And then he saw me lurking on the outskirts, and gave a startled grunt, as if I hurt him a good deal internally.
“This—” began the prof, waving in my direction.
“I am already acquainted with Mr. Wooster.”
“This,” went on the prof, “is Miss Sipperley’s nephew Oliver. You remember Miss Sipperley?”
“What do you mean?” barked Sir Roderick. Having had so much to do with loonies has given him a rather sharp and authoritative manner on occasion. “This is that wretched young man, Bertram Wooster. What is all this nonsense about Olivers and Sipperleys?”
The prof was eyeing me with some natural surprise. So were the others. I beamed a bit weakly.
“Well, as a matter of fact—” I said.
The prof was wrestling with the situation. You could hear his brain buzzing.
“He said he was Oliver Sipperley,” he moaned.
“Come here!” bellowed Sir Roderick. “Am I to understand that you have inflicted yourself on this household under the pretence of being the nephew of an old friend?”
It seemed a pretty accurate description of the facts.
“Well—er—yes,” I said.
Sir Roderick shot an eye at me. It entered the body somewhere about the top stud, roamed around inside for a bit, and went out at the back.
“Insane! Quite insane, as I knew from the first moment I saw him.”