Skeldings. Sir Roderick Glossop will be there.”
“What!”
“Don’t bellow like that. You nearly deafened me.”
“Did you say Sir Roderick Glossop?”
“I did.”
“You don’t mean Tuppy Glossop?”
“I mean Sir Roderick Glossop. Now, Bertie, I want you to listen to me attentively. Are you there?”
“Yes. Still here.”
“Well, then, listen. I have at last succeeded, after incredible difficulty and in face of all the evidence, in almost persuading Sir Roderick that you are not actually insane. He is prepared to suspend judgment until he has seen you once more. On your behaviour at Skeldings, therefore—”
But I had hung up the receiver. Shaken. That’s what I was. S. to the core.
Stop me if I’ve told you this before, but, in case you don’t know, let me just mention the facts in the matter of this Glossop. He was a formidable old bird with a bald head and outsize eyebrows, by profession a loony-doctor. How it happened, I couldn’t tell you to this day, but I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast. The fixture was scratched owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my napper; and since then he has always had my name at the top of his list of Loonies I Have Lunched With.