Until this passage left the aged relative's lips Kipper had been sitting with the tips of his fingers together, nodding from time to time as much as to say 'Caustic, yes, but perfectly legitimate criticism,' but on hearing this excerpt he did another of his sitting high jumps, lowering all previous records by several inches. It occurred to me as a passing thought that if all other sources of income failed, he had a promising future as an acrobat.

'But I never wrote that,' he gasped.

'Well, it's here in cold print.'

'Why, that's libellous!'

'So Upjohn and his legal eagle seem to feel. And I must say it reads like a pretty good five thousand pounds' worth to me.'

'Let me look at that,' yipped Kipper. 'I don't understand this. No, half a second, darling. Not now. Later. I want to concentrate,' he said, for Bobbie had flung herself on him and was clinging to him like the ivy on the old garden wall.

'Reggie!' she wailed – yes, wail's the word. 'It was me!'

'Eh?'

'That thing Mrs Travers just read. You remember you showed me the proof at lunch that day and told me to drop it off at the office, as you had to rush along to keep a golf date. I read it again after you'd gone, and saw you had left out that bit about the sausages – accidentally, I thought – and it seemed to me so frightfully funny and clever that… Well, I put it in at the end. I felt it just rounded the thing off.'

14

There was silence for some moments, broken only by the sound of an aunt saying 'Lord love a duck!' Kipper stood blinking, as I had sometimes seen him do at the boxing tourneys in which he indulged when in receipt of a shrewd buffet on some tender spot like the tip of the nose. Whether or not the idea of taking Bobbie's neck in both hands and twisting it into a spiral floated through his mind, I cannot say, but if so it was merely the ideal dream of a couple of seconds or so, for almost immediately love prevailed. She had described him as a lamb, and it was with all the mildness for which lambs are noted that he now spoke.

'Oh, I see. So that's how it was.'

'I'm so sorry.'

'Don't mention it.'

'Can you ever forgive me?'

'Oh, rather.'

'I meant so well.'

'Of course you did.'

'Will you really get into trouble about this?'

'There may be some slight unpleasantness.'

'Oh, Reggie!'

'Quite all right.'

'I've ruined your life.'

'Nonsense. The Thursday Review isn't the only paper in London. If they fire me, I'll accept employment elsewhere.'

This scarcely squared with what he had told me about being blacklisted, but I forbore to mention this, for I saw that his words had cheered Bobbie up considerably, and I didn't want to bung a spanner into her mood of bien etre. Never does to dash the cup of happiness from a girl's lips when after plumbing the depths she has started to take a swig at it.

'Of course!' she said. 'Any paper would be glad to have a valuable man like you.'

'They'll fight like tigers for his services,' I said, helping things along. 'You don't find a chap like Kipper out of circulation for more than a day or so.'

'You're so clever.'

'Oh, thanks.'

'I don't mean you, ass, I mean Reggie.'

'Ah, yes. Kipper has what it takes, all right.'

'All the same,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'I think, when Upjohn arrives, you had better do all you can to ingratiate yourself with him.'

I got her meaning. She was recommending that grappling-to-the-soul– with-hoops-of-steel stuff.

'Yes,' I said. 'Exert the charm, Kipper, and there's a chance he might call the thing off.'

'Bound to,' said Bobbie. 'Nobody can resist you, darling.'

'Do you think so, darling?'

'Of course I do, darling.'

'Well, let's hope you're right, darling. In the meantime,' said Kipper, 'if I don't get that whisky-and-soda soon, I shall disintegrate. Would you mind if I went in search of it, Mrs Travers?'

'It's the very thing I was about to suggest myself. Dash along and drink your fill, my unhappy young stag at eve.'

'I'm feeling rather like a restorative, too,' said Bobbie.

'Me also,' I said, swept along on the tide of the popular movement. 'Though I would advise,' I said, when we were outside, 'making it port. More authority. We'll look in on Swordfish. He will provide.'

We found Pop Glossop in his pantry polishing silver, and put in our order. He seemed a little surprised at the inrush of such a multitude, but on learning that our tongues were hanging out obliged with a bottle of the best, and after we had done a bit of tissue-restoring, Kipper, who had preserved a brooding silence since entering, rose and left us, saying that if we didn't mind he would like to muse apart for a while. I saw Pop Glossop give him a sharp look as he went out and knew that Kipper's demeanour had roused his professional interest, causing him to scent in the young visitor a potential customer. These brain specialists are always on the job and never miss a trick. Tactfully waiting till the door had closed, he said:

'Is Mr Herring an old friend of yours, Mr Wooster?'

'Bertie.'

'I beg your pardon. Bertie. You have known him for some time?'

'Practically from the egg.'

'And is Miss Wickham a friend of his?'

'Reggie Herring and I are engaged, Sir Roderick,' said Bobbie. Her words seemed to seal the Glossop lips. He said 'Oh' and began to talk about the weather and continued to do so until Bobbie, who since Kipper's departure had been exhibiting signs of restlessness, said she thought she would go and see how he was making out. Finding himself de– Wickham-ed, he unsealed his lips without delay.

'I did not like to mention it before Miss Wickham, as she and Mr Herring are engaged, for one is always loath to occasion anxiety, but that young man has a neurosis.'

'He isn't always as dippy as he looked just now.'

'Nevertheless-'

'And let me tell you something, Roddy. If you were as up against it as he is, you'd have a neurosis, too.'

And feeling that it would do no harm to get his views on the Kipper situation, I unfolded the tale.

'So you see the posish,' I concluded. 'The only way he can avoid the fate that is worse than death – viz. Letting his employers get nicked for a sum beyond the dreams of avarice – is by ingratiating himself with Upjohn, which would seem to any thinking man a shot that's not on the board. I mean, he had four years with him at Malvern House and didn't ingratiate himself once, so it's difficult to see how he's going to start doing it now. It seems to me the thing's an impasse. French expression,' I explained, 'meaning that we're stymied good and proper with no hope of finding a formula.'

To my surprise, instead of clicking the tongue and waggling the head gravely to indicate that he saw the stickiness of the dilemma, he chuckled fatly, as if having spotted an amusing side to the thing which had escaped me. Having done this, he blessed his soul, which was his way of saying 'Gorblimey'.

'It really is quite extraordinary, my dear Bertie,' he said, 'how associating with you restores my youth. Your lightest word seems to bring back old memories. I find myself recollecting episodes in the distant past which I have not thought of for years and years. It is as though you waved a magic wand of some kind. This matter of the problem confronting your friend Mr Herring is a case in point. While you were telling me of his troubles, the mists shredded away, the hands of the clock turned back, and I was once again a young fellow in my early twenties, deeply involved in the strange affair of Bertha Simmons, George Lanchester and Bertha's father, old Mr Simmons, who at that time resided in Putney. He was in the imported lard and butter business.'

'The – what was that strange affair again?'