The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3: (Jeeves & Wooster): No. 3 by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407071770
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-02-29T05:00:00+00:00

18

* * *

THE BLOKES WHO run the railway don’t make it easy for you to get from Wimbledon to King’s Deverill, feeling no doubt – and I suppose it’s a kindly thought – that that abode of thugs and ghouls is a place you’re better away from. You change twice before you get to Basingstoke and then change again and take the branch line. And once you’re on the branch line, it’s quicker to walk.

The first person I saw when I finally tottered out at journey’s end, feeling as if I had been glued to the cushioned seat since early boyhood and a bit surprised that I hadn’t put out tendrils like a Virginia creeper, was my cousin Thomas. He was buying motion-picture magazines at the bookstall.

‘Oh, hallo,’ I said. ‘So you got here all right?’

He eyed me coldly and said ‘Crumbs!’ a word of which he is far too fond. This Thos is one of those tough, hardboiled striplings, a sort of juvenile James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson. He has carroty hair and a cynical expression, and his manner is supercilious. You would think that anyone conscious of having a mother like my Aunt Agatha and knowing it could be proved against him, would be crushed and apologetic, but this is not the case. He swanks about the place as if he’d bought it, and in conversation with a cousin lacks tact and is apt to verge on the personal.

He became personal now, on the subject of my appearance, which I must confess was not spruce. Night travel in milk trains always tends to remove the gloss, and you can’t hobnob with beetles in bushes and remain dapper.

‘Crumbs!’ he said. ‘You look like something the cat brought in.’

You see what I mean? The wrong note. In no frame of mind to bandy words, I clouted the child moodily on the head and passed on. And as I emerged into the station yard, somebody yoo-hooed and I saw Corky sitting in her car.

‘Hallo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Where did you spring from, moon of my delight?’ She looked about her in a wary and conspiratorial manner, as if she had been registering snakiness in a spy film. ‘Did you see what was in the station?’ she asked, lowering the voice.

‘I did.’

‘Jeeves delivered him as per memo last night. Uncle Sidney looked a little taken aback for a moment, and seemed as if he were on the point of saying some of the things he gave up saying when he took Orders, but everything has turned out for the best. He loves his game of chess, and it seems that Thomas is the undisputed champion of his school, brimming over with gambits and openings and things, so they get along fine. And I love him. What a sympathetic, sweet-natured boy he is, Bertie.’

I blinked.

‘You are speaking of my cousin Thomas?’

‘He’s so loyal. When I told him about the heel Dobbs arresting Sam Goldwyn, he simply boiled with generous indignation.

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