(no subject)
Title: Jeeves and the Mating of the Scorpions
Chapter: 5
Pairing: Jeeves/Wooster
Summary: Everything looked great after Jeeves came up with a cunning plan, but when that fails, Bertie finds himself in the soup again. Jeeves seems unwilling to help, so Bertie has to take drastic steps all by himself.
Rating: NC-17.
Words: 3000
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings or storylines; they were all thought up by PG Wodehouse (except for the Phnell-Bunghams and Mr Spinnerett, those are OCs). This story was written and published only for fun, and no financial profit is made by anyone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm not familiar with how to store a cock when not in use (I don't have one), but apparently in older days, when briefs were a lot spacier, guys just stuffed them down one trouser leg, and their tailor would cut the leg in question a bit wider than the other one. That's what I mean when I write he "wore" right. I hope I hit the right term. Strangely, I can't find a translation for the phenomenon anywhere.
----------------------------------------------
I was sitting in the tub, and Jeeves was bustling about the room.
“Jeeves”, I said, “you’ve done it again. Tomorrow by this time we’ll see Daffy and Spinnerett as an engaged couple, and I’m ready to bet on it.”
“Providing everything works according to plan, sir”, said Jeeves demurely. He had his back turned to me again, which pained me. He wouldn’t look at me in my birthday suit, these days. In the past he had always acted completely natural in the bathroom, and none of my naughtier bits had ever put him at unease. I felt now, if ever, that I loved him, and that all precautions had come too late. Fate had decided to make me fall in love with a cactus.
The next morning I got up and dressed, and took a little walk around the garden to reap the rewards of last night’s efforts. I met Daffy in the gazebo - by herself, which gave me a dark premonition.
“Hullo, hullo”, I said. “What news from the front?”
Daffy sighed and gave me a rummy look. “If I’d only got as far as the front! Bertie, you remember that I told you I had to sneak past Mother, right? My bedroom has only one way out - through another room, where she sleeps during the hot summer months, because her normal bedroom is too warm for her at the moment. Well, she noticed me.”
“No! She did? What did you tell her?”
“That I’d heard a strange sound from the garden. Well, that was the worst possible excuse, but it was the only thing I could think of. She didn’t believe a word of it. I didn’t try it again. Imagine, if I had woken her up again!”
“That wouldn’t do at all.”
Daffy sighed heavily. “Well, here we are. No Emerald for Betsy, no Albert for me. I don’t dare to try it again, Bertie.”
“But… but… we must find a way!” I sat down beside her and patted her arm in sympathy. “I’ll tell Jeeves, and he’ll work his grey matter for five seconds and come up with another corker, you’ll see!”
Daffy looked at me for a moment too long. I did not like that. “I’m starting to think”, she said, sliding closer, “that it’s for the best. Albert - I should say Mr Spinnerett - is certainly a looker, but that’s not everything in life, is it? I’m thinking that maybe the man for me should be more approachable, and sweet, and know how to keep me entertained.”
The hair in the back of my neck was beginning to stand on end.
“What? I mean, what... what’s wrong with a man who’s… handsome and… serious and… scient… ific…” My voice trickled away like a tiny stream in the depths of the Sahara desert. Daffy was giving me chocolate eyes again, and this time she meant it.
“I think you know what I mean”, she said with a horrible twinkle. “Your man tells me that women never appreciate you for what you are. And I think you’re fabulous.”
“Well, no! You are completely mistaken! I’m not approachable! Worse than a clam, they say in my family! Bertie, he’s more reclusive than a clam. In fact, they say Bertie when they mean clam, that’s how bad it is! And I don’t know how to entertain anybody. I’m dead boring! In fact, when I’m dead, my funeral will bore thousands! Martha, they’ll say when they come home, Uncle John’ funeral was the Moulin Rouge compared to this!”
Daffy chuckled under her breath, and I realized to my horror that she found this rushed speech from my parched lips entertaining.
“You will join my friends tonight at the Bridge evening, won’t you?” she asked sweetly.
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
“Good. Care to go for a stroll?”
I jumped up and hit my head on the roof of the gazebo. “No. I mean, sad as it is, I have some very urgent business to do. Can’t wait. Sorry.”
And I ran down the garden path and made the gravel fly.
