Jeeves and the Black Goat of the Woods

by Matt Weiner, for his sins

I suppose most who know me think of me as carefree. Lightsome, untroubled, out-doing the sparkling waves with glee, or, as my ex-fiancée Florence Craye might put it, constantly grinning like a nincompoop. But, unfolding myself from the two-seater on an obnoxiously pleasant afternoon, I felt the weight of the world settling down on the old shoulders.

The first of my troubles was my hostess, Aunt Agatha. I’ve always thought this Aunt A. was born too late. She could have found a happy home riding beside Attila, the Scourge of God, and reclining on the skulls of her victims. Modern-day England lacks the scope for a woman of her talents. In the absence of any conveniently sackable city-states, she contents herself by obliging her hapless nephew to pass under the yoke. On this occasion she had leased a country cottage, yclept Hotspur House, and summoned me to a “small private gathering” for purposes unknown. My cerebellum rather thrummed with visions of the horrors in store.

What’s worse, it was Jeeves’ summer holiday. That worthy’s employment contract describes him as my gentleman’s personal gentleman, my accursed aunt refers to him as my wet-nurse, but what he is is some combination of Sherlock Holmes, Napoleon, and a guardian angel. The world’s leading wicket-unsticker, and jolly excellent at the regular course of his duties to boot. Of course one would never begrudge him his two weeks of freedom. He generally devotes them to reducing the number of fish to be found in the waters of Bognor Regis. Still, when he is gone, one feels somewhat inclined to haunt the waning moon like woman wailing for her demon lover. A bit at a loose end, you know.

More alarming still was what had, before Jeeves’ departure, appeared to be some coolness on his part toward young master Bertram. I knew this could not have stemmed from l’affaire of the dinner jacket, which I had handled rather deftly. (On my return from the Riviera I was wearing a rather chic yellow dinner jacket, at the sight of which Jeeves’s right eyebrow had ascended one millimeter. I promptly divested myself of it and handed it over for disposal. One learns to choose one’s battles.)

Nevertheless, Jeeves had seemed almost distrait. Once I had come on him in the parlor seemingly unaware, his gaze fixed, if I traced it correctly, on the E-flat above middle C on my old upright piano. A note of no particular renown or menace as far as I could tell.

Another time, having dispensed a hangover cure after a night of revelry (mine, not his), he said, “I have taken the liberty of writing out the list of ingredients for you, sir. The recipe is in the drawer of your bedside table.”

It took me a moment to understand. Jeeves’s hangover cure works by lightly sautéing one’s brain in the flames of hell and then rolling it in balsam, and it takes some time before I am at full speed. But when I had worked out the meaning of his words, I said, “But Jeeves, whatever for?”

“Sir, I felt it judicious to consider a time when my service to you might have concluded. I felt that, in such an eventuality, you might appreciate the ability to prepare this unction for yourself, sir.”

I mean, what? A time when his service might have concluded? The very thought chilled me to the b., my friends. To the b.

Besides, the recipe for the hangover cure is no use without the man himself. Once Pongo Twistleton told me that he’d wheedled the formula out of him, and his own try at preparing it had proved a damp squid. More of a Dark Art than anything culinary, I should think.

•         •         •

Thus, the Bertram Wooster who rang Hotspur House’s doorbell was one whose soul had been entered by more than a bit of iron. And one who was near struck dumb to find the door opened by Jeeves himself.

On such an occasion one would like to preserve one’s dignity, if one had any. Yet I would have near fallen on the man’s neck, had his glare not stopped me. For glare it was. My valet, still in my employ, was regarding me with barely disguised contempt, as if I were an overly showy pair of cuff links. I don’t mind saying I found it hard. My ties with Aunt Agatha were those of blood, while he appeared to have entered into them voluntarily.

Be that as it may, he turned away from me, and said in a quiet penetrating voice, “Mr. Wooster, madam.” Whereupon he vanished, bearing with him the traveling coat that had transported itself from my person, as things tend to do when Jeeves is gentleman’s-personal-gentlemaning.

