was wondering, sir, if on the whole it would not be best if you were to obviate all unpleasantness and embarrassment by removing yourself from the yacht." " What! " " Yacht, sir." " I know you said ' Yacht.' And I said * What! ' Jeeves," I went on, and there was a quiver in the voice, "it is not like you to come in here at a crisis like this with straws in your hair and talk absolute drip. How the devil can I leave the yacht ? " " The matter could be readily arranged, if you are agreeable, sir. It would, of course, involve certain inconveniences . . ." " Jeeves," I said," short of squeezing through the port-hole, which can't be done, I am ready to undergo any little passing inconvenience if it will get me off this bally floating dungeon and restore me to terra firma." I paused and regardedhim anxiously. "This is not mere gibbering,is it ? You really have a scheme ? " " Yes, sir. The reason I hesitated to advance it was that I feared you might not approve of the idea of covering your face with boot polish." " What I " " Time being of the essence, sir, I think it would not be advisable to employ burnt cork."
I turned my face to the wall. It was the end. " Leave me, Jeeves," I said. " You've been having a couple." And I'm not sure that what cut me'like a knife, more even than any agony at my fearful predicament, was not the realization that my original suspicions had been correct and that, after all these years, that superb brain had at last come unstuck.
For, though I had tactfully affected to set all this talk of burnt cork and boot polish down to mere squiffiness, in my heart I was convinced that the fellow had gone off his onion. He coughed. " If you will permit me to explain, sir. The entertainers are just concluding their performance. In a short time they will be leaving the boat." I sat up.
Hope dawned once more, and remorse gnawed me like a bull pup worrying a rubber bone at the thought that I should have so misjudged this man. I saw what that giant brain was driving at. " You mean--? " " I have a small tin of boot polish here, sir. y I brought it with me in anticipation of this move. It would be a simple task to apply it to your face and hands in such a manner as to , create the illusion, should you encounter Mr. Stoker, that you were a member of this troupe of negroid entertainers." ' ' " Jeeves! " "
The suggestion I would make, sir, is that, if ^ I you are amenable to what I propose, we should 'i i
wait until these black-faced persons have left for the shore. I could then inform the captain that one of them, a personal friend of mine, had lingered behind to talk with me and so had missed the motor launch. I have little doubt that he would accord me permission to row you ashore in one of the smaller boats." I stared at the man. Years of intimate acquaintance, the memory of swift ones he had pulled in the past, the knowledge that he lived largely on fish, thus causing his brain to be about as full of phosphorus as the human brain can jolly well stick, had not prepared me for this supreme effort. " Jeeves," I said, " as I have so often had occasion to say before, you stand alone." " Thank you, sir." " Others abide our question. Thou art free." " I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir." " You think it would work ? " "Yes, sir." " The scheme carries your personal guarantee ? " " Yes, sir." " And you say you have the stuff handy ? " " Yes, sir." I flung myself into a chair and turned the features ceilingwards. " Then start smearing, Jeeves," I said, " and continue to smear till your trained senses tell you that you have smeared enough."
I MUST say, as a general rule, I always bar stories where the chap who's telling them skips lightly from point to point and leaves you to work it out for yourself as best you can just what has happened in the interim.
