But unknown to him, the replacement bust was fashioned by his former fiancée Sally Painter, and conceals valuable jewellery that a friend of hers was planning to smuggle through New York Customs.

Unfortunately, the local Constable, Harold Potter, happens to have grown up with Major Plank (and also happens to remember arresting Uncle Fred and Pongo at the dog races under the names of Edwin Smith and George Robinson).

"[4] Ambiguities in language can lead to comedic cross-talk, such as when confusion is caused by two different meanings of the word "by" in chapter 13: "I was assaulted by the duck pond.

"[5]Incongruity between descriptions of a particular situation is used for comedic effect, as in chapter 1: "From the penny-in-the-slot machine at the far end to the shed where the porter kept his brooms and buckets the platform was dark with what practically amounted to a sea of humanity.

"[6] Foreign loan words are fairly frequent in Wodehouse's stories, sometimes in incongruous contexts, such as "mésalliance" being used to describe a convict's sister marrying a policeman (chapter 3.5).

"[8] Some of Wodehouse's older, more dignified male characters have humorously inappropriate, discourteous nicknames from their years at school, such as Sir Aylmer "Mugsy" Bostock, Major "Bimbo" Brabazon-Plank, and Frederick Altamont Cornwallis "Barmy" Twistleton, Lord Ickenham.

[9] The stylistic device of the "enumeration" is used with a carefully planned anticlimax at the end in chapter 6: "Now slept the crimson petal and the white, and in the silent garden of Ashenden Manor nothing stirred save shy creatures of the night such as owls, mice, rats, gnats, bats and Constable Potter.

"[10] Vivid imagery involving exaggerated similes and metaphors is frequently used in Wodehouse's stories, for example in chapter 3: "A sticky moisture had begun to bedew his brow, as if he had entered the hot room of some Turkish bath of the soul.

"[11] In chapter 2, an exaggerated synonym is used for comic effect when Lord Ickenham asks "What have you been doing, Bill Oakshott, to merit this reception—nay, this durbar?

[17] Wodehouse biographer Richard Usborne calls the book "a brilliantly sustained rattle of word-perfect dialogue and narrative topping a very complicated and well-controlled plot.

[21] The cast included Richard Briers as Uncle Fred, Hugh Grant as Pongo, Paul Eddington as the narrator, Simon Treves as Bill Oakshott, Charles Gray as Sir Aylmer Bostock, Josephine Tewson as Lady Bostock, Chris Emmett as Harold Potter, Teresa Gallagher as Elsie Bean,[22] Susie Brann as Sally, Mary Chater as Hermione Bostock, Toby Longworth as Otis, and Donald Hewlett as Major Brabazon-Plank.