The Code of the Woosters / Фамильная честь Вустеров

And if he forgets to put in the soda, it will be all right with me. Bertie, a frightful thing has happened.”

“Let’s go to the dining saloon, my dear aunt,” I said. “We shall not be interrupted there. Jeeves will come in here to pack.”

“Are you off somewhere?”

“Totleigh Towers. I have had a most disturbing—”

“Totleigh Towers? Well, I’m dashed! That’s just where I came to tell you you had got to go immediately”

“Eh?”

“Matter of life and death.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll soon see, when I’ve explained.

”

“Then come along to the dining room and explain at your earliest convenience.”

“Now then, my dear old auntie,” I said, when Jeeves had brought the foodstuffs and withdrawn, “tell me all.”

For an instant, there was silence, broken only by the musical sound of an aunt drinking brandy and soda. Then she drew a deep breath. “Bertie,” she said, “I wish to begin by saying a few words about Sir Watkyn Bassett.

May greenfly attack his roses. May his cook be drunk on the night of the big dinner party. May all his hens die.”

“Does he keep hens?” I said. “May his cistern start leaking, and may white ants, if there are any in England, gnaw away the foundations of Totleigh Towers. And when he walks to the church with his daughter Madeline, may he get a sneezing fit and find that he has come out without a pocket handkerchief”

She paused.

“Quite,” I said. “I agree with you in too.

But what has he done?”

“I will tell you. You remember that cow-creamer?”

I dug into a fried egg, quivering a little.

“Remember it? I shall never forget it. You will scarcely believe this, Aunt Dahlia, but when I got to the shop, who should be there by the most amazing coincidence but this same Bassett—”

“It wasn’t a coincidence. He had gone there to have a look at the thing, to see if it was all Tom had said it was. For—can you imagine such lunacy, Bertie?—that uncle of yours had told the man about it.

Tom lunched with Sir Watkyn Bassett at the latter’s club yesterday. And the fiend Bassett had come to the shop and bought the cow-creamer. The man had promised to hold it for Tom till three o’clock, but naturally when three o’clock came and he didn’t turn up and there was another customer looking at the thing, and he let it go. So there you are. Bassett has the cow-creamer, and took it down to Totleigh last night.