Presently, having completed my toilet, I bade the man a cheery farewell and in generous mood suggested that, as I was dining out, why didn’t he take the evening off and go to some improving picture or something. Sort of olive branch, if you see what I mean.

He didn’t seem to think much of it.

“Thank you, sir, I will remain in.”

I surveyed him narrowly.

“Is this dudgeon, Jeeves?”

“No, sir, I am obliged to remain on the premises. Mr. Fink-Nottle informed me he would be calling to see me this evening.”

“Oh, Gussie’s coming, is he? Well, give him my love.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And a whisky and soda, and so forth.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Right ho, Jeeves.”

I then set off for the Drones.

At the Drones I ran into Pongo Twistleton, and he talked so much about this forthcoming merry-making of his, of which good reports had already reached me through my correspondents, that it was nearing eleven when I got home again.

And scarcely had I opened the door when I heard voices in the sitting-room, and scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found that these proceeded from Jeeves and what appeared at first sight to be the Devil.

A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.

-2-

“What-ho, Gussie,” I said.

You couldn’t have told it from my manner, but I was feeling more than a bit nonplussed. The spectacle before me was enough to nonplus anyone. I mean to say, this Fink-Nottle, as I remembered him, was the sort of shy, shrinking goop who might have been expected to shake like an aspen if invited to so much as a social Saturday afternoon at the vicarage. And yet here he was, if one 

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