Be of good cheer," I said. " We may not be so well off for cottages, but the butter situation,I am happy to say, is reasonably bright. We can't get any to-night, but it cometh in the morning, so to speak. Jeeves is going to bring me some as soon as the dairyman delivers." " But I cannot remain in this condition till morning." " Only course to pursue, I'm afraid." He brooded. Hard to see in the darkness, but discontentedly, I thought, as if his haughty spirit fretted somewhat. He must have been doing some good, solid thinking, too, because suddenly he came to life with an idea. ** This cottage of yours-had it a garage ? " " Oh, yes."
" Was that burned down also ? " " No, I fancy it escaped the holocaust.
It was well away from the scene of conflagration." " Is there petrol in it ? " " Oh, yes. Lots of petrol." " Why, then all is well, Mr. Wooster.
I am convinced that petrol will prove a cleansing agent equally as efficacious as butter." " But, dash it, you can't go to my garage." "
Why not, pray ? " • " Well, yes, you could, if you liked, I suppose.
Not me, though. For reasons which I am not prepared to divulge, I propose to spend the rest of the night in the summer-house on the main lawn of the Hall." " You will not accompany me ? " " Sorry. No." " Then good night, Mr. Wooster. I will not keep you any longer from your rest.
I am greatly obliged to you for the assistance you have accorded me in a trying situation. We must see more of one another. Let us lunch together one of these days. How do I obtain access to this garage of yours ? " "
You'll have to bust a window." " I will do so." He pushed off, full of buck and determination, and I, with a dubious shake of the old onion, trickled along towards the summerhouse.
I DON'T know if you have ever spent the night in a summer-house. If not, avoid making the experiment. It's not a thing I would advise any friend of mine to do. On the subject of sleeping in summer-houses I will speak out fearlessly. As far as I have been able to ascertain, such a hinge doesn't present a single attractive feature. Apart from the inevitable discomfort in the fleshy parts, there's the cold, and apart from the cold there's the mental anguish. All the ghost stories you've ever read go flitting through the mind, particularlyany you know where fellows are found next morning absolutely dead, without a mark on them but with such a look of horror and fear in their eyes that the search party draw in their breath a bit and gaze at each other as much as to say " What ho I " Things creak. You fancy you hear stealthy footsteps. You receive the impression that a goodish quota of skinny hands are reaching out for you in the darkness. And, as I say, the cold extremely severe and much discomfort in the fleshy parts. The whole constituting a pretty sticky experience and one to be avoided by the knowledgeable. And what made the thing so dashed poignant in my case was the thought that if I had only had the nerve to accompany intrepid old Glossop to the garage there would have been no need for me to stay marooned in this smelly structure, listening to the wind howling through the chinks in the woodwork. Once at the garage, I mean to say, I could not only have scoured the face but could have hopped into the old two-seater, which was champing at its bit there, and tooled off to London by road, singing a gipsy song, as it were. And I simply couldn't muster up the nerve to take a pop at it. The garage, I reflected, was right in the danger zone, well inside the Vbules and Dobson belt, and I absolutely could not face the possibility of running into Police-Sergeant Voules and being detained and questioned. Those meetings with him the night before had shattered my moral, causing me to look upon this hellhound of the Law as a sleepless prowler who rambled incessantly and was bound to appear out of a trap just at the moment when you could best have done without him.
So I stayed where I was. I hitched myself into position forty-six in the hope that it would be easier on the f.p's than the last forty-five, and had another shot at the dreamless. The thing that always beats me is how on these occasions one ever gets to sleep at all. Personally, I abandoned all idea of it at an Q