From the depths of the house now emerged what I thought at first to be Aunt Agatha. The sight of her inspired the familiar old terror, but it was soon washed away by a nephewly concern. Aunt Agatha, I feared, had suffered a stroke. Her mouth curled up at the corners in an unnatural way. Said mouth now opened, and from it issued the following strange words:

“Bertie! I am so pleased you came. Let me show you the grounds.”

In my darkest imaginings, I had never foreseen a smiling, welcoming Aunt Agatha. It was as if the prophet Daniel, reading the writing on the wall, had told Belshazzar “It says you’re doing jolly well” and sent him off with a pat on the shoulder.

This changeling led me through the rather compact cottage to the back door, which debouched on a lush landscape, full of the usual sort of flowers and whatnot. This leafy bower was interrupted by an elaborately festooned picnic table, next to a towering obelisk of what looked like black basalt. Evidently Aunt Agatha intended to dine al fresco.

“Luncheon outside, Aunt A.?” I asked. “I’m surprised Jeeves consented to this scheme.”

“Naturally I would not look to approval from the help,” Aunt Agatha replied blasphemously. “In any case, the arrangements had been made long before I engaged Jeeves. Purvis was suddenly indisposed and your man graciously agreed to serve as butler for today. I am grateful to you,” said this prodigy, “for allowing him to attend.”

Mystery was piling upon enigma. On many past occasions had I moved heaven and earth in a futile effort to satisfy Aunt Agatha’s whims. Did I ever receive a scrap of thanks for my efforts? Never. Once or twice I had had to flee the country. Now she expressed gratitude when I had done nothing whatsoever. Further was the question of how she had managed to beard Jeeves on his holiday without realizing that he was temporarily at liberty. But uppermost in my mind was another matter.

“I say, arrangements? You never did say who else would be arriving to don the feedbag.”

“You know most of the guests, I believe. Sir Watkyn Basset, his daughter Madeleine, and Lord Sidcup should be arriving shortly.”

“Strewth!” I ejaculated. “Was the fourth horseman unavailable?”

These rogues were indeed well known to me. Sir Watkyn Bassett habitually infested Totleigh Towers, which hell on earth I had once been forced to visit with the idea of pinching a cow-creamer. That occasion had given me enough of Sir Watkyn’s company for this life, the next, and a few beyond that. And he was the least pernicious of the lot.

The alleged Earl of Sidcup was in truth Roderick Spode, erstwhile lingerie designer, quondam aspiring dictator, and all-around blight on the landscape, a man overly fond of grabbing a chap by the neck and threatening to tear him limb from limb and generally disturbing the peace that an urbane young gentleman requires for a true philosophical life. Never have I seen the man without wishing there was an ocean between us. Ideally, I would be the one above the surface.

Yet this Spode had once rescued me from the grimmest of fates. When my head lay on the chopping-block, like Sydney Eggcrate he had removed it and replaced it with his own. The chopping-block I speak of was his fiancée, Madeleine Bassett. This Bassett’s outer wrappings are pleasing enough, limpid blue eyes and honey-colored hair and all that sort of thing. Inside, however, lies as gooey a girl as ever called rabbits the courtiers of the fairy queen. Worst of all is her unshakeable idée fixe: that Bertram is hopelessly in love with her, and that whenever one of her engagements was broken it is her duty to, as she puts it, make me happy. On the occasion I speak of, she had handed my friend Gussie the mitten after some unpleasantness with ham sandwiches, and I had abandoned all hope when this Spode providentially scooped her up. It seems he had known her since she was so high and loved her as long, the fathead.

All in all, the sort of villains one might expect Aunt Agatha to harbor. With another up her sleeve, apparently. “There is one more guest expected,” she said. “A Lady Reilly. I understand that she will be arriving somewhat later, and that luncheon will begin without her. I do hope that she will not be too late, for she is absolutely essential to the day’s plans.”

Before I could ask what those plans might be, Jeeves manifested by the table to announce that the doom was upon us.

