
THE RETURN OF JEEVES

by
P. G. WODEHOUSE

BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

"Jeeves is back, cool as dry ice and
helpful as money in the bank."
--Time

"Mr. Wodehouse's gift for inspired
inanity is as shiny as ever, and Jeeves has not
changed a bit."
--The New Yorker

"If you know Jeeves, you know that everything
turns out all right. And if you don't know
Jeeves, the perfect butler, you should.
Typical wacky Wodehouse."
--Chicago Sunday Tribune

"The peculiar charm of Mr. Wodehouse's
writing lies not in his satire, not in the
nostalgia evoked for the less complicated world of his
earlier works, not in his intricate and absurd
plots. His gift is for educated madness,
sublime to ridiculous anti-climax, and
occasional descriptive passages of
unexpected lyrical beauty."
--New York Herald Tribune

William Egerton Ossingham Belfry, the
young and impoverished ninth earl of Rowcester
(pronounced Roaster), is Jeeves's
temporary master while Bertie Wooster is
away at school learning how to housekeep for
himself. Lord Rowcester's rather complex situation--what
with his pretty fianc@ee, an American
millionairess, and a retired Indian Army
captain all involved in the picture--is soon
straightened out by the ingenious Jeeves, who has
all problems of romance and finance solved and is
on his way again.

HARPER AND ROW PUBLISHERS

Available in Perennial Library
by P. G. Wodehouse

The Cat-Nappers
How Right You Are, Jeeves
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds
Jeeves in the Morning
The Mating Season
The Return of Jeeves
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Thank You, Jeeves
The World of Jeeves (short stories)

























THE RETURN OF JEEVES



The waiter, who had slipped out to make a quick
telephone call, came back into the
coffee-room of the Goose and Gherkin wearing the
starry-eyed look of a man who has just learned that
he has backed a long-priced winner. He
yearned to share his happiness with someone, and the only
possible confidant was the woman at the table near
the door, who was having a small gin and tonic and
whiling away the time by reading a book of
spiritualistic interest. He decided to tell her the
good news.
"I don't know if you would care to know,
madam," he said, in a voice that throbbed with
emotion, "but Whistler's Mother won the Oaks."
The woman looked up, regarding him with large,
dark, soulful eyes as if he had been something
recently assembled from ectoplasm.
"The what?"
"The Oaks, madam."
"And what are the Oaks?"
It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be
anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he
had already gathered that the lady was an American
lady, and American ladies, he knew, are
often ignorant of the fundamental facts of
life. He had once met one who had wanted
to know what a football pool was.
"It's an annual horse race, madam,
reserved for fillies. By which I mean that it comes
off once a year and the male sex isn't allowed
to compete. It's run at Epsom Downs the day
before the Derby, of which you have no doubt heard."
"Yes, I have heard of the Derby. It is your
big race over here, is it not?"
"Yes, madam. What is sometimes termed a
classic. The Oaks is run the day before it,
though in previous years the day after. By which I
mean," said the waiter, hoping he was not being too
abstruse, "it used to be run the day following the
Derby, but now they've changed it."
"And Whistler's Mother won this race you call the
Oaks?"
"Yes, madam. By a couple of lengths. I
was on five bob."
"I see. Well, that's fine, isn't it? Will
you bring me another gin and tonic?"
"Certainly, madam. Whistler's
Mother!" said the waiter, in a sort of ecstasy.
"What a beauty!"
He went out. The woman resumed her reading.
Quiet descended on the coffee-room.
In its general essentials the coffee-room
at the Goose and Gherkin differed very little from the
coffee-rooms of all the other inns that nestle by the
wayside in England and keep the island race from
dying of thirst. It had the usual dim religious
light, the customary pictures of The Stag At
Bay and The Huguenot's Farewell over the
mantelpiece, the same cruets and bottles of
sauce, and the traditional ozone-like smell of
mixed pickles, gravy soup, boiled
potatoes, waiters and old cheese.
What distinguished it on this June afternoon and gave
it a certain something that the others had not got was the
presence in it of the woman the waiter had been
addressing. As a general rule, in the
coffee-rooms of English wayside inns, all
the eye is able to feast on is an occasional farmer
eating fried eggs or a couple of commercial
travellers telling each other improper
stories, but the Goose and Gherkin had drawn this
strikingly handsome hand across the sea, and she raised
the tone of the place unbelievably.
The thing about her that immediately arrested the attention and
drew the startled whistle to the lips was the aura of
wealth which she exuded. It showed itself in her rings,
her hat, her stockings, her shoes, her platinum
fur cape and the Jacques Fath sports
costume that clung lovingly to her undulating
figure. Here, you would have said to yourself, beholding
her, was a woman who had got the stuff in
sackfuls and probably suffered agonies from
coupon-clipper's thumb, a woman at the mention
of whose name the bloodsucking leeches of the Internal
Revenue Department were accustomed to raise their
filthy hats with a reverent intake of the breath.
Nor would you have been in error. She was just as
rich as she looked. Twice married and each time
to a multi-millionaire, she was as nicely
fixed financially as any woman could have wished.
Hers had been one of those Horatio Alger
careers which are so encouraging to girls who hope
to get on in the world, showing as they do that you never know
what prizes Fate may be storing up for you around
the corner. Born Rosalinda Banks, of the
Chilicothe, Ohio, Bankses, with no assets
beyond a lovely face, a superb figure
and a mild talent for vers libre, she had come
to Greenwich Village to seek her fortune and had
found it first crack out of the box. At a studio
party in Macdougall Alley she had met and
fascinated Clifton Bessemer, the Pulp
Paper Magnate, and in almost no time at all
had become his wife.
Widowed owing to Clifton Bessemer trying
to drive his car one night through a truck instead of
round it, and two years later meeting in Paris and
marrying the millionaire sportsman and big
game hunter, A. B. Spottsworth, she was
almost immediately widowed again.
It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the
lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused
A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary
column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion
thought it wasn't. The result being that when he
placed his foot on the animal's neck
preparatory to being photographed by Captain
Biggar, the White Hunter accompanying the
expedition, a rather unpleasant brawl had ensued,
and owing to Captain Biggar having to drop the camera
and spend several vital moments looking about for his
rifle, his bullet, though unerring, had come too
late to be of practical assistance. There was
nothing to be done but pick up the pieces and
transfer the millionaire sportsman's vast
fortune to his widow, adding it to the sixteen
million or so which she had inherited from Clifton
Bessemer.
Such, then, was Mrs. Spottsworth, a
woman with a soul and about forty-two million
dollars in the old oak chest. And, to clear up
such minor points as may require elucidation,
she was on her way to Rowcester Abbey, where she was
to be the guest of the ninth Earl of Rowcester, and had
stopped off at the Goose and Gherkin because she
wanted to stretch her legs and air her Pekinese
dog Pomona. She was reading a book of
spiritualistic interest because she had recently become
an enthusiastic devotee of psychical
research. She was wearing a Jacques Fath
sports costume because she liked Jacques Fath
sports costumes. And she was drinking gin and
tonic because it was one of those warm evenings when a gin
and tonic just hits the spot.
The waiter returned with the elixir, and went on
where he had left off.
"Thirty-three to one the price was,
madam."
Mrs. Spottsworth raised her lustrous
eyes.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That's what she started at."
"To whom do you refer?"
"This filly I was speaking of that's won the
Oaks."
"Back to her, are we?" said Mrs.
Spottsworth with a sigh. She had been reading about
some interesting manifestations from the spirit world, and this
earthy stuff jarred upon her.
The waiter sensed the lack of enthusiasm. It
hurt him a little. On this day of days he would have
preferred to have to do only with those in whose veins
sporting blood ran.
"You're not fond of racing, madam?"
Mrs. Spottsworth considered.
"Not particularly. My first husband used to be
crazy about it, but it always seemed to me so
unspiritual. All that stuff about booting them home
and goats and beetles and fast tracks and mudders
and something he referred to as a boat race. Not at
all the sort of thing to develop a person's
higher self. I'd bet a grand now and then, just
for the fun of it, but that's as far as I would go. It
never touched the deeps in me."
"A grand, madam?"
"A thousand dollars."
"Coo!" said the waiter, awed. "That's what
I'd call putting your shirt on. Though for me
it'd be not only my shirt but my stockings and
pantie-girdle as well. Lucky for the
bookies you weren't at Epsom today, backing
Whistler's Mother."
He moved off, and Mrs. Spottsworth
resumed her book.
For perhaps ten minutes after that nothing of major
importance happened in the coffee-room of the
Goose and Gherkin except that the waiter killed
a fly with his napkin and Mrs. Spottsworth
finished her gin and tonic. Then the door was
flung open by a powerful hand, and a tough, square,
chunky, weather-beaten-looking man in the middle
forties strode in. He had keen blue eyes,
a very red face, a round head inclined to baldness and
one of those small, bristly moustaches which abound in
such profusion in the outposts of Empire.
Indeed, these sprout in so widespread a way on
the upper lips of those who bear the white
man's burden that it is a tenable theory that the
latter hold some sort of patent rights. One
recalls the nostalgic words of the poet Kipling,
when he sang "Put me somewhere east of Suez,
where the best is like the worst, where there ain't no ten
commandments and a man can raise a small bristly
moustache."
It was probably this moustache that gave the
newcomer the exotic look he had. It made
him seem out of place in the coffee-room of an
English inn. You felt, eyeing him, that his
natural setting was Black Mike's bar in
Pago-Pago, where he would be the life and soul
of the party, though of course most of the time he would be
out on safari, getting rough with such fauna as
happened to come his way. Here, you would have said, was a
man who many a time had looked his rhinoceros in the
eye and made it wilt.
And again, just as when you were making that penetrating
analysis of Mrs. Spottsworth, you would have
been perfectly right. This bristly moustached
he-man of the wilds was none other than the
Captain Biggar whom we mentioned a moment ago
in connection with the regrettable fracas which had
culminated in A. B. Spottsworth going
to reside with the morning stars, and any of the crowd out
along Bubbling Well Road or in the Long
Bar at Shanghai could have told you that "Bwana"
Biggar had made more rhinoceri wilt than you could
shake a stick at.
At the moment, he was thinking less of our dumb
chums than of something cool in a tankard. The
evening, as we have said, was warm, and he had driven
many miles--from Epsom Downs, where he had
started immediately after the conclusion of the race known as
The Oaks, to this quiet inn in
Southmoltonshire.
"Beer!" he thundered, and at the sound of his
voice Mrs. Spottsworth dropped her book
with a startled cry, her eyes leaping from the parent
sockets.
And in the circumstances it was quite understandable that her
eyes should have leaped, for her first impression had
been that this was one of those interesting manifestations from
the spirit world, of which she had been reading. Enough to make
any woman's eyes leap.
The whole point about a hunter like Captain
Biggar, if you face it squarely, is that he
hunts. And, this being so, you expect him to stay
put in and around his chosen hunting grounds.
Meet him in Kenya or Malaya or Borneo
or India, and you feel no surprise.
"Hullo there, Captain Biggar," you say.
"How's the spooring?" And he replies that the
spooring is tophole. Everything perfectly in
order.
But when you see him in the coffee-room of an
English country inn, thousands of miles from his
natural habitat, you may be excused for
harbouring a momentary suspicion that this is not the
man in the flesh but rather his wraith or phantasm
looking in, as wraiths and phantasms will,
to pass the time of day.
"Eek!" Mrs. Spottsworth exclaimed,
visibly shaken. Since interesting herself in
psychical research, she had often wished to see a
ghost, but one likes to pick one's time and place
for that sort of thing. One does not want
spectres muscling in when one is enjoying a
refreshing gin and tonic.
To the Captain, owing to the dimness of the light in the
Goose and Gherkin's coffee-room, Mrs.
Spottsworth, until she spoke, had been
simply a vague female figure having one
for the road. On catching sight of her, he had
automatically twirled his moustache, his invariable
practice when he observed anything female in the
offing, but he had in no sense drunk her in.
Bending his gaze upon her now, he quivered all
over like a nervous young hippopotamus finding itself
face to face with its first White Hunter.
"Well, fry me in butter!" he
ejaculated. He stood staring at her. "Mrs.
Spottsworth! Well, simmer me in prune
juice! Last person in the world I'd have dreamed
of seeing. I thought you were in America."
Mrs. Spottsworth had recovered her
poise.
"I flew over for a visit a week ago,"
she said.
"Oh, I see. That explains it. What
made it seem odd, finding you here, was that I
remember you told me you lived in California
or one of those places."
"Yes, I have a home in Pasadena. In
Carmel, too, and one in New York and another
in Florida and another up in Maine."
"Making five in all?"
"Six. I was forgetting the one in Oregon."
"Six?" The Captain seemed
thoughtful. "Oh, well," he said, "it's nice
to have a roof over your head, of course."
"Yes. But one gets tired of places after a
while. One yearns for something new. I'm thinking
of buying this house I'm on my way to now,
Rowcester Abbey. I met Lord Rowcester's
sister in New York on her way back from
Jamaica, and she said her brother might be
willing to sell. But what are you doing in England,
Captain? I couldn't believe my eyes at
first."
"Oh, I thought I'd take a look at the
old country, dear lady. Long time since I
had a holiday, and you know the old proverb--all
work and no play makes Jack a peh-bah
pom bahoo. Amazing the way things have changed
since I was here last. No idle rich, if you
know what I mean. Everybody working. Everybody
got a job of some kind."
"Yes, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Lord
Rowcester's sister, Lady Carmoyle, tells
me her husband, Sir Roderick Carmoyle,
is a floorwalker at Harrige's. And he's
a tenth Baronet or something."
"Amazing, what? Tubby Frobisher and the
Subahdar won't believe me when I tell
them."
"Who?"
"Couple of pals of mine out in Kuala
Lumpur. They'll be astounded. But I like it,"
said the Captain stoutly. "It's the right spirit. The
straight bat."
"I beg your pardon?"
"A cricket term, dear lady. At
cricket you've got to play with a straight bat,
or ... or, let's face it, you don't play
with a straight bat, if you see what I mean."
"I suppose so. But do sit down, won't
you?"
"Thanks, if I may, but only for a minute.
I'm chasing a foe of the human species."
In Captain Biggar's manner, as he sat
down, a shrewd observer would have noted a trace
of embarrassment, and might have attributed this to the
fact that the last time he and Mrs. Spottsworth
had seen each other he had been sorting out what was
left of her husband with a view to shipping it
to Nairobi. But it was not the memory of that
awkward moment that was causing his diffidence. Its
roots lay deeper than that.
He loved this woman. He had loved her from the
very moment she had come into his life. How well
he remembered that moment. The camp among the
acacia trees. The boulder-strewn cliff. The
boulder-filled stream. Old Simba the lion
roaring in the distance, old Tembo the elephant
doing this and that in the bimbo or tall grass, and
A. B. Spottsworth driving up in the car with a
vision in jodhpurs at his side. "My wife,"
A. B. Spottsworth had said, indicating the
combination of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy
by whom he was accompanied, and as he replied
"Ah, the memsahib" and greeted her with a civil
"Krai yu ti ny ma pay," it was as if a
powerful electric shock had passed through
Captain Biggar. This, he felt, was X.
Naturally, being a white man, he had not
told his love, but it had burned steadily within him
ever since, a strong, silent passion of such a
calibre that sometimes, as he sat listening to the
hyaenas and gazing at the snows of
Kilimanjaro, it had brought him within an ace of
writing poetry.
And here she was again, looking lovelier than ever.
It seemed to Captain Biggar that somebody in the
vicinity was beating a bass drum. But it was only
the thumping of his heart.
His last words had left Mrs. Spottsworth
fogged.
"Chasing a foe of the human species?" she
queried.
"A blighter of a bookie. A cad of the lowest
order with a soul as black as his finger-nails.
I've been after him for hours. And I'd have
caught him," said the captain, moodily sipping
beer, "if something hadn't gone wrong with my bally
car. They're fixing it now at that garage down the
road."
"But why were you chasing this bookmaker?" asked
Mrs. Spottsworth. It seemed to her a
frivolous way for a strong man to be passing his
time.
Captain Biggar's face darkened. Her question
had touched an exposed nerve.
"The low hound did the dirty on me. Seemed
straight enough, too. Chap with a walrus moustache
and a patch over his left eye. Honest Patch
Perkins, he called himself. "Back your fancy
and fear nothing, my noble sportsman," he said.
"If you don't speculate, you can't
accumulate," he said. "Walk up, walk
up. Roll, bowl or pitch. Ladies
half-way and no bad nuts returned," he
said. So I put my double on with him."
"Your double?"
"A double, dear lady, is when you back a
horse in one race and if it wins, put the
proceeds on another horse in another race."
"Oh, what we call a parlay in
America."
"Well, you can readily see that if both
bounders pull it off, you pouch a princely sum.
I've got in with a pretty knowledgeable crowd
since I came to London, and they recommended
as a good double for today Lucy Glitters and
Whistler's Mother."
The name struck a chord.
"The waiter was telling me that Whistler's Mother
won."
"So did Lucy Glitters in the previous
race. I had a fiver on her at a hundred
to six and all to come on Whistler's Mother for the
Oaks. She ambled past the winning post at--"
"Thirty-three to one, the waiter was saying.
My goodness! You certainly cleaned up, didn't
you!"
Captain Biggar finished his beer. If it is
possible to drink beer like an overwrought soul, he
did so.
"I certainly ought to have cleaned up," he said,
with a heavy frown. "There was the colossal sum of
three thousand pounds two shillings and sixpence owing
to me, plus my original fiver which I had handed
to the fellow's clerk, a chap in a check suit and
another walrus moustache. And what happened? This
inky-hearted bookie welshed on me. He legged
it in his car with me after him. I've been pursuing
him, winding and twisting through the country roads, for
what seems an eternity. And just as I was on the
point of grappling with him, my car broke down.
But I'll have the scoundrel! I'll catch the
louse! And when I do, I propose to scoop out
his insides with my bare hands and twist his head off
and make him swallow it. After which--"
Captain Biggar broke off. It had suddenly
come to him that he was monopolizing the conversation. After
all, of what interest could these daydreams of his be
to this woman?
"But let's not talk about me any more," he
said. "Dull subject. How have you been
all these years, dear lady? Pretty fit, I
hope? You look right in the pink. And how's your
husband? Oh, sorry!"
"Not at all. You mean, have I married again?
No, I have not married again, though Clifton and
Alexis keep advising me to. They are
sweet about it. So broad-minded and considerate."
"Clifton? Alexis?"
"Mr. Bessemer and Mr. Spottsworth,
my two previous husbands. I get them on the
ouija board from time to time. I suppose," said
Mrs. Spottsworth, laughing a little
self-consciously, "you think it's odd of me
to believe in things like the ouija board?"
"Odd?"
"So many of my friends in America call all that
sort of thing poppycock."
Captain Biggar snorted militantly.
"I'd like to be there to talk to them! I'd
astonish their weak intellects. No, dear
lady, I've seen too many strange things in my
time, living as I have done in the shadow-lands of
mystery, to think anything odd. I have seen
barefooted pilgrims treading the path of
Ahura-Mazda over burning coals. I've
seen ropes tossed in the air and small boys
shinning up them in swarms. I've met fakirs
who slept on beds of spikes."
"Really?"
"I assure you. And think of it, insomnia
practically unknown. So you don't catch me
laughing at people because they believe in ouija boards."
Mrs. Spottsworth gazed at him tenderly.
She was thinking how sympathetic and understanding he
was.
"I am intensely interested in psychical
research. I am proud to be one of the little band of
devoted seekers who are striving to pierce the
veil. I am hoping to be vouchsafed some
enthralling spiritual manifestation at this Rowcester
Abbey where I'm going. It is one of the oldest
houses in England, they tell me."
"Then you ought to flush a spectre or two,"
agreed Captain Biggar. "They collect in
gangs in these old English country houses. How
about another gin and tonic?"
"No, I must be getting along. Pomona's
in the car, and she hates being left alone."
"You couldn't stay and have one more quick one?"
"I fear not. I must be on my way.
I can't tell you how delightful it has been,
meeting you again, Captain."
"Just made my day, meeting you, dear lady,"
said Captain Biggar, speaking hoarsely, for he
was deeply moved. They were out in the open now, and
he was able to get a clearer view of her as she
stood beside her car bathed in the sunset glow. How
lovely she was, he felt, how wonderful, how
... Come, come, Biggar, he said to himself gruffly,
this won't do, old chap. Play the game,
Biggar, play the game, old boy!
"Won't you come and see me when I get back
to London, Captain? I shall be at the
Savoy."
"Charmed, dear lady, charmed," said Captain
Biggar. But he did not mean it.
For what would be the use? What would it profit
him to renew their acquaintance? Just twisting the
knife in the wound, that's what he would be doing.
Better, far better, to bite the bullet and wash
the whole thing out here and now. A humble hunter with
scarcely a bob to his name couldn't go mixing with
wealthy widows. It was the kind of thing he had so
often heard Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar
denouncing in the old Anglo-Malay Club at
Kuala Lumpur. "Chap's nothing but a bally
fortune-hunter, old boy," they would say,
discussing over the gin pahits some acquaintance
who had made a rich marriage. "Simply a
blighted gigolo, old boy, nothing more. Can't do
that sort of thing, old chap, what? Not cricket,
old boy."
And they were right. It couldn't be done. Damn it
all, a feller had his code. "Meh nee
pan kong bahn rotfai" about summed it up.
Stiffening his upper lip, Captain Biggar went
down the road to see how his car was getting on.



