"Murbles is coming round to dinner tonight, Charles," said Wimsey. "I wish you'd stop and have grub with us too. Bunter does a wonderful bloody steak and there are new peas and potatoes and genuine English grass. Gerald sent it up from Denver specially. You can't buy it."
Technically I wasn't on duty, and anyway, it wasn't drink. "I wouldn't say no to a quick spliff," I said.
"Right ho," said Wimsey. "Bung me the Rizlas, would you, Bunter? Now watch very carefully, Charles. The joint I am about to roll requires a craftsman and can utilise up to twelve skins."
There's no arguing with Wimsey when he's in one of his showing-off moods, so I watched. He's got meddling sorts of hands, and fingers that fiddle, and they fiddled those papers into some kind of whatsit, thin at one end and bulbous at the other, the like of which I'd never seen before.
"I call this," said Wimsey portentously, "a Denver Drumstick, because I invented it in Denver, and -"
"Yes, yes, I'm way ahead of you. That thing must pack quite a punch, old man."
"Oh, it'll blow you sky high," said Wimsey with evident enjoyment, but no sign of handing said enjoyment on to other parties present.
"Don't garrick that joint," I protested. "Pass it over to me. Come on, you blighter, all property is theft, you know."
"Property?" said Wimsey musingly. "Property. Property. Now why does that ring a bell? Gosh, this stuff gives a man a thirst. Bunter! We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them here. And we want them now!"
"Yes, my lord. Would the Haut Brion serve?"
"Oho, Ho Byron! Yes, it jolly well would," said Wimsey, finally surrendering the doobie. "Better than that awful Chateau St Thingy I had at Helen's yesterday. I'd rather drink lighter fluid. I say, Bunter, why don't you stop bustling around and come and have a drag on this J? I would not be so all alone. Everybody must get -"
"Thank you, my lord, but I fear the peas require my undivided attention," replied the admirable Bunter, departing with what to my highly trained detective eye looked like suspicious haste into the kitchen. Bunter, as his master is fond of saying, moves in mysterious ways.
"Man, Charles!" said Wimsey, interrupting my meditations. "You're no very gleg at the passing."
"Sorry, sorry! Didn't mean to hog the thing." I took a last quick drag, savouring the head rush as Denver's finest hit my lungs, and then lay back against one of those unfeasibly large primrose cushions Wimsey always has lying about the place. The next thing I knew a dark and imposing shape had appeared in the doorway, and Bunter was announcing, "Mr Murbles, my lord."
I may have been out of it, but there's nothing invented Wimsey can't take, and he lifted up his voice accordingly and rendered our awful guest a cheery welcome. "Murbles! The murblest Roman of them all! What murblest thou, Murbles?"
"Lost your Murbles, have you?" I chipped in, not to be outdone.
Old Murbles has a fine lawyerly eye, and a nose any bloodhound would be proud of. He screwed up his face at the sight of Wimsey and me sprawled giggling on the floor, sniffed the air once or twice and then frowned.
"Oh really, you chaps," he said, "Is everybody here very stoned?"
Finis
I also have a much longer Wimsey story, with pretty pictures, The Incident of the Fellow in the Fellows' Garden, at www.englishanddrama.at/FannishStuff/wimseyfic/