Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Read Online Free PDF Page B

course, and I could see it shook him. He passed a hamlike hand,
gnarled with toiling at the oar, across his brow.
    ‘Well,
I shall have to think it over. Yes, yes, I shall have to think it over.’
    ‘Go
away and start now, is what I would suggest.’
    ‘I
will. I shall be scrupulously fair. I shall weigh this and that. But if I find
my suspicions are correct, I shall know what to do about it.’
    And
with these ominous words he withdrew, leaving me not a little bowed down with
weight of woe. For apart from the fact that when a bird of Stilton’s impulsive
temperament gets it into his nut that you have woven snares for his feet,
practically anything can happen in the way of violence and mayhem, it gave me
goose pimples to think of Florence being at large once more. It was with heavy
heart that I finished my whisky and splash and tottered home. ‘Wooster,’ a
voice seemed to be whispering in my ear, ‘things are getting hot, old sport.’
    Jeeves
was at the telephone when I reached the sitting-room.
    ‘I am
sorry,’ he was saying, and I noticed that he was just as suave and firm as I
had been at our recent get-together. ‘No, please, further discussion is
useless. I am afraid you must accept my decision as final. Good night.’
    From
the fact that he had not chucked in a lot of ‘sirs’ I presumed that he had been
talking to some pal of his, though from the curtness of his tone probably not
the one whose strength was as the strength of ten.
    ‘What
was that, Jeeves?’ I asked. ‘A little tiff with one of the boys at the club?’
    ‘No,
sir. I was speaking to Mr. Percy Gorringe, who rang up shortly before you
entered. Affecting to be yourself, I informed him that his request for a
thousand pounds could not be entertained. I thought that this might spare you
discomfort and embarrassment.’
    I must
say I was touched. After being worsted in that clash of wills of ours, one
might have expected him to show dudgeon and be loath to do the feudal thing by
the young master. But Jeeves and I, though we may have our differences — as it
might be on the subject of lip—joy —do not allow them to rankle.
    ‘Thank
you, Jeeves.’
    ‘Not at
all, sir.
    ‘Lucky
you came back in time to do the needful. Did you enjoy yourself at the club?’
    ‘Very
much, sir.‘
    ‘More
than I did at mine.
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘I ran
into Stilton Cheesewright there and found him in difficult mood. Tell me,
Jeeves, what do you do at this Junior Ganymede of yours?’
    ‘Well,
sir, many of the members play a sound game of bridge. The conversation, too,
rarely fails to touch a high level of interest. And should one desire more
frivolous entertainment, there are the club books.’
    ‘The…
Oh, yes, I remember.’
    Perhaps
you do, too, if you happened to be around when I was relating the doings at
Totleigh Towers, the country seat of Sir Watkyn Bassett, when this club book
had enabled me to put it so crushingly across the powers of darkness in the
shape of Roderick Spode. Under Rule Eleven at the Junior Ganymede, you may
recall, members are required to supply intimate details concerning their
employers for inclusion in the volume, and its pages revealed that Spode, who
was an amateur Dictator of sorts, running a gang called the Black Shorts, who
went about in black footer bags shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’, also secretly designed
ladies’ underclothing under the trade name of Eulalie Sœurs. Armed with this
knowledge, I had had, of course, little difficulty in reducing him to the level
of a third-class power. These Dictators don’t want a thing like that’ to get
spread about.
    But
though the club book had served me well on that occasion, I was far from
approving of it. Mine has been in many ways a chequered career, and it was not
pleasant to think that full details of episodes I would prefer to be buried in
oblivion were giving a big laugh daily to a bunch of valets and butlers.
    ‘You
couldn’t tear the Wooster material out of that club book,