I shot through the door into my room, barricaded the door, and hid under the window.
“Jeeves”, I cried out in a hushed voice, “I want your advice!”
“Very good, sir.” Jeeves materialized out of the adjoining room.
“I say. I say, Daffy has changed her mind. Now she wants me. You must find a way to get her off my back. My life depends on your quick thinking!”
“Sir, may I ask what makes a matrimonial union with Miss Phnell-Bungham so unappealing to you?”
I gaped at the man. “You what?! Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t marry her!”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, she is in many ways superior to most fiancées from your past.”
“Jeeves, you’re blabbering! What the hell are you thinking?”
Jeeves coughed. “Sir, I believe that after the events of the last few weeks, marriage would be a highly sensible step for you to take.”
The floor beneath my feet dropped away. My chin fell six feet deep, out of reach, where I could not pull it up again. Jeeves wanted to marry me off! To put me under wraps and close the box!
“The young lady has a very pleasant disposition”, said Jeeves through the haze, “but also intelligence and sensibility. Even more importantly, she shares your liking for - more or less - cultivated amusement.”
“Jeeves, are you trying to auction off a horse? Because that’s what you sound like you’re doing!”
“I think Miss Phnell-Bungham would in many ways make a very good companion to you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her, Jeeves, but what about me? I don’t want to marry! Especially not after… everything!”
“It would be sensible. And your family would certainly approve of your choice.”
“Sensible? You’re talking about cold reason when it comes to hot passion? About my family’s opinion, when it should be a decision of heart? Damn it, Jeeves, you know why I can’t marry. You know that I would marry nobody but you, in spite of everything my family would say and in spite of your hostility against my clothes and my penny dreadfuls…” How absurd it all sounded! At this point I was running out of air. I had to gasp a few times. “But I can’t marry you. Dash it, I can’t even make love to you. And since I can’t have you, I don’t want anybody particularly, thanks very much.”
I could see in his pale face that he was moved. “In this case, sir”, he said with a slight roughness in his voice, “you will have to let the young lady know that her affections are wasted.”
“That is exactly what I need you for, Jeeves.” I dropped onto a chair. “I can’t walk up to the girl and tell her to just keep lusting after her spider-fancier.”
Jeeves’ jaw began to move sideways. His eyes began to wander towards the left side of the ceiling. “I fancy, sir, that her affections for Mr Spinnerett are not quite dead, just momentarily distracted. If Mr Spinnerett were to court her, I think it highly likely that she would quickly be charmed by him again.”
“Yes, but how? There is a light-sleeping mother factor between her bedroom and the drawing-room. She can’t get there.”
“No, sir, but you can.”
The scales fell from my eyes. “You mean, I get the blasted spider…”
“Scorpion, sir.”
“… and bring it to Spinnerett?”
“It would be advisable to do so while Mr Spinnerett is playing Bridge tonight, and to leave a note with some words of a passionate nature, together with some instructions, signed with a forged signature of the young lady.”
“Ah, but there is one problem. I can’t pick the blasted thing up in the morning and put it back in its tank before the old man notices it’s gone, because I don’t know which scorpion is which. I might, just as likely as not, swap them, and then where would we be?”
“Mr Spinnerett could easily sort this out, sir.”
“Yes, but he expects Daffy to come by and collect the beast. Say what you want about his distracted scientific nature, but he’ll notice that I’m not Daffy!”
Jeeves coughed. “Yes, sir, it would take something in the nature of diversionary tactics. I suggest you abduct the male scorpion. It joins the female in the tank, while Mr Spinnerett is away - the Bridge evening tomorrow should be an ideal opportunity. You leave a note, saying you will make Father - that is, Mr Phnell-Bungham - believe that the scorpion escaped all by itself, and that Mr Spinnerett should pretend that he found it in the house, no sooner than tea-time. By then, Mr Phnell-Bungham will be very grateful to the finder, and he will not know of the mating that has taken place.”
“But what if Betsy eats Emerald after mating?”
“In this case, sir, Emerald will be tragically missing forever, perhaps assumed to have been trodden to death under a careless shoe. In any case, Mr Spinnerett will soon be able to supply Mr Phnell-Bungham with new specimen.”
“Jeeves”, I said, and I swear my voice was heavy with tears of gratitude, “your plan is brilliant, but I know how to improve it even more. You do the whole thing. I’ll botch it. You know me.”