•         •         •

1 girl, soupy

1 martinet, jumped-up

1 gorilla, ill-tempered (preferably with five or six grudges against Bertram Wooster)

1 Aunt Agatha

1 long-suffering fortune’s fool

Distribute around picnic table. Let stew for 30 mins.

The rummy thing was, most of them didn’t play up to form. Madeleine admittedly did well at her typical line of piteous Wooster-ward gazes, spiced with murmurs about how sad life was. The rest seemed almost glad to see me. Spode, pronging a spear of marinated asparagus, fixed me with a forceful eye and said, “Wooster, do you ever long to be part of something greater than yourself?” He twirled the asparagus and began to masticate it, in a way that was reminiscent of something. I wasn’t sure what.

“Certainly not,” I said. Spode seemed surprised, for some reason.

“Nonsense, nonsense, Wooster!” Sir Watkyn said. Incredibly, he twinkled roguishly. “We may have had our differences in the past Wooster—forgive me if I was overly harsh—but, though I may not have remarked on it, I always appreciated your fine qualities, of—ah. ‘The hour will come for the man and the man will meet the hour,’ I said. And the hour draws nigh!”

A tear rolled down Madeleine’s cheek. I suppose that even long exposure to Pop Bassett does not convey immunity to his drivel.

“You’ll come round, Wooster. The greatness of our purpose will be manifest,” Spode said. He took another bite of asparagus. Suddenly I realized what he was reminding me of. Once, in a futile effort to improve me, Florence Craye took me to see a whacking great painting of a remarkable number of people suffering the torments of Hell. One particular chappie was having an uncomfortable time of it, roasting on a spit over a brimstoney fire. Spode had managed to turn the asparagus into the spit and chappie mixed together.

Have I mentioned that I was seated facing the obelisk? It was carved all over with strange inscriptions that looked like words at a casual glimpse, but that never spelled anything out when viewed straight on. Dashed unsettling.

“The cause,” Spode began, and I rather lost the train of conversation. Really, I thought Spode’s causes were over and done with. Time was, he’d swanned about in black shorts with a claque called the Saviours of Britain, making noises about how the good old homeland needed the firm hand of himself, but on his ascension to the Earldom of Sidcup he’d said goodbye to all that. So the fool returneth to his folly, I suppose.

At the first decent opportunity I made my excuses and tottered toward the back door of Hotspur House. A splash of cold water in my eyes, I thought, might clear my head. And if I dared hope, the comforting sight of Jeeves. Who was indeed in the kitchen, accompanied by a mass of inky blackness, which mass was interspersed with two large curved horns and a baleful pair of eyes.

“Jeeves!” I said. “What’s all this?”

“The goat, sir,” Jeeves replied. I could not deny it; his manner was distinctly frosty.

“I can see that,” I said, with a touch of frost myself. If Jeeves has a fault, it is his occasional tendency to treat a chap as if he were even more dim-witted than his behavior warrants. “We have here one goat, black as the pit from pole to pole. The question is, which goat is this? And why?”

“The black goat of the woods, sir,” Jeeves said.

“Jeeves, this is not one of your most forthcoming days,” I said. “Which woods are these? No, I suppose that’s not important. Why in the devil are you wrangling a goat in Aunt Agatha’s kitchen?”

“There is no need to feign ignorance, sir.” And though Jeeves’s manner had become distinctly hostile, still I was surprised when he produced a wicked-looking knife. “The slaughter of the goat—”

“I say, what!” I yelped. “What a perishing thought!” One is hardly a vegetarian, of course, but it’s different when one’s met the chap. “We will remove this beast,” I said. “Your assistance, please.”

“Sir, I hardly think that prudent,” Jeeves said, but I had already taken the goat by the horns. Come to think of it, that must be where the expression comes from. One faces a difficult problem, and one shilly-shallies about, and the shilly-shallying doesn’t help matters. One then perceives that it is time to take firm and decisive action, and one grasps the bull by the horns. Only in this case the available horns were attached to a goat, and it was those horns that I grasped.

