She looked as if she had been thinking a good deal about
rather unpleasant things.
"You've met Bertie Wooster, Aunt Isabel?" said Rocky.
"I have."
There was something in her eye that seemed to say:
"Out of a city of six million people, why did you pick on me?"
"Take a seat, Bertie. What'll you have?" said Rocky.
And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy,
bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and
then decide not to say it after all. After we had had an hour of this
wild dissipation, Aunt Isabel said she wanted to go home. In the light
of what Rocky had been telling me, this struck me as sinister. I had
gathered that at the beginning of her visit she had had to be dragged
home with ropes.
It must have hit Rocky the same way, for he gave me a pleading look.
"You'll come along, won't you, Bertie, and have a drink at the flat?"
I had a feeling that this wasn't in the contract, but there wasn't
anything to be done. It seemed brutal to leave the poor chap alone with
the woman, so I went along.
Right from the start, from the moment we stepped into the taxi, the
feeling began to grow that something was about to break loose. A
massive silence prevailed in the corner where the aunt sat, and,
though Rocky, balancing himself on the little seat in front, did his
best to supply dialogue, we weren't a chatty party.
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