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could you, Jeeves?’
    ‘I fear
not, sir.’
    ‘It
contains matter that can fairly be described as dynamite.’
    ‘Very true,
sir.’
    ‘Suppose
the contents were bruited about and reached the ears of my Aunt Agatha?’
    ‘You
need have no concern on that point, sir. Each member fully understands that
perfect discretion is a sine qua non.’
    ‘All
the same I’d feel happier if that page —‘
    ‘Those
eleven pages, sir.’
    ‘— if
those eleven pages were consigned to the flames.’ A sudden thought struck me.
‘Is there anything about Stilton Cheesewright in the book?’
    ‘A
certain amount, sir.’
    ‘Damaging?’
    ‘Not in
the real sense of the word, sir. His personal attendant merely reports that he
has a habit, when moved, of saying “Ho!” and does Swedish exercises in the nude
each morning before breakfast.’
    I
sighed. I hadn’t really hoped, and yet it had been a disappointment. I have
always held — rightly, I think — that nothing eases the tension of a difficult
situation like a well—spotted bit of blackmail, and it would have been
agreeable to have been in a position to go to Stilton and say ‘Cheesewright, I
know your secret!’ and watch him wilt. But you can’t fulfil yourself to any
real extent in that direction if all the party of the second part does is say
‘Ho!’. and tie himself into knots before sailing into the eggs and b. It was
plain that with Stilton there could be no such moral triumph as I had achieved
in the case of Roderick Spode.
    ‘Ah,
well,’ I said resignedly, ‘if that’s that, that’s that, what?’
    ‘So it
would appear, sir.
    ‘Nothing
to do but keep the chin up and the upper lip as stiff as can be managed. I
think I’ll go to bed with an improving book. Have you read The Mystery of
the Pink Crayfish by Rex West?’
    ‘No,
sir, I have not enjoyed that experience. Oh, pardon me, sir, I was forgetting.
Lady Florence Craye spoke to me on the telephone shortly before you came in.
Her ladyship would be glad if you would ring her up. I will get the number,
sir.’
    I was
puzzled. I could make nothing of this. No reason, of course, why she shouldn’t
want me to give her a buzz, but on the other hand no reason that I could see
why she should.
    ‘She
didn’t say what she wanted?’
    ‘No,
sir.’
    ‘Odd,
Jeeves.’
    ‘Yes,
sir… One moment, m’lady. Here is Mr. Wooster. ‘I took the instrument from him
and hullo-ed.
    ‘Bertie?’
    ‘On the
spot.’
    ‘I hope
you weren’t in bed?’
    ‘No,
no.’
    ‘I
thought you wouldn’t be. Bertie, will you do something for me? I want you to
take me to a night club tonight.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘A
night club. Rather a low one. I mean garish and all that sort of thing. It’s
for the book I’m writing. Atmosphere.’
    ‘Oh,
ah,’ I said, enlightened. I knew all about this atmosphere thing. Bingo Little’s
wife, the well-known novelist Rosie M. Banks, is as hot as a pistol on it,
Bingo has often told me. She frequently sends him off to take notes of this and
that so that she shall have plenty of ammunition for her next chapter. If
you’re a novelist, apparently, you have to get your atmosphere correct, or your
public starts writing you stinkers beginning ‘Dear Madam, are you aware…?’
‘You’re doing something about a night club?’
    ‘Yes,
I’m just coming to the part where my hero goes to one, and I’ve never been to
any except the respectable ones where everybody goes, which aren’t the sort of
thing I want. What I need is something more —‘
    ‘Garish?’
    ‘Yes,
garish.’
    ‘You
want to go tonight?’
    ‘It
must be tonight, because I’m off tomorrow afternoon to Brinkley.’
    ‘Oh,
you’re going to stay with Aunt Dahlia?’
    ‘Yes.
Well, can you manage it?’
    ‘Oh,
rather. Delighted.’
    ‘Good.
D’Arcy Cheesewright,’ said Florence, and I noted the steely what-d’you-call-it
in her voice, ‘was to have taken me, but he finds himself unable to. So I’ve
had to fall back on