“I am sorry, but I must absolutely refuse. This book was on the mantelpiece, sir. It contains a useful manual on the handling and transport of scorpions, which will be very useful for your endeavour tonight.”
Things couldn’t have been more perfect for the fiendish strategy Jeeves had thought up. The night was warm, and the Bridge company was playing outside on the terraces. The drawing-room was empty, and Spinnerett was downstairs playing Bridge with the rest of Daffy’s friends.
And Bertram was sneaking down the stairs towards the drawing-room like a practised scorpion-thief. In my hand was a small cardboard box, and in the other the book that said how to handle the beasts. Nobody saw me come into the room. I closed the door as softly as a breeze and turned on a small light.
Old Bungham had, in his pride over his collection, labelled them all, the way a wine connoisseur would label his bottles. All I had to do was to find the South-Italian Cleft-Stinger (Jeeves had kindly written it down for me), and put the animal into the box. It couldn’t go wrong: Emerald was the only of his species in this room.
Just as soon as I had found the right tank, I was overcome by a terrible anxiety. My hands were shaking. The book said that the cleft-stingers weren’t particularly poisonous, but I still didn’t fancy getting stung by one of nature’s most vicious vermins. Emerald was sitting in his home, looking particularly sinister. He was just the sort whom you would use if you wanted to kill someone by giving them a heart attack, like they do in all those Sherlock Holmes stories. You want to kill an old enemy, you show him a particularly ugly creepy-crawly, and he keels over dead. It’s the perfect crime, except for the fact that at some point you have to handle the beast.
The book said that one should grab the tail near the stinger and then take the animal on the other hand, but how was I going to hold the box? I was definitely ill-equipped for the job in that I didn’t have enough hands.
“Hello old boy”, I said, my voice suave like a gravelly road, “Bertie’s going to take you to the adventure of a lifetime!”
Emerald was not touched. I opened the lid just a little bit, enough to squeeze my arm inside (did scorpions jump their victims insidiously? I had better keep the lid closed as far as possible), and shook my way down to the beast. He yielded a few steps from my hand, but then he got fed up and stayed put. With the power only true love can lend a man, I grabbed his tail and threw him into the cardboard box. Then I wiped the sweat from my brow.
I had him in the box, safe and sound. The rest should be easy. Now that my mind was clearer, it suddenly struck me that our cunning plan had one catch. It wasn’t very credible that Emerald should have escaped from a closed tank. I had to leave the tank a bit open, at least. Maybe old Bungham would believe that he was getting a bit senile, and that he had forgotten to close it.
But that sounded thin even to my ears. Bungham would never fall for it - him, leaving the tank of his most precious scorpion open! He would suspect foul play immediately. But if I left several tanks open, then the whole family would stand around the old man and tut-tut at him, and he would be so confused he wouldn’t even think of accusing anyone.
I had to select a few tanks, and do it quickly. But you don’t want a handful of the deadliest crawling around the house at night, and I had no time to get a few books and look up which was which. So I just made a quick silent prayer, closed my eyes and pointed my finger at a random tank. This one I opened. I did this five times more, and then I thought it enough. With any luck, they wouldn’t even feel like taking a stroll. One could only hope.
I made it to Spinnerett’s room unheard and unseen. He had a dozen small tanks on his desk, all labelled just like Bungham’s, and it was the work of a moment to drop Emerald in with Betsy. I then grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil from the desk and wrote a note.
From Daffy, with Love
Return Emerald tomorrow. Father thinks he has escaped from this tank. Come downstairs around teatime, pretend that you found him in the house.
After some more thinking, I added:
Piningly, Daffy
This should do. I left the two lovebirds to it, put the paper on the desk, and flew downstairs again. The Bridge party on the terrace was up and running when I entered.
“So”, I said and wiped my brow again. “What ho, everybody!”
Say what you want about Daffy Phnell-Bungham’s fickle heart - she had a very good taste in friends, and we made a merry bunch until shortly after midnight, when we were quite done playing, and also nobody could really hold the cards any more.