Rowcester Abbey--pronounced Roaster--was
about ten miles from the Goose and Gherkin. It
stood--such portions of it as had not fallen down--
just beyond Southmolton in the midst of smiling
country. Though if you had asked William
Egerton Bamfylde Ossingham Belfry,
ninth Earl of Rowcester, its proprietor, what
the English countryside had to smile about these
days, he would have been unable to tell you. Its
architecture was thirteenth century,
fifteenth century and Tudor, its dilapidation
twentieth century post-World War Two.
To reach the Abbey you turned off the main road
and approached by a mile-long drive thickly
incrusted with picturesque weeds and made your
way up stone steps, chipped in spots, to a
massive front door which badly needed a lick
of paint. And this was what Bill Rowcester's
sister Monica and her husband, Sir Roderick
("Rory") Carmoyle, had done at just about the
hour when Mrs. Spottsworth and Captain
Biggar were starting to pick up the threads at their
recent reunion.
Monica, usually addressed as Moke, was
small and vivacious, her husband large and
stolid. There was something about his aspect and
deportment that suggested a more than ordinarily
placid buffalo chewing a cud and taking in its
surroundings very slowly and methodically, refusing
to be hurried. It was thus that, as they stood on the
front steps, he took in Rowcester Abbey.
"Moke," he said at length, having completed
his scrutiny, "I'll tell you something which you may
or may not see fit to release to the Press. This
bally place looks mouldier every time I see it."
Monica was quick to defend her childhood
home.
"It might be a lot worse."
Rory considered this, chewing his cud for a while in
silence.
"How?" he asked.
"I know it needs doing up, but where's the money
to come from? Poor old Bill can't afford to run a
castle on a cottage income."
"Why doesn't he get a job like the rest of
us?"
"You needn't stick on side just because you're in
trade, you old counterjumper."
"Everybody's doing it, I mean to say.
Nowadays the House of Lords is practically
empty except on evenings and bank holidays."
"We Rowcesters aren't easy to place. The
Rowcester men have all been lilies of the field.
Why, Uncle George didn't even put on
his own boots."
"Whose boots did he put on?" asked
Rory, interested.
"Ah, that's what we'd all like to know. Of
course, Bill's big mistake was letting that
American woman get away from him."
"What American woman would that be?"
"It was just after you and I got married. A
Mrs. Bessemer. A widow. He met her in
Cannes one summer. Fabulously rich and, according
to Bill, unimaginably beautiful. It seemed
promising for a time, but it didn't come to anything.
I suppose someone cut him out. Of course, he
was plain Mr. Belfry then, not my lord
Rowcester, which may have made a difference."
Rory shook his head.
"It wouldn't be that. I was plain Mr.
Carmoyle when I met you and look at the way
I snaffled you in the teeth of the pick of the
County."
"But then think what you were like in those days. A
flick of the finger, a broken heart. And you're not
so bad now, either," added Monica fondly.
"Something of the old magic remains."
"True," said Rory placidly. "In a
dim light I still cast a spell. But the trouble with
Bill was, I imagine, that he lacked
drive ... the sort of drive you see so much of
at Harrige's. The will to win, I suppose you
might call it. Napoleon had it. I have it,
Bill hasn't. Oh, well, there it is," said
Rory philosophically. He resumed his study
of Rowcester Abbey. "You know what this house
wants?" he proceeded. "An atom bomb,
dropped carefully on the roof of the main
banqueting hall."
"It would help, wouldn't it?"
"It would be the making of the old place. Put it
right in no time. Still, atom bombs cost money, so
I suppose that's out of the question. What you ought to do
is use your influence with Bill to persuade him
to buy a lot of paraffin and some shavings and save the
morning papers and lay in plenty of matches and
wait till some moonless night and give the joint
the works. He'd feel a different man, once the
old ruin was nicely ablaze."
Monica looked mysterious.
"I can do better than that."
Rory shook his head.
"No. Arson. It's the only way. You can't
beat good old arson. Those fellows down in the
east end go in for it a lot. They touch a match
to the shop, and it's like a week at the seaside
to them."
"What would you say if I told you I was
hoping to sell the house?"
Rory stared, amazed. He had a high
opinion of his wife's resourcefulness, but he
felt that she was attempting the impossible.
"Sell it? I don't believe you could give
it away. I happen to know Bill offered it for a
song to one of these charitable societies as a
Home for Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents,
and they simply sneered at him. Probably thought
it would give the Delinquents rheumatism. Very
damp house, this."
"It is a bit moist."
"Water comes through the walls in heaping handfuls.
I suppose because it's so close to the river. I
remember saying to Bill once, "Bill,"
I said, "I'll tell you something about your home
surroundings. In the summer the river is at the
bottom of your garden, and in the winter your garden
is at the bottom of the river." Amused the old
boy quite a bit. He thought it clever."
Monica regarded her husband with that cold,
wifely eye which married men learn to dread.
"Very clever," she said frostily.
"Extremely droll. And I suppose the first
thing you'll do is make a crack like that to Mrs.
Spottsworth."
"Eh?" It stole slowly into Rory's mind that
a name had been mentioned that was strange to him.
"Who's Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"The woman I'm hoping to sell the house to.
American. Very rich. I met her when I was
passing through New York on my way home.
She owns dozens of houses in America, but
she's got a craving to have something old and
picturesque in England."
"Romantic, eh?"
"Dripping with romance. Well, when she told
me that--we were sitting next to each other at a
women's lunch--I immediately thought of Bill and the
Abbey, of course, and started giving her a sales
talk. She seemed interested. After all, the
Abbey is chock full of historical
associations."
"And mice."
"She was flying to England next day, so I
told her when I would be arriving and we arranged that
she was to come here and have a look at the place. She
should be turning up at any moment."
"Does Bill know she's coming?"
"No. I ought to have sent him a cable, but I
forgot. Still, what does it matter?
He'll be only too delighted. The
important thing is to keep you from putting her off
with your mordant witticisms. "I often say
in my amusing way, Mrs. Spottsworth, that
whereas in the summer months the river is at the
bottom of the garden, in the winter months--ha, ha
--the garden--this is going to slay you--is at the
bottom of the river, ho, ho, ho." That would just
clinch the sale."
"Now would I be likely to drop a brick of
that sort, old egg?"
"Extremely likely, old crumpet. The
trouble with you is that, though a king among men, you have
no tact."
Rory smiled. The charge tickled him.
"No tact? The boys at Harrige's would
laugh if they heard that."
"Do remember that it's vital to put this deal
through."
"I'll bear it in mind. I'm all for giving
poor old Bill a leg-up. It's a damn
shame," said Rory, who often thought rather deeply
on these subjects. "Bill starts at the
bottom of the ladder as a mere heir to an
Earldom, and by pluck and perseverance works his way
up till he becomes the Earl himself. And no
sooner has he settled the coronet on his head
and said to himself "Now to whoop it up!" than they
pull a social revolution out of their hats like a
rabbit and snitch practically every penny he's
got. Ah, well!" said Rory with a sigh. "I
say," he went on, changing the subject, "have you
noticed, Moke, old girl, that throughout this little
chat of ours--which I for one have thoroughly enjoyed--
I have been pressing the bell at frequent
intervals and not a damn thing has happened? What
is this joint, the palace of the sleeping beauty?
Or do you think the entire strength of the company has
been wiped out by some plague or pestilence?"
"Good heavens!" said Monica, "bells at
Rowcester Abbey don't ring. I don't
suppose they've worked since Edward the
Seventh's days. If Uncle George wished
to summon the domestic staff, he just shoved his
head back and howled like a prairie wolf."
"That would have been, I take it, when he wanted
somebody else's boots to put on?"
"You just open the door and walk in. Which is
what I am about to do now. You bring the bags in from
the car."
"Depositing them where?"
"In the hall for the moment," said Monica.
"You can take them upstairs later."
She went in, and made her way to that familiar
haunt, the living-room off the hall where in her
childhood days most of the life of Rowcester
Abbey had centred. Like other English houses of
its size, the Abbey had a number of vast state
apartments which were never used, a library which was used
occasionally, and this living-room, the popular
meeting-place. It was here that in earlier days she
had sat and read the Girl's Own Paper and,
until the veto had been placed on her
activities by her Uncle George, whose sense
of smell was acute, had kept white rabbits.
A big, comfortable, shabby room with French windows
opening into the garden, at the bottom of which--in the
summer months--the river ran.
As she stood looking about her, sniffing the old
familiar smell of tobacco and leather and
experiencing, as always, a nostalgic thrill and a
vague wish that it were possible to put the clock
back, there came through the French window a girl in
overalls, who, having stared for a moment in
astonishment, uttered a delighted squeal.
"Moke ... darling!"
Monica turned.
"Jill, my angel!"
They flung themselves into each other's arms.



Jill Wyvern was young, very pretty, slightly
freckled and obviously extremely practical
and competent. She wore her overalls as if they
had been a uniform. Like Monica, she was
small, and an admirer of hers, from
Bloomsbury, had once compared her, in an
unpublished poem, to a Tanagra statuette.
It was not a very apt comparison, for Tanagra
statuettes, whatever their merits, are on the
static side and Jill was intensely alert and
alive. She moved with a springy step and in her time
had been a flashy outside-right on the hockey
field.
"My precious Moke," she said. "Is it
really you? I thought you were in Jamaica."
"I got back this morning. I picked up
Rory in London, and we motored down here.
Rory's outside, looking after the
bags."
"How brown you are!"
"That's Montego Bay. I worked on this
sunburn for three months."
"It suits you. But Bill didn't say
anything about expecting you. Aren't you appearing rather
suddenly?"
"Yes, I cut my travels short rather
suddenly. My allowance met those New York
prices and gave up the ghost with a low moan.
Ah, here's the merchant prince."
Rory came in, mopping his forehead.
"What have you got in those bags of yours, old
girl? Lead?" He saw Jill, and stopped,
gazing at her with wrinkled brow. "Oh, hullo,"
he said uncertainly.
"You remember Jill Wyvern, Rory."
"Of course, yes. Jill Wyvern, to be
sure. As you so sensibly observe, Jill
Wyvern. You been telling her about your
sunburn?"
"She noticed it for herself."
"It does catch the eye. She says she's that
colour all over," said Rory confidentially
to Jill. "Might raise a question or two from an
old-fashioned husband, what? Still, I suppose
it all makes for variety. So you're Jill
Wyvern, are you? How you've grown!"
"Since when?"
"Since ... since you started growing."
"You haven't a notion who I am, have you?"
"I wouldn't say that ..."
"I'll help you out. I was at your wedding."
"You don't look old enough."
"I was fifteen. They gave me the job of
keeping the dogs from jumping on the guests. It was
pouring, you may remember, and they all had muddy
paws."
"Good God! Now I have you placed. So you were
that little squirt. I noticed you bobbing about and thought
what a frightful young excrescence you looked."
"My husband is noted for the polish of his
manners," said Monica. "He is often called
the modern Chesterfield."
"What I was about to add," said Rory with
dignity, "was that she's come on a lot since
those days, showing that we should never despair. But
didn't we meet again some time?"
"Yes, a year or two later when you stayed
here one summer. I was just coming out then, and
I expect I looked more of an excrescence
than ever."
Monica sighed.
"Coming out! The dear old getting-ready-for-
market stage! How it takes one back. Off
with the glasses and the teeth-braces."
"On with things that push you in or push you out,
whichever you needed."
This was Rory's contribution, and Monica
looked at him austerely.
"What do you know about it?"
"Oh, I get around in our Ladies'
Foundation department," said Rory.
Jill laughed.
"What I remember best are those agonized
family conferences about my hockey-player's
hands. I used to walk about for hours holding them in
the air."
"And how did you make out? Has it paid off
yet?"
"Paid off?"
Monica lowered her voice confidentially.
"A man, dear. Did you catch anything worth
while?"
"I think he's worth while. As a matter of
fact, you don't know it, but you're moving in rather
exalted circles. She whom you see before you is
none other than the future Countess of
Rowcester."
Monica screamed excitedly.
"You don't mean you and Bill are engaged?"
"That's right."
"Since when?"
"Some weeks ago."
"I'm delighted. I wouldn't have thought Bill
had so much sense."
"No," agreed Rory in his tactful way.
"One raises the eyebrows in astonishment.
Bill, as I remember it, was always more of a lad
for the buxom, voluptuous type. Many a
passionate romance have I seen him through with
females who looked like a cross between
pantomime Fairy Queens and all-in
wrestlers. There was a girl in the Hippodrome
chorus--"
He broke off these reminiscences, so fraught
with interest to a fianc@ee, in order to say
"Ouch!" Monica had kicked him shrewdly on
the ankle.
"Tell me, darling," said Monica.
"How did it happen? Suddenly?"
"Quite suddenly. He was helping me give a cow
a bolus--"
Rory blinked. "A--?"
"Bolus. Medicine. You give it to cows. And
before I knew what was happening, he had grabbed
my hand and was saying, "I say, arising from this, will
you marry me?"'"
"How frightfully eloquent. When Rory
proposed to me, all he said was "Eh,
what?"'"
"And it took me three weeks to work up to that,"
said Rory. His forehead had become wrinkled again.
It was plain that he was puzzling over something. "This
bolus of which you were speaking. I don't quite follow.
You were giving it to a cow, you say?"
"A sick cow."
"Oh, a sick cow? Well, here's the point
that's perplexing me. Here's the thing that seems to me
to need straightening out. Why were you giving boluses
to sick cows?"
"It's my job. I'm the local vet."
"What! You don't by any chance mean a
veterinary surgeon?"
"That's right. Fully licensed. We're all
workers nowadays."
Rory nodded sagely.
"Profoundly true," he said. "I'm a son
of toil myself."
"Rory's at Harrige's," said Monica.
"Really?"
"Floorwalker in the Hosepipe, Lawn
Mower and Bird Bath department," said Rory.
"But that is merely temporary. There's a strong
rumour going the rounds that hints at promotion to the
Glass, Fancy Goods and Chinaware. And from there
to the Ladies' Underclothing is but a step."
"My hero!" Monica kissed him lovingly.
"I'll bet they'll all be green with jealousy."
Rory was shocked at the suggestion.
"Good God, no! They'll rush to shake me
by the hand and slap me on the back. Our esprit
de corps is wonderful. It's one for all and
all for one in Harrige's."
Monica turned back to Jill.
"And doesn't your father mind you running about the
country giving boluses to cows? Jill's father,"
she explained to Rory, "is Chief Constable of the
county."
"And very nice, too," said Rory.
"I should have thought he would have objected."
"Oh, no. We're all working at something.
Except my brother Eustace. He won a
Littlewood's pool last winter and he's gone
frightfully upper class. Very high hat with the rest
of the family. Moves on a different plane."
"Damn snob," said Rory warmly. "I
hate class distinctions."
He was about to speak further, for the subject was
one on which he held strong opinions, but at this
moment the telephone bell rang, and he looked
round, startled.
"For heaven's sake! Don't tell me the
old boy has paid his telephone bill!" he
cried, astounded.
Monica took up the receiver.
"Hullo? ... Yes, this is Rowcester
Abbey ... No, Lord Rowcester is not in at the
moment. This is his sister, Lady Carmoyle. The
number of his car? It's news to me that he's
got a car." She turned to Jill. "You
don't know the number of Bill's car, do you?"
"No. Why are they asking?"
"Why are you asking?" said Monica into the
telephone. She waited a moment, then hung
up. "He's rung off."
"Who was it?"
"He didn't say. Just a voice from the
void."
"You don't think Bill's had an accident?"
"Good heavens, no," said Rory. "He's much
too good a driver. Probably he had to stop
somewhere to buy some juice, and they need his number for
their books. But it's always disturbing when people don't
give their names on the telephone. There was a
fellow in ours--second in command in the Jams,
Sauces and Potted Meats--who was rung up
one night by a Mystery Voice that wouldn't give
its name, and to cut a long story short--"
Monica did so.
"Save it up for after dinner, my king of
raconteurs," she said. "If there is any
dinner," she added doubtfully.
"Oh, there'll be dinner all right," said
Jill, "and you'll probably find it'll melt
in the mouth. Bill's got a very good cook."
Monica stared.
"A cook? These days? I don't believe
it. You'll be telling me next he's got a
housemaid."
"He has. Name of Ellen."
"Pull yourself together, child. You're talking
wildly. Nobody has a housemaid."
"Bill has. And a gardener. And a butler. A
wonderful butler called Jeeves. And he's
thinking of getting a boy to clean the knives and
boots."
"Good heavens! It sounds like the home life of the
Aga Khan." Monica frowned thoughtfully.
"Jeeves?" she said. "Why does that name seem
to ring a bell?"
Rory supplied illumination.
"Bertie Wooster. He has a man named
Jeeves. This is probably a brother or an
aunt or something."
"No," said Jill. "It's the same man.
Bill has him on lend-lease."
"But how on earth does Bertie get on without
him?"
"I believe Mr. Wooster's away somewhere.
Anyhow, Jeeves appeared one day and said he was
willing to take office, so Bill grabbed him, of
course. He's an absolute treasure.
Bill says he's an "old soul," whatever
that means."
Monica was still bewildered.
"But how about the financial end? Does he
pay this entourage, or just give them a pleasant
smile now and then?"
"Of course he pays them. Lavishly. He
flings them purses of gold every Saturday
morning."
"Where does the money come from?"
"He earns it."
"Don't be silly. Bill hasn't earned a
penny since he was paid twopence a time for taking his
castor oil. How could he possibly earn it?"
"He's doing some sort of work for the
Agricultural Board."
"You don't make a fortune out of that."
"Bill seems to. I suppose he's so
frightfully good at his job that they pay him more than
the others. I don't know what he does,
actually. He just goes off in his car. Some kind
of inspection, I suppose it is. Checking up
on all those questionnaires. He's not very good at
figures, so he always takes Jeeves with him."
"Well, that's wonderful," said Monica.
"I was afraid he might have started backing
horses again. It used to worry me so much
in the old days, the way he would dash from
race-course to race-course in a grey topper
that he carried sandwiches in."
"Oh, no, it couldn't be anything like that. He
promised me faithfully he would never bet on a
horse again."
"Very sensible," said Rory. "I don't mind
a flutter from time to time, of course. At
Harrige's we always run a Sweep on big
events, five-bob chances. The brass hats
frown on anything larger."
Jill moved to the French window.
"Well, I mustn't stand here talking," she
said. "I've got work to do. I came to attend
to Bill's Irish terrier. It's sick of a
fever."
"Give it a bolus."
"I'm giving it some new American ointment.
It's got mange. See you later."
Jill went off on her errand of mercy, and
Rory turned to Monica. His customary
stolidity had vanished. He was keen and alert, like
Sherlock Holmes on the trail.
"Moke!"
"Hullo?"
"What do you make of it, old girl?"
"Make of what?"
"This sudden affluence of Bill's. There's
something fishy going on here. If it had just been a
matter of a simple butler, one could have understood
it. A broker's man in disguise, one would have
said. But how about the housemaid and the cook and the car
and, by Jove, the fact that he's paid his telephone
bill."
"I see what you mean. It's odd."
"It's more than odd. Consider the facts. The
last time I was at Rowcester Abbey, Bill was
in the normal state of destitution of the
upper-class Englishman of today, stealing the
cat's milk and nosing about in the gutters for
cigar-ends. I come here now, and what do I find?
Butlers in every nook and cranny, housemaids as
far as the eye can reach, cooks jostling each other
in the kitchen, Irish terriers everywhere, and a lot
of sensational talk going on about boys to clean the
knives and boots. It's ... what's the word?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do. Begins with "in"."
"Influential? Inspirational? Infra red?"
"Inexplicable. That's what it is. The
whole thing is utterly inexplicable. One
dismisses all that stuff about jobs with the
Agricultural Board as pure eyewash. You
don't cut a stupendous dash like this on a salary
from the Agricultural Board." Rory paused,
and ruminated for a moment. "I wonder if the old
boy's been launching out as a gentleman
burglar."
"Don't be an idiot."
"Well, fellows do, you know. Raffles, if
you remember. He was one, and made a dashed good
thing out of it. Or could it be that he's blackmailing
somebody?"
"Oh, Rory."
"Very profitable, I believe. You look around
for some wealthy bimbo and nose out his guilty
secrets, then you send him a letter saying that you know
all and tell him to leave ten thousand quid in
small notes under the second milestone on the
London road. When you've spent that, you tap
him for another ten. It all mounts up over a
period of time, and would explain these butlers,
housemaids and what not very neatly."
"If you would talk less drivel and take more
bags upstairs, the world would be a better
place."
Rory thought it over and got her meaning.
"You want me to take the bags upstairs?"
"I do."
"Right ho. The Harrige motto is
Service."
The telephone rang again. Rory went to it.
"Hullo?" He started violently. "The
who? Good God! All right. He's out now, but
I'll tell him when I see him." He hung
up. There was a grave look on his face.
"Moke," he said, "perhaps you'll believe me
another time and not scoff and mock when I advance
my theories. That was the police."
"The police?"
"They want to talk to Bill."
"What about?"
"They didn't say. Well, dash it, they
wouldn't, would they? Official Secrets Acts
and all that sort of thing. But they're closing in on
him, old girl, closing in on him."
"Probably all they want is to get him
to present the prizes at the police sports or
something."
"I doubt it," said Rory. "Still,
hold that thought if it makes you happier. Take
the bags upstairs, you were saying? I'll do it
instanter. Come along and encourage me with word and
gesture."



