B REAKFAST was over, and the guests of Blandings had scattered to their morning occupations. Some were writing letters, some were in the billiard-room: some had gone to the stables, some to the links: Lady Constance was interviewing the housekeeper, Lord Emsworth harrying head-gardener McAllister among the flower-beds: and in the Yew Alley, the dappled sunlight falling upon her graceful head, Miss Peavey walked pensively up and down.
She was alone. It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone—if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck. Not one of the horde of visitors who had arrived overnight for the County Ball had shown any disposition whatever to court Miss Peavey’s society.
One regrets this. Except for that slight bias towards dishonesty which led her to steal everything she could lay her hands on that was not nailed down, Aileen Peavey’s was an admirable character; and, oddly enough, it was the noble side of her nature to which these coarse-fibred critics objected. Of Miss Peavey, the purloiner of other people’s goods, they knew nothing; the woman they were dodging was Miss Peavey, the poetess. And it may be mentioned that,[p. 207] however much she might unbend in the presence of a congenial friend like Mr. Edward Cootes, she was a perfectly genuine poetess. Those six volumes under her name in the British Museum catalogue were her own genuine and unaided work: and, though she had been compelled to pay for the production of the first of the series, the other five had been brought out at her publisher’s own risk, and had even made a little money.
Miss Peavey, however, was not sorry to be alone: for she had that on her mind which called for solitary thinking. The matter engaging her attention was the problem of what on earth had happened to Mr. Edward Cootes. Two days had passed since he had left her to go and force Psmith at the pistol’s point to introduce him into the castle: and since that moment he had vanished completely. Miss Peavey could not understand it.
His non-appearance was all the more galling in that her superb brain had just completed in every detail a scheme for the seizure of Lady Constance Keeble’s diamond necklace; and to the success of this plot his aid was an indispensable adjunct. She was in the position of a general who comes from his tent with a plan of battle all mapped out, and finds that his army has strolled off somewhere and left him. Little wonder that, as she paced the Yew Alley, there was a frown on Miss Peavey’s fair forehead.
The Yew Alley, as Lord Emsworth had indicated in his extremely interesting lecture to Mr. Ralston McTodd at the Senior Conservative Club, contained among other noteworthy features certain yews which rose in solid blocks with rounded roof and stemless mushroom finials, the majority possessing arched recesses, forming arbors. As Miss Peavey was passing one of these, a voice suddenly addressed her.
[p. 208]“Hey!”
Miss Peavey started violently.
“Anyone about?”
A damp face with twigs sticking to it was protruding from a near-by yew. It rolled its eyes in an ineffectual effort to see round the corner.
Miss Peavey drew nearer, breathing heavily. The question as to the whereabouts of her wandering boy was solved; but the abruptness of his return had caused her to bite her tongue; and joy, as she confronted him, was blended with other emotions.
“You dish-faced gazooni!” she exclaimed heatedly, her voice trembling with a sense of ill-usage, “where do you get that stuff, hiding in trees, and barking a girl’s head off?”
“Sorry, Liz. I . . .”
“And where,” proceeded Miss Peavey, ventilating another grievance, “have you been all this darned time? Gosh-dingit, you leave me a coupla days back saying you’re going to stick up this bozo that calls himself McTodd with a gat and make him get you into the house, and that’s the last I see of you. What’s the big idea?”
“It’s all right, Liz. He did get me into the house. I’m his valet. That’s why I couldn’t get at you before. The way the help has to keep itself to itself in this joint, we might as well have been in different counties. If I hadn’t happened to see you snooping off by yourself this morning . . .”
Miss Peavey’s keen mind grasped the position of affairs.
“All right, all right,” she interrupted, ever impatient of long speeches from others. “I understand. Well, this is good, Ed. It couldn’t have worked out better. I’ve got a scheme all doped out, and now you’re here we can get busy.”
[p. 209]“A scheme?”
“A pippin,” assented Miss Peavey.
“It’ll need to be,” said Mr. Cootes, on whom the events of the last few days had caused pessimism to set its seal. “I tell you that McTodd gook is smooth. He somehow,” said Mr. Cootes prudently, for he feared harsh criticisms from his lady-love should he reveal the whole truth, “he somehow got wise to the notion that, as I was his valet, I could go and snoop round in his room, where he’d be wanting to hide the stuff if he ever got it, and now he’s gone and got them to let him have a kind of shack in the woods.”
............