I, feeling not unlike an olive in a martini, and thoroughly satisfied with my performance in re: Emerald, tried to find my way to my room, and failed. Instead I ended up somewhere on the ground floor, in a corridor where I was certainly not supposed to be. Any minute now I would get into a kitchen-maid’s way and get charmed out of the chunnel, and look like a perfect fool even to the staff.
But it was no kitchen-maid I met, it was Jeeves. I met him between a doorway and a sideboard that was covered in dishes, and I counted on his infallible reflexes to avert an impact between the two corpi involved. I shouldn’t have. We collided in the doorway and whisked a few trays from the sideboard.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, not at all, my fault completely. I’m sozzled as an amarena cherry. You?”
“I have to admit, sir, it is the cook’s birthday and I was invited to… share a couple of drinks… more than I should have”, he added pensively.
“No, it’s fine, you deserve it, after the bad time we’ve all had”, I said. “It’s no fun, what, being lovesick.”
“No, sir.”
“I’m lost, Jeeves.”
“Lost, sir?”
“Can’t find my room.”
“Allow me, sir. I distinctly remember where we left it.” We set off, but we didn’t get far: one of the trays had perfidiously lodged itself between my calves, so that I fell over it, and took Jeeves with me. He hit the wall of the doorway, and I hit him. For a moment we had to collect our bearings. Then I realized how lovely it was, being pressed against him in this way. He wasn’t moving. His eyes had a sad shine to them as they looked down on me.
I felt the tender beginnings of an erection against me. He “wore” right, that much was certain, and as I did too, a bit of shifting was necessary to bring the two together. Jeeves’ eyes fell half-shut, his mouth opened just a bit, and he groaned under his breath as I began to slide slowly against him. His warmth, the scent of his skin, and our shared excitement made me bold enough to try a kiss.
So there I was, kissing my manservant in the doorway and rubbing my particulars against his, and I felt that this was all I had ever expected from life. But it didn’t last long. Suddenly his eyes flew open, and he pushed me away like a rag doll. He seems too confused to say anything at all. Only after he had picked up the trays, he cleared his throat and said hoarsely: “Follow me, sir.”
I knew what this meant. We Woosters know when a battle can’t be won, so I hung my head and followed him, let him put me into bed, and finally took care of my needs all alone. At least I was drunk enough to sleep like a rock afterwards.
Chapter: 5
Pairing: Jeeves/Wooster
Summary: Everything looked great after Jeeves came up with a cunning plan, but when that fails, Bertie finds himself in the soup again. Jeeves seems unwilling to help, so Bertie has to take drastic steps all by himself.
Rating: NC-17.
Words: 3000
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings or storylines; they were all thought up by PG Wodehouse (except for the Phnell-Bunghams and Mr Spinnerett, those are OCs). This story was written and published only for fun, and no financial profit is made by anyone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm not familiar with how to store a cock when not in use (I don't have one), but apparently in older days, when briefs were a lot spacier, guys just stuffed them down one trouser leg, and their tailor would cut the leg in question a bit wider than the other one. That's what I mean when I write he "wore" right. I hope I hit the right term. Strangely, I can't find a translation for the phenomenon anywhere.
----------------------------------------------
I was sitting in the tub, and Jeeves was bustling about the room.
“Jeeves”, I said, “you’ve done it again. Tomorrow by this time we’ll see Daffy and Spinnerett as an engaged couple, and I’m ready to bet on it.”
“Providing everything works according to plan, sir”, said Jeeves demurely. He had his back turned to me again, which pained me. He wouldn’t look at me in my birthday suit, these days. In the past he had always acted completely natural in the bathroom, and none of my naughtier bits had ever put him at unease. I felt now, if ever, that I loved him, and that all precautions had come too late. Fate had decided to make me fall in love with a cactus.
The next morning I got up and dressed, and took a little walk around the garden to reap the rewards of last night’s efforts. I met Daffy in the gazebo - by herself, which gave me a dark premonition.
“Hullo, hullo”, I said. “What news from the front?”
Daffy sighed and gave me a rummy look. “If I’d only got as far as the front! Bertie, you remember that I told you I had to sneak past Mother, right? My bedroom has only one way out - through another room, where she sleeps during the hot summer months, because her normal bedroom is too warm for her at the moment. Well, she noticed me.”
“No! She did? What did you tell her?”