For some moments after they had gone the peace of the
summer evening was broken only by the dull, bumping
sound of a husband carrying suit-cases upstairs.
This died away, and once more a drowsy stillness
stole over Rowcester Abbey. Then, faintly at
first but growing louder, there came from the distance the
chugging of a car. It stopped, and there entered through the
French window a young man. He tottered in,
breathing heavily like a hart that pants for cooling
streams when heated in the chase, and having produced
his cigarette-case lit a cigarette in an
overwrought way, as if he had much on his mind.
Or what one may loosely call his mind.
William, ninth Earl of Rowcester, though
intensely amiable and beloved by all who knew him,
was far from being a mental giant. From his earliest
years his intimates had been aware that, while his
heart was unquestionably in the right place, there was a
marked shortage of the little grey cells, and it was
generally agreed that whoever won the next Nobel
prize, it would not be Bill Rowcester. At the
Drones Club, of which he had been a member
since leaving school, it was estimated that in the
matter of intellect he ranked somewhere in between
Freddie Widgeon and Pongo Twistleton, which
is pretty low down on the list. There were some,
indeed, who held his I.q. to be inferior to that of
Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps.
Against this must be set the fact that, like all his
family, he was extremely good-looking, though
those who considered him so might have revised their
views, had they seen him now. For in addition
to wearing a very loud check coat with bulging,
voluminous pockets and a crimson tie with blue
horseshoes on it which smote the beholder like a
blow, he had a large black patch over his
left eye and on his upper lip a ginger moustache
of the outsize or soupstrainer type. In the
clean-shaven world in which we live today it is not often
that one sees a moustache of this almost tropical
luxuriance, and it is not often, it may be added, that
one wants to.
A black patch and a ginger moustache are
grave defects, but that the ninth Earl was not
wholly dead to a sense of shame was shown by the
convulsive start, like the leap of an adagio
dancer, which he gave a moment later when, wandering
about the room, he suddenly caught sight of himself
in an old-world mirror that hung on the wall.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, recoiling.
With nervous fingers he removed the patch, thrust
it into his pocket, tore the fungoid growth from
his lip and struggled out of the check coat. This done,
he went to the window, leaned out and called in a low,
conspiratorial voice.
"Jeeves!"
There was no answer.
"Hi, Jeeves, where are you?"
Again silence.
Bill gave a whistle, then another. He was
still whistling, his body half-way through the French
window, when the door behind him opened, revealing a
stately form.
The man who entered--or perhaps one should say
shimmered into--the room was tall and dark and
impressive. He might have been one of the
better-class ambassadors or the youngish High
Priest of some refined and dignified religion.
His eyes gleamed with the light of intelligence, and his
finely chiselled face expressed a feudal
desire to be of service. His whole air was that
of a gentleman's gentleman who, having
developed his brain over a course of years
by means of a steady fish diet, is eager to place
that brain at the disposal of the young master. He was
carrying over one arm a coat of sedate colour
and a tie of conservative pattern.
"You whistled, m'lord?" he said.
Bill spun round.
"How the dickens did you get over there,
Jeeves?"
"I ran the car into the garage, m'lord, and then
made my way to the servants' quarters. Your
coat, m'lord."
"Oh, thanks. I see you've changed."
"I deemed it advisable, m'lord. The
gentleman was not far behind us as we rounded into the
straight and may at any moment be calling. were
he to encounter on the threshold a butler in a
check suit and a false moustache, it is possible
that his suspicions might be aroused. I am glad
to see that your lordship has removed that somewhat
distinctive tie. Excellent for creating
atmosphere on the racecourse, it is scarcely
vogue in private life."
Bill eyed the repellent object with a shudder.
"I've always hated that beastly thing, Jeeves.
All those foul horseshoes. Shove it away
somewhere. And the coat."
"Very good, m'lord. This coffer should prove
adequate as a temporary receptacle."
Jeeves took the coat and tie, and crossed the
room to where a fine old oak dower chest stood,
an heirloom long in the Rowcester family.
"Yes," he said, "'Tis not so deep as a
well nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis
enough, 'twill serve."
He folded the distressing objects carefully,
placed them inside and closed the lid. And even this
simple act he performed with a quiet dignity which
would have impressed any spectator less
agitated than Bill Rowcester. It was like seeing
the plenipotentiary of a great nation lay a wreath
on the tomb of a deceased monarch.
But Bill, as we say, was agitated. He was
brooding over an earlier remark that had fallen from
this great man's lips.
"What do you mean, the gentleman may at any
moment be calling?" he asked. The thought of receiving
a visit from that red-faced man with the loud voice
who had bellowed abuse at him all the way from
Epsom Downs to Southmoltonshire was not an
unmixedly agreeable one.
"It is possible that he observed and memorized
the number of our car, m'lord. He was in a
position to study our licence plate for some
considerable time, your lordship will recollect."
Bill sank limply into a chair and brushed a
bead of perspiration from his forehead. This contingency, as
Jeeves would have called it, had not occurred to him.
Placed before him now, it made him feel
filleted.
"Oh, golly, I never thought of that. Then he
would get the owner's name and come racing along here,
wouldn't he?"
"So one would be disposed to imagine, m'lord."
"Hell's bells, Jeeves!"
"Yes, m'lord."
Bill applied the handkerchief to his forehead
again.
"What do I do if he does?"
"I would advise your lordship to assume a
nonchalant air and disclaim all knowledge of the
matter."
"With a light laugh, you mean?"
"Precisely, m'lord."
Bill tried a light laugh. "How did that
sound, Jeeves?"
"Barely adequate, m'lord."
"More like a death rattle?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"I shall need a few rehearsals."
"Several, m'lord. It will be essential to carry
conviction."
Bill kicked petulantly at a
footstool.
"How do you expect me to carry conviction,
feeling the way I do?"
"I can readily appreciate that your lordship
is disturbed."
"I'm all of a twitter. Have you ever seen a
jelly hit by a cyclone?"
"No, m'lord, I have never been present on
such an occasion."
"It quivers. So do I."
"After such an ordeal your lordship would be
unstrung."
"Ordeal is the right word, Jeeves. Apart from
the frightful peril one is in, it was so dashed
ignominious having to leg it like that."
"I should hardly describe our recent
activities as legging it, m'lord. "Strategic
retreat" is more the mot juste. This is a
recognized military manoeuvre, practised
by all the greatest tacticians when the occasion
seemed to call for such a move. I have no doubt
that General Eisenhower has had recourse to it from
time to time."
"But I don't suppose he had a fermenting
punter after him, shouting "Welsher!" at the top
of his voice."
"Possibly not, m'lord."
Bill brooded. "It was that word "Welsher"
that hurt, Jeeves."
"I can readily imagine it, m'lord.
Objected to as irrelevant, incompetent and
immaterial, as I believe the legal
expression is. As your lordship several times
asseverated during our precarious homeward
journey, you have every intention of paying the
gentleman."
"Of course I have. No argument about that.
Naturally I intend to brass up to the
last penny. It's a case of ... what,
Jeeves?"
"Noblesse oblige, m'lord."
"Exactly. The honour of the Rowcesters is
at stake. But I must have time, dash it, to raise
three thousand pounds two and six."
"Three thousand and five pounds two and six,
m'lord. Your lordship is forgetting the gentleman's
original five-pound note."
"So I am. You trousered it and came away with
it in your pocket."
"Precisely, m'lord. Thus bringing the sum
total of your obligations to this Captain
Biggar--"
"Was that his name?"
"Yes, m'lord. Captain C. G.
Brabazon-Biggar, United Rovers Club,
Northumberland Avenue, London W.c$2.
In my capacity as your lordship's clerk I
wrote the name and address on the ticket which he
now has in his possession. The note which he handed
to me and which I duly accepted as your lordship's
official representative raises your
commitments to three thousand and five pounds two
shillings and sixpence."
"Oh, gosh!"
"Yes, m'lord. It is not an insignificant
sum. Many a poor man would be glad of three
thousand and five pounds two shillings and sixpence."
Bill winced. "I would be grateful,
Jeeves, if you could see your way not to keep on
intoning those words."
"Very good, m'lord."
"They are splashed on my soul in glorious
technicolor."
"Quite so, m'lord."
"Who was it who said that when he or she was dead,
the word something would be found carved on his or her
heart?"
"Queen Mary, m'lord, the predecessor of the
great Queen Elizabeth. The word was
"Calais", and the observation was intended to convey
her chagrin at the loss of that town."
"Well, when I die, which will be very shortly if
I go on feeling as I do now, just cut me open,
Jeeves--"
"Certainly, m'lord."
"--and I'll bet you a couple of bob you'll
find carved on my heart the words "Three thousand
and five pounds two and six"."
Bill rose and paced the room with fevered
steps.
"How does one scrape together a sum like that,
Jeeves?"
"It will call for thrift, m'lord."
"You bet it will. It'll take years."
"And Captain Biggar struck me as an
impatient gentleman."
"You needn't rub it in, Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
"Let's keep our minds on the present."
"Yes, m'lord. Remember that man's life
lies all within this present, as 'twere but a
hair's breadth of time. As for the rest, the past is
gone, the future yet unseen."
"Eh?"
"Marcus Aurelius, m'lord."
"Oh? Well, as I was saying, let us glue
our minds on what is going to happen if this
Biggar suddenly blows in here. Do you think he'll
recognize me?"
"I am inclined to fancy not, m'lord. The
moustache and the patch formed a very effective
disguise. After all, in the past few months we
have encountered several gentlemen of your lordship's
acquaintance--"
"And not one of them spotted me."
"No, m'lord. Nevertheless, facing the facts,
I fear we must regard this afternoon's episode as a
set-back. It is clearly impossible for us
to function at the Derby tomorrow."
"I was looking forward to cleaning up on the
Derby."
"I, too, m'lord. But after what has
occurred, one's entire turf activities must,
I fear, be regarded as suspended
indefinitely."
"You don't think we could risk one more pop?"
"No, m'lord."
"I see what you mean, of course. Show up
at Epsom tomorrow, and the first person we'd run
into would be this Captain Biggar--"
"Straddling, like Apollyon, right across the way.
Precisely, m'lord."
Bill passed a hand through his disordered hair.
"If only I had frozen on to the money we
made at Newmarket!"
"Yes, m'lord. Of all sad words of tongue
or pen the saddest are these--It might have been.
Whittier."
"You warned me not to let our capital fall
too low."
"I felt that we were not equipped to incur any
heavy risk. That was why I urged your lordship so
vehemently to lay Captain Biggar's second
wager off. I had misgivings. True, the
probability of the double bearing fruit at such odds
was not great, but when I saw Whistler's Mother pass
us on her way to the starting-post, I was conscious
of a tremor of uneasiness. Those long legs, that
powerful rump ..."
"Don't, Jeeves!"
"Very good, m'lord."
"I'm trying not to think of Whistler's Mother."
"I quite understand, m'lord."
"Who the dickens was Whistler, anyway?"
"A figure, landscape and portrait painter
of considerable distinction, m'lord, born in Lowell,
Massachusetts, in 1834. His "Portrait
of my Mother", painted in 1872, is
particularly esteemed by the cognoscenti and was
purchased by the French Government for the
Luxembourg Gallery, Paris, in 1892. His
works are individual in character and notable for subtle
colour harmony."
Bill breathed a little stertorously.
"It's subtle, is it?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"I see. Thanks for telling me. I was
worrying myself sick about his colour harmony."
Bill became calmer. "Jeeves, if the worst
comes to the worst and Biggar does catch me bending,
can I gain a bit of time by pleading the Gaming
Act?"
"I fear not, m'lord. You took the
gentleman's money. A cash transaction."
"It would mean choky, you feel?"
"I fancy so, m'lord."
"Would you be jugged, too, as my clerk?"
"In all probability, m'lord. I am not quite
certain on the point. I should have to consult my
solicitor."
"But I would be for it?"
"Yes, m'lord. The sentences, however, are not,
I believe, severe."
"But think of the papers. The ninth Earl of
Rowcester, whose ancestors held the field at
Agincourt, skipped from the field at Epsom
with a slavering punter after him. It'll be jam for the
newspaper boys."
"Unquestionably the circumstance of your lordship
having gone into business as a Silver Ring
bookmaker would be accorded wide publicity."
Bill, who had been pacing the floor again,
stopped in mid-stride and regarded the speaker with
an accusing eye.
"And who was it suggested that I should go into business
as a Silver Ring bookie? You, Jeeves. I
don't want to be harsh, but you must own that the idea
came from you. You were the--"
"Fons et origo mali, m'lord? That,
I admit, is true. But if your lordship will
recall, we were in something of a quandary. We had
agreed that your lordship's impending marriage made
it essential to augment your lordship's slender
income, and we went through the Classified
Trades section of the telephone directory in
quest of a possible profession which your lordship
might adopt. It was merely because nothing of a
suitable nature had presented itself by the time we
reached the T's that I suggested Turf
Accountant faute de mieux."
"Faute de what?"
"Mieux, m'lord. A French expression.
We should say "for want of anything better"."
"What asses these Frenchmen are! Why can't
they talk English?"
"They are possibly more to be pitied than
censured, m'lord. Early upbringing no doubt has
a good deal to do with it. As I was saying, it seemed
to me a happy solution of your lordship's
difficulties. In the United States of
America, I believe, bookmakers are
considered persons of a somewhat low order and are,
indeed, suppressed by the police, but in England it
is very different. Here they are looked up to and
courted. There is a school of thought which regards
them as the new aristocracy. They make a great
deal of money, and have the added gratification of not
paying income-tax."
Bill sighed wistfully.
"We made a lot of money up
to Newmarket."
"Yes, m'lord."
"And where is it now?"
"Where, indeed, m'lord?"
"I shouldn't have spent so much doing up the
place."
"No, m'lord."
"And it was a mistake to pay my
tailor's bill."
"Yes, m'lord. One feels that your lordship
did somewhat overdo it there. As the old Roman
observed, ne quid nimis."
"Yes, that was rash. Still, no good beefing about it
now, I suppose."
"No, m'lord. The moving finger writes, and
having writ--"
"Hoy!"
"--moves on, nor all your piety and wit
can lure it back to cancel half a line nor all
your tears wash out one word of it. You were saying,
m'lord?"
"I was only going to ask you to cheese it."
"Certainly, m'lord."
"Not in the mood."
"Quite so, m'lord. It was only the appositeness
of the quotation--from the works of the Persian poet
Omar Khayy@am--that led me to speak. I
wonder if I might ask a question, m'lord?"
"Yes, Jeeves?"
"Is Miss Wyvern aware of your lordship's
professional connection with the turf?"
Bill quivered like an aspen at the mere
suggestion.
"I should say not. She would throw fifty-seven
fits if she knew. I've rather given her the
idea that I'm employed by the Agricultural
Board."
"A most respectable body of men."
"I didn't actually say so in so many words.
I just strewed the place with Agricultural
Board report forms and took care she saw them.
Did you know that they issue a hundred and
seventy-nine different blanks other than the
seventeen questionnaires?"
"No, m'lord. I was not aware. It shows
zeal."
"Great zeal. They're on their toes, those
boys."
"Yes, m'lord."
"But we're wandering from the point, which is that
Miss Wyvern must never learn the awful truth.
It would be fatal. At the outset of our
betrothal she put her foot down firmly on the
subject of my tendency to have an occasional
flutter, and I promised her faithfully that I
would never punt again. Well, you might argue that
being a Silver Ring bookie is not the same thing
as punting, but I doubt if you would ever
sell that idea to Miss Wyvern."
"The distinction is certainly a nice one,
m'lord."
"Let her discover the facts, and all would be
lost."
"Those wedding bells would not ring out."
"They certainly wouldn't. She would return me
to store before I could say "What ho". So if
she comes asking questions, reveal nothing. Not even if
she sticks lighted matches between your toes."
"The contingency is a remote one, m'lord."
"Possibly. I'm merely saying, whatever
happens, Jeeves, secrecy and silence."
"You may rely on me, m'lord. In the
inspired words of Pliny the Younger--"
Bill held up a hand. "Right ho,
Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
"I'm not interested in Pliny the Younger."
"No, m'lord."
"As far as I'm concerned, you may take
Pliny the Younger and put him where the monkey put
the nuts."
"Certainly, m'lord."
"And now leave me, Jeeves. I have a lot
of heavy brooding to do. Go and get me a stiffish
whisky and soda."
"Very good, m'lord. I will attend to the matter
immediately."
Jeeves melted from the room with a look of
respectful pity, and Bill sat down and put his
head between his hands. A hollow groan escaped
him, and he liked the sound of it and gave another.
He was starting on a third, bringing it up from the
soles of his feet, when a voice spoke at his
side.
"Good heavens, Bill. What on earth's the
matter?"
Jill Wyvern was standing there.



In the interval which had elapsed since her
departure from the living room, Jill had rubbed
American ointment on Mike the Irish terrier,
taken a look at a goldfish belonging to the
cook, which had caused anxiety in the kitchen
by refusing its ants' eggs, and made a routine
tour of the pigs and cows, giving one of the latter a
bolus. She had returned to the house
agreeably conscious of duty done and looking
forward to a chat with her loved one, who, she
presumed, would by now be back from his
Agricultural Board rounds and in a mood for
pleasant dalliance. For even when the
Agricultural Board know they have got hold of
an exceptionally good man and wish (naturally)
to get every possible ounce of work out of him, they are
humane enough to let the poor peon call it a day
round about the hour of the evening cocktail.
To find him groaning with his head in his hands was
something of a shock.
"What on earth's the matter?" she repeated.
Bill had sprung from his chair with a convulsive
leap. That loved voice, speaking unexpectedly
out of the void when he supposed himself to be alone with
his grief, had affected him like a buzz-saw
applied to the seat of his trousers. If it had been
Captain C. G. Brabazon-Biggar, of the
United Rovers Club, Northumberland
Avenue, he could not have been much more perturbed.
He gaped at her, quivering in every limb.
Jeeves, had he been present, would have been
reminded of Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo.
"Matter?" he said, inserting three m's at
the beginning of the word.
Jill was looking at him with grave,
speculative eyes. She had that direct,
honest gaze which many nice girls have, and as a
rule Bill liked it. But at the moment he could
have done with something that did not pierce quite so like a
red-hot gimlet to his inmost soul. A sense of
guilt makes a man allergic to direct,
honest gazes.
"Matter?" he said, getting the word shorter and
crisper this time. "What do you mean, what's the
matter? Nothing's the matter. Why do you ask?"
"You were groaning like a foghorn."
"Oh, that. Touch of neuralgia."
"You've got a headache?"
"Yes, it's been coming on some time. I've had
rather an exhausting afternoon."
"Why, aren't the crops rotating properly?
Or are the pigs going in for smaller
families?"
"My chief problem today," said Bill dully,
"concerned horses."
A quick look of suspicion came
into Jill's gaze. Like all nice girls, she
had, where the man she loved was concerned,
something of the Private Eye about her.
"Have you been betting again?"
Bill stared.
"Me?"
"You gave me your solemn promise you
wouldn't. Oh, Bill, you are an idiot.
You're more trouble to look after than a troupe of
performing seals. Can't you see it's just throwing money
away? Can't you get it into your fat head that the
punters haven't a hope against the bookmakers?
I know people are always talking about bringing off
fantastic doubles and winning thousands of pounds with a
single fiver, but that sort of thing never really
happens. What did you say?"
Bill had not spoken. The sound that had
proceeded from his twisted lips had been merely a
soft moan like that of an emotional red Indian at
the stake.
"It happens sometimes," he said hollowly.
"I've heard of cases."
"Well, it couldn't happen to you. Horses just
aren't lucky for you."
Bill writhed. The illusion that he was being
roasted over a slow fire had become
extraordinarily vivid.
"Yes," he said, "I see that now."
Jill's gaze became more direct and
penetrating than ever.
"Come clean, Bill. Did you back a loser
in the Oaks?"
This was so diametrically opposite to what had
actually occurred that Bill perked up a little.
"Of course I didn't."
"You swear?"
"I may begin to at any moment."
"You didn't back anything in the Oaks?"
"Certainly not."
"Then what's the matter?"
"I told you. I've got a headache."
"Poor old thing. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thanks. Jeeves is bringing me a
whisky and soda."
"Would a kiss help, while you're waiting?"
"It would save a human life."
Jill kissed him, but absently. She
appeared to be thinking.
"Jeeves was with you today, wasn't he?" she
said.
"Yes. Yes, Jeeves was along."
"You always take him with you on these
expeditions of yours."
"Yes."
"Where do you go?"
"We make the rounds."
"Doing what?"
"Oh, this and that."
"I see. How's the headache?"
"A little better, thanks."
"Good."
There was silence for a moment.
"I used to have headaches a few years ago,"
said Jill.
"Bad?"
"Quite bad. I suffered agonies."
"They do touch you up, don't they?"
"They do. But," proceeded Jill, her voice
rising and a hard note creeping into her voice,
"my headaches, painful as they were, never made
me look like an escaped convict lurking in a
bush listening to the baying of the bloodhounds and
wondering every minute when the hand of doom was going
to fall on the seat of his pants. And that's how you
are looking now. There's guilt written on your
every feature. If you were to tell me at this moment that
you had done a murder and were worrying because you had
suddenly remembered you hadn't hidden the body
properly, I would say "I thought as much".
Bill, for the last time, what's the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter."
"Don't tell me."
"I am telling you."
"There's nothing on your mind?"
"Not a thing."
"You're as gay and carefree as a lark singing in
the summer sky?"
"If anything, rather more so."
There was another silence. Jill was biting her
lip, and Bill wished she wouldn't. There is, of
course, nothing actually low and degrading in a
girl biting her lip, but it is a spectacle that
a fianc`e with a good deal on his mind can never
really enjoy.
"Bill, tell me," said Jill. "How do you
feel about marriage?"
Bill brightened. This, he felt, was more the
stuff.
"I think it's an extraordinarily good egg.
Always provided, of course, that the male half
of the sketch is getting someone like you."
"Never mind the pretty speeches. Shall
I tell you how I feel about it?"
"D."
"I feel that unless there is absolute trust
between a man and a girl, they're crazy even to think
of getting married, because if they're going to hide
things from each other and not tell each other their
troubles, their marriage is bound to go on the rocks
sooner or later. A husband and wife ought
to tell each other everything. I wouldn't ever dream
of keeping anything from you, and if it interests you to know
it, I'm as sick as mud to think that you're keeping
this trouble of yours, whatever it is, from me."
"I'm not in any trouble."
"You are. What's happened, I don't know,
but a short-sighted mole that's lost its
spectacles could see that you're a soul in
torment. When I came in here, you were groaning your
head off."
Bill's self-control, so sorely tried
today, cracked.
"Damn it all," he bellowed, "why shouldn't
I groan? I believe Rowcester Abbey is
open for being groaned in at about this hour, is it not?
I wish to heaven you would leave me alone," he
went on, gathering momentum. "Who do you think you
are? One of these G-men fellows questioning some rat
of the Underworld? I suppose you'll be asking next
where I was on the night of February the
twenty-first. Don't be such an infernal Nosy
Parker."
Jill was a girl of spirit, and with girls of spirit this
sort of thing soon reaches saturation point.
"I don't know if you know it," she said
coldly, "but when you spit on your hands and get
down to it, you can be the world's premier louse."
"That's a nice thing to say."
"Well, it's the truth," said Jill.
"You're simply a pig in human shape. And
if you want to know what I think," she went on,
gathering momentum in her turn, "I believe
what's happened is that you've gone and got mixed
up with some awful female."
"You're crazy. Where the dickens could I have
met any awful females?"
"I should imagine you have had endless
opportunities. You're always going off in your
car, sometimes for a week at a stretch. For all
I know, you may have been spending your time festooned
with hussies."
"I wouldn't so much as look at a
hussy if you brought her to me on a plate with
watercress round her."
"I don't believe you."
"And it was you, if memory serves me aright,"
said Bill, "who some two and a half seconds
ago were shooting off your head about the necessity for
absolute trust between us. Women!" said Bill
bitterly. "Women! My God, what a sex!"
On this difficult situation Jeeves entered,
bearing a glass on a salver.
"Your whisky and soda, m'lord," he said, much
as a President of the United States might have
said to a deserving citizen "Take this
Congressional medal".
Bill accepted the restorative gratefully.
"Thank you, Jeeves. Not a moment before it was
needed."
"And Sir Roderick and Lady Carmoyle
are in the yew alley, asking to see you, m'lord."
"Good heavens! Rory and the Moke? Where did
they spring from? I thought she was in Jamaica."
"Her ladyship returned this morning, I
understand, and Sir Roderick obtained compassionate
leave from Harrige's in order to accompany her
here. They desired me to inform your lordship that they
would be glad of a word with you at your convenience before the
arrival of Mrs. Spottsworth."
"Before the what of who? Who on earth's Mrs.
Spottsworth?"
"An American lady whose acquaintance her
ladyship made in New York, m'lord. She
is expected here this evening. I gathered from what
her ladyship and Sir Roderick were saying that there
is some prospect of Mrs. Spottsworth
buying the house."
Bill gaped.
"Buying the house?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"This house?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Rowcester Abbey, you mean?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"You're pulling my leg, Jeeves."
"I would not take such a liberty, m'lord."
"You seriously mean that this refugee from whatever
American loony-bin it was where she was under
observation until she sneaked out with false
whiskers on is actually contemplating paying hard
cash for Rowcester Abbey?"
"That was the interpretation which I placed
on the remarks of her ladyship and Sir
Roderick, m'lord."
Bill drew a deep breath.
"Well, I'll be blowed. It just shows you that it
takes all sorts to make a world. Is she coming
to stay?"
"So I understood, m'lord."
"Then you might remove the two buckets you
put to catch the water under the upper hall
skylight. They create a bad impression."
"Yes, m'lord. I will also place some more
drawing pins in the wallpaper. Where would your
lordship be thinking of depositing Mrs.
Spottsworth?"
"She'd better have the Queen Elizabeth
room. It's the best we've got."
"Yes, m'lord. I will insert a wire screen
in the flue to discourage intrusion by the bats that nest
there."
"We can't give her a bathroom, I'm
afraid."
"I fear not, m'lord."
"Still, if she can make do with a shower, she can stand
under the upper hall skylight."
Jeeves pursed his lips.
"If I might offer the suggestion, m'lord, it
is not judicious to speak in that strain. Your
lordship might forget yourself and let fall some such
observation in the hearing of Mrs. Spottsworth."
Jill, standing at the French window and looking out
with burning eyes, had turned and was listening,
electrified. The generous wrath which had caused
her to allude to her betrothed as a pig in human
shape had vanished completely. It could not compete
with this stupendous news. As far as Jill was
concerned, the war was over.
She thoroughly concurred with Jeeves's
rebuke.
"Yes, you poor fish," she said. "You mustn't
even think like that. Oh, Bill, isn't it
wonderful! If this comes off, you'll have money enough
to buy a farm. I'm sure we'd do well
running a farm, me as a vet and you with all your
expert farming knowledge."
"My what?"
Jeeves coughed.
"I think Miss Wyvern is alluding to the
fact that you have had such wide experience working for the
Agricultural Board, m'lord."
"Oh, ah, yes. I see what you
mean. Of course, yes, the Agricultural
Board. Thank you, Jeeves."
"Not at all, m'lord."
Jill developed her theme.
"If you could sting this Mrs. Spottsworth for
something really big, we could start a prize herd.
That pays like anything. I wonder how much you could
get for the place."
"Not much, I'm afraid. It's seen better
days."
"What are you going to ask?"
"Three thousand and five pounds two shillings and
sixpence."
"What!"
Bill blinked.
"Sorry. I was thinking of something else."
"But what put an odd sum like that into your
head?"
"I don't know."
"You must know."
"I don't."
"Bill you must have had some reason."
"The sum in question arose in the course of his
lordship's work in connection with his Agricultural
Board duties this afternoon, miss," said Jeeves
smoothly. "Your lordship may recall that I
observed at the time that it was a peculiar
figure."
"So you did, Jeeves, so you did."
"That was why your lordship said "Three thousand and
five pounds two shillings and sixpence"."
"Yes, that was why I said "Three thousand and
five pounds two shillings and sixpence"."
"These momentary mental aberrations are not
uncommon, I believe. If I might suggest
it, m'lord, I think it would be advisable to proceed
to the yew alley without further delay. Time is
of the essence."
"Of course, yes. They're waiting for me,
aren't they? Are you coming, Jill?"
"I can't, darling. I have patients to attend
to. I've got to go all the way over to Stover
to see the Mainwarings' Peke, though I don't
suppose there's the slightest thing wrong with it. That
dog is the worst hypochondriac."
"Well, you're coming to dinner all right?"
"Of course. I'm counting the minutes. My
mouth's watering already."
Jill went out through the French window. Bill
mopped his forehead. It had been a near
thing.
"You saved me there, Jeeves," he said. "But
for your quick thinking all would have been discovered."
"I am happy to have been of service, m'lord."
"Another instant, and womanly intuition would have
been doing its stuff, with results calculated
to stagger humanity. You eat a lot of fish,
don't you, Jeeves?"
"A good deal, m'lord."
"So Bertie Wooster has often told me.
You sail into the sole and sardines like nobody's
business, he says, and he attributes your
giant intellect to the effects of the
phosphorus. A hundred times, he says, it
has enabled you to snatch him from the soup at the
eleventh hour. He raves about your great
gifts."
"Mr. Wooster has always been gratifyingly
appreciative of my humble efforts on his
behalf, m'lord."
"What beats me and has always beaten me is
why he ever let you go. When you came to me that day
and said you were at liberty, you could have bowled me
over. The only explanation I could think of was that
he was off his rocker ... or more off his rocker
than he usually is. Or did you have a row with him
and hand in your portfolio?"
Jeeves seemed distressed at the suggestion.
"Oh, no, m'lord. My relations with Mr.
Wooster continue uniformly cordial, but
circumstances have compelled a temporary separation.
Mr. Wooster is attending a school which does not
permit its student body to employ gentlemen's
personal gentlemen."
"A school?"
"An institution designed to teach the
aristocracy to fend for itself, m'lord. Mr.
Wooster, though his finances are still quite sound, feels
that it is prudent to build for the future, in case
the social revolution should set in with even greater
severity. Mr. Wooster ... I can hardly
mention this without some display of emotion ... is
actually learning to darn his own socks. The course
he is taking includes boot-cleaning,
sock-darning, bed-making and primary grade
cooking."
"Golly! Well, that's certainly a novel
experience for Bertie."
"Yes, m'lord. Mr. Wooster doth suffer a
sea change into something rich and strange.
I quote the Bard of Stratford. Would your
lordship care for another quick whisky and soda before
joining Lady Carmoyle?"
"No, we mustn't waste a moment. As you were
saying not long ago, time is of the ... what,
Jeeves?"
"Essence, m'lord."
"Essence? You're sure?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Well, if you say so, though I always thought
an essence was a sort of scent. Right ho, then,
let's go."
"Very good, m'lord."



