Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

without tumbling over your feet and making a mess of it? All I ask of you is to stroll under a window and pick up a few jewels, and now you come and tell me⁠ ⁠…”

“But, Liz!” said the tree plaintively.

“I do all the difficult part of the job. All that there was left for you to handle was something a child of three could have done on its ear. And now⁠ ⁠…”

“But, Liz! I’m telling you I couldn’t find the stuff. I was down there all right, but I couldn’t find it.”

“You couldn’t find it!” Miss Peavey pawed restlessly at the soft turf with a shapely shoe. “You’re the sort of dumb Isaac that couldn’t find a bass-drum in a telephone-booth. You didn’t look.”

“I did look. Honest, I did.”

“Well, the stuff was there. I threw it down the moment the lights went out.”

“Somebody must have got there first, and swiped it.”

“Who could have got there first? Everybody was up in the room where I was.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Am I⁠ ⁠…” The poetess’s voice trailed off. She was staring down the Yew Alley at a couple who had just entered. She hissed a warning in a sharp undertone. “Hsst! Cheese it, Ed. There’s someone coming.”

The two intruders who had caused Miss Peavey to suspend her remarks to her erring lieutenant were of opposite sexes⁠—a tall girl with fair hair, and a taller young man irreproachably clad in white flannels who beamed down at his companion through a single eyeglass. Miss Peavey gazed at them searchingly as they approached. A sudden thought had come to her at the sight of them. Mistrusting Psmith as she had done ever since Mr. Cootes had unmasked him for the impostor that he was, the fact that they were so often together had led her to extend her suspicion to Eve. It might, of course, be nothing but a casual friendship, begun here at the castle; but Miss Peavey had always felt that Eve would bear watching. And now, seeing them together again this morning, it had suddenly come to her that she did not recall having observed Eve among the gathering in the drawing-room last night. True, there had been many people present, but Eve’s appearance was striking, and she was sure that she would have noticed her, if she had been there. And, if she had not been there, why should she not have been on the terrace? Somebody had been on the terrace last night, that was certain. For all her censorious attitude in their recent conversation, Miss Peavey had not really in her heart believed that even a dumbbell like Eddie Cootes would not have found the necklace if it had been lying under the window on his arrival.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. McTodd,” she cooed. “I’m feeling so upset about this terrible affair. Aren’t you, Miss Halliday?”

“Yes,” said Eve, and she had never said a more truthful word.

Psmith, for his part, was in more debonair and cheerful mood even than was his wont. He had examined the position of affairs and found life good. He was particularly pleased with the fact that he had persuaded Eve to stroll with him this morning and inspect his cottage in the woods. Buoyant as was his temperament, he had been half afraid that last night’s interview on the terrace might have had disastrous effects on their intimacy. He was now feeling full of kindliness and goodwill towards all mankind⁠—even Miss Peavey; and he bestowed on the poetess a dazzling smile.

“We must always,” he said, “endeavour to look on the bright side. It was a pity, no doubt, that my reading last night had to be stopped at a cost of about twenty thousand pounds to the Keeble coffers, but let us not forget that but for that timely interruption I should have gone on for about another hour. I am like that. My friends have frequently told me that when once I start talking it requires something in the nature of a cataclysm to stop me. But, of course, there are drawbacks to everything, and last night’s rannygazoo perhaps shook your nervous system to some extent?”

“I was dreadfully frightened,” said Miss Peavey. She turned to Eve with a delicate shiver. “Weren’t you, Miss Halliday?”

“I wasn’t there,” said Eve absently.

“Miss Halliday,” explained Psmith, “has had in the last few days some little experience of myself as orator, and with her usual good sense decided not to go out of her way to get more of me than was absolutely necessary. I was perhaps a trifle wounded at the moment, but on thinking it over came to the conclusion that she was perfectly justified in her attitude. I endeavour always in my conversation to instruct, elevate, and entertain, but there is no gainsaying the fact that a purist might consider enough of my chitchat to be sufficient. Such, at any rate, was Miss Halliday’s view, and I honour her for it. But here I am, rambling on again just when I can see that you wish to be alone. We will leave you, therefore, to muse. No doubt we have been interrupting a train of thought which would have resulted but for my arrival in a rondel or a ballade or some other poetic morceau. Come, Miss Halliday. A weird and repellent female,” he said to Eve as they drew out of hearing, “created for some purpose which I cannot fathom. Everything in this world, I like to think, is placed there for some useful end: but why the authorities unleashed Miss Peavey on us is beyond me. It is not too much to say that she gives me a pain in the gizzard.”

Miss Peavey, unaware of these harsh views, had watched them out of sight, and now she turned excitedly to the tree which sheltered her ally.

“Ed!”

“Hello?” replied the muffled voice of Mr. Cootes.

“Did you hear?”

“No.”

“Oh, my heavens!” cried his overwrought partner. “He’s gone deaf now! That girl⁠—you didn’t hear what she was saying? She said that she wasn’t