Well, it was a close thing. If I ever have ^ grandchildren-which, at the moment, seems a longish shot-and they come clustering round my knee of an evening for a story, the one I shall tell them is about my getting back into the bedroom just one split second ahead of that carving knife. And if as a result they have convulsions during the night and wake up screaming, they will have got some rough idea of their aged relative's emotions at this juncture. To say that Bertram, even when he had slammed the door, locked it, shoved a chair against it, and a bed against the chair, felt wholly at his ease would be a wilful overstatement. I cannot put my mental attitude more clearly than '
by saying that, if J. Washburn Stoker had happened to drop in at that moment, I would t have welcomed him like a brother. Brinkley was at the keyhole, begging me to come out and let him ascertain the colour of my insides ; and, by Jove, what seemed to me to add the final touch to the whole unpleasant ij ness was that he spoke in the same respectful jj voice he always used. Kept calling me " Sir,"
?• too, which struck me as dashed silly. I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a " Sir " on to every sentence. The two things don't go together. At this point it seemed to me that my first
move ought to be to clear up the obvious misunderstanding that existed in his mind. I put the lips to the woodwork. " It's all right, Brinkley." "
It will be if you come out, sir," he said civilly. " I mean, I'm not the Devil." " Oh, yes, you are, sir." " I'm not, I tell you." " Oh, yes, sir." " I'm Mr. Wooster." He uttered a piercing cry. " He's got Mr.
Wooster in there I " You don't get the old-fashioned soliloquy much nowadays, so I took it that he was addressing some third party. And, sure enough, there was a sort of rumbling puffing and a tonsil-ridden voice spoke. " What's all this ? " It was my sleepless neighbour. Police Sergeant Voules.
My first emotion on realising that the Law was in our midst was one of pretty sizeable relief. There were lots of things about this vigilant man I didn't like-his habit of poking his nose into people's garages and potting sheds, for one-but, whatever you might feel about some of his habits, there was no denying that he was a useful chap to have around in a situation like this. Tackling a loony valet is not everyone's job. You need a certain personality and presence. These this outsize
guardian of the peace had got in full measure. And I was just about to urge him on with encouraging noises through the door, when something seemed to whisper to me that it would be more prudent to refrain. You see, the whole thing about these vigilant police sergeants is that they detain and question. Finding Bertram Wooster in the equivocal position of going about the place with his face blacked up. Sergeant Voules would not just pass the thing off with a shrug of the shoulders and a light good night. He would, as I say, detain and question. Recalling our encounters of the previous night, he would view with concern. He would insist on my accompanying him to the police station while he sent for Chuffy to come and advise what to do for the best. Doctors would be summoned, ice packs applied. With the result that I would most certainly be confined to the neighbourhood quite long enough for old Stoker to discover that my room was empty and my bed had not been slept in and to come rushing ashore to scoop me up and carry me back to the yacht again.
On second thoughts, therefore, I said nothing. Merely breathed softly through the nose. Outside the door, snappy dialogue was in progress ; and I give you my honest word that, if I hadn't had authoritative information to the contrary, I should have said that this extraordinary bird, Brinkley, was as sober as a tee total Girl Guide. All that one of the biggest toots in history had done to him was to put a sort of precise edge on his speech and cause him to articulate with a crystal clearness which was more like a silver bell than anything. " The Devil is in there, murdering Mr. Wooster, sir," he was saying. And, except in radio announcers, I've never heard anything more beautifully modulated.
