Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Categories: [ Books/Wodehouse ]
Published in 1963.
Bertie's friend Pinker tells him that his fiancee Stiffy Bing wants him to go to Totleigh Towers to do something for her. Knowing Stiffy, Bertie refuses at first, but when he learns that Gussie is angry at his fiancee Madeline because she put him on a vegetarian diet, and that if they break up, Madeline will turn to Bertie, the latter decides to go to Totleigh Towers and try to patch their relationship. Sir Watkin Basset, Madeline's father and Siffy's uncle, is a collector, and he recently acquired for a very low price a very valuable statuette. Stiffy wants Bertie to return the statuette to the seller, an explorer named Planck, because she believed Sir Watking cheated him. But Sir Watkin only pretended to have paid a low price, to make Bertie's uncle Tom Travers, another competing collector, jealous. Thanks to Jeeves, the statuette is returned to Sir Watkin's collection room, and Bertie escapes the wrath of Roderick Spode, now Lord Sidcup, who is persuated that Bertie has come to the house to steal the statuette. Later, Gussie flees the house with the cook and Sir Watkin is happy to learn that his daughter will not marry Gussie after all. He's so happy that he even promises a vicarage to Pinker, who was waiting for it to get married to Stiffy. But when he learns that Madeline got engaged to Bertie (because she believes he is in love with her), he takes his word back. Thanks to Jeeves, Pinker gets a vicarage at the neighbouring village from Planck, who was at the same time looking for a new vicar and a player for his rugby team. Stiffy then gives him the statuette, which she had again pinched from the collection to blackmail her uncle to honor his word. Bertie passes it to Jeeves. Meanwhile, Lord Sidcup tries to convince Madeline, with whom he had been in love for a very long time, to marry him instead to Bertie. She makes her mind to do so when Jeeves tells her that Bertie is a kleptomaniac and that he just found the statuette hidden in Bertie's sock drawer. Bertie is then arrested and put in prison, but Jeeves manages to get him out by promising to enter Sir Watkin's service (which he plans to quit after a week to return to Bertie's service) against him dropping the charges against Bertie.
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