ut the Brinkley Court fire bell. The dickens of a row it
makes. Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has
always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he
bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that
might give you heart failure, but which you couldn't possibly mistake for
the drowsy chirping of a sparrow in the ivy.

When I was a kid and spent my holidays at Brinkley, we used to have fire
drills after closing time, and many is the night I've had it jerk me out
of the dreamless like the Last Trump.

I confess that the recollection of what this bell could do when it
buckled down to it gave me pause as I stood that night at 12.30 p.m.
prompt beside the outhouse where it was located. The sight of the rope
against the whitewashed wall and the thought of the bloodsome uproar
which was about to smash the peace of the night into hash served to
deepen that rummy feeling to which I have alluded.

Moreover, now that I had had time to meditate upon it, I was more than
ever defeatist about this scheme of Jeeves's.

Jeeves seemed to take it for granted that Gussie and Tuppy, faced with a
hideous fate, would have no thought beyond saving the Bassett and Angela.

I could not bring myself to share his sunny confidence.

I mean to say, I know how moments when they're faced with a hideous fate
affect chaps. I remember Freddie Widgeon, one of the most chivalrous
birds in the Drones, telling me how there was an alarm of fire once at a
seaside hotel where he was staying and, so far from rushing about saving
women, he was down the escape within ten seconds of the kick-off, his
mind concerned with but one thing--viz., the personal well-being of
F. Widgeon.

As far as any idea of doing the delicately nurtured a bit of good went,
he tells me, he was prepared to stand underneath and catch them in
blankets, but no more.

Why, then, should this not be so with Augustus Fink-Nottle and Hildebrand
Glossop?

Such were my thoughts as I stood toying with the rope, and I believe I
should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this
juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing that
bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it would
probably startle her into a decline.

And so agreeable was this reflection that I waited no longer, but seized
the rope, braced the feet and snapped into it.

Well, as I say, I hadn't b