Except it soon became clear that the goat and I did not see eye to unsettling eye on the question of what was to be done. With a toss of its head the goat plucked its horns from my grasp. It then commenced to apply those horns to the task of delivering a stout blow to my trouser-seat.

Bertram can move swiftly when needs must. In a trice I was out the front door and onto the walk, the b. g. of the w. running a close second. The front garden, as I remembered, was a wide open space as would afford free play to one’s escape, and it was with no little surprise that I collided with a solid pillar.

This pillar resolved itself into the most formidable-looking woman I have ever seen. Undeniably handsome, with the front of Jove, the side of another god or two I suppose, and well supplied with eyes like Mars to threaten and command—two of them, in fact. At the moment those eyes were fixed on the goat, which had taken itself out of the running and sat down, looking abashed.

I was abashed as well. The Woosters do not make a habit of crashing into women to whom they have not properly been introduced. Not that this Amazon seemed at all shaken. If anything, I’d have said she was suppressing amusement. A name came to me from the vasty deep.

“Dreadfully sorry,” I said. “The name’s Wooster. Are you by any chance Lady Reilly?”

She threw her head back and let loose what I believe is called a silvery laugh, if the trumpet that will wake the dead is made of silver.

“No, no, Lady R’lyeh!” she said. She spelled it. “You English have such trouble with it. I’ve heard about you, Mr. Wooster, and”—at this point some sort of tentacle shot forth from her sleeve and wrapped around my arms and legs—“we certainly can’t have you leaving now. Come along.”

I was struck still on the spot. This Lady R’lyeh was playing remarkably free with another woman’s guests, and taking quite a liberty with a man whose contact with her, though unfortunate, had been quite unintentional. Not to mention that the tentacle kept my limbs from moving. This was taken care of for me, however, as Lady R’lyeh promptly lifted me airward and bundled me on to the back of the goat. With little regard for the jounces and shocks I was receiving, the ungrateful beast proceeded to convey me back into the house and to a dark cupboard, where, the tentacle having detached itself from Lady R’lyeh, we dossed down.

•         •         •

After some time, a familiar quiet footfall sounded outside the door. I chanced all.

“Jeeves!” I hissed.

“Yes, sir,” came that reassuring voice, the coldness now gone from it.

“Jeeves, I’m in a frightful pickle.”

“Yes, sir. I must say—” and here he hesitated.

“That you tried to dissuade me from freeing the goat?” I said. “Consider it forgotten.”

“No, sir,” he said. “I fear; that is to say, I fear that I did you a serious injustice, sir.”

“What, like socking me in durance vile with only a rather niffy goat for a companion?”

“No, sir. If anything, that was contrary to my desires. On your arrival, Mrs. Gregson having not informed me of the guest list, I presumed that you were a willing participant in the day’s plans.”

“It is a trifle hurtful that you thought I might willingly have associated with Aunt Agatha, but—”

“If I may, sir. Mrs. Gregson and her guests intend to perform a ritual, requiring the sacrifice of the black goat of the woods….”

Meaning to urge Jeeves to put a sock in it, I drew in a breath. Which was a bad idea, because, as I may have mentioned, I had been bunged into a fairly small enclosed space with a goat. The smell was overpowering. Thus I remained speechless for a moment longer.

“…in order to summon certain of the elder gods and achieve their dominion over humankind. The blood of the goat, I knew, was required for this ritual. Inexcusably, sir, I had assumed that you were also a participant; but it has become known to me that the ritual also requires the blood of a human…”

I found my breath again. “Jeeves!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is that all that rot Spode was talking about? About becoming part of something greater? Did that excrescence mean becoming part of something greater by being sacrificed to bring the elder gods to earth?”

“I fear that Lord Sidcup had that in mind, sir.”

“I object to this, Jeeves,” I said. “I object very strongly.”

“If it is a consolation, sir, a swift death would be a blessing, should the elder gods arrive.”

“It is not, Jeeves,” I said.

“Very good, sir.”

Some moments of silence passed, broken only by the snuffling of the goat.

