Read Online The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 by P.G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online

H’m. Ha. The night of –’
    He swallowed a couple of times.
    ‘I see you have forgotten. Let me assist your memory. You were in a low night club with Florence Craye, my fiancée.’
    ‘Who, me?’
    ‘Yes, you. And this morning you were in the dock at Vinton Street police court.’
    ‘You’re sure you mean me?’
    ‘Quite sure. I had the information from my uncle, who is the magistrate there. He came to lunch at my flat today, and as he was leaving he caught sight of your photograph on the wall.’
    ‘I didn’t know you kept my photograph on your wall, Stilton. I’m touched.’
    He continued to ferment.
    ‘It was a group photograph,’ he said curtly, ‘and you happened to be in it. He looked at it, sniffed sharply and said “Do you know this young man?” I explained that we belonged to the same club, so it was not always possible to avoid you, but that was the extent of our association. I was going on to say that, left to myself, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, when he proceeded. Still sniffing, he said he was glad I was not a close friend of yours, because you weren’t at all the sort of fellow he liked to think of any nephew of his being matey with. He said you had been up before him this morning, charged with assaulting a policeman, who stated that he had arrested you for tripping him up while he was chasing a girl with platinum hair in a night club.’
    I pursed the lips. Or, rather, I tried to, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the machinery. Still, I spoke boldly and with spirit.
    ‘Indeed?’ I said. ‘Personally I would be inclined to attach little credence to the word of the sort of policeman who spends his time chasing platinum-haired girls in night clubs. And as for this uncle of yours, with his wild stories of me having been up before him – well, you know what magistrates are. The lowest form of pond life. When a fellow hasn’t the brains and initiative to sell jellied eels, they make him a magistrate.’
    ‘You mean that when he said that about your photograph he was deceived by some slight resemblance?’
    I waved a hand.
    ‘Not necessarily a slight resemblance. London’s full of chaps who look like me. I’m a very common type. People have told me that there is a fellow called Ephraim Gadsby – one of the Streatham Common Gadsbys – who is positively my double. I shall, of course, take this into consideration when weighing the question of bringing an action for slander and defamation of character against this uncle of yours, and shall probably decide to let justice be tempered with mercy. But it would be a kindly act to warn the old son of a bachelor to be more careful in future how he allows his tongue to run away with him. There are limits to one’s forbearance.’
    He brooded darkly for about forty-five seconds.
    ‘Platinum hair, the policeman said,’ he observed at the end of this lull. ‘This girl had platinum hair.’
    ‘No doubt very becoming.’
    ‘I find it extremely significant that Florence has platinum hair.’
    ‘I don’t see why. Hundreds of girls have. My dear Stilton, ask yourself if it is likely that Florence would have been at a night club like the … what did you say the name was?’
    ‘I didn’t. But I believe it was called The Mottled Oyster.’
    ‘Ah, yes, I have heard of it. Not a very nice place, I understand. Quite incredible that she would have gone to a joint like that. A fastidious, intellectual girl like Florence? No, no.’
    He pondered. It seemed to me that I had him going.
    ‘She wanted me to take her to a night club last night,’ he said. ‘Something to do with getting material for her new book.’
    ‘But you very properly refused?’
    ‘No, as a matter of fact, I said I would. Then we had that bit of trouble, so of course it was off.’
    ‘And she, of course, went home to bed. What else would any pure, sweet English girl have done? It amazes me that you can suppose even for a moment that she would have gone to