Jeeves - my man, you know - is a truly remarkable cove. He comes up with all kinds of brainy ideas to help out a chappie in a pinch and has all kinds of pinch-getting-out-of skills besides. He gives a sort of unchanging impression, as though he had sprung into being fully formed, like how the good old ancient Greeks and Romans and what not thought their goddess Athena (or rather Diana) had burst straight out of her old guv'nor's head without any of that growing-up nonsense. Not that Jeeves would ever cause such a stir as bursting out of anyone's head, being rather more inclined to simply project himself out.

But when it comes down to it, Jeeves is a mere mortal like all the rest of us, and so he must have come from somewhere - if perhaps somewhere a little brainier and with rather more fish than the common lot. I've often wondered over the long years of our acquaintance how he got those marvelous brains of his and why a fellow like him would want to work for a chappie like Bertram Wooster. It's one of those grand mysteries of life, but this one happens to have an answer.

I suppose it all begins with my old pal Bunny Manders. It started not long after Jeeves had joined the Wooster household and, well, Bunny's more of a writer than I am really, so I'll let him tell it to start:

...

It was a cold night. Raffles and I stood outside for what felt like hours in our heavy coats, staring up into a third floor flat of the illustrious Berkeley Mansions, not a few blocks from Raffles's own lodgings at the Albany. We looked like any decent gentlemen passing on the street even at such a late hour, perhaps standing around to wait for a friend, but our errand was a much less gregarious one.

"Are you sure you want to try it?" I asked him for certainly not the first time that evening. "What if he's caught on? He isn't just one of your ordinary marks, you know, he's-"

At that point, Raffles cut me off. "That's exactly why we must!" he exclaimed in a sharp whisper. "I couldn't forgive myself if I'd passed up the chance. No, we'll go in there and what's more we'll go in tonight!"

I glanced up at the darkened windows, each one seeming to hide someone lurking in the shadows, just out of sight. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I glimpsed a tall, dark figure looming in the shadows between the streetlamps' golden glow.

"Not to worry, Bunny," Raffles insisted, "I've got the joint cased from top to bottom. But you can stay behind and stand watch if that would put your mind at ease."

"Not at all! I mean, of course I'll come."

"Good old Bunny!" He clapped me on the shoulder.

I smiled back at him, but his attention had returned to his mark. My eyes darted up and down the street again and back up at the window. All seemed quiet for the time being, but I had a creeping feeling we were being watched.

Casually as you please, Raffles started to meander across the silent and empty street toward the darkened apartments, all of their inhabitants no doubt fast asleep - or so I hoped. I hastily hurried after him.

I jumped at the sound of something rustling in the bushes behind us.

"Bunny!" Raffles exclaimed impatiently, again in a whisper. He turned to see what I was staring at and gave a low laugh. "It's just a rabbit, nothing to be afraid of."

And he was right, for just at the moment he had turned to look, a little bunny rabbit had come hopping out of the bushes, minding its own business nibbling at the grass around it. My face turned beet red with embarrassment.

Raffles took it with a smile. "With any luck, that'll be the worst of it tonight. Come along." He beckoned me to follow him around to the alleyway that ran along the side of the building, wedged between one grand residence and the next.

It was there, in the dark alleyway, that we slipped on our masks. Then, I helped Raffles unfurl his ingenious rope ladder.

"We'll have to do it in parts," he muttered as he tossed it up to a second story window.

He gave the ladder a single solid tug to be certain the hook held, and then we began our first ascent. Raffles went first, of course, and I sluggishly took up the rear, clinging to the thin, dangling ropes for dear life. At last, Raffles hauled me up onto a window sill, and I plastered myself to the wall as I caught my breath, my poor hands stinging where the rough ropes had dug into them.

I didn't have long to rest - if it could be called that, balancing on a window sill - before Raffles finished pulling up the ladder and had re-anchored it a story up, and we resumed our ascent. That one more story was all we had left to climb, and as we approached the window, I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, not just from the exertion. I wondered if we had been heard already, I could feel eyes peering out at us from the darkness, watching as we charged blindly into a trap.

But it was too late to protest. Raffles helped me up again and put a finger to his lips as he began to work on the window. It was slow going and even the tiniest squeak was deafening to my ears. My blood ran cold like the icy wind. Finally, Raffles pried the window open so it was just barely wide enough for him to squeeze through and I followed after with some difficulty.

I tumbled out into Raffles's arms. Somehow he managed to cushion my fall as to mute my landing, but still I cringed at the din in the otherwise silent, seemingly abandoned flat. We hastily picked ourselves up and stopped cold.

From the shadows emerged the form of a man, as though he had materialized from the darkness itself. His features were pale white in the moonlight as he stood, staring at us, stern and silent, like a statue of marble or wax, meticulously dressed with not a thing out of place. He gave no impression of having been startled or stirred from any manner of slumber; he had been expecting us.

Now, at this time, old Bertram Wooster was supposedly lost in dreamland, getting his requisite forty winks. But maybe it was the weather, or something I'd had at dinner, or perhaps an odd premonition, or maybe Bunny and his pal weren't quite so stealthy as they thought, but whatever the case was, something roused me from my slumber. I was dazedly blinking the sleep from my eyes when I most certainly heard something that sounded rather like talking coming from the other room.

