With a guardian angel like mine working overtime, it was enough. She delivered judgment instantaneously.

'I shall not marry you,' she said, and went off haughtily to de– egg herself.

'Very sensible of her,' said L. P. Runkle. 'The right course to take. A man like you, bound to be in and out of prison, couldn't possibly be a good husband. How is a wife to make her plans … dinner parties, holidays, Christmas treats for the children, the hundred and one things a woman has to think of … when she doesn't know from one day to another whether the head of the house won't be telephoning to say he's been arrested again and no bail allowed? Yes?' said Runkle, and I saw that Seppings had appeared in the offing.

'A Mr Bingley has called to see you, sir.'

'Ah, yes, I was expecting him.'

He popped off, and scarcely had he ceased to pollute the atmosphere when the old ancestor blew in.

She was plainly agitated, the resemblance to a cat on hot bricks being very marked. She panted a good deal, and her face had taken on the rather pretty mauve colour it always does when the soul is not at rest.

'Bertie,' she boomed, 'when you went away yesterday, did you leave the door of your bedroom unlocked?'

'Of course I didn't.'

'Well, Jeeves says it's open now.'

'It can't be.'

'It is. He thinks Runkle or some minion of his has skeleton– keyed the lock. Don't yell like that, curse you.'

I might have retorted by asking her what she expected me to do when I suddenly saw all, but I was too busy seeing all to be diverted into arguments about my voice production. The awful truth had hit me as squarely between the eyes as if it had been an egg or a turnip hurled by one of the Market Snodsbury electorate.

'Bingley!' I ejaculated.

'And don't sing.'

'I was not singing, I was ejaculating «Bingley!», or vociferating «Bingley!» if you prefer it. You remember Bingley, the fellow who stole the club book, the chap you were going to take by the throat and shake like a rat. Aged relative, we are up against it in no uncertain manner. Bingley is the Runkle minion you alluded to.

Jeeves says he dropped in to tea this afternoon. What simpler for him, having had his cuppa, than to nip upstairs and search my room? He used to be Runkle's personal attendant, so Runkle would turn to him naturally when he needed an accomplice. Yes, I don't wonder you're perturbed,' I added, for she had set the welkin ringing with one of those pungent monosyllables so often on her lips in the old Quorn-and-Pytchley days. 'And I'll tell you something else which will remove your last doubts, if you had any. He's just turned up again, and Runkle has gone out to confer with him. What do you suppose they're conferring about? Give you three guesses.'

The Quorn trains its daughters well. So does the Pytchley. She did not swoon, as many an aunt would have done in her place, merely repeated the monosyllable in a slightly lower tone – meditatively as it were, like some aristocrat of the French Revolution on being informed that the tumbril waited.

'This tears it,' she said, the very words such an aristocrat would have used, though speaking of course in French. 'I'll have to confess that I took his foul porringer.'

'No, no, you mustn't do that.'

'What else is there for me to do? I can't let you go to chokey.'

'I don't mind.'

'I do. I may have my faults –'

'No, no.'

'Yes, yes. I am quite aware that there are blemishes in my spiritual make-up which ought to have been corrected at my finishing school, but I draw the line at letting my nephew do a stretch for pinching porringers which I pinched myself. That's final.'

I saw what she meant, of course. Noblesse oblige, and all that. And very creditable, too. But I had a powerful argument to put forward, and I lost no time in putting it.

'But wait, old ancestor. There's another aspect of the matter. If it's … what's the expression? … if it's bruited abroad that I'm merely an as-pure-as-the-driven-snow innocent bystander, my engagement to Florence will be on again.'

'Your what to who?' It should have been 'whom', but I let it go. 'Are you telling me that you and Florence …'

'She proposed to me ten minutes ago and I had to accept her because one's either preux or one isn't, and then Runkle butted in and pointed out to her the disadvantages of marrying someone who would shortly be sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs, and she broke it off.'

The relative seemed stunned, as if she had come on something abstruse in the Observer crossword puzzle.

'What is it about you that fascinates the girls? First Madeline Bassett, now Florence, and dozens of others in the past. You must have a magnetic personality.'

'That would seem to be the explanation,' I agreed. 'Anyway, there it is. One whisper that there isn't a stain on my character, and I haven't a hope. The Bishop will be notified, the assistant clergy and bridesmaids rounded up, the organist will start practising «The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden», and the limp figure you see drooping at the altar rails will be Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. I implore you, old blood relation, to be silent and let the law take its course. If it's a choice between serving a life sentence under Florence and sewing a mailbag or two, give me the mailbags every time.'

She nodded understandingly, and said she saw what I meant.

'I thought you would.'

'There is much in what you say.' She mused awhile. 'As a matter of fact, though, I doubt if it will get as far as mailbags. I'm pretty sure what's going to happen. Runkle will offer to drop the whole thing if I let him have Anatole.'

'Good God!'

'You may well say «Good God!» You know what • Anatole means to Tom.'

She did not need to labour the point. Uncle Tom combines a passionate love of food with a singular difficulty in digesting it, and Anatole is the only chef yet discovered who can fill him up to the Plimsoll mark without causing the worst sort of upheaval in his gastric juices.

'But would Anatole go to Runkle?'

'He'd go to anyone if the price was right.'

'None of that faithful old retainer stuff ?'

'None. His outlook is entirely practical. That's the French in him.'

'I wonder you've been able to keep him so long. He must have had other offers.'

'I've always topped them. If it was simply another case of outbidding the opposition, I wouldn't be worrying.'

'But when Uncle Tom comes back and finds Anatole conspicuous by his absence, won't the home be a bit in the melting pot?'

'I don't like to think of it.'

But she did think of it. So did I. And we were both thinking of it, when our musings were interrupted by the return of L. P. Runkle, who waddled in and fixed us with a bulging eye.

I suppose if he had been slenderer, one might have described him as a figure of doom, but even though so badly in need of a reducing diet he was near enough to being one to make my interior organs do a quick shuffle-off-to-Buffalo as if some muscular hand had stirred them up with an egg-whisk. And when he began to speak, he was certainly impressive. These fellows who have built up large commercial empires are always what I have heard Jeeves call orotund. They get that way from dominating meetings of shareholders. Having started off with 'Oh, there you are, Mrs Travers', he went into his speech, and it was about as orotund as anything that has ever come my way. It ran, as nearly as I can remember, as follows:

'I was hoping to see you, Mrs Travers. In a previous conversation, you will recall that I stated uncompromisingly that your nephew Mr Wooster had purloined the silver porringer which I brought here to sell to your husband, whose absence I greatly deplore. That this was no mere suspicion has now been fully substantiated. I have a witness who is prepared to testify on oath in court that he found it in the top drawer of the chest of drawers in Mr Wooster's bedroom, unskilfully concealed behind socks and handkerchiefs.'