“That I’d heard a strange sound from the garden. Well, that was the worst possible excuse, but it was the only thing I could think of. She didn’t believe a word of it. I didn’t try it again. Imagine, if I had woken her up again!”
“That wouldn’t do at all.”
Daffy sighed heavily. “Well, here we are. No Emerald for Betsy, no Albert for me. I don’t dare to try it again, Bertie.”
“But… but… we must find a way!” I sat down beside her and patted her arm in sympathy. “I’ll tell Jeeves, and he’ll work his grey matter for five seconds and come up with another corker, you’ll see!”
Daffy looked at me for a moment too long. I did not like that. “I’m starting to think”, she said, sliding closer, “that it’s for the best. Albert - I should say Mr Spinnerett - is certainly a looker, but that’s not everything in life, is it? I’m thinking that maybe the man for me should be more approachable, and sweet, and know how to keep me entertained.”
The hair in the back of my neck was beginning to stand on end.
“What? I mean, what... what’s wrong with a man who’s… handsome and… serious and… scient… ific…” My voice trickled away like a tiny stream in the depths of the Sahara desert. Daffy was giving me chocolate eyes again, and this time she meant it.
“I think you know what I mean”, she said with a horrible twinkle. “Your man tells me that women never appreciate you for what you are. And I think you’re fabulous.”
“Well, no! You are completely mistaken! I’m not approachable! Worse than a clam, they say in my family! Bertie, he’s more reclusive than a clam. In fact, they say Bertie when they mean clam, that’s how bad it is! And I don’t know how to entertain anybody. I’m dead boring! In fact, when I’m dead, my funeral will bore thousands! Martha, they’ll say when they come home, Uncle John’ funeral was the Moulin Rouge compared to this!”
Daffy chuckled under her breath, and I realized to my horror that she found this rushed speech from my parched lips entertaining.
“You will join my friends tonight at the Bridge evening, won’t you?” she asked sweetly.
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
“Good. Care to go for a stroll?”
I jumped up and hit my head on the roof of the gazebo. “No. I mean, sad as it is, I have some very urgent business to do. Can’t wait. Sorry.”
And I ran down the garden path and made the gravel fly.
I shot through the door into my room, barricaded the door, and hid under the window.
“Jeeves”, I cried out in a hushed voice, “I want your advice!”
“Very good, sir.” Jeeves materialized out of the adjoining room.
“I say. I say, Daffy has changed her mind. Now she wants me. You must find a way to get her off my back. My life depends on your quick thinking!”
“Sir, may I ask what makes a matrimonial union with Miss Phnell-Bungham so unappealing to you?”
I gaped at the man. “You what?! Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t marry her!”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, she is in many ways superior to most fiancées from your past.”
“Jeeves, you’re blabbering! What the hell are you thinking?”
Jeeves coughed. “Sir, I believe that after the events of the last few weeks, marriage would be a highly sensible step for you to take.”
The floor beneath my feet dropped away. My chin fell six feet deep, out of reach, where I could not pull it up again. Jeeves wanted to marry me off! To put me under wraps and close the box!
“The young lady has a very pleasant disposition”, said Jeeves through the haze, “but also intelligence and sensibility. Even more importantly, she shares your liking for - more or less - cultivated amusement.”
“Jeeves, are you trying to auction off a horse? Because that’s what you sound like you’re doing!”
“I think Miss Phnell-Bungham would in many ways make a very good companion to you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her, Jeeves, but what about me? I don’t want to marry! Especially not after… everything!”
“It would be sensible. And your family would certainly approve of your choice.”
“Sensible? You’re talking about cold reason when it comes to hot passion? About my family’s opinion, when it should be a decision of heart? Damn it, Jeeves, you know why I can’t marry. You know that I would marry nobody but you, in spite of everything my family would say and in spite of your hostility against my clothes and my penny dreadfuls…” How absurd it all sounded! At this point I was running out of air. I had to gasp a few times. “But I can’t marry you. Dash it, I can’t even make love to you. And since I can’t have you, I don’t want anybody particularly, thanks very much.”
I could see in his pale face that he was moved. “In this case, sir”, he said with a slight roughness in his voice, “you will have to let the young lady know that her affections are wasted.”
“That is exactly what I need you for, Jeeves.” I dropped onto a chair. “I can’t walk up to the girl and tell her to just keep lusting after her spider-fancier.”
