I had baffled it. It hadn't a thing to say. Of course, I mused, I ought to have thought of this solution right from the start. Dashed obvious, the whole thing, when you came to think of it. I mean, Jeeves would be back at the Hall by now. I had only to go and get in touch with him and he would bring out pounds of butter on a lordly dish. And not only that, but he would lend me enough of the needful to pay my fare to London and possibly even to purchase a packet of milk chocolate from the slot machine at the station. The thing was a walkover. I rose from my stump, braced to a degree, and started off. In the race for life, as you might term it, I had lost my bearings a bit, but I pretty soon hit the main road, and I don't suppose it was more than a quarter of an hour later that I was rapping at the back door of the Hall. It was opened by a small female-a scullery maid of sorts, I put her down as-who, on observing me, gaped for a moment with a sort of shocked horror, and then with a piercing squeal keeled over and started to roll about and drum her heels on the floor. And I'm not so dashed sure she wasn't frothing at the mouth.
I MUST admit it was a fairly nasty shock. I had never realized before what an important part one's complexion plays in life. I mean to say, a Bertram Wooster with merely a pretty tan calling at the back door of Chuffnell Hall would have been received with respect and deference.
Indeed, I shouldn't wonder if a girl of the social standing of a scullery maid might not actually have curtsied. And I don't suppose matters would have been so substantially different if I had had an interesting pallor or pimples. But purely and simply because there happened to be a little boot polish on my face, here was this female tying herself in knots on the doormat and throwing fits up and down the passage. Well, there was only one thing to do, of course. Already voices from along the corridor were making inquiries, and in another half-second I presumed that I might expect a regular susurration of domestics on the scene. I picked up the feet and pushed off. And, taking it that the neighbourhood of the back door was liable to be searched pretty soon, I hared round to the front and came to roost in a patch of bushes not far from the main entrance. N 193
Here I paused. It seemed to me that before going any farther, I had better try to analyse the situation and find out what to do next. In other circs.-if, let us say, I had been reclining in a deck chair with a cigarette, instead of squatting in a beastly jungle with beetles falling down my neck-I should probably have got a good deal of entertainment and uplift out of the scene and surroundings generally. I've always been rather a lad for the peace of the old-world English garden round about the time between the end of dinner and the mixing of the bedtime spot.
From where I sat, I could see the great mass of the Hall standing out against the sky, and very impressive it was, too. Birds were rustling in the trees, and I think there must have been a flower bed fairly close by with stocks and tobacco plant in it, for the air was full of a pretty goodish sort of smell. Add the perfect stillness of a summer night, and there you are. At the end of about ten minutes, however, the stillness of the summer night rather sprang a leak. From one of the rooms there proceeded a loud yelling. I recognised the voice of little Seabury, and I remember feeling thankful that he had his troubles, too. After a bit, he cheesed it-I assumed the friction had arisen from the fact that somebody wanted to put him to bed and he didn't want to go-and all was quiet again. Directly after that there came a sound of
