After the ancestor had said 'For heaven's sake!' or 'Gorblimey' or whatever it was, indicating that her visitor's story interested her strongly, the McCorkadale resumed. And what she resumed about unquestionably put the frosting on the cake. Words of doom is the only way I can think of to describe the words she spoke as.

'The man, it appeared, was a retired valet, and he belonged to a club for butlers and valets in London, one of the rules of which was that all members were obliged to record in the club book information about their employers. My visitor explained that he had been at one time in the employment of Mr Winship and had duly recorded a number of the latter's escapades which if made public, would be certain to make the worst impression on the voters of Market Snodsbury.'

This surprised me. I hadn't had a notion that Bingley had ever worked for Ginger. It just shows the truth of the old saying that half the world doesn't know how the other three-quarters live.

'He then told me without a blush of shame that on his latest visit to London he had purloined this book and now had it in his possession.'

I gasped with horror. I don't know why, but the thought that Bingley must have been pinching the thing at the very moment when Jeeves and I were sipping our snootfuls in the next room seemed to make it so particularly poignant. Not that it wouldn't have been pretty poignant anyway. For years I had been haunted by the fear that the Junior Ganymede club book, with all the dynamite it contained, would get into the wrong hands, and the hands it had got into couldn't have been more the sort of hands you would have wished it hadn't. I don't know if I make myself clear, but what I'm driving at is that if I had been picking a degraded character to get away with that book, Bingley was the last character I would have picked. I remember Jeeves speaking of someone who was fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and that was Bingley all over. The man was wholly without finer feelings, and when you come up against someone without finer feelings, you've had it.

The aged relative was not blind to the drama of the situation. She uttered an awed 'Lord love a duck!', and the McCorkadale said she might well say 'Lord love a duck', though it was not an expression she would have used herself.

'What did you do?' the ancestor asked, all agog, and the McCorkadale gave that sniffing snort of hers. It was partly like an escape of steam and partly like two or three cats unexpectedly encountering two or three dogs, with just a suggestion of a cobra waking up cross in the morning. I wondered how it had affected the late Mr McCorkadale. Probably made him feel that there are worse things than being run over by a municipal tram.

'I sent him away with a flea in his ear. I pride myself on being a fair fighter, and his proposition revolted me. If you want to have him arrested, though I am afraid I cannot see how it can be done, he lives at 5 Ormond Crescent. He appears to have asked my maid to look in and see his etchings on her afternoon off, and he gave her his address. But, as I say, there would seem not to be sufficient evidence for an arrest. Our conversation was without witnesses, and he would simply have to deny possession of the book. A pity. I would have enjoyed seeing a man like that hanged, drawn and quartered.'

She snorted again, and the ancestor, who always knows what the book of etiquette would advise, came across with the soothing syrup. She said Ma McCorkadale deserved a medal.

'Not at all.'

'It was splendid of you to turn the man down.'

'As I said, I am a fair fighter.'

'Apart from your revulsion at his proposition, it must have been very annoying for you to be interrupted when you were working on your speech.'

'Especially as a few moments before this person appeared I had been interrupted by an extraordinary young man who gave me the impression of being half-witted.'

'That would have been my nephew, Bertram Wooster.'

'Oh, I beg your pardon.'

'Quite all right.'

'I may have formed a wrong estimate of his mentality. Our interview was very brief. I just thought it odd that he should be trying to persuade me to vote for my opponent.'

'It's the sort of thing that would seem a bright idea to Bertie. He's like that. Whimsical. Moving in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. But he ought not to have butted in when you were busy with your speech. Is it coming out well?'

'I am satisfied with it.'

'Good for you. I suppose you're looking forward to the debate?'

'Very keenly. I am greatly in favour of it. It simplifies things so much if the two opponents face one another on the same platform and give the voters a chance to compare their views. Provided, of course, that both observe the decencies of debate. But I really must be getting back to my work.'

'Just a moment.' No doubt it was the word 'observe' that had rung a bell with the ancestor. 'Do you do the Observer crossword puzzle by any chance?'

'I solve it at breakfast on Sunday mornings.'

'Not the whole lot?'

'Oh yes.'

'Every clue?'

'I have never failed yet. I find it ridiculously simple.'

'Then what's all that song and dance about the measured tread of saints round St Paul's?'

'Oh, I guessed that immediately. The answer, of course, is pedometer. You measure tread with a pedometer. Dome, meaning St Paul's, comes in the middle and Peter, for St Peter, round it. Very simple.'

'Oh, very. Well, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind,' said Aunt Dahlia, and they parted in complete amity, a thing I wouldn't have thought possible when Ma McCorkadale was one of the parters.

For perhaps a quarter of a minute after I had rejoined the human herd, as represented by my late father's sister Dahlia, I wasn't able to get a word in, the old ancestor being fully occupied with saying what she thought of the compiler of the Observer crossword puzzle, with particular reference to domes and pedometers. And when she had said her say on that subject she embarked on a rueful tribute to the McCorkadale, giving it as her opinion that against a woman with a brain like that Ginger hadn't the meagre chance of a toupee in a high wind. Though, she added in more hopeful vein, now that the menace of the Ganymede Club book had been squashed there was just a possibility that the eloquence of Spode might get his nose in front.

All this while I had been trying to cut in with my opening remark, which was to the effect that the current situation was a bit above the odds, but it was only when I had repeated this for the third time that I succeeded in obtaining her attention.

'This is a bit thick, what,' I said, varying my approach slightly.

She seemed surprised as if the idea had not occurred to her.

'Thick?'

'Well, isn't it?'

'Why? If you were listening, you heard her say that, being a fair fighter, she had scorned the tempter and sent him away with a flea in his ear, which must be a most uncomfortable thing to have. Bingley was baffled.'

'Only for the nonce.'

'Nonsense.'

'Not nonsense, nonce, which isn't at all the same thing. I feel that Bingley, though crushed to earth, will rise again. How about if he sells that book with all its ghastly contents to the Market Snodsbury Argus-Reminder?'

I was alluding to the powerful bi-weekly sheet which falls over itself in its efforts to do down the Conservative cause, omitting no word or act to make anyone with Conservative leanings feel like a piece of cheese. Coming out every Wednesday and Saturday with proofs of Ginger's past, I did not see how it could fail to give his candidature the sleeve across the windpipe.

I put this to the old blood relation in no uncertain terms. I might have added that that would wipe the silly smile off her face, but there was no necessity. She saw at once that I spoke sooth, and a crisp hunting-field expletive escaped her. She goggled at me with all the open dismay of an aunt who has inadvertently bitten into a bad oyster.