softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn’t the key. It wasn’t for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it out again.
Where the dickens were my evening things? I had looked all over the place before I remembered that Jeeves must have taken them away to brush. To leap at the bell and ring it was, with me, the work of a moment. I had just rung it when there was a footstep outside, and in came Uncle Willoughby.
“Oh, Bertie,” he said, without a blush, “I have—ah—received a telegram from Berkeley, who occupied this room in your absence, asking me to forward him his—er—his cigarette-case, which, it would appear, he inadvertently omitted to take with him when he left the house. I cannot find it downstairs; and it has, therefore, occurred to me that he may have left it in this room. I will—er—just take a look around.”
It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I’ve ever seen—this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.
“I haven’t seen it anywhere,” I said.
“Nevertheless, I will search. I must—ah—spare no effort.”
“I should have seen it if it had been here—what?”