I sent Jeeves a telegram saying I was coming, and drove straight to Bingo’s place when I reached town. I wanted to find out the general posish of affairs. But apparently the man was out. I rang a couple of times but nothing happened, and I was just going to leg it when I heard the sound of footsteps inside and the door opened. It wasn’t one of the cheeriest moments of my career when I found myself peering into the globular face of Lord Bittlesham.

“Oh, er, hallo!” I said. And there was a bit of a pause.

I don’t quite know what I had been expecting the old boy to do if, by bad luck, we should ever meet again, but I had a sort of general idea that he would turn fairly purple and start almost immediately to let me have it in the gizzard. It struck me as somewhat rummy, therefore, when he simply smiled weakly. A sort of frozen smile it was. His eyes kind of bulged and he swallowed once or twice.

“Er.⁠ ⁠…” he said.