Jeeves’ jaw began to move sideways. His eyes began to wander towards the left side of the ceiling. “I fancy, sir, that her affections for Mr Spinnerett are not quite dead, just momentarily distracted. If Mr Spinnerett were to court her, I think it highly likely that she would quickly be charmed by him again.”
“Yes, but how? There is a light-sleeping mother factor between her bedroom and the drawing-room. She can’t get there.”
“No, sir, but you can.”
The scales fell from my eyes. “You mean, I get the blasted spider…”
“Scorpion, sir.”
“… and bring it to Spinnerett?”
“It would be advisable to do so while Mr Spinnerett is playing Bridge tonight, and to leave a note with some words of a passionate nature, together with some instructions, signed with a forged signature of the young lady.”
“Ah, but there is one problem. I can’t pick the blasted thing up in the morning and put it back in its tank before the old man notices it’s gone, because I don’t know which scorpion is which. I might, just as likely as not, swap them, and then where would we be?”
“Mr Spinnerett could easily sort this out, sir.”
“Yes, but he expects Daffy to come by and collect the beast. Say what you want about his distracted scientific nature, but he’ll notice that I’m not Daffy!”
Jeeves coughed. “Yes, sir, it would take something in the nature of diversionary tactics. I suggest you abduct the male scorpion. It joins the female in the tank, while Mr Spinnerett is away - the Bridge evening tomorrow should be an ideal opportunity. You leave a note, saying you will make Father - that is, Mr Phnell-Bungham - believe that the scorpion escaped all by itself, and that Mr Spinnerett should pretend that he found it in the house, no sooner than tea-time. By then, Mr Phnell-Bungham will be very grateful to the finder, and he will not know of the mating that has taken place.”
“But what if Betsy eats Emerald after mating?”
“In this case, sir, Emerald will be tragically missing forever, perhaps assumed to have been trodden to death under a careless shoe. In any case, Mr Spinnerett will soon be able to supply Mr Phnell-Bungham with new specimen.”
“Jeeves”, I said, and I swear my voice was heavy with tears of gratitude, “your plan is brilliant, but I know how to improve it even more. You do the whole thing. I’ll botch it. You know me.”
“I am sorry, but I must absolutely refuse. This book was on the mantelpiece, sir. It contains a useful manual on the handling and transport of scorpions, which will be very useful for your endeavour tonight.”
Things couldn’t have been more perfect for the fiendish strategy Jeeves had thought up. The night was warm, and the Bridge company was playing outside on the terraces. The drawing-room was empty, and Spinnerett was downstairs playing Bridge with the rest of Daffy’s friends.
And Bertram was sneaking down the stairs towards the drawing-room like a practised scorpion-thief. In my hand was a small cardboard box, and in the other the book that said how to handle the beasts. Nobody saw me come into the room. I closed the door as softly as a breeze and turned on a small light.
Old Bungham had, in his pride over his collection, labelled them all, the way a wine connoisseur would label his bottles. All I had to do was to find the South-Italian Cleft-Stinger (Jeeves had kindly written it down for me), and put the animal into the box. It couldn’t go wrong: Emerald was the only of his species in this room.
Just as soon as I had found the right tank, I was overcome by a terrible anxiety. My hands were shaking. The book said that the cleft-stingers weren’t particularly poisonous, but I still didn’t fancy getting stung by one of nature’s most vicious vermins. Emerald was sitting in his home, looking particularly sinister. He was just the sort whom you would use if you wanted to kill someone by giving them a heart attack, like they do in all those Sherlock Holmes stories. You want to kill an old enemy, you show him a particularly ugly creepy-crawly, and he keels over dead. It’s the perfect crime, except for the fact that at some point you have to handle the beast.
The book said that one should grab the tail near the stinger and then take the animal on the other hand, but how was I going to hold the box? I was definitely ill-equipped for the job in that I didn’t have enough hands.
“Hello old boy”, I said, my voice suave like a gravelly road, “Bertie’s going to take you to the adventure of a lifetime!”
Emerald was not touched. I opened the lid just a little bit, enough to squeeze my arm inside (did scorpions jump their victims insidiously? I had better keep the lid closed as far as possible), and shook my way down to the beast. He yielded a few steps from my hand, but then he got fed up and stayed put. With the power only true love can lend a man, I grabbed his tail and threw him into the cardboard box. Then I wiped the sweat from my brow.
