I had just time to refill the bulb and shove it beside Biffy’s plate, when the door opened and Sir Roderick came in. I was picking up the fallen table at the moment, and he started talking brightly to my back.
“Good afternoon. I trust I am not— Mr. Wooster!”
I’m bound to say I was not feeling entirely at my ease. There is something about the man that is calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart. If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.
“How are you, how are you, how are you?” I said, overcoming a slight desire to leap backwards out of the window. “Long time since we met, what?”
“Nevertheless, I remember you most distinctly, Mr. Wooster.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Old Biffy asked me to come and join you in mangling a bit of lunch.”
He waggled the eyebrows at me.
“Are you a friend of Charles Biffen?”
“Oh, rather. Been friends for years and years.”
He drew in his breath sharply, and I could see that Biffy’s stock had dropped several points. His eye fell on the floor, which was strewn with things that had tumbled off the upset table.
“Have you had an accident?” he said.