The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 Read Online Free PDF

could make up my mind!’
    ‘About what, Stilton?’
    ‘About whether to break your foul neck or not.’
    I did a bit more wilting. It seemed to me that I was alone in a deserted smoking-room with a homicidal loony. It is a type of loony I particularly bar, and the homicidal loony I like least is one with a forty-four chest and biceps in proportion. His fingers, I noticed, were twitching, always a bad sign. ‘Oh, for the wings of a dove’ about summed up my feelings as I tried not to look at them.
    ‘Break my foul neck?’ I said, hoping for further information. ‘Why?’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘I haven’t the foggiest.’
    ‘Ho!’
    He paused at this point to dislodge a fly which had sauntered in through the open window and become mixed up with his vocal cords. Having achieved his object, he resumed.
    ‘Wooster!’
    ‘Still here, old man.’
    ‘Wooster,’ said Stilton, and if he wasn’t grinding his teeth, I don’t know a ground tooth when I see one, ‘what was the thought behind that moustache of yours? Why did you grow it?’
    ‘Well, rather difficult to say, of course. One gets these whims.’ I scratched the chin a moment.
    ‘I suppose I felt it might brighten things up,’ I hazarded.
    ‘Or had you an ulterior motive? Was it part of a subtle plot for stealing Florence from me?’
    ‘My dear Stilton!’
    ‘It all looks very fishy to me. Do you know what happened just now, when we left my uncle’s?’
    ‘I’m sorry, no. I’m a stranger in these parts myself.’
    He ground a few more teeth.
    ‘I will tell you. I saw Florence home in a cab, and all the way there she was raving about that moustache of yours. It made me sick to listen to her.’
    I weighed the idea of saying something to the effect that girls would be girls and must be expected to have their simple enthusiasms, but decided better not.
    ‘When we got off at her door and I turned after paying the driver, I found she was looking at me intently, examining me from every angle, her eyes fixed on my face.’
    ‘You enjoyed that, of course?’
    ‘Shut up. Don’t interrupt me.’
    ‘Right ho. I only meant it must have been pretty gratifying.’
    He brooded for a space. Whatever had happened at that lovers’ get-together, one could see that the memory of it was stirring him like a dose of salts.
    ‘A moment later,’ he said, and paused, wrestling with his feelings. ‘A moment later,’ he went on, finding speech again, ‘she announced that she wished me to grow a moustache, too. She said – I quote her words – that when a man has a large pink face and a head like a pumpkin, a little something around the upper lip often does wonders in the way of easing the strain. Would you say my head was like a pumpkin, Wooster?’
    ‘Not a bit, old man.’
    ‘Not like a pumpkin?’
    ‘No, not like a pumpkin. A touch of the dome of St. Paul’s, perhaps.’
    ‘Well, that is what she compared it to, and she said that if I split it in the middle with a spot of hair, the relief to pedestrians and traffic would be enormous. She’s crazy. I wore a moustache my last year at Oxford, and it looked frightful. Nearly as loathsome as yours. Moustache forsooth!’ said Stilton, which surprised me, for I hadn’t supposed he knew words like “forsooth”. ‘“I wouldn’t grow a moustache to please a dying grandfather,” I told her. “A nice fool I’d look with a moustache,” I said. “It’s how you look without one,” she said. “Is that so?” I said. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” she said. “Ho!” I said, and she said “Ho to you!”’
    If she had added ‘With knobs on’, it would, of course, have made it stronger, but I must say I was rather impressed by Florence’s work as described in this slice of dialogue. It seemed to me snappy and forceful. I suppose girls learn this sort of cut-and-thrust stuff at their finishing schools. And Florence, one must remember, had been moving a good deal of late in