It was a few days after the big wedding and I was polishing off the daily shaving with the diligence that a straight-edge demands if you aren't to go out among the teeming hordes with little bits of cotton attached to the visage like those button mushrooms.

There was a knock on the door and since all was decently covered, I called out a hearty "Come in" to whatever representatives of the world's t. hordes might be out there. Imagine your Bertam's surprise when Desiree came in, closing the door behind her and pawing her way over rather like that panther at the London zoo who always reminds me of my assorted aunts, except, of course, for Aunt Dahlia, who is an egg of the highest caliber, despite her tendency to disparage my intellectual capacity. I explain that compared to Jeeves, I rank low, but so would anyone. She usually snorts something about how Darwin would have changed his mind or invented another theory had he met me. But I digress.

"Bertie," she sighed when she was just a few inches away and still advancing. I backed up, since there was a distinctly alarming glint in her eyes.

"Er, jolly day out, isn't it?"

"Bertie, I made such a terrible mistake and I need your help. He's a monster."

"Eh? Who's a monster?"

"My...husband."

"Tush-tush! He has the aspect of a man absolutely--"

I'd run out of space to back into and just as I was warming to the theme of young Luthor having the aspect of a man well and truly wrapped around her finger, I felt her kissing me very thoroughly.

"Right. Monster. Quite right." I couldn't understand why on earth I'd not seen that Luthor would mistreat a delicate flower of feminity like that.

"Bertie, you have to set me free from him."

"Right. I'll get Jeeves onto it."

She frowned, a bit like Cleopatra would have if a handmaiden or some such had said that she had the last milk in her tea and there wasn't any for Cleopatra's bath. "That's not what I meant," she murmured, wrapping her arms around my neck.

"But Jeeves is frightfully clever-"

She put a finger on my mouth. "No, Bertie, you have to kill him. Then I can be yours."

"Kill Jeeves?" I probably gaped and she frowned again, as though Cleopatra's handmaid had done the same thing the very next day.

"No, darling, kill Lex."

"Oh. Well. Right-ho." It all made quite a bit of sense. Kill the Luthor bean, free Desiree, definitely a wise course of action. "Er--with what?"

I almost thought she rolled her eyes, but decided I had to be mistaken. "Whatever comes to hand. Find a gun, a knife, anything. But remember, Bertie, it has to be soon. I won't be free until you do. Promise you'll do it this morning."

"Right-ho," I repeated. "On this morning's to-do list." Another kiss and she wafted out before I could even say that said kiss had spread some of the shaving cream from my face to hers, right under the nose.

Even if she didn't hold Jeeves' brain in the proper regard, I did, so after attending to the rest of shaving, I knocked and stuck my head in his room. "I say, Jeeves, if you had to kill a chappie, how would you go about it?"

He put a bookmark in the pages of the doubtless improving tome he was reading. "I beg your pardon, sir?"

I hadn't expected Jeeves to be slow in grasping the concept. "You know, kill. Gun, poison, rampaging bulls?"

"Is this a theoretical question or do you intend to implement such a plan?"

"Sorry, Jeeves, not at my best in the mornings."

"Are you going to kill any specific individual."

"Oh. Righty-ho. The Luthor bean." I decided to explain the whole story. "You see, Desiree, who is the most stunning girl in the world, says that he's a monster. Furthermore, she says that she won't be free unless I kill him. So you can see, only solution. Clear to the simplest mind." I rested my case, if that's the right way to say it.

"I see, sir." He got up and put his jacket on. "I suggest that we go to Mr. Luthor's residence and see what weapons suggest themselves."

"Top hole, Jeeves, old chap. Bound to be all kinds of useful implements there. Lead the way, Jeeves."

***

"I say, Jeeves, are you sure that Luthor is up here?"

"I'm quite positive, sir."

I paused for thought. Jeeves had gotten us inside unseen but I wondered if his thinking might have gone a bit below par after that, since we'd been wandering around the place for hours, and I was reasonably certain that we'd been in this turret at least once before. I looked at the faithful timepiece and saw that it was already early afternoon, a fact which my stomach was insistent on confirming. A Wooster's word is sacred, and due to the endless wanderings like some Dutchman Jeeves met once, I'd not killed the Luthor chap, which I'd said I'd do that morning, so I was feeling a bit like a knight whose white horse didn't feel like galloping to the rescue, don't you know?

Out the window, I saw the rugby chappie's father coming, with what looked like a shotgun. "I say, Jeeves, isn't that Kent senior?"

Jeeves' brow wrinkled. "I wonder why he is armed, sir."

"The lawless frontier and all that, he probably has to shoot bison or bandits or some such. All in a day's routine."

I saw something else. "D'you think that blur was Kent minor?"

"I think it quite likely, sir." I felt a firm guiding hand on my shoulder. "And I am convinced that Mr. Luthor is in this closet." The f. g. hand then propelled me into said closet and I heard the definite sound of a key being turned and removed.

"Jeeves," I said in a tone which mixed anger and reproach in just the right quantities. "I fear your powers of thought are fading." I could have sworn that I heard him running out of the room and down the stairs.

I battered at the door in a determined sort of way, but the door was of solid craftsmanship. I invoked a curse on the builder's work ethic and settled to wait. While I was there with little else to occupy my mind and make the hours pass, it might be prudent, I decided, to think of just how to explain to Desiree that though no fault of his own, Bertram had put his hand to the plow but then got locked in a closet.

My watch is the jolly kind that can glow in the dark, and I saw that it had taken only fifteen minutes to think of the wording. I passed the next moments with some of the more lively songs from the Drones' and then started in on some romantic ditties.

"I'd do anything for you," I warbled, then had that feeling you get when you remember that you've forgotten something. There was something I'd promised to do and it definitely involved the softer emotions. I recreated the scene, as detective chappies do. Shaving, that I recalled clearly, passed without incident. Then Desiree visited and I recalled subsequent events much less clearly, a bit like after an evening with the Drones and various convivial beverages.

I heard footsteps approaching and hoped that it wasn't Desiree, as I'd really rather changed my mind about killing Luthor. A Wooster's word is his bond, but there is a limit, especially if she hadn't yet asked Jeeves. For a solution, not to kill the Luthor bird, that is.

The door unlocked and it was Jeeves. "I say, Jeeves, what is happening? Closets and Kents and such."

"The young lady's kiss had potent aphrodasiac powers."

"What types of powers? I didn't quite catch the word."

"She could, by kissing a man, make him intent on obeying her will only. She apparently used these powers on you, and when you apparently had resisted her, she did the same to Jonathan Kent. However, Mr. Kent's extraordinary young son prevented this and, as with you, the powers wore off in time.

"This is a very rum sort of town, what?"

"Indeed, sir."

I considered the scope of Jeeves' deeds that morning and swallowed hard. Sometimes gratitude is best expressed in grand gestures. "Oh, Jeeves. That tie..."

"Yes, sir?"

"It's truly not the height of fashion?"

"On fashion, I am not an authority, but it is certainly not at the height of taste. I suspect, in fact, that it was the factor that led the lady to select you for her cat's paw. A man who would wear that to a wedding might be judged as having little intellect."

I heaved a d. sigh. "Very well, Jeeves. When we get back, you may dispose of it."

"Very good, sir. Might I suggest that we leave now, while our presence is still unknown to the inhabitants?"

"Lead on, Jeeves."