It was with her mind in something of a whirl that Mrs.
Spottsworth had driven away from the door of the
Goose and Gherkin. The encounter with Captain C.
G. Biggar had stirred her quite a good deal.
Mrs. Spottsworth was a woman who
attached considerable importance to what others of
less sensitivity would have dismissed carelessly as
chance happenings or coincidences. She did not
believe in chance. In her lexicon there was no such
word as coincidence. These things, she held, were
meant. This unforeseen return into her life of the
White Hunter could be explained, she felt,
only on the supposition that some pretty adroit
staff work had been going on in the spirit world.
It had happened at such a particularly
significant moment. Only two days
previously A. B. Spottsworth, chatting with
her on the ouija board, had remarked, after mentioning
that he was very happy and eating lots of fruit, that
it was high time she thought of getting married again.
No sense, A. B. Spottsworth had said, in
her living a lonely life with all that money in the
bank. A woman needs a mate, he had
asserted, adding that Cliff Bessemer, with whom
he had exchanged a couple of words that morning in
the vale of light, felt the same. "And they
don't come more levelheaded than old Cliff
Bessemer," said A. B. Spottsworth.
And when his widow had asked "But, Alexis,
wouldn't you and Clifton mind me marrying again?"'
A. B. Spottsworth had replied in his
bluff way, spelling the words out carefully,
"Of course we wouldn't, you dumb-bell. Go
to it, kid."
And right on top of that dramatic conversation who
should pop up out of a trap but the man who had loved
her with a strong silent passion from the first moment they
had met. It was uncanny. One would have said that
passing the veil made the late Messrs.
Bessemer and Spottsworth clairvoyant.
Inasmuch as Captain Biggar, as we have seen,
had not spoken his love but had let concealment like a
worm i' the bud feed on his tomato-coloured
cheek, it may seem strange that Mrs.
Spottsworth should have known anything about the way he
felt. But a woman can always tell. When she
sees a man choke up and look like an
embarrassed beetroot every time he catches her
eye over the eland steaks and lime-juice, she
soon forms an adequate diagnosis of his
case.
The recurrence of these phenomena during those
moments of farewell outside the Goose and
Gherkin showed plainly, moreover, that the passage
of time had done nothing to cool off the gallant
Captain. She had not failed to observe the
pop-eyed stare in his keen blue eyes, the
deepening of the hue of his vermilion face and the way
his number eleven feet had shuffled from start
to finish of the interview. If he did not still consider
her the tree on which the fruit of his life hung,
Rosalinda Spottsworth was vastly mistaken.
She was a little surprised that nothing had emerged in
the way of an impassioned declaration. But how could
she know that a feller had his code?
Driving through the pleasant Southmoltonshire
country, she found her thoughts dwelling lingeringly on
Captain C. G. Biggar.
At their very first meeting in Kenya she had found
something about him that attracted her, and two days
later this mild liking had become a rather fervent
admiration. A woman cannot help but respect a
man capable of upping with his big-bored .505
Gibbs and blowing the stuffing out of a charging buffalo.
And from respect to love is as short a step as that
from Harrige's Glass, Fancy Goods and
Chinaware department to the Ladies' Underclothing.
He seemed to her like someone out of Ernest
Hemingway, and she had always had a weakness for those
rough, tough devil-may-care Hemingway characters.
Spiritual herself, she was attracted by roughness and
toughness in the male. Clifton Bessemer had
had those qualities. So had A. B.
Spottsworth. What had first impressed
her in Clifton Bessemer had been the way he
had swatted a charging fly with a rolled-up evening
paper at the studio party where they had met, and in
the case of A. B. Spottsworth the spark had
been lit when she heard him one afternoon in conversation
with a Paris taxi-driver who had expressed
dissatisfaction with the amount of his fare.
As she passed through the great gates of Rowcester
Abbey and made her way up the long drive, it
was beginning to seem to her that she might do
considerably worse than cultivate Captain
Biggar. A woman needs a protector, and
what better protector can she find than a man
who thinks nothing of going into tall grass after a
wounded lion? True, wounded lions do not enter
largely into the ordinary married life, but it is
nice for a wife to know that, if one does happen
to come along, she can leave it with every confidence to her
husband to handle.
It would not, she felt, be a difficult matter
to arrange the necessary preliminaries. A few kind
words and a melting look or two ought to be quite
sufficient to bring that strong, passionate nature
to the boil. These men of the wilds respond
readily to melting looks.
She was just trying one out in the mirror of her car
when, as she rounded a bend in the drive, Rowcester
Abbey suddenly burst upon her view, and for the moment
Captain Biggar was forgotten. She could think of
nothing but that she had found the house of her dreams.
Its mellow walls aglow in the rays of the setting
sun, its windows glittering like jewels, it
seemed to her like some palace of Fairyland. The
little place in Pasadena, the little place in
Carmel, and the little places in New York,
Florida, Maine and Oregon were well enough in
their way, but this outdid them all. Houses like
Rowcester Abbey always look their best from outside
and at a certain distance.
She stopped the car and sat there, gazing
raptly.

Rory and Monica, tired of waiting in the
yew alley, had returned to the house and met
Bill coming out. All three had gone back into the
living-room, where they were now discussing the
prospects of a quick sale to this female Santa
Claus from across the Atlantic. Bill, though
feeling a little better after his whisky and soda, was
still in a feverish state. His goggling eyes
and twitching limbs would have interested a Harley
Street physician, had one been present
to observe them.
"Is there a hope?" he quavered, speaking rather
like an invalid on a sick bed addressing his
doctor.
"I think so," said Monica.
"I don't," said Rory.
Monica quelled him with a glance.
"The impression I got at that women's lunch
in New York," she said, "was that she was
nibbling. I gave her quite a blast of propaganda
and definitely softened her up. All that remains
now is to administer the final shove. When she
arrives, I'll leave you alone together, so that you can
exercise that well-known charm of yours. Give her
the old personality."
"I will," said Bill fervently. "I'll be like
a turtle dove cooing to a female
turtle-dove. I'll play on her as on a
stringed instrument."
"Well, mind you do, because if the sale comes
off, I'm expecting a commission."
"You shall have it, Moke, old thing. You shall be
repaid a thousandfold. In due season there will
present themselves at your front door elephants
laden with gold and camels bearing precious stones
and rare spices."
"How about apes, ivory and peacocks?"
"They'll be there."
Rory, the practical, hard-headed business
man, frowned on this visionary stuff.
"Well, will they?" he said. "The point seems
to me extremely moot. Even on the assumption
that this woman is weak in the head I can't see her
paying a fortune for a place like Rowcester Abbey.
To start with, all the farms are gone."
"That's true," said Bill, damped. "And the
park belongs to the local golf club. There's
only the house and garden."
"The garden, yes. And we know all about the
garden, don't we? I was saying to Moke only
a short while ago that whereas in the summer months
the river is at the bottom of the garden--"
"Oh, be quiet," said Monica. "I
don't see why you shouldn't get fifteen thousand
pounds, Bill. Maybe even as much as twenty."
Bill revived like a watered flower.
"Do you really think so?"
"Of course she doesn't," said
Rory. "She's just trying to cheer you up, and very
sisterly of her, too. I honour her for it. Under
that forbidding exterior there lurks a tender heart.
But twenty thousand quid for a house from which even
Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents recoil in
horror? Absurd. The thing's a relic of the
past. A hundred and forty-seven rooms!"
"That's a lot of house," argued Monica.
"It's a lot of junk," said Rory
firmly. "It would cost a bally fortune to do it
up."
Monica was obliged to concede this.
"I suppose so," she said. "Still, Mrs.
Spottsworth's the sort of woman who would be quite
prepared to spend a million or so on that.
You've been making a few improvements, I
notice," she said to Bill.
"A drop in the bucket."
"You've even done something about the smell on the
first-floor landing."
"Wish I had the money it cost."
"You're hard up?"
"Stony."
"Then where the dickens," said Rory, pouncing like
a prosecuting counsel, "do all these butlers and
housemaids come from? That girl Jill
Stick-in-the-mud--"
"Her name is not Stick-in-the-mud."
Rory raised a restraining hand.
"Her name may or may not be
Stick-in-the-mud," he said, letting the point
go, for after all it was a minor one, "but the fact
remains that she was holding us spellbound just now with a
description of your domestic amenities which
suggested the mad luxury that led to the fall of
Babylon. Platoons of butlers, beauty
choruses of housemaids, cooks in reckless
profusion and stories flying about of boys to clean
the knives and boots. ... I said to Moke after
she'd left that I wondered if you had set up as
a gentleman bur ... That reminds me, old
girl. Did you tell Bill about the police?"
Bill leaped a foot, and came down shaking in
every limb.
"The police? What about the police?"
"Some blighter rang up from the local
gendarmerie. The rozzers want to question you."
"What do you mean, question me?"
"Grill you," explained Rory. "Give you
the third degree. And there was another
call before that. A mystery man who didn't give
his name. He and Moke kidded back and forth for a
while."
"Yes, I talked to him," said Monica.
"He had a voice that sounded as if he ate
spinach with sand in it. He was inquiring about the
licence number of your car."
"What!"
"You haven't run into somebody's cow, have you?
I understand that's a very serious offence nowadays."
Bill was still quivering briskly.
"You mean someone was wanting to know the licence
number of my car?"
"That's what I said. Why, what's the matter,
Bill? You're looking as worried as a
prune."
"White and shaken," agreed Rory. "Like a
side-car." He laid a kindly hand on his
brother-in-law's shoulder. "Bill, tell me.
Be frank. Why are you wanted by the police?"
"I'm not wanted by the police."
"Well, it seems to be their dearest wish
to get their hands on you. One theory that crossed my
mind," said Rory, "was--I mentioned it to you,
Moke, if you remember--that you had found some
opulent bird with a guilty secret and were going in
for a spot of blackmail. This may or may not be
the case, but if it is, now is the time to tell us,
Bill, old man. You're among friends.
Moke's broadminded, and I'm broadminded.
I know the police look a bit squiggle-eyed
at blackmail, but I can't see any objection
to it myself. Quick profits and practically no
overheads. If I had a son, I'm not at
all sure I wouldn't have him trained for that
profession. So if the flatties are after you and you
would like a helping hand to get you out of the country before
they start watching the ports, say the word, and
we'll ..."
"Mrs. Spottsworth," announced Jeeves
from the doorway, and a moment later Bill had done
another of those leaps in the air which had become so
frequent with him of late.
He stood staring pallidly at the vision that
entered.







