The Jeeves Omnibus Read Online Free PDF Page A

I have.’
    I was shocked. Not so much at the information that the foul child had given this additional evidence of a diseased mind as that Chuffy should be exhibiting this attitude of amused tolerance. I eyed him keenly. Right from the start this morning I had thought his manner strange. Usually, when you meet him, he is brooding over his financial situation and is rather apt to greet you with the lack-lustre eye and the care-worn frown. He had been like that five days ago in London. What, then, had caused him to beam all over the place like this and even to go as far as to speak of little Seabury with what amounted to something perilously near to an indulgent affection? I sensed a mystery and decided to apply the acid test.
    ‘How is your Aunt Myrtle?’
    ‘She’s fine.’
    ‘Living at the Hall now, I hear.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Indefinitely?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    It was enough.
    One of the things, I must mention, which have always made poor old Chuffy’s lot so hard is his aunt’s attitude towards him. She has never quite been able to get over that matter of the succession. Seabury, you see, was not the son of Chuffy’s late uncle, the fourth Baron: he was simply something Lady Chuffnell had picked up
en route
in the course of a former marriage and, consequently, did not come under the head of what the Peerage calls ‘issues’. And, in matters of succession, if you aren’t issue, you haven’t a hope. When the fourth Baron pegged out, accordingly, it was Chuffy who copped the title and estates. All perfectly square and aboveboard, of course, but you can’t get women to see these things, and the relict’s manner, Chuffy has often told me, was consistently unpleasant. She had a way of clasping Seabury in her arms and looking reproachfully at Chuffy as if he had slipped over a fast one on mother and child. Nothing actually said, you understand, but her whole attitude that of a woman who considers she has been the victim of sharp practice.
    The result of this had been that the Dowager Lady Chuffnell was not one of Chuffy’s best-loved buddies. Their relations had always been definitely strained, and what I’m driving at is that usually, when you mention her name, a look of pain comes into Chuffy’s clean-cut face and he winces a little, as if you had probed an old wound.
    Now he was actually smiling. Even that remark of mine about her living at the Hall had not jarred him. Obviously, there were mysteries here. Something was being kept from Bertram.
    I tackled him squarely.
    ‘Chuffy,’ I said, ‘what does this mean?’
    ‘What does what mean?’
    ‘This bally cheeriness. You can’t deceive me. Not old Hawk-Eye Wooster. Come clean, my lad, something is up. What is all the ruddy happiness about?’
    He hesitated. For a moment he eyed me narrowly.
    ‘Can you keep a secret?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, it doesn’t much matter, because it’ll be in the
Morning Post
in a day or two. Bertie,’ said Chuffy, in a hushed voice, ‘do you know what’s happened? I’m getting Aunt Myrtle off this season.’
    ‘You mean somebody wants to marry her?’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Who is this half-wit?’
    ‘Your old friend, Sir Roderick Glossop.’
    I was stupefied.
    ‘What!’
    ‘I was surprised, too.’
    ‘But old Glossop can’t be contemplating matrimony.’
    ‘Why not? He’s been a widower more than two years.’
    ‘Oh, I dare say it’s possible to make up some kind of a story for him. But what I mean is, he doesn’t seem to go with orange blossoms and wedding cake.’
    ‘Well, there it is.’
    ‘Well, I’m dashed!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, there’s one thing, Chuffy, old man. This means that little Seabury will be getting a really testing stepfather and old Glossop just the stepson I could have wished him. Both have been asking for something on these lines for years. But fancy any woman being mad enough to link her lot with his. Our Humble Heroines!’
    ‘I wouldn’t say the heroism was all on one side. About