Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

Scout. Continue the treatment a few more days, and he would probably
beg her as a personal favour to accept twice what she was asking.
    ‘Very
shrewd,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think you’re on the right lines. Has Anatole been
giving you his Rognons aux Montagnes?’
    ‘And his Selle d’Agneau aux laitues à la Grecque.’
    ‘Then I
would say the thing was in the bag. All over but the cheering. But here’s a
point that has been puzzling me,’ I said. ‘Florence tells me that La Morehead
is one of the more costly of our female pen-pushers and has to have purses of
gold flung to her in great profusion before she will consent to sign on the
dotted line. Correct?’
    ‘Quite
correct.’
    ‘Then
how the dickens,’ I said, getting down to it in my keen way, ‘did you contrive
to extract the necessary ore from Uncle Tom? Didn’t he pay his income-tax this
year?’
    ‘You
bet he did. I should have thought you would have heard his screams in London. Poor
old boy, how he does suffer on these occasions.
    She
spoke sooth. Uncle Tom, though abundantly provided with the chips, having been
until his retirement one of those merchant princes who scoop it up in sackfuls
out East, has a rooted objection to letting the hellhounds of the Inland
Revenue dip in and get theirs. For weeks after they have separated him from his
hard-earned he is inclined to go off into corners and sit with his head between
his hands, muttering about ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic
legislation and what is to become of us all if this continues.
    ‘He
certainly does,’ I assented. ‘Quite the soul in torment, what? And yet, despite
this, you succeeded in nicking him for what must have been a small fortune. How
did you do it? From what you were saying on the phone last night I got the
impression that he was in more than usually non-parting mood these days. You
conjured up in my mind’s eye the picture of a man who was sticking his ears
back and refusing to play ball, like Balaam’s ass.’
    ‘What
do you know about Balaam’s ass?’
    ‘Me? I
know Balaam’s ass from soup to nuts. Have you forgotten that when a pupil at
the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn’s educational establishment at Bramley-on-Sea I once won
a prize for Scripture Knowledge?’
    ‘I’ll
bet you cribbed.’
    ‘Not at
all. My triumph was due to sheer merit. But, getting back to it, how did you
induce Uncle Tom to scare the moths from his pocket-book? It must have required
quite a scuttleful of wifely wiles on your part?’
    I
wouldn’t like to say of a loved aunt that she giggled, but unquestionably the
sound that proceeded from her lips closely resembled a giggle.
    ‘Oh, I
managed.’
    ‘But
how?’
    ‘Never
mind how, you pestilential young Nosy Parker. I managed.’
    ‘I
see,’ I said, letting it go. Something told me she did not wish to spill the
data. ‘And how is the Trotter deal coming along?’
    I
seemed to have touched an exposed nerve. The giggle died on her lips, and her
face — always, as I have said, on the reddish side —deepened in colour to a
rich mauve.
    ‘Blister
his blighted insides!’ she said, speaking with the explosive heat which had
once made fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley leap convulsively in their
saddles. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with the son of Belial. Here he is,
with nine of Anatole’s lunches and eight of Anatole’s dinners tucked away among
the gastric juices, and he refuses to get down to brass tacks. He hums _‘
    ‘What
on earth does he do that for?’
    ‘— and
haws. He evades the issue. I strain every nerve to make him talk turkey, but I
can’t pin him down. He doesn’t say Yes and he doesn’t say No.’
    ‘There’s
a song called that… or, rather, “She didn’t say Yes and she didn’t say No”. I
sing it a good deal in my bath. It goes like this.’
    I
started to render the refrain in a pleasant light baritone, but desisted on
receiving Agatha Christie abaft the frontal bone. The old relative seemed