Mrs. Spottsworth had come sailing into the
room with the confident air of a woman who knows that
her hat is right, her dress is right, her shoes
are right and her stockings are right and that she has a
matter of forty-two million dollars tucked
away in sound securities, and Bill, with a
derelict country house for sale, should have found her
an encouraging spectacle. For unquestionably she
looked just the sort of person who would buy
derelict English country houses by the gross
without giving the things a second thought.
But his mind was not on business transactions.
It had flitted back a few years and was in the
French Riviera, where he and this woman had met
and--he could not disguise it from himself--become
extremely matey.
It had all been perfectly innocent, of
course--just a few moonlight drives, one or
two mixed bathings and hob-nobbings at Eden Roc
and the ordinary exchanges of civilities
customary on the French Riviera--but it seemed
to him that there was a grave danger of her introducing
into their relations now that touch of Auld Lang
Syne which is the last thing a young man wants when
he has a fianc@ee around--and a fianc@ee,
moreover, who has already given evidence of
entertaining distressing suspicions.
Mrs. Spottsworth had come upon him as a
complete and painful surprise. At Cannes
he had got the impression that her name was
Bessemer, but of course in places like Cannes
you don't bother much about surnames. He had, he
recalled, always addressed her as Rosie, and she
--he shuddered--had addressed him as Billiken.
A clear, but unpleasant, picture rose before
his eyes of Jill's face when she heard her
addressing him as Billiken at dinner tonight. Most
unfortunately, through some oversight, he had
omitted to mention to Jill his Riviera
acquaintance Mrs. Bessemer, and he could see
that she might conceivably take a little explaining
away.
"How nice to see you again, Rosalinda," said
Monica. "So glad you found your way here all
right. It's rather tricky after you leave the main
road. My husband, Sir Roderick
Carmoyle. And this is--"
"Billiken!" cried Mrs.
Spottsworth, with all the enthusiasm of a generous
nature. It was plain that if the ecstasy occasioned
by this unexpected encounter was a little one-sided, on
her side at least it existed in full measure.
"Eh?" said Monica.
"Mr. Belfry and I are old friends. We
knew each other in Cannes a few years ago,
when I was Mrs. Bessemer."
"Bessemer!"
"It was not long after my husband had passed the
veil owing to having a head-on collision with a
truck full of beer bottles on the Jericho
Turnpike. His name was Clifton Bessemer."
Monica shot a pleased and congratulatory
look at Bill. She knew all about Mrs.
Bessemer of Cannes. She was aware that her
brother had given this Mrs. Bessemer the rush
of a lifetime, and what better foundation could a young
man with a house to sell have on which to build.
"Well, that's fine," she said. "You'll have
all sorts of things to talk about, won't you? But
he isn't Mr. Belfry now, he's Lord
Rowcester."
"Changed his name," explained Rory. "The
police are after him, and an alias was
essential."
"Oh, don't be an ass, Rory. He
came into the title," said Monica. "You know how
it is in England. You start out as something, and then
someone dies and you do a switch. Our uncle,
Lord Rowcester, pegged out not long ago, and Bill
was his heir, so he shed the Belfry and took on
the Rowcester."
"I see. Well, to me he will always be
Billiken. How are you, Billiken?"
Bill found speech, though not much of it and what
there was rather rasping.
"I'm fine, thanks--er--Rosie."
"Rosie?" said Rory, startled and, like the child of
nature he was, making no attempt to conceal his
surprise. "Did I hear you say Rosie?"
Bill gave him a cold look.
"Mrs. Spottsworth's name, as you have already
learned from a usually well-informed source--viz.
Moke--is Rosalinda. All her friends--even
casual acquaintances like myself--called her
Rosie."
"Oh, ah," said Rory. "Quite, quite. Very
natural, of course."
"Casual acquaintances?" said Mrs.
Spottsworth, pained.
Bill plucked at his tie.
"Well, I mean blokes who just knew you from
meeting you at Cannes and so forth."
"Cannes!" cried Mrs. Spottsworth
ecstatically. "Dear, sunny, gay, delightful
Cannes! What times we had there, Billiken!
Do you remember--"
"Yes, yes," said Bill. "Very jolly, the
whole thing. Won't you have a drink or a sandwich
or a cigar or something?"
Fervently he blessed the Mainwarings' Peke for
being so confirmed a hypochondriac that it had taken
Jill away to the other side of the county. By the time
she returned, Mrs. Spottsworth, he
trusted, would have simmered down and become less
expansive on the subject of the dear old days.
He addressed himself to the task of curbing her
exuberance.
"Nice to welcome you to Rowcester Abbey,"
he said formally.
"Yes, I hope you'll like it," said
Monica.
"It's the most wonderful place I ever
saw!"
"Would you say that? Mouldering old ruin, I'd
call it," said Rory judicially, and was
fortunate enough not to catch his wife's eye, "Been
decaying for centuries. I'll bet if you shook
those curtains, a couple of bats would fly out."
"The patina of Time!" said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "I adore it." She closed
her eyes. ""The dead, twelve deep, clutch
at you as you go by"," she murmured.
"What a beastly idea," said Rory. "Even
a couple of clutching corpses would be a bit
over the odds, in my opinion."
Mrs. Spottsworth opened her eyes. She
smiled.
"I'm going to tell you something very strange," she
said. "It struck me so strongly when I came in
at the front door I had to sit down for a
moment. Your butler thought I was ill."
"You aren't, I hope?"
"No, not at all. It was simply that I was
... overcome. I realized that I had been here
before."
Monica looked politely puzzled. It was
left to Rory to supply the explanation.
"Oh, as a sightseer?" he said.
"One of the crowd that used to come on Fridays during
the summer months to be shown over the place at a
bob a head. I remember them well in the days
when you and I were walking out, Moke. The
Gogglers, we used to call them. They came in
charabancs and dropped nut chocolate on the
carpets. Not that dropping nut chocolate on them
would make these carpets any worse. That's all
been discontinued now, hasn't it, Bill?
Nothing left to goggle at, I suppose. The
late Lord Rowcester," he explained to the
visitor, "stuck the Americans with all his best
stuff, and now there's not a thing in the place worth
looking at. I was saying to my wife only a
short while ago that by far the best policy in
dealing with Rowcester Abbey would be to burn it
down."
A faint moan escaped Monica. She
raised her eyes heavenwards, as if pleading for a
thunderbolt to strike this man. If this was her
Roderick's idea of selling goods to a customer,
it seemed a miracle that he had ever managed
to get rid of a single hose-pipe, lawn-mower
or bird-bath.
Mrs. Spottsworth shook her head with an
indulgent smile.
"No, no, I didn't mean that I had been
here in my present corporeal envelope. I
meant in a previous incarnation. I'm a
Rotationist, you know."
Rory nodded intelligently.
"Ah, yes. Elks, Shriners and all that.
I've seen pictures of them, in funny
hats."
"No, no, you are thinking of Rotarians. I
am a Rotationist, which is quite different. We
believe that we are reborn as one of our
ancestors every ninth generation."
"Ninth?" said Monica, and began to count on
her fingers.
"The mystic ninth house. Of course you've
read the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster, Sir
Roderick?"
"I'm afraid not. Is it good?"
"Essential, I would say."
"I'll put it on my library list," said
Rory. "By Agatha Christie, isn't it?"
Monica had completed her calculations.
"Ninth ... That seems to make me Lady
Barbara, the leading hussy of Charles the
Second's reign."
Mrs. Spottsworth was impressed.
"I suppose I ought to be calling you Lady
Barbara and asking you about your latest love
affair."
"I only wish I could remember it. From what
I've heard of her, it would make quite a story."
"Did she get herself sunburned all over?"
asked Rory. "Or was she more of an indoor
girl?"
Mrs. Spottsworth had closed her eyes
again.
"I feel influences," she said. "I even
hear faint whisperings. How strange it is, coming
into a house that you last visited three hundred
years ago. Think of all the lives that have been
lived within these ancient walls. And they are here,
all around us, creating an intriguing aura for this
delicious old house."
Monica caught Bill's eye.
"It's in the bag, Bill," she whispered.
"Eh?" said Rory in a loud, hearty
voice. "What's in the bag?"
"Oh, shut up."
"But what is in the ... Ouch!" He rubbed a
well-kicked ankle. "Oh, ah, yes, of
course. Yes, I see what you mean."
Mrs. Spottsworth passed a hand across her
brow. She appeared to be in a sort of
mediumistic trance.
"I seem to remember a chapel. There is a
chapel here?"
"Ruined," said Monica.
"You don't need to tell her that, old girl,"
said Rory.
"I knew it. And there's a Long Gallery."
"That's right," said Monica. "A duel was
fought in it in the eighteenth century. You can still see
the bullet holes in the walls."
"And dark stains on the floor, no doubt. This
place must be full of ghosts."
This, felt Monica, was an idea to be
discouraged at the outset.
"Oh, no, don't worry," she said
heartily. "Nothing like that in Rowcester Abbey,"
and was surprised to observe that her guest was gazing
at her with large, woebegone eyes like a child informed
that the evening meal will not be topped off with
ice-cream.
"But I want ghosts," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "I must have ghosts. Don't
tell me there aren't any?"
Rory was his usual helpful self.
"There's what we call the haunted lavatory
on the ground floor," he said. "Every now and then,
when there's nobody near it, the toilet will
suddenly flush, and when a death is expected in the
family, it just keeps going and going. But we
don't know if it's a spectre or just a
defect in the plumbing."
"Probably a poltergeist," said Mrs.
Spottsworth, seeming a little disappointed. "But
are there no visual manifestations?"
"I don't think so."
"Don't be silly, Rory," said Monica.
"Lady Agatha."
Mrs. Spottsworth was intrigued.
"Who was Lady Agatha?"
"The wife of Sir Caradoc the Crusader.
She has been seen several times in the ruined
chapel."
"Fascinating, fascinating," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "And now let me take you to the
Long Gallery. Don't tell me where it is.
Let me see if I can't find it for myself."
She closed her eyes, pressed her
finger-tips to her temples, paused for a moment,
opened her eyes and started off. As she reached the
door, Jeeves appeared.
"Pardon me, m'lord."
"Yes, Jeeves?"
"With reference to Mrs. Spottsworth's dog,
m'lord, I would appreciate instructions as to meal
hours and diet."
"Pomona is very catholic in her tastes,"
said Mrs. Spottsworth. "She usually dines
at five, but she is not at all fussy."
"Thank you, madam."
"And now I must concentrate. This is a test."
Mrs. Spottsworth applied her finger-tips
to her temple once more. "Follow, please,
Monica. You, too, Billiken. I am going
to take you straight to the Long Gallery."
The procession passed through the door, and
Rory, having scrutinized it in his slow, thorough
way, turned to Jeeves with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Potty, what?"
"The lady does appear to diverge somewhat from
the generally accepted norm, Sir Roderick."
"She's as crazy as a bed bug.
I'll tell you something, Jeeves. That sort of
thing wouldn't be tolerated at Harrige's."
"No, sir?"
"Not for a moment. If this Mrs. Dogsbody,
or whatever her name is, came into--say the
Cakes, Biscuits and General Confectionery and
started acting that way, the store detectives would
have her by the seat of the trousers and be giving her the
old heave-ho before the first gibber had proceeded from
her lips."
"Indeed, Sir Roderick?"
"I'm telling you, Jeeves. I had an
experience of that sort myself shortly after I
joined. I was at my post one morning--I was in
the Jugs, Bottles and Picnic Supplies
at the time--and a woman came in. Well
dressed, refined aspect, nothing noticeable about
her at all except that she was wearing a
fireman's helmet--I started giving her
courteous service. "Good morning, madam,"
I said. "What can I do for you, madam? Something
in picnic supplies, madam? A jug? A
bottle?"' She looked at me keenly. "Are
you interested in bottles, gargoyle?"' she
asked, addressing me for some reason as gargoyle.
"Why, yes, madam," I replied. "Then
what do you think of this one," she said. And with that she
whipped out a whacking great decanter and brought it
whizzing down on the exact spot where my
frontal bone would have been, had I not started
back like a nymph surprised while bathing. It
shattered itself on the counter. It was enough. I
beckoned to the store detectives and they scooped
her up."
"Most unpleasant, Sir Roderick."
"Yes, shook me, I confess. Nearly
made me send in my papers. It turned out that
she had recently been left a fortune by a
wealthy uncle in Australia, and it had unseated
her reason. This Mrs. Dogsbody's trouble
is, I imagine, the same. Inherited
millions from a platoon of deceased husbands,
my wife informs me, and took advantage of the
fact to go right off her onion. Always a
mistake, Jeeves, unearned money. There's
nothing like having to scratch for a living. I'm
twice the man I was since I joined the ranks
of the world's workers."
"You see eye to eye with the Bard, Sir
Roderick. 'Tis deeds must win the
prize."
"Exactly. Quite so. And speaking of winning
prizes, what about tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, Sir Roderick?"
"The Derby. Know anything?"
"I fear not, Sir Roderick. It would seem
to be an exceptionally open contest. Monsieur
Boussac's Voleur is, I understand, the
favourite. Fifteen to two at last night's
call-over and the price likely to shorten to sixes
or even fives for the S.p. But the animal in
question is somewhat small and lightly boned for so
gruelling an ordeal. Though we have, to be sure,
seen such a handicap overcome. The name of
Manna, the 1925 winner, springs to the mind, and
Hyperion, another smallish horse, broke the
course record previously held by Flying
Fox, accomplishing the distance in two minutes,
thirty-four seconds."
Rory regarded him with awe.
"By Jove! You know your stuff, don't you?"
"One likes to keep au courant in these
matters, sir. It is, one might say, an
essential part of one's education."
"Well, I'll certainly have another chat with
you tomorrow before I put my bet on."
"I shall be most happy if I can be of
service, Sir Roderick," said Jeeves
courteously, and oozed softly from the room, leaving
Rory with the feeling, so universal among those who
encountered this great man, that he had established
connection with some wise, kindly spirit in whose hands he
might place his affairs without a tremor.
A few moments later, Monica came in,
looking a little jaded.
"Hullo, old girl," said Rory. "Back
from your travels? Did she find the ruddy
Gallery?"
Monica nodded listlessly.
"Yes, after taking us all over the house. She
said she lost the influence for a while. Still, I
suppose it wasn't bad after three hundred
years."
"I was saying to Jeeves a moment ago that the
woman's as crazy as a bed bug. Though, arising
from that, how is it that bed bugs have got their
reputation for being mentally unbalanced? Now that
she's over in this country, I expect she'll
soon be receiving all sorts of flattering offers from
Colney Hatch and similar
establishments. What became of Bill?"
"He didn't stay the course. He
disappeared. Went to dress, I suppose."
"What sort of state was he in?"
"Glassy-eyed and starting at sudden noises."
"Ah, still jittery. He's certainly got the
jumps all right, our William. But I've had
another theory about old Bill," said Rory.
"I don't think his nervousness is due to his being
one jump ahead of the police. I now
attribute it to his having got this job with the
Agricultural Board and, like all these
novices, pitching in too strenuously at first.
We fellows who aren't used to work have got to learn
to husband our strength, to keep something in reserve,
if you know what I mean. That's what I'm always
preaching to the chaps under me. Most of them listen, but
there's one lad--in the Midgets Outfitting--
you've never seen such drive. That boy's going
to burn himself out before he's fifty. Hullo, whom
have we here?"
He stared, at a loss, at a tall,
good-looking girl who had just entered. A momentary
impression that this was the ghost of Lady Agatha,
who, wearying of the ruined chapel, had come to join the
party, he dismissed. But he could not place her.
Monica saw more clearly into the matter.
Observing the cap and apron, she deduced that this
must be that almost legendary figure, the housemaid.
"Ellen?" she queried.
"Yes, m'lady. I was looking for his
lordship."
"I think he's in his room. Anything I can
do?"
"It's this gentleman that's just come, asking to see
his lordship, m'lady. I saw him driving up in
his car and, Mr. Jeeves being busy in the
dining-room, I answered the door and showed him
into the morning-room."
"Who is he?"
"A Captain Biggar, m'lady."
Rory chuckled amusedly.
"Biggar? Reminds me of that game we used
to play when we were kids, Moke--the Bigger
Family."
"I remember."
"You do? Then which is bigger, Mr. Bigger or
Mrs. Bigger?"
"Rory, really."
"Mr. Bigger, because he's father
Bigger. Which is bigger, Mr. Bigger or his old
maid aunt?"
"You're not a child now, you know."
"Can you tell me, Ellen?"
"No, sir."
"Perhaps Mrs. Dogsbody can," said Rory,
as that lady came bustling in.
There was a look of modest triumph on
Mrs. Spottsworth's handsome face.
"Did you tell Sir Roderick?" she said.
"I told him," said Monica.
"I found the Long Gallery, Sir
Roderick."
"Three rousing cheers," said Rory. "Continue
along these lines, and you'll soon be finding bass
drums in telephone booths. But pigeon-holing
that for the moment, do you know which is bigger, Mr.
Bigger or his old maid aunt?"
Mrs. Spottsworth looked perplexed.
"I beg your pardon?"
Rory repeated his question, and her perplexity
deepened.
"But I don't understand."
"Rory's just having one of his spells," said
Monica.
"The old maid aunt," said Rory, "because,
whatever happens, she's always Bigger."
"Pay no attention to him," said Monica.
"He's quite harmless on these occasions. It's just that
a Captain Biggar has called. That set him
off. He'll be all right in a minute."
Mrs. Spottsworth's fine eyes had
widened.
"Captain Biggar?"
"There's another one," said Rory, knitting his
brow, "only it eludes me for the moment. I'll
get it soon. Something about Mr. Bigger and his
son."
"Captain Biggar?" repeated Mrs.
Spottsworth. She turned to Ellen. "Is he
a gentleman with a rather red face?"
"He's a gentleman with a very red face," said
Ellen. She was a girl who liked to get these
things right.
Mrs. Spottsworth put a hand to her heart.
"How extraordinary!"
"You know him?" said Monica.
"He is an old, old friend of mine. I
knew him when ... Oh, Monica, could you ...
would you ... could you possibly invite him
to stay?"
Monica started like a war-horse at the sound
of the bugle.
"Why, of course, Rosalinda. Any friend of
yours. What a splendid idea."
"Oh, thank you." Mrs. Spottsworth
turned to Ellen. "Where is Captain Biggar?"
"In the morning-room, madam."
"Will you take me there at once. I must see
him."
"If you will step this way, madam."
Mrs. Spottsworth hurried out, followed
sedately by Ellen. Rory shook his head
dubiously.
"Is this wise, Moke, old girl?
Probably some frightful outsider in a bowler hat
and a made-up tie."
Monica's eyes were sparkling.
"I don't care what he's like. He's a friend
of Mrs. Spottsworth's, that's all that
matters. Oh, Bill!" she cried, as Bill
came in.
Bill was tail-coated, white-tied and
white-waistcoated, and his hair gleamed with
strange unguents. Rory stared at him in
amazement.
"Good God, Bill! You look like Great
Lovers Through The Ages. If you think I'm
going to dress up like that, you're much mistaken. You
get the old Carmoyle black tie and soft
shirt, and like it. I get the idea, of course.
You've dolled yourself up to impress Mrs.
Spottsworth and bring back memories of the old
days at Cannes. But I'd be careful not
to overdo it, old boy. You've got to consider
Jill. If she finds out about you and the
Spottsworth--"
Bill started.
"What the devil do you mean?"
"Nothing, nothing. I was only making a random
remark."
"Don't listen to him, Bill," said
Monica. "He's just drooling. Jill's
sensible."
"And after all," said Rory, looking on the
bright side, "it all happened before you met
Jill."
"All what happened?"
"Nothing, old boy, nothing."
"My relations with Mrs.
Spottsworth were pure to the last drop."
"Of course, of course."
"Do you sell muzzles at Harrige's,
Rory?" asked Monica.
"Muzzles? Oh, rather. In the Cats, Dogs
and Domestic Pets."
"I'm going to buy one for you, to keep you
quiet. Just treat him as if he wasn't there,
Bill, and listen while I tell you the news.
The most wonderful thing has happened. An old
friend of Mrs. Spottsworth's has turned up,
and I've invited him to stay."
"An old friend?"
"Another old lover, one presumes."
"Do stop it, Rory. Can't you understand what a
marvellous thing this is, Bill! We've put her
under an obligation. Think what a melting mood
she'll be in after this!"
Her enthusiasm infected Bill. He saw just
what she meant.
"You're absolutely right. This is
terrific."
"Yes, isn't it a stroke of luck?
She'll be clay in your hands now."
"Clay is the word. Moke, you're superb.
As fine a bit of quick thinking as I ever struck.
Who is the fellow?"
"His name's Biggar. Captain Biggar."
Bill groped for support at a chair. A
greenish tinge had spread over his face.
"What!" he cried. "Captain But-but-but--?"
"Ha!" said Rory. "Which is bigger, Mr.
Bigger or Master Bigger? Master Bigger, because
he's a little Bigger. I knew I'd get it,"
he said complacently.