“Jeeves,” I said at last. “How about setting one free?”

Astonishingly, there came a sigh. “Well, sir—”

“Less of the ‘well, sir’ and more of the freeing, please. What is the hitch?”

“I fear, sir, that my methods might not meet your approval.”

“You are worried about your methods,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” Jeeves said. “Yet explaining these methods would be both otiose and futile, under the circumstances. I am placed in an awkward position.”

“Deuced uncomfortable for you, what?”

“Furthermore, sir,” Jeeves said, “The course of action I contemplate cannot be carried out without your explicit blessing.”

At this point I came to realize that it is possible to shout while keeping one’s voice lowered. I did so.

“You have my blessing, Jeeves! Take all the blessings you need! Methods be damned, get me out of this damned spot!”

“Very good, sir,” Jeeves said. I heard a door open behind me. A sharp blow descended on my noggin, and I sank into dreamless insensibility.

•         •         •

On emerging from the dreamless i., several things struck me as off. To begin with, a distinct lack of the expected headache. The Woosters enjoy robust health and can often be found rising on the stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things, but we generally require a good night’s sleep in order to do so.

I also seemed to be out of the darkness and free of any tentacles or similar encumbrances. In fact, I was standing upright. I felt as lissome as if I’d just taken the waters.

I was in the front hall. The cupboard was slightly ajar. Through an odd sort of window by the front door, Jeeves was visible in the next room. Except there shouldn’t have been a room there. A-whirl as my head was with the rush of recent events, I knew I had been through that door and found only a roomless lawn.

I stepped forward to perform a closer examination. Jeeves stepped forward as well. I stopped. So did Jeeves. He seemed to have acquired an uncharacteristic fondness for pat-a-cake.

“Jeeves,” I began to say, but words would not come. As I tried to speak I felt a sort of cosmic disapproval. It reminded me of the occasion at which I was awarded my school’s prize for scripture knowledge. While I was seated six rows back and, I thought, under tolerable cover, the headmaster hauled out the local luminary they’d dredged up to hand out the ribbons and introduced him as Filbert Conkerson. This name brought to mind about three priceless cracks, which I was on the verge of shouting out; whereupon said headmaster cast a cold eye directly on me, causing my words to die a-borning. I now felt as if the entire cosmos were giving me a headmastery glare.

Stranger yet, Jeeves himself seemed to be struggling for speech. I raised my hands helplessly. He raised his hands helplessly with me. There could be no doubt; the odd little window was a mirror, and I was looking at myself, somehow draped in Jeeves’s likeness.

Cautiously, I felt the back of my head. It didn’t feel like it bulged out, as does that great man’s. The same old Wooster body, then, but Jeevesian to the eye.

These ruminations were interrupted by a peremptory call from Aunt Agatha. “Jeeves!” she cried. “Bring out the goat and the—”; her voice broke off.

Came now the ringing tones of Lady R’lyeh. “The major sacrifice, Jeeves,” she said with a near chuckle. “Great Iä!, Agatha, no need to be squeamish.”

Still I could not speak. I spied a door standing ajar beneath the stairs, which proved to be the cupboard in which I had lately lain. In which I was still lying, apparently. There was the black goat and my tentacle-bound form. It was decidedly disorienting.

My tongue still cleaving to the roof of my mouth, I hustled myself onto my shoulder. That is, I, Bertram Wooster, currently doing business as Jeeves, picked up Bertram Wooster, body only, premises available with a reference and two weeks’ advance rent. I (the body) felt heavier than I (the—dash it! I’ve no idea) expected. I resolved to visit a slimming spa, once occupancy of Ye Olde Body was resumed.

Staggering under my own weight, I chivvied the goat to the back garden. Aunt Agatha was wearing her usual hostile expression. The sight was almost comforting.

“Place Mr. Wooster on the altar, Jeeves,” she said. “And when you are delayed in your duties, please do let us know. You may call out to us if necessary.”

This seemed to me high-handed, but I voiced no objection. Well, I couldn’t. That was the sticking-point.

