ith you one
day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning
purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me
tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow
a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid."

"But, dash it!" I cried. "Do you know what's happened? Madeline Bassett
says she's going to marry me!"

"I hope it keeps fine for you," said the relative, and passed from the
room looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

-21-

I don't suppose I was looking so dashed unlike something out of an Edgar
Allan Poe story myself, for, as you can readily imagine, the news item
which I have just recorded had got in amongst me properly. If the
Bassett, in the belief that the Wooster heart had long been hers and was
waiting ready to be scooped in on demand, had decided to take up her
option, I should, as a man of honour and sensibility, have no choice but
to come across and kick in. The matter was obviously not one that could
be straightened out with a curt _nolle prosequi_. All the evidence,
therefore, seemed to point to the fact that the doom had come upon me
and, what was more, had come to stay.

And yet, though it would be idle to pretend that my grip on the situation
was quite the grip I would have liked it to be, I did not despair of
arriving at a solution. A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would
no doubt have thrown in the towel at once and ceased to struggle; but the
whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men.

By way of a start, I read the note again. Not that I had any hope that a
second perusal would enable me to place a different construction on its
contents, but it helped to fill in while the brain was limbering up. I
then, to assist thought, had another go at the fruit salad, and in
addition ate a slice of sponge cake. And it was as I passed on to the
cheese that the machinery started working. I saw what had to be done.

To the question which had been exercising the mind--viz., can Bertram
cope?--I was now able to reply with a confident "Absolutely."

The great wheeze on these occasions of dirty work at the crossroads is
not to lose your head but to keep cool and try to find the ringleaders.
Once find the ringleaders, and you know where you are.

The ringleader here was plainly the Bassett. It was she who had started
the whole imbroglio by chucking Gussie, and it was clear that before