I could speak no more. Emotion had overmastered my voice. I was at a loss
and not abreast; but of one thing, it seemed to me, there could be no
doubt. For some reason, not to be fathomed now, but most certainly to be
gone well into as soon as I had pushed this infernal sewing-machine of
mine over those nine miles of lonely, country road and got within
striking distance of him, Jeeves had been doing the dirty. Knowing that
at any given moment he could have solved the whole situation, he had kept
Aunt Dahlia and others roosting out on the front lawn _en deshabille_
and, worse still, had stood calmly by and watched his young employer set
out on a wholly unnecessary eighteen-mile bicycle ride.

I could scarcely believe such a thing of him. Of his Uncle Cyril, yes.
With that distorted sense of humour of his, Uncle Cyril might quite
conceivably have been capable of such conduct. But that it should be
Jeeves--

I leaped into the saddle and, stifling the cry of agony which rose to the
lips as the bruised person touched the hard leather, set out on the
homeward journey.

-23-

I remember Jeeves saying on one occasion--I forgot how the subject had
arisen--he may simply have thrown the observation out, as he does
sometimes, for me to take or leave--that hell hath no fury like a woman
scorned. And until tonight I had always felt that there was a lot in it.
I had never scorned a woman myself, but Pongo Twistleton once scorned an
aunt of his, flatly refusing to meet her son Gerald at Paddington and
give him lunch and see him off to school at Waterloo, and he never heard
the end of it. Letters were written, he tells me, which had to be seen to
be believed. Also two very strong telegrams and a bitter picture post
card with a view of the Little Chilbury War Memorial on it.

Until tonight, therefore, as I say, I had never questioned the accuracy
of the statement. Scorned women first and the rest nowhere, was how it
had always seemed to me.

But tonight I revised my views. If you want to know what hell can really
do in the way of furies, look for the chap who has been hornswoggled into
taking a long and unnecessary bicycle ride in the dark without a lamp.

Mark that word "unnecessary". That was the part of it that really jabbed
the iron into the soul. I mean, if it was a case of riding to the
doctor's to save the child with croup, or going off to the local pub to
fetch supplies in the event of the cellar having run dry, no