It was a favourite dictum of the late A.
B. Spottsworth, who, though fond of his wife
in an absent-minded sort of way, could never have
been described as a ladies' man or
mistaken for one of those Troubadours of the Middle
Ages, that the secret of a happy and successful
life was to get rid of the women at the earliest
possible opportunity. Give the gentler sex the
bum's rush, he used to say, removing his coat
and reaching for the poker chips, and you could start to go
places. He had often observed that for sheer
beauty and uplift few sights could
compare with that of the female members of a dinner-party
filing out of the room at the conclusion of the meal,
leaving the men to their soothing masculine conversation.
To Bill Rowcester at nine o'clock on the night
of this disturbing day such an attitude of mind would
have seemed incomprehensible. The last thing in the world
that he desired was Captain Biggar's soothing
masculine conversation. As he stood holding the
dining-room door open while Mrs.
Spottsworth, Monica and Jill passed through
on their way to the living-room, he was weighed down
by a sense of bereavement and depression, mingled with
uneasy speculations as to what was going to happen
now. His emotions, in fact, were similar in kind
and intensity to those which a garrison beleaguered
by savages would have experienced, had the United
States Marines, having arrived, turned right
round and walked off in the opposite direction.
True, all had gone perfectly well so
far. Even he, conscience-stricken though he was,
had found nothing to which he could take exception in the
Captain's small talk up till now. Throughout
dinner, starting with the soup and carrying on to the sardines
on toast, the White Hunter had confined himself
to such neutral topics as cannibal chiefs he
had met and what to do when cornered by head-hunters
armed with poisoned blowpipes. He had told
two rather long and extraordinarily dull stories
about a couple of friends of his called Tubby
Frobisher and the Subahdar. And he had
recommended to Jill, in case she should ever find
herself in need of one, an excellent ointment for
use when bitten by alligators. To fraudulent
bookmakers, chases across country and
automobile licences he had made no reference
whatsoever.
But now that the women had left and two strong men
--or three, if you counted Rory--stood face
to face, who could say how long this happy state of
things would last? Bill could but trust that Rory would
not bring the conversation round to the dangerous subject
by asking the Captain if he went in for racing at
all.
"Do you go in for racing at all, Captain?"
said Rory as the door closed.
A sound rather like the last gasp of a dying zebra
shot from Captain Biggar's lips. Bill, who
had risen some six inches into the air, diagnosed
it correctly as a hollow, mirthless laugh.
He had had some idea of uttering something
along those lines himself.
"Racing?" Captain Biggar choked. "Do I
go in for racing at all? Well, mince me up and
smother me in onions!"
Bill would gladly have done so. Such a
culinary feat would, it seemed to him, have solved
all his perplexities. He regretted that the
idea had not occurred to one of the cannibal chiefs
of whom his guest had been speaking.
"It's the Derby Dinner tonight," said Rory.
"I'll be popping along shortly to watch it on
the television set in the library. All the top
owners are coming on the screen to say what they think
of their chances tomorrow. Not that the blighters know a damn
thing about it, of course. were you at the Oaks this
afternoon by any chance?"
Captain Biggar expanded like one of those
peculiar fish in Florida which swell when you
tickle them.
"Was I at the Oaks? Chang suark!
Yes, sir, I was. And if ever a man--"
"Rather pretty, this Southmoltonshire country,
don't you think, Captain?" said Bill.
"Picturesque, as it is sometimes called. The
next village to us--Lower Snodsbury--you
may have noticed it as you came through--has a--"
"If ever a man got the ruddy sleeve across
the bally wind-pipe," proceeded the Captain, who
had now become so bright red that it was fortunate that
by a lucky chance there were no bulls present in the
dining-room, "it was me at Epsom this afternoon. I
passed through the furnace like Shadrach, Meshach and
Nebuchadnezzar or whoever it was. I had my
soul tied up in knots and put through the wringer."
Rory tut-tutted sympathetically.
"Had a bad day, did you?"
"Let me tell you what happened."
"--ationorman church," continued Bill, faint
but persevering, "which I believe is greatly--"
"I must begin by saying that since I came back
to the old country, I have got in with a pretty
shrewd lot of chaps, fellows who know one end
of a horse from the other, as the expression is, and
they've been putting me on to some good things. And
today--"
"--admired by blokes who are fond of
Norman churches," said Bill. "I don't
know much about them myself, but according to the nibs there's a
nave or something on that order--"
Captain Biggar exploded again.
"Don't talk to me about knaves! Yogi
tulsiram jaginath! I met the king of them
this afternoon, blister his insides. Well, as I was
saying, these chaps of mine put me on to good things
from time to time, and today they advised a double. Lucy
Glitters in the two-thirty and Whistler's Mother
for the Oaks."
"Extraordinary, Whistler's Mother winning like
that," said Rory. "The consensus of opinion at
Harrige's was that she hadn't a hope."
"And what happened? Lucy Glitters rolled
in at a hundred to six, and Whistler's Mother, as
you may have heard, at thirty-three to one."
Rory was stunned. "You mean your double came
off?"
"Yes, sir."
"At those odds?"
"At those odds."
"How much did you have on?"
"Five pounds on Lucy Glitters and all
to come on Whistler's Mother's nose."
Rory's eyes bulged.
"Good God! Are you listening to this, Bill? You
must have won a fortune."
"Three thousand pounds."
"Well, I'll be ... Did you hear that,
Jeeves?"
Jeeves had entered, bearing coffee. His
deportment was, as ever, serene. Like Bill, he
found Captain Biggar's presence in the home
disturbing, but where Bill quaked and quivered, he
continued to resemble a well-bred statue.
"Sir?"
"Captain Biggar won three thousand quid on
the Oaks."
"Indeed, sir? A consummation devoutly to be
wished."
"Yes," said the Captain sombrely.
"Three thousand pounds I won, and the bookie did
a bolt."
Rory stared. "No!"
"I assure you."
"Skipped by the light of the moon?"
"Exactly."
Rory was overcome.
"I never heard anything so monstrous. Did you
ever hear anything so monstrous, Jeeves?
Wasn't that the frozen limit, Bill?"
Bill seemed to come out of a trance.
"Sorry, Rory, I'm afraid
I was thinking of something else. What were you
saying?"
"Poor old Biggar brought off a double at
Epsom this afternoon, and the swine of a bookie legged
it, owing him three thousand pounds."
Bill was naturally aghast. Any good-hearted
young man would have been, hearing such a story.
"Good heavens, Captain," he cried, "what
a terrible thing to have happened. Legged it, did he,
this bookie?"
"Popped off like a jack rabbit, with me after
him."
"I don't wonder you're upset.
Scoundrels like that ought not to be at large. It
makes one's blood boil to think of this ... this
... what would Shakespeare have called him,
Jeeves?"
"This arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy
knave, m'lord."
"Ah, yes. Shakespeare put these things
well."
"A whoreson, beetle-headed, flap-eared
knave, a knave, a rascal, an eater of
broken meats; a beggarly, filthy,
worsted-stocking--"
"Yes, yes, Jeeves, quite so. One gets the
idea." Bill's manner was a little agitated.
"Don't run away, Jeeves. Just give the
fire a good stir."
"It is June, m'lord."
"So it is, so it is. I'm all of a
doodah, hearing this appalling story. Won't you
sit down, Captain? Oh, you are sitting down.
The cigars, Jeeves. A cigar for Captain
Biggar."
The Captain held up a hand.
"Thank you, no. I never smoke when I'm
after big game."
"Big game? Oh, I see what you mean.
This bookie fellow. You're a White Hunter,
and now you're hunting white bookies," said
Bill with a difficult laugh. "Rather good, that,
Rory?"
"Dashed good, old boy. I'm convulsed. And
now may I get down? I want to go and watch the
Derby Dinner."
"An excellent idea," said Bill
heartily. "Let's all go and watch the Derby
Dinner. Come along, Captain."
Captain Biggar made no move
to follow Rory from the room. He remained in his
seat, looking redder than ever.
"Later, perhaps," he said curtly. "At the
moment, I would like to have a word with you, Lord
Rowcester."
"Certainly, certainly, certainly,
certainly, certainly," said Bill, though not
blithely. "Stick around, Jeeves. Lots of
work to do in here. Polish an ashtray or something.
Give Captain Biggar a cigar."
"The gentleman has already declined your
lordship's offer of a cigar."
"So he has, so he has. Well, well!"
said Bill. "Well, well, well, well,
well!" He lit one himself with a hand that trembled like
a tuning-fork. "Tell us more about this bookie of
yours, Captain."
Captain Biggar brooded darkly for a moment.
He came out of the silence to express a wistful
hope that some day it might be granted to him to see
the colour of the fellow's insides.
"I only wish," he said, "that I could meet
the rat in Kuala Lumpur."
"Kuala Lumpur?"
Jeeves was his customary helpful self.
"A locality in the Straits Settlements,
m'lord, a British Crown Colony in the East
Indies including Malacca, Penang and the
province of Wellesley, first made a
separate dependency of the British Crown in
1853 and placed under the Governor-General of
India. In 1887 the Cocos or Keeling
Islands were attached to the colony, and in 1889
Christmas Island. Mr. Somerset Maugham
has written searchingly of life in those parts."
"Of course, yes. It all comes back to me.
Rather a strange lot of birds out there, I
gather."
Captain Biggar conceded this.
"A very strange lot of birds. But we
generally manage to put salt on their tails. Do
you know what happens to a welsher in Kuala
Lumpur, Lord Rowcester?"
"No, I--er--don't believe I've ever
heard. Don't go, Jeeves. Here's an
ashtray you've missed. What does happen to a
welsher in Kuala Lumpur?"
"We let the blighter have three days to pay
up. Then we call on him and give him a
revolver."
"That's rather nice of you. Sort of heaping coals
of ... You don't mean a loaded revolver?"
"Loaded in all six chambers. We look the
louse in the eye, leave the revolver on the table
and go off. Without a word. He understands."
Bill gulped. The strain of the conversation was
beginning to tell on him.
"You mean he's expected to ... Isn't that
a bit drastic?"
Captain Biggar's eyes were cold and hard, like
picnic eggs.
"It's the code, sir. Code! That's a big
word with the men who live on the frontiers of
Empire. Morale can crumble very easily out
there. Drink, women and unpd gambling debts,
those are the steps down," he said. "Drink, women
and unpd gambling debts," he repeated,
illustrating with jerks of the hand.
"That one's the bottom, is it? You hear that,
Jeeves?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Rather interesting."
"Yes, m'lord."
"Broadens the mind a bit."
"Yes, m'lord."
"One lives and learns, Jeeves."
"One does indeed, m'lord."
Captain Biggar took a Brazil nut, and
cracked it with his teeth.
"We've got to set an example, we
bearers of the white man's burden. Can't let the
Dyaks beat us on code."
"Do they try?"
"A Dyak who defaults on a debt has
his head cut off."
"By the other Dyaks?"
"Yes, sir, by the other Dyaks."
"Well, well."
"The head is then given to his principal
creditor."
This surprised Bill. Possibly it
surprised Jeeves, too, but Jeeves' was a
face that did not readily register such emotions as
astonishment. Those who knew him well claimed
on certain occasions of great stress to have seen a very
small muscle at the corner of his mouth give
one quick, slight twitch, but as a rule his
features preserved a uniform
imperturbability, like those of a cigar-store
Indian.
"Good heavens!" said Bill. "You couldn't run
a business that way over here. I mean to say, who
would decide who was the principal creditor?
Imagine the arguments there would be, Eh,
Jeeves?"
"Unquestionably, m'lord. The butcher, the baker
..."
"Not to mention hosts who had entertained the Dyak
for weekends, from whose houses he had slipped
away on Monday morning, forgetting the
Saturday night bridge game."
"In the event of his surviving, it would make
such a Dyak considerably more careful in his bidding,
m'lord."
"True, Jeeves, true. It would, wouldn't
it? He would think twice about trying any of that
psychic stuff?"
"Precisely, m'lord. And would undoubtedly
hesitate before taking his partner out of a business
double."
Captain Biggar cracked another nut. In the
silence it sounded like one of those explosions which slay
six.
"And now," he said, "with your permission, I would
like to cut the ghazi havildar and get down
to brass tacks, Lord Rowcester." He paused
a moment, marshalling his thoughts. "About this
bookie."
Bill blinked.
"Ah, yes, this bookie. I know the bookie
you mean."
"For the moment he has got away, I am
sorry to say. But I had the sense to memorize
the number of his car."
"You did? Shrewd, Jeeves."
"Very shrewd, m'lord."
"I then made inquiries of the police. And do
you know what they told me? They said that that car
number, Lord Rowcester, was yours."
Bill was amazed. "Mine?"
"Yours."
"But how could it be mine?"
"That is the mystery which we have to solve. This
Honest Patch Perkins, as he called himself, must
have borrowed your car ... with or without your
permission."
"Incredulous!"
"Incredible, m'lord."
"Thank you, Jeeves. Incredible! How would
I know any Honest Patch Perkins?"
"You don't?"
"Never heard of him in my life. Never laid
eyes on him. What does he look like?"
"He is tall ... about your height ... and
wears a ginger moustache and a black patch over his
left eye."
"No, dash it, that's not possible ... Oh,
I see what you mean. A black patch over his
left eye and a ginger moustache on the upper lip.
I thought for a moment ..."
"And a check coat and a crimson tie with blue
horse-shoes on it."
"Good heavens! He must look the most ghastly
outsider. Eh, Jeeves?"
"Certainly far from soign`e, m'lord."
"Very far from soign`e. Oh, by the way,
Jeeves, that reminds me. Bertie Wooster
told me that you once made some such remark to him,
and it gave him the idea for a ballad to be
entitled "Way down upon the soign`e
river". Did anything ever come of it, do you know?"
"I fancy not, m'lord."
"Bertie wouldn't have been equal to whacking it
out, I suppose, but one can see a song hit
there, handled by the right person."
"No doubt, m'lord."
"Cole Porter could probably do it."
"Quite conceivably, m'lord."
"Or Oscar Hammerstein."
"It should be well within the scope of Mr.
Hammerstein's talents, m'lord."
It was with a certain impatience that Captain
Biggar called the meeting to order.
"To hell with song hits and Cole Porters!"
he said, with an abruptness on which Emily Post
would have frowned. "I'm not talking about Cole
Porter, I'm talking about this bally bookie who
was using your car today."
Bill shook his head.
"My dear old pursuer of pumas and
what-have-you, you say you're talking about bally
bookies, but what you omit to add is that you're
talking through the back of your neck. Neat that,
Jeeves."
"Yes, m'lord. Crisply put."
"Obviously what happened was that friend Biggar
got the wrong number."
"Yes, m'lord."
The red of Captain Biggar's face deepened
to purple. His proud spirit was wounded.
"Are you telling me I don't know the number
of a car that I followed all the way from Epsom
Downs to Southmoltonshire? That car was used today
by this Honest Patch Perkins and his clerk, and I'm
asking you if you lent it to him."
"My dear good bird, would I lend my car to a
chap in a check suit and a crimson tie, not
to mention a black patch and a ginger moustache? The
thing's not ... what, Jeeves?"
"Feasible, m'lord." Jeeves coughed.
"Possibly the gentleman's eyesight needs
medical attention."
Captain Biggar swelled portentously.
"My eyesight? My eyesight? Do you know
who you're talking to? I am Bwana Biggar."
"I regret that the name is strange to me,
sir. But I still maintain that you have made the
pardonable mistake of failing to read the licence
number correctly."
Before speaking again, Captain Biggar was obliged
to swallow once or twice, to restore his
composure. He also took another nut.
"Look," he said, almost mildly. "Perhaps
you're not up on these things. You haven't been
told who's who and what's what. I am Biggar
the White Hunter, the most famous White
Hunter in all Africa and Indonesia. I can
stand without a tremor in the path of an onrushing
rhino ... and why? Because my eyesight is so
superb that I know ... I know I can get him in
that one vulnerable spot before he has come within
sixty paces. That's the sort of eyesight mine
is."
Jeeves maintained his iron front.
"I fear I cannot recede from my position,
sir. I grant that you may have trained your vision
for such a contingency as you have described, but,
poorly informed as I am on the subject of the
larger fauna of the East, I do not believe that
rhinoceri are equipped with licence numbers."
It seemed to Bill that the time had come to pour
oil on the troubled waters and dish out a word of
comfort.
"This bookie of yours, Captain. I think I
can strike a note of hope. We concede that he
legged it with what appears to have been the swift
abandon of a bat out of hell, but I believe that
when the fields are white with daisies he'll
pay you. I get the impression that he's simply
trying to gain time."
"I'll give him time," said the Captain
morosely. "I'll see that he gets plenty.
And when he has paid his debt to Society, I shall
attend to him personally. A thousand pities
we're not out East. They understand these things there.
If they know you for a straight shooter and the other
chap's a wrong 'un ... well, there aren't many
questions asked."
Bill started like a frightened fawn.
"Questions about what?"
""Good riddance" sums up their attitude.
The fewer there are of such vermin, the better for
Anglo-Saxon prestige."
"I suppose that's one way of looking at
it."
"I don't mind telling you that there are a
couple of notches on my gun that aren't for
buffaloes ... or lions ... or elands ...
or rhinos."
"Really? What are they for?"
"Cheaters."
"Ah, yes. Those are those leopard things that go
as fast as racehorses."
Jeeves had a correction to make.
"Somewhat faster, m'lord. A half-mile in
forty-five seconds."
"Great Scott! Pretty nippy, what?
That's travelling, Jeeves."
"Yes, m'lord."
"That's a cheetah, that was, as one might
say."
Captain Biggar snorted impatiently.
"Chea-ters was what I said. I'm not talking
about cheetah, the animal ... though I have shot
some of those, too."
"Too?"
"Too."
"I see," said Bill, gulping a little.
"Too."
Jeeves coughed.
"Might I offer a suggestion, m'lord?"
"Certainly, Jeeves. Offer several."
"An idea has just crossed my mind, m'lord.
It has occurred to me that it is quite possible that this
racecourse character against whom Captain Biggar
nurses a justifiable grievance may have
substituted for his own licence plate a false
one--"
"By Jove, Jeeves, you've hit it!"
"--and that by some strange coincidence he
selected for this false plate the number of your
lordship's car."
"Exactly. That's the solution. Odd we
didn't think of that before. It explains the whole
thing, doesn't it, Captain?"
Captain Biggar was silent. His thoughtful frown
told that he was weighing the idea.
"Of course it does," said Bill
buoyantly. "Jeeves, your bulging brain, with
its solid foundation of fish, has solved what but
for you would have remained one of those historic
mysteries you read about. If I had a hat on,
I would raise it to you."
"I am happy to have given satisfaction,
m'lord."
"You always do, Jeeves, you always do. It's
what makes you so generally esteemed."
Captain Biggar nodded.
"Yes, I suppose that might have happened.
There seems to be no other explanation."
"Jolly, getting these things cleared up," said
Bill. "More port, Captain?"
"No, thank you."
"Then suppose we join the ladies. They're
probably wondering what the dickens has
happened to us and saying "He cometh not", like ...
who, Jeeves?"
"Mariana of the Moated Grange, m'lord.
Her tears fell with the dews at even; her tears
fell ere the dews were dried. She could not look
on the sweet heaven either at morn or
eventide."
"Oh, well, I don't suppose our
absence has hit them quite as hard as that. Still, it
might be as well ... Coming, Captain?"
"I should first like to make a telephone call."
"You can do it from the living-room."
"A private telephone call."
"Oh, right ho. Jeeves, conduct Captain
Biggar to your pantry and unleash him on the
instrument."
"Very good, m'lord."
Left alone, Bill lingered for some moments, the
urge to join the ladies in the living-room
yielding to a desire to lower just one more glass of
port by way of celebration. Honest Patch
Perkins had, he felt, rounded a nasty corner.
The only thought that came to mar his contentment had
to do with Jill. He was not quite sure of his standing with that
lodestar of his life. At dinner,
Mrs. Spottsworth, seated on his right, had
been chummy beyond his gloomiest apprehensions, and
he fancied he had detected in Jill's eye
one of those cold, pensive looks which are the last
sort of look a young man in love likes to see
in the eye of his betrothed.
Fortunately, Mrs. Spottsworth's
chumminess had waned as the meal proceeded and
Captain Biggar started monopolizing the
conversation. She had stopped talking about the old
Cannes days and had sat lingering in rapt silence
as the White Hunter told of antres vast and
deserts idle and of the cannibals that each other
eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do
grow beneath their shoulders.
This to hear had Mrs. Spottsworth seriously
inclined, completely switching off the Cannes
motif, so it might be that all was well.
Jeeves returned, and he greeted him
effusively as one who had fought the good fight.
"That was a brain wave of yours, Jeeves."
"Thank you, m'lord."
"It eased the situation considerably. His
suspicions are lulled, don't you think?"
"One would be disposed to fancy so, m'lord."
"You know, Jeeves, even in these disturbed
post-war days, with the social revolution turning
handsprings on every side and Civilization, as you
might say, in the melting-pot, it's still quite an
advantage to be in big print in Debrett's
Peerage."
"Unquestionably so, m'lord. It gives a
gentleman a certain standing."
"Exactly. People take it for granted that you're
respectable. Take an Earl, for instance. He
buzzes about, and people say "Ah, an Earl" and
let it go at that. The last thing that occurs to them is
that he may in his spare moments be putting on
patches and false moustaches and standing on a
wooden box in a check coat and a tie with blue
horseshoes, shouting "Five to one the field,
bar one!""
"Precisely, m'lord."
"A satisfactory state of things."
"Highly satisfactory, m'lord."
"There have been moments today, Jeeves, I
don't mind confessing, when it seemed to me that the
only thing to do was to turn up the toes and say
"This is the end", but now it would take very little
to start me singing like the Cherubim and
Seraphim. It was the Cherubim and Seraphim who
sang, wasn't it?"
"Yes, m'lord. Hosanna, principally."
"I feel a new man. The odd sensation of
having swallowed a quart of butterflies, which I
got when there was a burst of red fire and a roll of
drums from the orchestra and that White Hunter shot
up through a trap at my elbow, has passed
away completely."
"I am delighted to hear it, m'lord."
"I knew you would be, Jeeves, I knew you
would be. Sympathy and understanding are your middle
names. And now," said Bill, "to join the ladies
in the living-room and put the poor souls out of their
suspense."
Arriving in the living-room, he found that the
number of ladies available for being joined there had
been reduced to one--reading from left to right,
Jill. She was sitting on the settee twiddling
an empty coffee-cup and staring before her with what
are sometimes described as unseeing eyes. Her
air was that of a girl who is brooding on something,
a girl to whom recent happenings have given much
food for thought.
"Hullo there, darling," cried Bill with the
animation of a ship-wrecked mariner sighting a
sail. After that testing session in the dining-room,
almost anything that was not Captain Biggar would have
looked good to him, and she looked particularly good.
Jill glanced up.
"Oh, hullo," she said.
It seemed to Bill that her manner was reserved,
but he proceeded with undiminished exuberance.
"Where's everybody?"
"Rory and Moke are in the library, looking
in at the Derby Dinner."
"And Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"Rosie," said Jill in a toneless voice,
"has gone to the ruined chapel. I believe she
is hoping to get a word with the ghost of Lady
Agatha."
Bill started. He also gulped a little.
"Rosie?"
"I think that is what you call her, is it not?"
"Why--er--yes."
"And she calls you Billiken. Is she a very
old friend?"
"No, no. I knew her slightly at
Cannes one summer."
"From what I heard her saying at dinner about
moonlight drives and bathing from the Eden Roc,
I got the impression that you had been rather
intimate."
"Good heavens, no. She was just an
acquaintance, and a pretty mere one, at that."
"I see."
There was a silence.
"I wonder if you remember," said Jill,
at length breaking it, "what I was saying this evening
before dinner about people not hiding things from each other, if
they are going to get married?"
"Er--yes ... Yes ... I remember that."
"We agreed that it was the only way."
"Yes ... Yes, that's right. So we did."
"I told you about Percy, didn't I? And
Charles and Squiffy and Tom and Blotto," said
Jill, mentioning other figures of Romance from the
dead past. "I never dreamed of concealing the fact
that I had been engaged before I met you. So why
did you hide this Spottsworth from me?"
It seemed to Bill that, for a pretty good sort
of chap who meant no harm to anybody and strove
always to do the square thing by one and all, he was being
handled rather roughly by Fate this summer day. The
fellow--Shakespeare, he rather thought, though he would
have to check with Jeeves--who had spoken of the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune, had known what he
was talking about. Slings and arrows described it to a
nicety.
"I didn't hide this Spottsworth from you!"
he cried passionately. "She just didn't
happen to come up. Lord love a duck, when you're
sitting with the girl you love, holding her little hand and
whispering words of endearment in her ear, you can't
suddenly switch the conversation to an entirely
different topic and say "Oh, by the way, there was
a woman I met in Cannes some years ago,
on the subject of whom I would now like to say a
few words. Let me tell you all about the time we
drove to St. Tropez"."
"In the moonlight."
"Was it my fault that there was a moon? I
wasn't consulted. And as for bathing from the Eden
Roc, you talk as if we had had the ruddy Eden
Roc to ourselves with not another human being in sight.
It was not so, but far otherwise. Every time we took
a dip, the water was alive with exiled
Grand Dukes and stiff with dowagers of the most
rigid respectability."
"I still think it odd you never mentioned her."
"I don't."
"I do. And I think it still odder that when
Jeeves told you this afternoon that a Mrs.
Spottsworth was coming here, you just said "Oh,
ah?"' or something and let it go as if you had never
heard the name before. Wouldn't the natural thing have
been to say "Mrs. Spottsworth? Well,
well, bless my soul, I wonder if that can
possibly be the woman with whom I was on terms
of mere acquaintanceship at Cannes a year or
two ago. Did I ever tell you about her,
Jill? I used to drive with her a good deal in the
moonlight, though of course in quite a distant
way"."
It was Bill's moment.
"No," he thundered, "it would not have been the
natural thing to say "Mrs. Spottsworth?
Well, well," and so on and so forth, and I'll
tell you why. When I knew her ... slightly,
as I say, as one does know people in places like
Cannes ... her name was Bessemer."
"Oh?"
"Precisely. B with an E with an S with
an S with an E with an M with an E with an
R. Bessemer. I have still to learn how all this
Spottsworth stuff arose."
Jeeves came in. Duty called him at
about this hour to collect the coffee-cups, and duty
never called to this great man in vain.
His arrival broke what might be called the
spell. Jill, who had more to say on the
subject under discussion, withheld it. She got up
and made for the French window.
"Well, I must be getting along," she said,
still speaking rather tonelessly.
Bill stared.
"You aren't leaving already?"
"Only to go home and get some things. Moke
has asked me to stay the night."
"Then Heaven bless Moke! Full marks for the
intelligent female."
"You like the idea of my staying the night?"
"It's terrific."
"You're sure I shan't be in the way?"
"What on earth are you talking about? Shall I come
with you?"
"Of course not. You're supposed
to be a host."
She went out, and Bill, gazing after her
fondly, suddenly stiffened. Like a delayed-action
bomb, those words "You're sure I shan't be in
the way?"' had just hit him. Had they been mere
idle words? Or had they contained a sinister
significance?
"Women are odd, Jeeves," he said.
"Yes, m'lord."
"Not to say peculiar. You can't tell what they
mean when they say things, can you?"
"Very seldom, m'lord."
Bill brooded for a moment.
"Were you observing Miss Wyvern as she
buzzed off?"
"Not closely, m'lord."
"Was her manner strange, do you think?"
"I could not say, m'lord. I was concentrating on
coffee-cups."
Bill brooded again. This uncertainty was
preying on his nerves. "You're sure I
shan't be in the way?"' Had there been a nasty
tinkle in her voice as she uttered the words?
Everything turned on that. If no tinkle, fine.
But if tinkle, things did not look so good. The
question, plus tinkle, could only mean that his reasoned
explanation of the Spottsworth-Cannes sequence
had failed to get across and that she still harboured
suspicions, unworthy of her though such
suspicions might be.
The irritability which good men feel on these
occasions swept over him. What was the use of being
as pure as the driven snow, or possibly
purer, if girls were going to come tinkling at you?
"The whole trouble with women, Jeeves," he
said, and the philosopher Schopenhauer would have
slapped him on the back and told him he knew
just how he felt, "is that practically all of them
are dotty. Look at Mrs. Spottsworth.
Wacky to the eyebrows. Roosting in a ruined
chapel in the hope of seeing Lady Agatha."
"Indeed, m'lord? Mrs. Spottsworth is
interested in spectres?"
"She eats them alive. Is that balanced
behaviour?"
"Psychical research frequently has an
appeal for the other sex, m'lord. My Aunt
Emily--"
Bill eyed him dangerously.
"Remember what I said about Pliny
the Younger, Jeeves?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"That goes for your Aunt Emily as well."
"Very good, m'lord."
"I'm not interested in your Aunt Emily."
"Precisely, m'lord. During her long
lifetime very few people were."
"She is no longer with us?"
"No, m'lord."
"Oh, well, that's something," said Bill.
Jeeves floated out, and he flung himself into a
chair. He was thinking once more of that cryptic
speech, and now his mood had become wholly
pessimistic. It was no longer any question of a
tinkle or a non-tinkle. He was virtually
certain that the words "You're sure I shan't be
in the way?"' had been spoken through clenched teeth
and accompanied by a look of infinite meaning. They
had been the words of a girl who had intended to make
a nasty crack.
He was passing his hands through his hair with a
febrile gesture, when Monica entered from the
library. She had found the celebrants at the
Derby Dinner a little on the long-winded side.
Rory was still drinking in every word, but she needed an
intermission.
She regarded her hair-twisting brother with
astonishment.
"Good heavens, Bill! Why the agony?
What's up?"
Bill glared unfraternally.
"Nothing's up, confound it! Nothing, nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing!"
Monica raised her eyebrows.
"Well, there's no need to be stuffy about it.
I was only being the sympathetic sister."
With a strong effort Bill recovered the
chivalry of the Rowcesters. "I'm sorry,
Moke old thing. I've got a headache."
"My poor lamb!"
"It'll pass off in a minute."
"What you need is fresh air."
"Perhaps I do."
"And pleasant society. Ma
Spottsworth's in the ruined chapel. Pop
along and have a chat with her."
"What!"
Monica became soothing.
"Now don't be difficult, Bill. You know
as well as I do how important it is
to jolly her along. A flash of speed on your
part now may mean selling the house. The whole
idea was that on top of my sales talk you were
to draw her aside and switch on the charm. Have you
forgotten what you said about cooing to her like a turtle
dove? Dash off this minute and coo as you have never
cooed before."
For a long moment it seemed as though Bill, his
frail strength taxed beyond its limit of endurance,
was about to suffer something in the nature of
spontaneous combustion. His eyes goggled, his
face flushed, and burning words trembled on his
lips. Then suddenly, as if Reason had
intervened with a mild "Tut, tut", he ceased
to glare and his cheeks slowly resumed their normal
hue. He had seen that Monica's suggestion was
good and sensible.
In the rush and swirl of recent events, the
vitally urgent matter of pushing through the sale of his
ancestral home had been thrust into the background
of Bill's mind. It now loomed up for what it
was, the only existing life preserver bobbing about
in the sea of troubles in which he was immersed.
Clutch it, and he was saved. When you sold
houses, he reminded himself, you got deposits,
paid cash down. Such a deposit would be
sufficient to dispose of the Biggar menace, and if the
only means of securing it was to go to Rosalinda
Spottsworth and coo, then go and coo he must.
Simultaneously there came to him the healing
thought that if Jill had gone home to provide
herself with things for the night, it would be at least half
an hour before she got back, and in half an hour
a determined man can do a lot of cooing.
"Moke," he said, "you're right. My place
is at her side."
He hurried out, and a moment later Rory
appeared at the library door.
"I say, Moke," said Rory, "can you speak
Spanish?"
"I don't know. I've never tried. Why?"
"There's a Spaniard or an Argentine or
some such bird in there telling us about his horse in his
native tongue. Probably a rank outsider,
still one would have been glad to hear his views. Where's
Bill? Don't tell me he's still in there with the
White Man's Burden?"
"No, he came in here just now, and went out
to talk to Mrs. Spottsworth."
"I want to confer with you about old
Bill," said Rory. "Are we alone and
unobserved?"
"Unless there's someone hiding in that dower chest.
What about Bill?"
"There's something up, old girl, and it has to do
with this chap Biggar. Did you notice Bill at
dinner?"
"Not particularly. What was he doing? Eating
peas with his knife?"
"No, but every time he caught Biggar's eye,
he quivered like an Ouled Nail stomach dancer.
For some reason Biggar affects him like an
egg-whisk. Why? That's what I want to know.
Who is this mystery man? Why has he come here?
What is there between him and Bill that makes Bill
leap and quake and shiver whenever he looks at
him? I don't like it, old thing. When you married
me, you never said anything about fits in the family,
and I consider I have been shabbily treated. I
mean to say, it's a bit thick, going to all the
trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon
that you've become brother-in-law to a fellow with
St. Vitus Dance."
Monica reflected.
"Come to think of it," she said, "I do
remember, when I told him a Captain Biggar
had clocked in, he seemed a bit upset.
Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish
pallor and a drooping lower jaw. And I came in
here just now and found him tearing his hair. I agree
with you. It's sinister."
"And I'll tell you something else," said
Rory. "When I left the dining-room to go and
look at the Derby Dinner, Bill was all for coming too. "How about it?"' he said to Biggar, and
Biggar, looking very puff-faced, said "Later,
perhaps. At the moment, I would like a word with you, Lord
Rowcester". In a cold, steely voice, like a
magistrate about to fine you a fiver for pinching a
policeman's helmet on Boat Race
night. And Bill gulped like a stricken bull
pup and said "Oh, certainly, certainly" or words to that effect. It sticks out a mile that this
Biggar has got something on old Bill."
"But what could he possibly have on him?"
"Just the question I asked myself, my old partner of
joys and sorrows, and I think I have the solution.
Do you remember those stories one used to read as a
kid? The Strand Magazine used to be
full of them."
"Which stories?"
"Those idol's eye stories. The ones where a
gang of blighters pop over to India to pinch the
great jewel that's the eye of the idol. They get the
jewel all right, but they chisel one of the blighters
out of his share of the loot, which naturally makes him
as sore as a gumboil, and years later he
tracks the other blighters down one by one in their
respectable English homes and wipes them out to the
last blighter, by way of getting a bit of his own
back. You mark my words, old Bill is being
chivvied by this chap Biggar because he did him out of his
share of the proceeds of the green eye of the little yellow
god in the temple of Vishnu, and I shall be much
surprised if we don't come down to breakfast
tomorrow morning and find him weltering in his blood
among the kippers and sausages with a dagger of
Oriental design in the small of his back."
"Ass!"
"Are you addressing me?"
"I am, and with knobs on. Bill's never been
farther east than Frinton."
"He's been to Cannes."
"Is Cannes east? I never know. But he's
certainly never been within smelling distance of
Indian idols' eyes."
"I didn't think of that," said Rory.
"Yes, that, I admit, does weaken my argument
to a certain extent." He brooded tensely.
"Ha! I have it now. I see it all. The rift
between Bill and Biggar is due to the baby."
"What on earth are you talking about? What
baby?"
"Bill's, working in close collaboration with
Biggar's daughter, the apple of Biggar's eye,
a poor, foolish little thing who loved not wisely
but too well. And if you are going to say that
girls are all wise nowadays, I reply
"Not one brought up in the missionary school at
Squalor Lumpit". In those missionary
schools they explain the facts of life by telling
the kids about the bees and the flowers till the poor
little brutes don't know which is which."
"For heaven's sake, Rory."
"Mark how it works out with the inevitability of
Greek tragedy or whatever it was that was so bally
inevitable. Girl comes to England, no mother
to guide her, meets a handsome young Englishman,
and what happens? The first false step.
The remorse ... too late. The little bundle.
The awkward interview with Father. Father all steamed
up. Curses a bit in some native dialect
and packs his elephant gun and comes along to see
old Bill. "Caramba!" as that Spaniard
is probably saying at this moment on the
television screen. Still, there's nothing to worry
about. I don't suppose he can make him marry
her. All Bill will have to do is look after the little
thing's education. Send it to school and so on. If
a boy, Eton. If a girl, Roedean."
"Cheltenham."
"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten you were an Old
Cheltonian. The question now arises, should young
Jill be told? It hardly seems fair
to allow her to rush unwarned into marriage with a
ripsnorting rou`e like William, Earl of
Rowcester."
"Don't call Bill a ripsnorting
rou`e!"
"It is how we should describe him at
Harrige's."
"As a matter of fact, you're probably
all wrong about Bill and Biggar. I know the
poor boy's jumpy, but most likely it
hasn't anything to do with Captain Biggar at
all. It's because he's all on edge, wondering
if Mrs. Spottsworth is going to buy the
house. In which connection, Rory, you old
fathead, can't you do something to help the thing along
instead of bunging a series of spanners into the
works?"
"I don't get your drift."
"I will continue snowing. Ever since Mrs.
Spottsworth arrived, you've been doing nothing but
point out Rowcester Abbey's defects. Be
constructive."
"In what way, my queen?"
"Well, draw her attention to some of the good things
there are in the place."
Rory nodded dutifully, but dubiously.
"I'll do my best," he said. "But I shall have
very little raw material to work with. And now, old
girl, I imagine that Spaniard will have blown
over by this time, so let us rejoin the Derby diners.
For some reason or other--why, one cannot tell--
I've got a liking for a beast called
Oratory."
Mrs. Spottsworth had left the ruined
chapel. After a vigil of some twenty-five
minutes she had wearied of waiting for Lady
Agatha to manifest herself. Like many very rich women,
she tended to be impatient and to demand quick
service. When in the mood for spectres, she
wanted them hot off the griddle. Returning to the
garden, she had found a rustic seat and was sitting
there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the beauty of the
night.
It was one of those lovely nights which occur from
time to time in an English June, mitigating the
rigours of the island summer and causing
manufacturers of raincoats and umbrellas
to wonder uneasily if they have been mistaken in
supposing England to be an earthly Paradise for
men of their profession.
A silver moon was riding in the sky, and a
gentle breeze blew from the west, bringing with it the
heart-stirring scent of stock and tobacco plant.
Shy creatures of the night rustled in the bushes
at her side and, to top the whole thing off, somewhere
in the woods beyond the river a nightingale had
begun to sing with the full-throated zest of a bird
conscious of having had a rave notice from the
poet Keats and only a couple of nights ago
a star spot on the programme of the B.b.c.
It was a night made for romance, and Mrs.
Spottsworth recognized it as such. Although in
her vers libre days in Greenwich
Village she had gone in almost exclusively for
starkness and squalor, even then she had been at
heart a sentimentalist. Left to herself, she would have
turned out stuff full of moons, Junes,
loves, doves, blisses and kisses. It was
simply that the editors of the poetry magazines
seemed to prefer rat-ridden tenements, the smell
of cooking cabbage, and despair, and a girl had
to eat.
Fixed now as solidly financially as any
woman in America and freed from the necessity of
truckling to the tastes of editors, she was able
to take the wraps off her romantic self, and as
she sat on the rustic seat, looking at the moon
and listening to the nightingale, a stylist like the late
Gustave Flaubert, tireless in his quest of the
mot juste, would have had no hesitation
in describing her mood as mushy.
To this mushiness Captain Biggar's conversation at
dinner had contributed largely. We have given some
indication of its trend, showing it ranging freely from
cannibal chiefs to dart-blowing head-hunters, from
head-hunters to alligators, and its effect on
Mrs. Spottsworth had been very similar to that of
Othello's reminiscences on Desdemona. In
short, long before the last strawberry had been
eaten, the final nut consumed, she was convinced that this
was the mate for her and resolved to spare no effort
in pushing the thing along. In the matter of marrying
again, both A. B. Spottsworth and Clifton
Bessemer had given her the green light, and there
was consequently no obstacle in her path.
There appeared, however, to be one in the path
leading to the rustic seat, for at this moment there
floated to her through the silent night the sound of a
strong man tripping over a flower-pot. It was
followed by some pungent remarks in Swahili, and
Captain Biggar limped up, rubbing his shin.
Mrs. Spottsworth was all womanly
sympathy.
"Oh, dear. Have you hurt yourself, Captain?"
"A mere scratch, dear lady," he assured
her.
He spoke bluffly, and only somebody like
Sherlock Holmes or Monsieur Poirot
could have divined that at the sound of her voice his soul
had turned a double somersault leaving him
quivering with an almost Bill Rowcester-like
intensity.
His telephone conversation concluded, the White
Hunter had prudently decided to avoid the
living-room and head straight for the great open
spaces, where he could be alone. To join the
ladies, he had reasoned, would be to subject
himself to the searing torture of having to sit and gaze
at the woman he worshipped, a process which would
simply rub in the fact of how unattainable she
was. He recognized himself as being in the
unfortunate position of the moth in Shelley's
well-known poem that allowed itself to become
attracted by a star, and it seemed to him that the
smartest move a level-headed moth could make
would be to minimize the anguish by shunning the adored
object's society. It was, he felt, what
Shelley would have advised.
And here he was, alone with her in the night, a
night complete with moonlight,
nightingales, gentle breezes and the scent of
stock and tobacco plant.
It was a taut, tense Captain Biggar, a
Captain Biggar telling himself he must be strong,
who accepted his companion's invitation to join her
on the rustic seat. The voices of Tubby
Frobisher and the Subahdar seemed to ring in his
ears. "Chin up, old boy," said Tubby in his
right ear. "Remember the code," said the
Subahdar in his left.
He braced himself for the coming t@ete-@a-t@ete.
Mrs. Spottsworth, a capital
conversationalist, began it by saying what a beautiful
night it was, to which the Captain replied "Top
hole". "The moon", said Mrs.
Spottsworth, indicating it and adding that she always
thought a night when there was a full moon was so much
nicer than a night when there was not a full moon.
"Oh, rather," said the Captain. Then, after Mrs.
Spottsworth had speculated as to whether the
breeze was murmuring lullabies to the sleeping
flowers and the Captain had regretted his inability
to inform her on this point, he being a stranger in these
parts, there was a silence.
It was broken by Mrs. Spottsworth, who
gave a little cry of concern. "Oh, dear!"
"What's the matter?"
"I've dropped my pendant. The clasp is
so loose."
Captain Biggar appreciated her emotion.
"Bad show," he agreed. "It must be on the
ground somewhere. I'll have a look-see."
"I wish you would. It's not valuable--I
don't suppose it cost more than ten thousand
dollars--but it has a sentimental interest. One
of my husbands gave it to me, I never can
remember which. Oh, have you found it? Thank you ever
so much. Will you put it on for me?"
As Captain Biggar did so, his fingers, spine
and stomach muscles trembled. It is almost
impossible to clasp a pendant round its owner's
neck without touching that neck in spots, and he
touched his companion's in several. And every time he
touched it, something seemed to go through him like a knife.
It was as though the moon, the nightingale, the
breeze, the stock and the tobacco plant were calling
to him to cover this neck with burning kisses.
Only Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar,
forming a solid bloc in opposition, restrained
him.
"Straight bat, old boy!" said Tubby
Frobisher.
"Remember you're a white man," said the
Subahdar.
He clenched his fists and was himself again.
"It must be jolly," he said, recovering his
bluffness, "to be rich enough to think ten thousand dollars
isn't anything to write home about."
Mrs. Spottsworth felt like an actor
receiving a cue.
"Do you think that rich women are happy,
Captain Biggar?"
The Captain said that all those he had met--and
in his capacity of White Hunter he had met quite
a number--had seemed pretty bobbish.
"They wore the mask."
"Eh?"
"They smiled to hide the ache in their hearts,"
explained Mrs. Spottsworth.
The Captain said he remembered one of them, a
large blonde of the name of Fish, dancing the can-can
one night in her step-ins, and Mrs.
Spottsworth said that no doubt she was just trying
to show a brave front to the world.
"Rich women are so lonely, Captain
Biggar."
"Are you lonely?"
"Very, very lonely."
"Oh, ah," said the Captain.
It was not what he would have wished to say. He would
have preferred to pour out his soul in a torrent of
impassioned words. But what could a fellow do, with
Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar watching his every
move?
A woman who has told a man in the
moonlight, with nightingales singing their heads off
in the background, that she is very, very lonely and
received in response the words "Oh, ah" is
scarcely to be blamed for feeling a momentary
pang of discouragement. Mrs. Spottsworth had
once owned a large hound dog of lethargic
temperament who could be induced to go out for his nightly
airing only by a succession of sharp kicks. She
was beginning to feel now as she had felt when her
foot thudded against this languorous animal's
posterior. The same depressing sense of trying
in vain to move an immovable mass. She loved
the White Hunter. She admired him. But when you
set out to kindle the spark of passion in him, you
certainly had a job on your hands. In
a moment of bitterness she told herself that she had
known oysters on the half-shegg'l with more of the divine
fire in them.
However, she persevered.
"How strange our meeting again like this," she said
softly.
"Very odd."
"We were a whole world apart, and we met in an
English inn."
"Quite a coincidence."
"Not a coincidence. It was destined. Shall I
tell you what brought you to that inn?"
"I wanted a spot of beer."
"Fate," said Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Destiny. I beg your pardon?"
"I was only saying that, come right down to it,
there's no beer like English beer."
"The same Fate, the same Destiny,"
continued Mrs. Spottsworth, who at another
moment would have hotly contested this statement, for she
thought English beer undrinkable, "that brought us together
in Kenya. Do you remember the day we met in
Kenya?"
Captain Biggar writhed. It was like asking
Joan of Arc if she happened to recall the time
she saw that heavenly vision of hers. "How about
it, boys?"' he inquired silently, looking
pleadingly from right to left. "Couldn't you stretch a
point?"' But Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar
shook their heads.
"The code, old man," said Tubby
Frobisher.
"Play the game, old boy," said the
Subahdar.
"Do you?" asked Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Oh, rather," said Captain Biggar.
"I had the strangest feeling, when I saw you
that day, that we had met before in some previous
existence."
"A bit unlikely, what?"
Mrs. Spottsworth closed her eyes.
"I seemed to see us in some dim,
prehistoric age. We were clad in skins. You
hit me over the head with your club and dragged me
by my hair to your cave."
"Oh, no, dash it, I wouldn't do a thing like
that."
Mrs. Spottsworth opened her eyes, and
enlarging them to their fullest extent allowed them
to play on his like searchlights.
"You did it because you loved me," she said in a
low, vibrant whisper. "And I--"
She broke off. Something tall and willowy had
loomed up against the skyline, and a voice with perhaps
just a quaver of nervousness in it was saying
"Hullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo".
"I've been looking for you everywhere, Rosie,"
said Bill. "When I found you weren't at the
ruined chapel ... Oh, hullo, Captain."
"Hullo," said Captain Biggar dully, and
tottered off. Lost in the shadows a few paces
down the path, he halted and brushed away the
beads of perspiration which had formed on his forehead.
He was breathing heavily, like a buffalo in the
mating season. It had been a near thing, a very
near thing. Had this interruption been postponed even
for another minute, he knew that he must have sinned
against the code and taken the irrevocable step which would
have made his name a mockery and a byword in the
Anglo-Malay Club at Kuala Lumpur.
A pauper with a bank balance of a few meagre
pounds, he would have been proposing marriage to a
woman with millions.
More and more, as the moments went by, he had found
himself being swept off his feet, his ears becoming
deafer and deafer to the muttered warnings of Tubby
Frobisher and the Subahdar. Her eyes he might
have resisted. Her voice, too, and the skin he had
loved to touch. But when it came to eyes, voice,
skin, moonlight, gentle breezes from the west and
nightingales, the mixture was too rich.
Yes, he felt as he stood there heaving like a
stage sea, he had been saved, and it might have
been supposed that his prevailing emotion would have
been a prayerful gratitude to Fate or
Destiny for its prompt action. But, oddly enough,
it was not. The first spasm of relief had died
quickly away, to be succeeded by a rising sensation of
nausea. And what caused this nausea was the fact
that, being still within earshot of the rustic seat, he could
hear all that Bill was saying. And Bill, having
seated himself beside Mrs. Spottsworth, had begun
to coo.
Too little has been said in this chronicle of the
ninth Earl of Rowcester's abilities in this
direction. When we heard him promising his sister
Monica to contact Mrs. Spottsworth and coo
to her like a turtle dove, we probably formed in
our minds the picture of one of those
run-of-the-mill turtle doves whose
cooing, though adequate, does not really amount
to anything much. We would have done better to envisage
something in the nature of a turtle dove of stellar
quality, what might be called the Turtle
Dove Supreme. A limited young man in many
respects, Bill Rowcester could, when in
mid-season form, touch heights in the way of
cooing which left his audience, if at all
impressionable, gasping for air.
These heights he was touching now, for the thought that this
woman had it in her power to take England's leading
white elephant off his hands, thus stabilizing his
financial position and enabling him to liquidate
Honest Patch Perkins' honourable obligations,
lent him an eloquence which he had not achieved
since May Week dances at Cambridge. The
golden words came trickling from his lips like
syrup.
Captain Biggar was not fond of syrup, and he
did not like the thought of the woman he loved being
subjected to all this goo. For a moment he toyed
with the idea of striding up and breaking Bill's
spine in three places, but once more found his
aspirations blocked by the code. He had eaten
Bill's meat and drunk Bill's drink ...
both excellent, especially the roast duck ...
and that made the feller immune to assault. For
when a feller has accepted a feller's
hospitality, a feller can't go about breaking the
feller's spine, no matter what the feller may
have done. The code is rigid on that point.
He is at liberty, however, to docket the
feller in his mind as a low-down, fortune-hunting
son of a what not, and this was how Captain Biggar was
docketing Bill as he lumbered back to the
house. And it was--substantially--how he
described him to Jill when, passing through the
French window, he found her crossing the
living-room on her way to deposit her things in
her sleeping apartment.
"Good gracious!" said Jill, intrigued
by his aspect. "You seem very upset, Captain
Biggar. What's the matter? Have you been bitten
by an alligator?"
Before proceeding, the Captain had to put her
straight on this.
"No alligators in England," he said.
"Except, of course, in zoos. No, I have
been shocked to the very depths of my soul."
"By a wombat?"
Again the Captain was obliged to correct her
misapprehensions. An oddly ignorant girl,
this, he was thinking.
"No wombats in England, either. What shocked
me to the very depths of my soul was listening to a
low-down, fortune-hunting English peer doing his
stuff," he barked bitterly. "Lord Rowcester,
he calls himself. Lord Gigolo's what I
call him."
Jill started so sharply that she dropped her
suitcase.
"Allow me," said the Captain, diving for it.
"I don't understand," said Jill. "Do you mean
that Lord Rowcester--?"
One of the rules of the code is that a white man
must shield women, and especially young, innocent
girls, from the seamy side of life, but Captain
Biggar was far too stirred to think of that now. He
resembled Othello not only in his taste for
antres vast and deserts idle but in his tendency,
being wrought, to become perplexed in the extreme.
"He was making love to Mrs. Spottsworth
in the moonlight," he said curtly.
"What!"
"Heard him with my own ears. He was cooing
to her like a turtle dove. After her money, of
course. All the same, these effete aristocrats
of the old country. Make a noise like a rich
widow anywhere in England, and out come all the
Dukes and Earls and Viscounts, howling like
wolves. Rats, we'd call them in Kuala
Lumpur. You should hear Tubby Frobisher talk
about them at the club. I remember him saying one
day to Doc and Squiffy--the Subahdar wasn't
there, if I recollect rightly--gone up
country, or something--"Doc", he said ..."
It was probably going to be a most
extraordinarily good story, but Captain Biggar
did not continue it any further for he saw that his
audience was walking out on him. Jill had turned
abruptly, and was passing through the door. Her
head, he noted, was bowed, and very properly, too,
after a revelation like that. Any nice girl would have
been knocked endways by such a stunning expos`e
of the moral weaknesses of the British aristocracy.
He sat down and picked up the evening paper,
throwing it from him with a stifled cry as the words
"Whistler's Mother" leaped at him from the printed
page. He did not want to be reminded of
Whistler's Mother. He was brooding
darkly on Honest Patch Perkins and wondering
wistfully if Destiny (or Fate) would ever bring
their paths together again, when Jeeves came floating
in. Simultaneously, Rory entered from the
library.
"Oh, Jeeves," said Rory, "will you bring
me a flagon of strong drink? I am athirst."
With a respectful movement of his head Jeeves
indicated the tray he was carrying, laden with the right
stuff, and Rory accompanied him to the table,
licking his lips.
"Something for you, Captain?" he said.
"Whisky, if you please," said Captain
Biggar. After that ordeal in the moonlit garden,
he needed a restorative.
"Whisky? Right. And for you, Mrs.
Spottsworth?" said Rory, as that lady came
through the French window accompanied by Bill.
"Nothing, thank you, Sir Roderick. On a
night like this, moonlight is enough for me.
Moonlight and your lovely garden, Billiken."
"I'll tell you something about that garden," said
Rory. "In the summer months--" He broke
off as Monica appeared in the library door.
The sight of her not only checked his observations
on the garden, but reminded him of her injunction
to boost the bally place to this Spottsworth
woman. Looking about him for something in the bally
place capable of being boosted, his eye fell on
the dower chest in the corner and he recalled
complimentary things he had heard said in the past about
it.
It seemed to him that it would make a good point
d'appui. "Yes," he proceeded, "the
garden's terrific, and furthermore it must never be
overlooked that Rowcester Abbey, though a bit
shopsoiled and falling apart at the seams, contains
many an objet d'art calculated to make the
connoisseur sit up and say "What ho!"
Cast an eye on that dower chest, Mrs.
Spottsworth."
"I was admiring it when I first arrived. It's
beautiful."
"Yes, it is nice, isn't it?" said
Monica, giving her husband a look of wifely
approval. One didn't often find Rory showing
such signs of almost human intelligence.
"Duveen used to plead to be allowed to buy it, but
of course it's an heirloom and can't be sold."
"Goes with the house," said Rory.
"It's full of the most wonderful old
costumes."
"Which go with the house," said Rory, probably quite
incorrectly, but showing zeal.
"Would you like to look at them?" said Monica,
reaching for the lid.
Bill uttered an agonized cry.
"They're not in there!"
"Of course they are. They always have been. And
I'm sure Rosalinda would enjoy seeing them."
"I would indeed."
"There's quite a romantic story attached to this
dower chest, Rosalinda. The Lord Rowcester of that
time--centuries ago--wouldn't let his daughter
marry the man she loved, a famous explorer and
discoverer."
"The old boy was against Discoverers," explained
Rory. "He was afraid they might discover
America. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, I
beg your pardon."
"The lover sent his chest to the girl, filled with
rare embroideries he had brought back from his
travels in the East, and her father wouldn't let her
have it. He told the lover to come and take it
away. And the lover did, and of course inside it was
the young man's bride. Knowing what was going
to happen, she had hidden there."
"And the funny part of the story is that the old
blister followed the chap all the way down the
drive, shouting "Get that damn thing out of
here!""
Mrs. Spottsworth was enchanted.
"What a delicious story. Do open it,
Monica."
"I will. It isn't locked."
Bill sank bonelessly into a chair.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"Brandy!"
"Very good, m'lord."
"Well, for heaven's sake!" said Monica.
She was staring wide-eyed at a check coat of
loud pattern and a tie so crimson, so intensely
blue horseshoed, that Rory shook his head
censoriously.
"Good Lord, Bill, don't tell me you go
around in a coat like that? It must make you look like
an absconding bookie. And the tie! The
cravat! Ye gods! You'd better drop in at
Harrige's and see the chap in our
haberdashery department. We've got a sale
on."
Captain Biggar strode forward. There was a
tense, hard expression on his rugged face.
"Let me look at that." He took the
coat, felt in the pocket and produced a
black patch. "Ha!" he said, and there was a
wealth of meaning in his voice.
Rory was listening at the library door.
"Hullo," he said. "Someone talking French.
Must be Boussac. Don't want to miss
Boussac. Come along, Moke. This girl," said
Rory, putting a loving arm round her shoulder,
"talks French with both hands. You coming, Mrs.
Spottsworth? It's the Derby Dinner on
television."
"I will join you later, perhaps," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "I left Pomona out in the
garden, and she may be getting lonely."
"You, Captain?"
Captain Biggar shook his head. His face was
more rugged than ever.
"I have a word or two to say to Lord Rowcester
first. If you can spare me a moment, Lord
Rowcester?"
"Oh, rather," said Bill faintly.
Jeeves returned with the brandy, and he sprang
for it like Whistler's Mother leaping at the winning post.



