“If I might make a suggestion, madam.”

I am not saying that in the course of our long association I have always found myself able to view Jeeves with approval. There are aspects of his character which have frequently caused coldnesses to arise between us. He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a thingummy, take a what-d'you-call-it. His work is often raw, and he has been known to allude to me as “mentally negligible”. More than once, as I have shown, it has been my painful task to squelch in him a tendency to get uppish and treat the young master as a serf or peon.

These are grave defects.

But one thing I have never failed to hand the man. He is magnetic. There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros, but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal, meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie purring with its legs in the air.

At any rate he calmed down Aunt Dahlia, the nearest thing to a charging rhinoceros, in under five seconds. He just stood there looking respectful, and though I didn't time the thing—not having a stop-watch on me—I should say it wasn't more than three seconds and a quarter before her whole manner underwent an astounding change for the better. She melted before one's eyes.

“Jeeves! You haven't got an idea?”

“Yes, madam.”

“That great brain of yours has really clicked as ever in the hour of need?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Jeeves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a shaking voice, “I am sorry I spoke so abruptly. I was not myself. I might have known that you would not come simply trying to make conversation. Tell us this idea of yours, Jeeves. Join our little group of thinkers and let us hear what you have to say. Make yourself at home, Jeeves, and give us the good word. Can you really get us out of this mess?”

“Yes, madam, if one of the gentlemen would be willing to ride a bicycle.”

“A bicycle?”

“There is a bicycle in the gardener's shed in the kitchen garden, madam. Possibly one of the gentlemen might feel disposed to ride over to Kingham Manor and procure the back-door key from Mr. Seppings.”

“Splendid, Jeeves!”

“Thank you, madam.”

“Wonderful!”

“Thank you, madam.”

“Attila!” said Aunt Dahlia, turning and speaking in a quiet, authoritative manner.

I had been expecting it. From the very moment those ill-judged words had passed the fellow's lips, I had had a presentiment that a determined effort would be made to elect me as the goat, and I braced myself to resist and obstruct.

And as I was about to do so, while I was in the very act of summoning up all my eloquence to protest that I didn't know how to ride a bike and couldn't possibly learn in the brief time at my disposal, I'm dashed if the man didn't go and nip me in the bud.

“Yes, madam, Mr. Wooster would perform the task admirably. He is an expert cyclist. He has often boasted to me of his triumphs on the wheel.”

I hadn't. I hadn't done anything of the sort. It's simply monstrous how one's words get twisted. All I had ever done was to mention to him—casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race—that at the age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys' Handicap at the local school treat.

A different thing from boasting of one's triumphs on the wheel.

I mean, he was a man of the world and must have known that the form of school treats is never of the hottest. And, if I'm not mistaken, I had specifically told him that on the occasion referred to I had received half a lap start and that Willie Punting, the odds-on favourite to whom the race was expected to be a gift, had been forced to retire, owing to having pinched his elder brother's machine without asking the elder brother, and the elder brother coming along just as the pistol went and giving him one on the side of the head and taking it away from him, thus rendering him a scratched-at-the-post non-starter. Yet, from the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or whatever it is.

And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.

“That's right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he used to go too.”

“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He can't go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes.... And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”

I found speech:

“But I haven't ridden for years.”

“Then it's high time you began again.”

“I've probably forgotten how to ride.”

“You'll soon get the knack after you've taken a toss or two. Trial and error. The only way.”

“But it's miles to Kingham.”

“So the sooner you're off, the better.”

“But—”

“Bertie, dear.”

“But, dash it—”

“Bertie, darling.”

“Yes, but dash it—”

“Bertie, my sweet.”

And so it was arranged. Presently I was moving sombrely off through the darkness, Jeeves at my side, Aunt Dahlia calling after me something about trying to imagine myself the man who brought the good news from Ghent to Aix. The first I had heard of the chap.

“So, Jeeves,” I said, as we reached the shed, and my voice was cold and bitter, “this is what your great scheme has accomplished! Tuppy, Angela, Gussie and the Bassett not on speaking terms, and self faced with an eight-mile ride—”

“Nine, I believe, sir.”

“—a nine-mile ride, and another nine-mile ride back.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“No good being sorry now. Where is this foul bone-shaker?”

“I will bring it out, sir.”

He did so. I eyed it sourly.

“Where's the lamp?”

“I fear there is no lamp, sir.”

“No lamp?”

“No, sir.”

“But I may come a fearful stinker without a lamp. Suppose I barge into something.”

I broke off and eyed him frigidly.

“You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?”

“I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a brewer's van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately. The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was Nicholls and which Jackson. So they collected as much as they could, and called it Nixon. I remember laughing very much at that story when I was a child, sir.”

I had to pause a moment to master my feelings.

“You did, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You thought it funny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.”

“He is dead, sir.”

“Thank heaven for that.... Well, give me the blasted machine.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Are the tyres inflated?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with the differential gear?”