I had him in the box, safe and sound. The rest should be easy. Now that my mind was clearer, it suddenly struck me that our cunning plan had one catch. It wasn’t very credible that Emerald should have escaped from a closed tank. I had to leave the tank a bit open, at least. Maybe old Bungham would believe that he was getting a bit senile, and that he had forgotten to close it.
But that sounded thin even to my ears. Bungham would never fall for it - him, leaving the tank of his most precious scorpion open! He would suspect foul play immediately. But if I left several tanks open, then the whole family would stand around the old man and tut-tut at him, and he would be so confused he wouldn’t even think of accusing anyone.
I had to select a few tanks, and do it quickly. But you don’t want a handful of the deadliest crawling around the house at night, and I had no time to get a few books and look up which was which. So I just made a quick silent prayer, closed my eyes and pointed my finger at a random tank. This one I opened. I did this five times more, and then I thought it enough. With any luck, they wouldn’t even feel like taking a stroll. One could only hope.
I made it to Spinnerett’s room unheard and unseen. He had a dozen small tanks on his desk, all labelled just like Bungham’s, and it was the work of a moment to drop Emerald in with Betsy. I then grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil from the desk and wrote a note.
From Daffy, with Love
Return Emerald tomorrow. Father thinks he has escaped from this tank. Come downstairs around teatime, pretend that you found him in the house.
After some more thinking, I added:
Piningly, Daffy
This should do. I left the two lovebirds to it, put the paper on the desk, and flew downstairs again. The Bridge party on the terrace was up and running when I entered.
“So”, I said and wiped my brow again. “What ho, everybody!”
Say what you want about Daffy Phnell-Bungham’s fickle heart - she had a very good taste in friends, and we made a merry bunch until shortly after midnight, when we were quite done playing, and also nobody could really hold the cards any more.
I, feeling not unlike an olive in a martini, and thoroughly satisfied with my performance in re: Emerald, tried to find my way to my room, and failed. Instead I ended up somewhere on the ground floor, in a corridor where I was certainly not supposed to be. Any minute now I would get into a kitchen-maid’s way and get charmed out of the chunnel, and look like a perfect fool even to the staff.
But it was no kitchen-maid I met, it was Jeeves. I met him between a doorway and a sideboard that was covered in dishes, and I counted on his infallible reflexes to avert an impact between the two corpi involved. I shouldn’t have. We collided in the doorway and whisked a few trays from the sideboard.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“No, not at all, my fault completely. I’m sozzled as an amarena cherry. You?”
“I have to admit, sir, it is the cook’s birthday and I was invited to… share a couple of drinks… more than I should have”, he added pensively.
“No, it’s fine, you deserve it, after the bad time we’ve all had”, I said. “It’s no fun, what, being lovesick.”
“No, sir.”
“I’m lost, Jeeves.”
“Lost, sir?”
“Can’t find my room.”
“Allow me, sir. I distinctly remember where we left it.” We set off, but we didn’t get far: one of the trays had perfidiously lodged itself between my calves, so that I fell over it, and took Jeeves with me. He hit the wall of the doorway, and I hit him. For a moment we had to collect our bearings. Then I realized how lovely it was, being pressed against him in this way. He wasn’t moving. His eyes had a sad shine to them as they looked down on me.
I felt the tender beginnings of an erection against me. He “wore” right, that much was certain, and as I did too, a bit of shifting was necessary to bring the two together. Jeeves’ eyes fell half-shut, his mouth opened just a bit, and he groaned under his breath as I began to slide slowly against him. His warmth, the scent of his skin, and our shared excitement made me bold enough to try a kiss.
So there I was, kissing my manservant in the doorway and rubbing my particulars against his, and I felt that this was all I had ever expected from life. But it didn’t last long. Suddenly his eyes flew open, and he pushed me away like a rag doll. He seems too confused to say anything at all. Only after he had picked up the trays, he cleared his throat and said hoarsely: “Follow me, sir.”
I knew what this meant. We Woosters know when a battle can’t be won, so I hung my head and followed him, let him put me into bed, and finally took care of my needs all alone. At least I was drunk enough to sleep like a rock afterwards.