But brandy, when administered in one of those small
after-dinner glasses, can never do anything really
constructive for a man whose affairs have so shaped
themselves as to give him the momentary illusion of having
been hit in the small of the back by the Twentieth
Century Limited. A tun or a hogshead
of the stuff might have enabled Bill to face the coming
interview with a jaunty smile. The mere sip which
was all that had been vouchsafed to him left him as
pallid and boneless as if it had been
sarsaparilla. Gazing through a mist at Captain
Biggar, he closely resembled the sort of man
for whom the police spread drag-nets,
preparatory to questioning them in connection with the recent
smash-and-grab robbery at Marks and
Schoenstein's Bon Ton Jewellery Store
on Eighth Avenue. His face had shaded away
to about the colour of the under-side of a dead fish, and
Jeeves, eyeing him with respectful
commiseration, wished that it were possible to bring the
roses back to his cheeks by telling him one or
two good things which had come into his mind from the
Collected Works of Marcus Aurelius.
Captain Biggar, even when seen through a mist,
presented a spectacle which might well have
intimidated the stoutest. His eyes seemed
to Bill to be shooting out long, curling flames,
and why they called a man with a face as red as that a
White Hunter was more than he was able to understand.
Strong emotion, as always, had intensified the
vermilion of the Captain's complexion, giving
him something of the appearance of a survivor from an
explosion in a tomato cannery.
Nor was his voice, when he spoke, of a
timbre calculated to lull any apprehensions
which his aspect might have inspired. It was the voice
of a man who needed only a little sympathy and
encouragement to make him whip out a revolver and
start blazing away with it.
"So!" he said.
There are no good answers to the word "So!"
particularly when uttered in the kind of voice just
described, and Bill did not attempt to find
one.
"So you are Honest Patch Perkins!"
Jeeves intervened, doing his best as usual.
"Well, yes and no, sir."
"What do you mean, yes and no? Isn't this the
louse's patch?" demanded the Captain, brandishing
Exhibit A. "Isn't that the hellhound's ginger
moustache?" he said, giving Exhibit B a
twiddle. "And do you think I didn't
recognize that coat and tie?"
"What I was endeavouring to convey by the expression
"Yes and no", sir, was that his lordship has
retired from business."
"You bet he has. Pity he didn't do it
sooner."
"Yes, sir. Oh, Iago, the pity of it,
Iago."
"Eh?"
"I was quoting the Swan of Avon, sir."
"Well, stop quoting the bally Swan of
Avon."
"Certainly, sir, if you wish it."
Bill had recovered his faculties to a
certain extent. To say that even now he was feeling
boomps-a-daisy would be an exaggeration, but he was
capable of speech.
"Captain Biggar," he said, "I owe you an
explanation."
"You owe me three thousand and five pounds two
and six," said the Captain, coldly
corrective.
This silenced Bill again, and the Captain took
advantage of the fact to call him eleven
derogatory names.
Jeeves assumed the burden of the defence, for
Bill was still reeling under the impact of the eleventh
name.
"It is impossible to gainsay the fact that in the
circumstances your emotion is intelligible, sir,
for one readily admits that his lordship's recent
activities are of a nature to lend themselves
to adverse criticism. But can one fairly
blame his lordship for what has occurred?"
This seemed to the Captain an easy one
to answer.
"Yes," he said.
"You will observe that I employed the adverb
"fairly", sir. His lordship arrived on
Epsom Downs this afternoon with the best intentions and a
capital adequate for any reasonable
emergency. He could hardly have been expected
to foresee that two such meagrely favoured animals
as Lucy Glitters and Whistler's Mother would have
emerged triumphant from their respective
trials of speed. His lordship is not
clairvoyant."
"He could have laid the bets off."
"There I am with you sir. Rem acu
tetigisti."
"Eh?"
"A Latin expression, which might be rendered in
English by the American colloquialism "You
said a mouthful". I urged his lordship to do so."
"You?"
"I was officiating as his lordship's clerk."
The Captain stared.
"You weren't the chap in the pink moustache?"
"Precisely, sir, though I would be inclined
to describe it as russet rather than pink."
The Captain brightened.
"So you were his clerk, were you? Then when he goes
to prison, you'll go with him."
"Let us hope there will be no such sad ending as
that, sir."
"What do you mean, "sad" ending?" said
Captain Biggar.
There was an uncomfortable pause. The Captain
broke it.
"Well, let's get down to it," he said.
"No sense in wasting time. Properly speaking,
I ought to charge this sheep-faced, shambling
refugee from hell--"
"The name is Lord Rowcester, sir."
"No, it's not, it's Patch Perkins.
Properly speaking, Perkins, you slinking
reptile, I ought to charge you for petrol consumed
on the journey here from Epsom, repairs to my
car, which wouldn't have broken down if I hadn't had
to push it so hard in the effort to catch you ... and,"
he added, struck with an afterthought, "the two beers
I had at the Goose and Gherkin while waiting for
those repairs to be done. But I'm no hog.
I'll settle for three thousand and five pounds
two and six. Write me a cheque."
Bill passed a fevered hand through his hair.
"How can I write you a cheque?"
Captain Biggar clicked his tongue,
impatient of this shilly-shallying.
"You have a pen, have you not? And there is ink on the
premises, I imagine? You are a strong,
able-bodied young fellow in full possession of the
use of your right hand, aren't you? No paralysis?
No rheumatism in the joints? If," he went
on, making a concession, "what is bothering you is
that you have run out of blotting paper, never mind.
I'll blow on it."
Jeeves came to the rescue, helping out the young
master, who was still massaging the top of his head.
"What his lordship is striving to express in
words, sir, is that while, as you rightly say, he
is physically competent to write a cheque for
three thousand and five pounds two shillings and
sixpence, such a cheque, when presented at your
bank, would not be honoured."
"Exactly," said Bill, well pleased with this
lucid way of putting the thing. "It would bounce like
a bounding Dervish and come shooting back like a homing
pigeon."
"Two very happy images, m'lord."
"I haven't a bean."
"Insufficient funds is the technical
expression, m'lord. His lordship, if I may
employ the argot, sir, is broke to the wide."
Captain Biggar stared.
"You mean you own a place like this, a bally
palace if ever I saw one, and can't
write a cheque for three thousand pounds?"
Jeeves undertook the burden of explanation.
"A house such as Rowcester Abbey in these days
is not an asset, sir, it is a liability.
I fear that your long residence in the East has
rendered you not quite abreast of the changed conditions
prevailing in your native land. Socialistic
legislation has sadly depleted the resources
of England's hereditary aristocracy. We are
living now in what is known as the Welfare
State, which means--broadly--that everybody is
completely destitute."
It would have seemed incredible to any of the native
boys, hippopotami, rhinoceri, pumas,
zebras, alligators and buffaloes with whom he
had come in contact in the course of his long career in
the wilds that Captain Biggar's strong jaw was
capable of falling like an unsupported stick of
asparagus, but it had fallen now in precisely
that manner. There was something almost piteous in the way
his blue eyes, round and dismayed, searched the
faces of the two men before him.
"You mean he can't brass up?"
"You have put it in a nutshell, sir. Who
steals his lordship's purse steals trash."
Captain Biggar, his iron self-control
gone, became a human semaphore. He might
have been a White Hunter doing his daily dozen.
"But I must have the money, and I must have it before
noon tomorrow." His voice rose in what in a
lesser man would have been a wail. "Listen.
I'll have to let you in on something that's vitally
secret, and if you breathe a word to a soul I'll
rip you both asunder with my bare hands, shred you up
into small pieces and jump on the remains with
hobnailed boots. Is that understood?"
Bill considered.
"Yes, that seems pretty clear. Eh,
Jeeves?"
"Most straightforward, m'lord."
"Carry on, Captain."
Captain Biggar lowered his voice to a rasping
whisper.
"You remember that telephone call I made
after dinner? It was to those pals of mine, the chaps
who gave me my winning double this afternoon. Well,
when I say winning double," said Captain Biggar,
raising his voice a little, "that's what it would have
been but for the degraded chiselling of a dastardly,
lop-eared--"
"Quite, quite," said Bill hurriedly. "You
telephoned to your friends, you were saying?"
"I was anxious to know if it was all settled."
"If all what was settled?"
Captain Biggar lowered his voice again, this time
so far that his words sounded like gas escaping from a
pipe.
"There's something cooking. As Shakespeare
says, we have an enterprise of great
importance."
Jeeves winced. ""Enter-prises of great
pith and moment" is the exact quotation, sir."
"These chaps have a big S.p. job on for the
Derby tomorrow. It's the biggest cert in the history
of the race. The Irish horse, Ballymore."
Jeeves raised his eyebrows.
"Not generally fancied, sir."
"Well, Lucy Glitters and Whistler's
Mother weren't generally fancied, were they? That's what
makes this job so stupendous. Ballymore's a
long-priced outsider. Nobody knows anything about
him. He's been kept darker than a black
cat on a moonless night. But let me tell you
that he has had two secret trial gallops
over the Epsom course and broke the record
both times."
Despite his agitation, Bill whistled.
"You're sure of that?"
"Beyond all possibility of doubt. I've
watched the animal run with my own eyes, and it's
like a streak of lightning. All you see is a
sort of brown blur. We're putting our money
on at the last moment, carefully distributed
among a dozen different bookies so as not
to upset the price. And now," cried Captain
Biggar, his voice rising once more, "you're
telling me that I shan't have any money to put
on."
His agony touched Bill. He did not think,
from what little he had seen of him, that Captain
Biggar was a man with whom he could ever form one of
those beautiful friendships you read about, the kind that
existed between Damon and Pythias, David and
Jonathan, or Swan and Edgar, but he could
understand and sympathize with his grief.
"Too bad, I agree," he said, giving the
fermenting hunter a kindly, brotherly look and
almost, but not quite, patting him on the shoulder. "The
whole situation is most regrettable, and you
wouldn't be far out in saying that the
spectacle of your anguish gashes me like a
knife. But I'm afraid the best I can
manage is a series of monthly payments,
starting say about six weeks from now."
"That's won't do me any good."
"Nor me," said Bill frankly. "It'll
knock the stuffing out of my budget and mean cutting
down the necessities of life to the barest
minimum. I doubt if I shall be able to afford
another square meal till about 1954.
Farewell, a long farewell ... to what,
Jeeves?"
"To all your greatness, m'lord. This is the state
of man: today he puts forth the tender leaves of
hopes; tomorrow blossoms, and bears his blushing
honours thick upon him. The third day comes a
frost, a killing frost, and when he thinks, good
easy man, full surely his greatness is
a-ripening, nips his roots."
"Thank you, Jeeves."
"Not at all, m'lord."
Bill looked at him and sighed.
"You'll have to go, you know, to start with. I can't
possibly pay your salary."
"I should be delighted to serve your lordship without
emolument."
"That's dashed good of you, Jeeves, and I
appreciate it. About as nifty a display of the
feudal spirit as I ever struck. But how," asked
Bill keenly, "could I keep you in fish?"
Captain Biggar interrupted these courteous
exchanges. For some moments he had been chafing,
if chafing is the right word to describe a White
Hunter who is within an ace of frothing at the
mouth. He said something so forceful about Jeeves's
fish that speech was wiped from Bill's lips and he
stood goggling with the dumb consternation of a man who
has been unexpectedly struck by a thunderbolt.
"I've got to have that money!"
"His lordship has already informed you that, owing to the
circumstance of his being fiscally crippled, that is
impossible."
"Why can't he borrow it?"
Bill recovered the use of his vocal cords.
"Who from?" he demanded peevishly. "You talk
as if borrowing money was as simple as falling off
a log."
"The point his lordship is endeavouring
to establish," explained Jeeves, "is the almost
universal tendency of gentlemen
to prove unco-operative when an attempt is
made to float a loan at their expense."
"Especially if what you're trying to get
into their ribs for is a whacking great sum like three
thousand and five pounds two and six."
"Precisely, m'lord. Confronted by such
figures, they become like the deaf adder that hearkens
not to the voice of the charmer, charming never so
wisely."
"So putting the bite on my social circle
is off," said Bill. "It can't be done. I'm
sorry."
Captain Biggar seemed to blow flame through his
nostrils.
"You'll be sorrier," he said, "and I'll
tell you when. When you and this precious clerk of
yours are standing in the dock at the Old Bailey,
with the Judge looking at you over his bifocals and
me in the well of the court making faces at you.
Then's the time when you'll be sorry ... then and
shortly afterwards, when the Judge pronounces
sentence, accompanied by some strong remarks from the
bench, and they lead you off to Wormwood Scrubs
to start doing your two years hard or whatever it
is."
Bill gaped.
"Oh, dash it!" he protested. "You wouldn't
proceed to that ... what, Jeeves?"
"Awful extreme, m'lord."
"You surely wouldn't proceed to that awful
extreme?"
"Wouldn't I!"
"One doesn't want unpleasantness."
"What one wants and what one is going to get
are two different things," said Captain Biggar,
and went out, grinding his teeth, to cool off in the
garden.
He left behind him one of those silences often
called pregnant. Bill was the first to speak.
"We're in the soup, Jeeves."
"Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in our
affairs would appear to have been precipitated,
m'lord."
"He wants his pound of flesh."
"Yes, m'lord."
"And we haven't any flesh."
"No, m'lord. It is a most disagreeable
state of affairs."
"He's a tough egg, that Biggar. He looks
like a gorilla with stomach-ache."
"There is, perhaps, a resemblance to such an
animal, afflicted as your lordship suggests."
"Did you notice him at dinner?"
"To which aspect of his demeanour during the meal
does your lordship allude?"
"I was thinking of the sinister way he tucked into the
roast duck. He flung himself on it like a tiger
on its prey. He gave me the impression of a
man without ruth or pity."
"Unquestionably a gentleman lacking in the softer
emotions, m'lord."
"There's a word that just describes him. Begins
with a V. Not vapid. Not vermicelli.
Vindictive. The chap's vindictive. I can
understand him being sore about not getting his money, but
what good will it do him to ruin me?"
"No doubt he will derive a certain moody
satisfaction from it, m'lord."
Bill brooded.
"I suppose there really is nobody one could
borrow a bit of cash from?"
"Nobody who springs immediately to the mind,
m'lord."
"How about that financier fellow, who lives out
Ditchingham way--Sir Somebody Something?"
"Sir Oscar Wopple, m'lord? He shot
himself last Friday."
"Oh, then we won't bother him."
Jeeves coughed.
"If I might make a suggestion, m'lord?"
"Yes, Jeeves?"
A faint ray of hope had stolen into Bill's
sombre eyes. His voice, while still scarcely
to be described as animated, no longer
resembled that of a corpse speaking from the tomb.
"It occurred to me as a passing thought, m'lord,
that were we to possess ourselves of Captain Biggar's
ticket, our position would be noticeably
stabilized."
Bill shook his head.
"I don't get you, Jeeves. Ticket?
What ticket? You speak as if this were a
railway station."
"I refer to the ticket which, in my capacity of
your lordship's clerk, I handed to the gentleman as
a record of his wager on Lucy Glitters and
Whistler's Mother, m'lord."
"Oh, you mean his ticket?" said Bill,
enlightened.
"Precisely, m'lord. As he left
the racecourse so abruptly, it must still be upon his
person, and it is the only evidence that exists that the wager was ever made. Once we had deprived
him of it, your lordship would be in a position to make
payment at your lordship's leisure."
"I see. Yes, that would be nice. So we
get the ticket from him, do we?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"May I say one word, Jeeves?"
"Certainly, m'lord."
"How?"
"By what I might describe as direct
action, m'lord."
Bill stared. This opened up a new line of
thought.
"Set on him, you mean? Scrag him?
Choke it out of him?"
"Your lordship has interpreted my meaning
exactly."
Bill continued to stare.
"But, Jeeves, have you seen him? That bulging
chest, those rippling muscles?"
"I agree that Captain Biggar is
well-nourished, m'lord, but we would have the
advantage of surprise. The gentleman went
out into the garden. When he returns, one may
assume that it will be by way of the French window by which
he made his egress. If I draw the
curtains, it will be necessary for him to enter through them.
We will see him fumbling, and in that moment a sharp
tug will cause the curtains to descend upon him,
enmeshing him, as it were."
Bill was impressed, as who would not have been.
"By Jove, Jeeves! Now you're talking.
You think it would work?"
"Unquestionably, m'lord. The method is that of the
Roman retiarius, with whose technique your
lordship is no doubt familiar."
"That was the bird who fought with net and trident?"
"Precisely, m'lord. So if your lordship
approves--"
"You bet I approve."
"Very good, m'lord. Then I will draw the
curtains now, and we will take up our stations on
either side of them."
It was with deep satisfaction that Bill
surveyed the completed preparations. After a rocky
start, the sun was coming through the cloud wrack.
"It's in the bag, Jeeves!"
"A very apt image, m'lord."
"If he yells, we will stifle his cries with the
... what do you call this stuff?"
"Velours, m'lord."
"We will stifle his cries with the velours. And
while he's grovelling on the ground, I shall get
a chance to give him a good kick in the
tailpiece."
"There is that added attraction, m'lord. For
blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, as the
playwright Congreve informs us."
Bill breathed heavily.
"Were you in the first world war, Jeeves?"
"I dabbled in it to a certain extent, m'lord."
"I missed that one because I wasn't born, but
I was in the Commandos in this last one. This is rather like
waiting for zero hour, isn't it?"
"The sensation is not dissimilar, m'lord."
"He should be coming soon."
"Yes, m'lord."
"On your toes, Jeeves!"
"Yes, m'lord."
"All set?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Hi!" said Captain Biggar in their immediate
rear. "I want to have another word with you two."
A lifetime of braving the snares and perils of the
wilds develops in those White Hunters over
the years a sort of sixth sense warning them of
lurking danger. Where the ordinary man, happening
upon a tiger trap in the jungle, would fall in
base over apex, your White Hunter, saved
by his sixth sense, walks round it.
With fiendish cunning, Captain Biggar, instead
of entering, as expected, through the French window, had
circled the house and come in by the front door.



