Bertie is about to reluctantly visit his unfriendly Aunt Agatha's house at Woollam Chersey, in Herts.

Before he leaves, he receives an unsigned telegram that says it is vital for him to meet perfect strangers at Woollam Chersey.

At Woollam Chersey, Aunt Agatha tells Bertie that he must behave himself and make a good impression on her guest, the Right Honourable A. B.

Bingo is tutoring young Thomas "Thos" Gregson, Aunt Agatha's son, and wants Bertie to treat him as a perfect stranger, or else Aunt Agatha will learn he is Bertie's friend, and fire him.

Bingo confesses that his wife left him two hundred pounds and asked him to stay behind to look after their Pekingese dog, but he lost the money on a horse race.

In the hall, Bertie runs into Jeeves, who learned from Thomas that Filmer had rowed to the island in the nearby lake.

As swans go, he may have been well up in the ranks of the intelligentsia; but, when it came to pitting his brains against Jeeves, he was simply wasting his time.

At the house, after Bertie takes a bath, he sees Jeeves, who says he has attended to the matter.

To protect Bingo, Jeeves convinced Filmer that it was Bertie who set his boat adrift.

"[3] According to Wodehouse scholar Kristin Thompson, when Jeeves does or says something unusual and it is not explained later, it may be a cue to the reader that he has manipulated events in ways that Bertie, the narrator, is not aware of.

[4] Whether or not Jeeves manipulated events to this extent, he does make a remark at the end which Bertie fails to understand but can be understood by the reader.

The phrase "practically an imbecile" presumably gave Jeeves the idea to blame his employer.

[5] "Jeeves and the Impending Doom" was illustrated by Charles Crombie in the Strand and by Wallace Morgan in Liberty.

[8] It was also featured in the 1983 collection P. G. Wodehouse Short Stories, which was illustrated by George Adamson and published by The Folio Society.