If I'd had guests at the time, take Claude and Eustace, for example, the sort of nightliving chappies who would have been remiss to be asleep by three in the morning, or even myself in my younger days, well, then it would have been different, but I knew for a fact - or rather thought I knew - that there wasn't anyone aside from me and Jeeves in that flat and if anyone had come bursting in at some ungodly hour in the night, they at least ought have had the decency to keep their voices down, or I had every right to tell them what was what.

I stumbled into my slippers and crept out of the bedroom intent on doing just that. I could hear them speaking, though I couldn't quite make out the words. I thought I heard Jeeves among them, and two higher voices, and it didn't sound like they were politely but firmly being shown to the door. It didn't matter to me what secret meetings Jeeves held in the middle of the night, but if he thought I was going to let them keep me from getting my good twelve hours of the dreamless, he had another thing coming.

I burst into the room with all the ire of a fellow who had been rudely jolted from slumber and was quite keen on getting back to it. There, I found Jeeves face to face with a pair of masked chappies. They looked like they could have been out on their way back from any fashionable to do, except for the thick black masks pulled over their faces that gave them a rather more ruffian-like appearance.

"Sir," Jeeves said, his voice clipped as though he had some dispute with my taste in sleepwear, which would have been quite absurd as he had suggested it himself.

"What's the meaning of all this?" I demanded, quite reasonably so.

"I am afraid we have burglars, sir," Jeeves replied, very much in the way he would have said that we had mice.

"Oh!" One read about burglars of course, but it wasn't exactly the sort of thing a fellow expected to happen to himself, but I supposed that was that. "I'll hold them while you step out and call the police, what?"

"Sir, perhaps it would be best if I kept an eye on them while you went to call the police."

"Oh, very well."

I was about to get to it when the smaller of the burglars shouted from a foot or so behind his companion, "Wait! We're J's cousins!"

I stopped in my tracks and turned to Jeeves. "Are they really?"

He looked none too happy with this revelation of his connection to such persons.

"Well, Raffles and I are old school chums," the burglar attempted, sounding uncertain about the whole thing, "but J's our cousin!"

Finally, with all eyes on him, Jeeves relented. "In a manner of speaking, sir."

"Then this is just some childish prank?" I asked - that was a much more likely thing to happen to a chap than a burglary, after all.

"Exactly," the taller of the burglars exclaimed, pulling off his mask and stepping forward with an outstretched hand. "I'm afraid things got a little out of hand."

I accepted it, though my eyes were still on Jeeves, looking at him in something of a new light. "I wouldn't have expected it of you, Jeeves."

"No, sir. I would not condone such behavior." He gave the man in front of me a severe look.

I followed Jeeves's gaze and found to my surprise that I recognized the fellow and it was easy enough to put a name to the face. "Why, you're A.J. Raffles! Jeeves, I had no idea you're related to one of the best cricketers in England!"

"No, sir," Jeeves said with some disdain.

But I was not to be discouraged. "What ho! I'm a great fan! Your latest inning was just the stuff! I'm Bertam Wooster, by the way, but my pals call me Bertie."

"It's my pleasure." Raffles said with a thin, crooked smile. He waved his smaller companion forward. "This is Bunny Manders, as he says, an old school friend of mine."

Bunny held out a hand and only belatedly remembered to pull off his own mask, revealing a friendly, youthful face. "Nice to meet you."

"What ho!" I exclaimed again, giving his hand a solid shake.

Raffles eyed the exchange. "You've found your own Bunny?" he remarked to Jeeves, sounding incredulous.

I couldn't very well see what he meant; I didn't see much in common between myself and Jeeves's nervous young cousin.

Jeeves seemed to be thinking along the same lines because he stood a little taller and replied, "Mr. Wooster is my employer."

"Of course," said Raffles sardonically. "Just a mercenary arrangement."

"Now, just a minute there!" I protested. "I haven't known him for very long, but I'll have you know that my man Jeeves is the very embodiment of the feudal spirit!"

Raffles turned his sharp, cold grey eyes on me as though he had entirely forgotten that I was there. I vividly remember for an instant feeling absolutely certain that his gaze could bore straight into a man's very soul. And then it was gone, replaced by a benign smile, and I was left to chalk it all up to the rummy circs. of our little late night gathering playing tricks on my sleep-addled mind.

"I had no intention of implying otherwise," Raffles said. "It's always a pleasure to meet a fellow sporting man. But I'm afraid Bunny and I must be going; we wouldn't want to intrude on your hospitality any longer, especially not at such a late hour."

Before I had a chance to insist that it wasn't any inconvenience to me, Jeeves cut in, "Shall I show Mr. Raffles and Mr. Manders to the door?"

It was only then that I abruptly remembered that it was still the middle of the night and I did have quite a bit of sleep to catch up on. "Right you are, Jeeves," I said, fighting back a yawn. "Pleasure to meet the both of you."

I followed them to the door as Jeeves showed Raffles and Manders out.

"We should do this again sometime," I said, "just make it a touch earlier - or rather later."

"Thank you, that's very kind," Raffles said, stepping out into the hall.

"Yes, thank you!" Manders added as he followed hastily after.

Jeeves shut the door behind them, leaving the flat empty, dark and silent.

I yawned again, this time not bothering to stifle it. Heavy sleep began to weigh upon my tired eyelids. "G'night, then Jeeves. And no more midnight reunions, what?"

"Certainly, sir. Goodnight, sir."

Jeeves saw that I was comfortable back in bed and then rippled off into the night.

Note: The story continues in other fics with "Part of The Mysterious Mr. Jeeves" in the summary!