The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

what do I find? Butlers in every nook and cranny, housemaids as far as the eye can reach, cooks jostling each other in the kitchen, Irish terriers everywhere, and a lot of sensational talk going on about boys to clean the knives and boots. It’s … what’s the word?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Yes, you do. Begins with “in”.’
    ‘Influential? Inspirational? Infra red?’
    ‘Inexplicable. That’s what it is. The whole thing is utterly inexplicable. One dismisses all that stuff about jobs with the Agricultural Board as pure eyewash. You don’t cut a stupendous dash like this on a salary from the Agricultural Board.’ Rory paused, and ruminated for a moment. ‘I wonder if the old boy’s been launching out as a gentleman burglar.’
    ‘Don’t be an idiot.’
    ‘Well, fellows do, you know. Raffles, if you remember. He was one, and made a dashed good thing out of it. Or could it be that he’s blackmailing somebody?’
    ‘Oh, Rory.’
    ‘Very profitable, I believe. You look around for some wealthy bimbo and nose out his guilty secrets, then you send him a letter saying that you know all and tell him to leave ten thousand quid in small notes under the second milestone on the London road. When you’ve spent that, you tap him for another ten. It all mounts up over a period of time, and would explain these butlers, housemaids and what not very neatly.’
    ‘If you would talk less drivel and take more bags upstairs, the world would be a better place.’
    Rory thought it over and got her meaning.
    ‘You want me to take the bags upstairs?’
    ‘I do.’
    ‘Right ho. The Harrige motto is Service.’
    The telephone rang again. Rory went to it.
    ‘Hullo?’ He started violently. ‘The
who
? Good God! All right. He’s out now, but I’ll tell him when I see him.’ He hung up. There was a grave look on his face. ‘Moke,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’ll believe me another time and not scoff and mock when I advance my theories. That was the police.’
    ‘The police?’
    ‘They want to talk to Bill.’
    ‘What about?’
    ‘They didn’t say. Well, dash it, they wouldn’t, would they? Official Secrets Acts and all that sort of thing. But they’re closing in on him, old girl, closing in on him.’
    ‘Probably all they want is to get him to present the prizes at the police sports or something.’
    ‘I doubt it,’ said Rory. ‘Still, hold that thought if it makes you happier. Take the bags upstairs, you were saying? I’ll do it instanter. Come along and encourage me with word and gesture.’

4
    ----
    FOR SOME MOMENTS after they had gone the peace of the summer evening was broken only by the dull, bumping sound of a husband carrying suitcases upstairs. This died away, and once more a drowsy stillness stole over Rowcester Abbey. Then, faintly at first but growing louder, there came from the distance the chugging of a car. It stopped, and there entered through the french window a young man. He tottered in, breathing heavily like a hart that pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase, and having produced his cigarette case lit a cigarette in an overwrought way, as if he had much on his mind.
    Or what one may loosely call his mind. William, ninth Earl of Rowcester, though intensely amiable and beloved by all who knew him, was far from being a mental giant. From his earliest years his intimates had been aware that, while his heart was unquestionably in the right place, there was a marked shortage of the little grey cells, and it was generally agreed that whoever won the next Nobel prize, it would not be Bill Rowcester. At the Drones Club, of which he had been a member since leaving school, it was estimated that in the matter of intellect he ranked somewhere in between Freddie Widgeon and Pongo Twistleton, which is pretty low down on the list. There were some, indeed, who held his IQ to be inferior to that of Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps.
    Against this must be set the fact that, like all his family, he was