As I laid myself down in a convenient depression in the obelisk’s plinth, Lady R’lyeh said, “And the dagger?”

I was at a loss. No dagger had been mentioned on the invitation. I passed a surreptitious hand over the old costume, to see if Jeeves had stashed any daggers where I could reach them, but I came up empty.

“Really,” Aunt Agatha sniffed. “Have you left the dagger inside? Lady Ryleigh”—she hadn’t quite got the accent—“can accomplish nothing without it. Fetch it at once!”

Meekly I returned cottageward. As I left, Lady R’lyeh said, “Pretty shabby quality of servants you have over here, it seems.”

Aunt Agatha replied, “I must apologize. My usual butler, Purvis, was taken ill, and I had to engage my nephew’s man on short notice. From the praise Bertie gives him, I had expected much better. But then, my nephew is a near imbecile.”

The infernal cheek! I bridled like billy-oh. Not at the personal insult; one is inured to the slings and arrows of an outrageous aunt. But for England’s leading pest to offer such shabby treatment to the treasure that is Jeeves! Or the treasure that she thought was Jeeves. Or that she didn’t realize would have been a treasure, if it had been Jeeves, which it wasn’t, because it was me, and in fairness I was not at my best. That headache I had expected was beginning to creep in.

Fortunately, the dagger was in plain sight on the kitchen counter. I recognized it as the knife Jeeves had been brandishing. On closer inspection, the blade was curiously twisted, and the hilt carved with more of those bally indecipherable inscriptions. Not what I’d choose to carve the Sunday joint, myself.

The dagger carried outside, Lady R’lyeh plucked it from my grasp and held it aloft. The black goat had nestled in the plinth of the obelisk beside me—the spare or perhaps original me—and La R’lyeh glared down at the two of us, or them, and chanted “Iä! Iä!” in a surprisingly throaty voice, followed by some more things I didn’t catch. Aunt Agatha, Spode, and the Bassetts seemed to have no difficulty themselves. They had knelt on the grass, without regard for the state of their respective trousers and skirts, and every so often they repeated what must have been the best lines. The dagger was taking on a bit of a dark glow, and just as I was wondering if Lady R’lyeh might be giving herself laryngitis, she plunged it into my breast. The breast of the me on the obelisk, I mean.

At once my tongue was freed from its fetters, and I yelped, “I say, how beastly!” But my cry was unheeded. Once the dagger hit home, something rather extraordinary had happened. The dark glow flashed, and the sharp point of the dagger was no longer embedded in a copy of Bertram, but in Jeeves himself. Jeeves didn’t seem pleased. He rose up and drew himself to his full height, and then kept on drawing past that. Soon he was a good twenty feet high and had sprouted a few sets of wings. Since the dagger was still attached to his top button and Lady R’lyeh was still holding the dagger, she was left farther off the ground than she was expecting, and she had begun to thrash and kick about. I was just averting my eyes—pestilential as she had was, the Woosters do not gawk at ladies in distress—when there was a sort of black thunderclap, and she was replaced by a sprinkle of ash.

“Fools!” boomed the voice of Jeeves. “Thought you you could outwit me? Thought you you could restrain my power? I know what I know when I must know it, and I do what I must do when I must do it. These elder gods of yours are as nothing to me.” Black thunderclap. “I cast them out! I close the channel!” Black thunderclap again. “Trifle not with forces of which you know so little, and be thankful that I spare you as much as I do!” Yet another black thunderclap, and the non-Wooster members of the company were all hurled back and lay insensate. “I have done what must be done, as was foretold, as was revealed to me when the Greatest and Most Nameless required it. Mr. Wooster, it would be best if you could return the black goat to the woods; you will find a suitable place to release him approximately one mile along the road back to London, on the left.” All at once the black glow darkened into a Jeeves-shaped cloud. The cloud expanded outward to tower over the land, swirled around for a time, then whooshed into the obelisk with an otherworldly moan. This accomplished, the obelisk abruptly sank into the ground, which closed o’er it as if it had never been.

