Read Online Joy in the Morning by P. G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online

manner furtive and evasive when I had asked him what he did at Steeple Bumpleigh. He had shrunk from revealing the truth, fearing lest I might be funny at his expense – as, indeed, I would have been, extraordinarily funny. Even now, though the gravity of the situation forbade their utterance, I was thinking of at least three priceless cracks I could make.
    ‘What about it? Why shouldn’t I be a policeman?’
    ‘Oh, rather.’
    ‘Half the men you know go into the police nowadays.’
    I nodded. This was undoubtedly true. Since they started that College at Hendon, the Force has become congested with one’s old buddies. I remember Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps describing to me with gestures his emotions on being pinched in Leicester Square one Boat Race night by his younger brother George. And much the same thing happened to Freddie Widgeon at Hurst Park in connection with his cousin Cyril.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, spotting a flaw, ‘but in London.’
    ‘Not necessarily.’
    ‘With the idea of getting into Scotland Yard and rising to great heights in their profession.’
    ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’
    ‘Get into Scotland Yard?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Rise to great heights?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest,’ I said.
    But I spoke dubiously. At Eton, Stilton had been Captain of the Boats, and he had also rowed assiduously for Oxford. His entire formative years, therefore, as you might say, had been spent in dipping an oar into the water, giving it a shove and hauling it out again. Only a pretty dumb brick would fritter away his golden youth doing that sort of thing – which, in addition to being silly, is also the deuce of a sweat – and Stilton Cheese-wright was a pretty dumb brick. A fine figure of a young fellow as far northwards as the neck, but above that solid concrete. I could not see him as a member of the Big Four. Far more likely that he would end up as one of those Scotland Yard bunglers who used, if you remember, always to be getting into Sherlock Holmes’s hair.
    However, I didn’t say so. As a matter of fact, I didn’t say anything, for I was too busy pondering on this new and unforeseen development. I was profoundly thankful that Jeeves had voted against my giving Florence a birthday present. Such a gift, if Stilton heard of it, would have led to his tearing me limb from limb or, at the best, summoning me for failing to abate a smoky chimney. You can’t be too careful how you stir up policemen.
    I had succeeded in sidetracking his question for a space, but I knew that the respite would be merely temporary. They train these cops to stick to the point. I was not surprised, therefore, when he now repeated it. I’m not saying I didn’t wish he hadn’t. All I’m saying is that I wasn’t surprised.
    ‘Well, to blazes with all that. You haven’t told me what you are doing in Steeple Bumpleigh.’
    I temporized.
    ‘Oh, just making a passing sojourn,’ I said nonchalantly, the old, careless Bertram Wooster.
    ‘You mean you’ve come to stay?’
    ‘For a while. Somewhere over yonder is my little nest. I hope you will frequently drop in, when off duty.’
    And what made you suddenly decide to come taking little nests in these parts?’
    I went into my routine.
    ‘Jeeves wanted to do a bit of fishing.’
    ‘Oh?’
    ‘Yes. He tells me it is admirable here. You find the hook, and the fish do the rest.’
    For quite a while he had been staring at me in an unpleasant, boiled sort of way, the brows drawn, the eyes bulging in their sockets. The austerity of his gaze now became intensified. Except for the fact that he hadn’t taken out a notebook and a stub of pencil, he might have been questioning some rat of the underworld as to where he had been on the night of June the twenty-fifth.
    ‘I see. That is your statement, is it? Jeeves wanted to do a bit of fishing?’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘Oh? Well, I’ll tell you what you wanted to do, young blasted