The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 Read Online Free Page B

experience that puts its stamp on a man. And while, as I say, I had no legal proof that this young blighter had been the author of the outrage, I entertained suspicions that were tantamount to certainty. So now I not only spoke with a marked coldness but also gave him the fairly frosty eye.
    It didn’t seem to jar him. He continued to regard me with that supercilious gaze which had got him so disliked among the right-minded. He was a smallish, freckled kid with aeroplane ears, and he had a way of looking at you as if you were something he had run into in the course of a slumming trip. In my Rogues’ Gallery of repulsive small boys I suppose he would come about third – not quite so bad as my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos, or Mr Blumenfeld’s Junior, but well ahead of little Sebastian Moon, my Aunt Dahlia’s Bonzo, and the field.
    After staring at me for a moment as if he were thinking that I had changed for the worse since he last saw me, he spoke.
    ‘You’re to come to lunch.’
    ‘Is Chuffy back, then?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Well, of course, if Chuffy had returned, I was at his disposal. I shouted over the hedge to Brinkley that I would be absent from the midday meal and climbed into the car and we rolled off.
    ‘When did he get back?’
    ‘Last night.’
    ‘Shall we be lunching alone?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Who’s going to be there?’
    ‘Mother and me and some people.’
    ‘A party? I’d better go back and put on another suit.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You think this one looks all right?’
    ‘No, I don’t. I think it looks rotten. But there isn’t time.’
    This point settled, he passed into the silence for a while. A brooding kid. He came out of it to give me some local gossip.
    ‘Mother and I are living at the Hall again.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘Yes. There’s a smell at the Dower House.’
    ‘Even though you’ve left it?’ I said, in my keen way.
    He was not amused.
    ‘You needn’t try to be funny. If you really want to know, I expect it’s my mice.’
    ‘Your what?’
    ‘I’ve started breeding mice and puppies. And, of course, they nif a bit,’ he added in a dispassionate sort of way. ‘But mother thinks it’s the drains. Can you give me five shillings?’
    I simply couldn’t follow his train of thought. The way his conversation flitted about gave me that feeling you get in dreams sometimes.
    ‘Five shillings?’
    ‘Five shillings.’
    ‘What do you mean, five shillings?’
    ‘I mean five shillings.’
    ‘I dare say. But what I want to know is how have we suddenly got on to the subject? We were discussing mice, and you introduce this five shillings motif.’
    ‘I want five shillings.’
    ‘Admitting that you may possibly want that sum, why the dickens should I give it to you?’
    ‘For protection.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘Protection.’
    ‘What from?’
    ‘Just protection.’
    ‘You don’t get any five shillings out of me.’
    ‘Oh, all right.’
    He sat silent for a space.
    ‘Things happen to guys that don’t kick in their protection money,’ he said dreamily.
    And on this note of mystery the conversation concluded, for we were moving up the drive of the Hall and on the steps I perceived Chuffy standing. I stopped the car and got out.
    ‘Hallo, Bertie,’ said Chuffy.
    ‘Welcome to Chuffnell Hall,’ I replied. I looked round. The kid had vanished. ‘I say, Chuffy,’ I said, ‘young blighted Seabury. What about him?’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘Well, if you ask me, I should say he had gone off his rocker. He’s just been trying to touch me for five bob and babbling about protection.’
    Chuffy laughed heartily, looking bronzed and fit.
    ‘Oh, that. That’s his latest idea.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘He’s been seeing gangster films.’
    The scales fell from my eyes.
    ‘He’s turned racketeer?’
    ‘Yes. Rather amusing. He goes round collecting protection money from everybody according to their means. Makes a good thing out of it, too. Enterprising kid. I’d pay up if I were you.