P G Wodehouse - Much Obliged, Jeeves

'That's all right,' he said. 'It would, I admit, appear to be a tricky situation, but I can handle it. I'm going to get Florence to break the engagement.'

He spoke with such a gay, confident ring in his voice, so like the old ancestor predicting what she was going to do to L. P. Runkle in the playing-on-a-stringed-instrument-line, that I was loth, if that's the word I want, to say anything to depress him, but the question had to be asked.

'How? ' I said, asking it.

'Quite simple. We agreed, I think, that she has no use for a loser. I propose to lose this election.'

Well, it was a thought of course, and I was in complete agreement with his supposition that if the McCorkadale nosed ahead of him in the voting, Florence would in all probability hand him the pink slip, but where it seemed to me that the current went awry was that he had no means of knowing that the electorate would put him in second place. Of course voters are like aunts, you never know what they will be up to from one day to the next, but it was a thing you couldn't count on. I mentioned this to him, and he repeated his impersonation of a leaky radiator.

'Don't you worry, Bertie. I have the situation well in hand. Something happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch which justifies my confidence.'

'What happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch?'

'Well, the first thing that happened after lunch was that Florence got hold of me and became extremely personal. It was then that I realized that it would be the act of a fathead to marry her.'

I nodded adhesion to this sentiment. That time when she had broken her engagement with me my spirits had soared and I had gone about singing like a relieved nightingale.

One thing rather puzzled me and seemed to call for explanatory notes.

'Why did Florence draw you into a dark corner when planning to become personal? ' I asked. 'I wouldn't have credited her with so much tact and consideration. As a rule, when she's telling people what she thinks of them, an audience seems to stimulate her. I recall one occasion when she ticked me off in the presence of seventeen Girl Guides, all listening with their ears flapping, and she had never spoken more fluently.'

He put me straight on the point I had raised. He said he had misled me.

'It wasn't Florence who drew me into the dark corner, it was Bingley.'

'Bingley?'

'A fellow who worked for me once.'

'He worked for me once.'

'Really? It's a small world, isn't it.'

'Pretty small. Did you know he'd come into money?'

'He'll soon be coming into some more.'

'But you were saying he drew you into the dark corner. Why did he do that?'

'Because he had a proposition to make to me which demanded privacy. He... but before going on I must lay a proper foundation. You know in those Perry Mason stories how whenever Perry says anything while crossexamining a witness, the District Attorney jumps up and yells "Objection your honour. The S.O.B. has laid no proper foundation". Well, then, you must know that this man Bingley belongs to a butlers and valets club in London called the Junior Ganymede, and one of the rules there is that members have to record the doings of their employers in the club book.'

I would have told him I knew all too well about that, but he carried on before I could speak.

'Such a book, as you can imagine, contains a lot of damaging stuff, and he told me he had been obliged to contribute several pages about me which, if revealed, would lose me so many votes that the election would be a gift to my opponent. He added that some men in his place would have sold it to the opposition and made a lot of money, but he wouldn't do a thing like that because it would be low and in the short time we were together he had come to have a great affection for me. I had never realized before what an extraordinarily good chap he was. I had always thought him a bit of a squirt. Shows hdw wrong you can be about people.'

Again I would have spoken, but he rolled over me like a tidal wave.