•         •         •

The Wooster that returned to the metrop was a melancholy Wooster indeed. If I’d felt like the iron had entered my soul before, now it was joined by the putter and the mashie-niblick. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, one was inclined to say, or would have been, if from a meteorological standpoint it hadn’t been a pleasant summer evening. Spiritually, though, one was dwindling, peaking, and pining like the dickens. Jeeves seemed to have meant what he’d said about concluding his service. It was hardly to be borne.

This shuffling wreck of a man unlatched the flat door and rather threw himself on the old divan. My mind was full of dark thoughts. I hesitate to confess how low I had sunk, but I was even beginning to consider reclaiming that yellow dinner jacket I had surrendered some weeks ago. Then I heard the clearing of a familiar throat.

“I have closed the front door for you, sir,” came the voice of Jeeves. “You would hardly care for the neighbors to see you reclining in such an attitude.”

I sat upright, looking about with a wild surmise. There—I scarce believed it—was Jeeves by the door, the usual size and entirely devoid of wings. The back of his head bulged out reassuringly.

“Jeeves!” I cried. “Jeeves!” I felt like a broken man, pieced back together. Like Humpty Dumpty. No, they couldn’t piece him back together, could they? Some other chap, must have been.

“I apologize, sir,” he said, “for any distress the recent events may have caused. Particularly insofar as I was drawn into them.”

“I thought you had left me,” I said. “Doing what must be done and that rot.” A horrible fear struck me. “You haven’t come back to give notice?”

“Certainly not, sir,” said that blessed man. “One finds that, even as certain of one’s duties have concluded, one feels a personal obligation in other quarters. A tie that binds, as it were.”

“Like that tentacle of Lady R’lyeh’s, what?” I said. Then I shuddered. “No, let us not speak of her. She was the most frightful specimen, eh?”

“I confess, sir that I cannot concur in that judgment. Though from your perspective I can see how she might seem so.”

I waved a tolerant hand. “Think nothing of it, Jeeves. You’ve certainly put in a good day’s work.”

“Thank you, sir. One strives to give satisfaction.”

“Humanity is saved from the dominion of the old gods.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aunt Agatha has made such an ass of herself that she won’t bother me for at least a fortnight.”

“Indeed, sir. Her powers should be temporarily checked.”

“Lucky that you were on the scene, eh? A bit rough on poor Purvis to be taken ill, but on each life a little rain must fall.”

“If I may, sir, your concern is misplaced. Purvis is in the best of health. It came to my attention that I might be required, and I offered him an inducement to feign an illness so that I might take his place for the afternoon.”

“What?” I said. “You bribed the old devil? You must be compensated, Jeeves. Fetch my checkbook and name your price.”

Jeeves coughed softly. “The currency that was employed is not to be found in your bank account,” he said, “but the gesture is appreciated.”

“Still, Jeeves,” I said. “Still. All this you did on your holiday! Take two more weeks, Jeeves. Take all the time you want. Go thy way to Bognor Regis and lay waste to those fish.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jeeves said. “I have already booked my train and hotel. Before my departure, I merely wished to assure you personally that you will be well cared for in the interim. The temporary servant that I have arranged may be somewhat taciturn, but you should find him both capable and obedient.”

“One asks for little, Jeeves,” I said, “and sometimes one gets it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must turn in. The day has left me drained.”

“Very good, sir. I will lay the table for breakfast now, which should leave enough time to prepare your breakfast in the morning before I go. Unfortunately, the service to Bognor Regis leaves insufficient time for me to be present to greet the gentleman who will care for you in my absence, but I have prepared an extensive set of instructions which you may read while you await him. Be aware, sir, that you must explicitly invite him to cross the threshold; and above all, do not disturb any lines of salt that I lay down overnight. I will tidy those up on my return.”

“I leave myself in your hands, Jeeves,” I said humbly, and off I hasted me to my bed. As the shades of night fell over me, I felt that morning might not be at seven, and it was none of my business whether the lark was on the thorn or not; but God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world. And that’s all one really needs, what?