The Code of the Woosters

After some time and effort, Wooster finally impresses Gussie—who he says is “pure concrete” above the neck—regarding the situation’s gravity. If Sir Watkyn reads the mislaid notebook, with its merciless dissections of Spode and himself, the wedding will be off, at the very least. Desperately, Gussie ponders where he might have lost it and concludes that he must have dropped it while taking the fly out of Stiffy Byng’s eye. Wooster, thinking Stiffy may have picked it up, heads out to intercept her on her evening stroll. In the gloam of a country lane, he witnesses a furious altercation between Stiffy and a local police officer, Constable Oates, whom Stiffy’s Aberdeen terrier has knocked off his bicycle and bitten. Stiffy snipes that Oates should know better than to ride bicycles since her poor dog “hates” them. Once they’re alone, Wooster learns that Stiffy does have Gussie’s notebook and has read its “excellent” commentary on Spode and her Uncle Watkyn. However, she keeps changing the subject back to Constable Oates, against whom she harbors a bitter grudge, largely he has complained about her dog to her uncle, who is now a Justice of the Peace. She even shares that she has been plotting revenge on him by pressuring her “secret” fiancé, a local curate named Harold, into stealing his helmet; she credits Wooster himself, who once tried to steal a police helmet in Leicester Square, as the inspiration for this.