Although the actual time which had elapsed between
Captain Biggar's departure and return had
been only about five minutes, scarcely long enough
for him to take half a dozen turns up and down
the lawn, pausing in the course of one of them
to kick petulantly at a passing frog, it had
been ample for his purposes. If you had said
to him as he was going through the French window "Have you
any ideas, Captain?"' he would have been forced
to reply "No more than a rabbit". But now his
eye was bright and his manner jaunty. He had seen
the way.
On occasions of intense spiritual turmoil the
brain works quickly. Thwarted passion stimulates
the little grey cells, and that painful scene on the
rustic seat, when love had collided so
disastrously with the code that governs the actions of the
men who live on the frontiers of Empire, had
stirred up those of Captain Biggar till, if you
had X-rayed his skull, you would have seen them
leaping and dancing like rice in a saucepan. Not
thirty seconds after the frog, rubbing its head,
had gone off to warn the other frogs to watch out for
atom bombs, he was rewarded with what he
recognized immediately as an inspiration.
Here was his position in a nutshell. He
loved. Right. He would go further, he loved like the
dickens. And unless he had placed a totally
wrong construction on her words, her manner and the
light in her eyes, the object of his passion
loved him. A woman, he meant to say, does
not go out of her way to bring the conversation round to the
dear old days when a feller used to whack her
over the top-knot with clubs and drag her
into caves, unless she intends to convey a certain
impression. True, a couple of minutes later
she had been laughing and giggling with the frightful
Rowcester excrescence, but that, it seemed to him now
that he had had time to simmer down, had been merely
a guest's conventional civility to a host. He
dismissed the Rowcester gumboil as negligible.
He was convinced that, if one went by the form book,
he had but to lay his heart at her feet, and she
would pick it up.
So far, so good. But here the thing began to get more
complicated. She was rich and he was poor. That was
the hitch. That was the snag. That was what was putting
the good old sand in the bally machinery.
The thought that seared his soul and lent additional
vigour to the kick he had directed at the frog
was that, but for the deplorable financial methods of that
black-hearted bookmaker, Honest Patch
Rowcester, it would all have been so simple.
Three thousand pounds deposited on the nose of
Ballymore at the current odds of fifty to one
would have meant a return of a hundred and fifty
thousand, just like finding it: and surely even Tubby
Frobisher and the Subahdar, rigid though their
views were, could scarcely accuse a chap of not
playing with the straight bat if he married a
woman, however wealthy, while himself in possession
of a hundred and fifty thousand of the best and
brightest.
He groaned in spirit. A sorrow's crown of
sorrow is remembering happier things, and he
proceeded to torture himself with the recollection of
how her neck had felt beneath his fingers as he
fastened her pen--
Captain Biggar uttered a short, sharp
exclamation. It was in Swahili, a language
which always came most readily to his lips in
moments of emotion, but its meaning was as clear as if
it had been the "Eureka!" of Archimedes.
Her pendant! Yes, now he saw daylight.
Now he could start handling the situation as it should be
handled.
Two minutes later, he was at the front
door. Two minutes and twenty-five seconds
later, he was in the living-room, eyeing the backs
of Honest Patch Rowcester and his clerk as they
stood--for some silly reason known only to themselves
--crouching beside the curtains which they had pulled across
the French window.
"Hi!" he cried. "I want to have another word
with you two."
The effect of the observation on his audience was
immediate and impressive. It is always disconcerting,
when you are expecting a man from the north-east, to have
him suddenly bark at you from the south-west,
especially if he does so in a manner that
recalls feeding-time in a dog hospital, and
Bill went into his quaking and leaping routine with the
smoothness that comes from steady practice. Even
Jeeves, though his features did not lose their
customary impassivity, appeared--if one could
judge by the fact that his left eyebrow flickered
for a moment as if about to rise--to have been stirred to quite
a considerable extent.
"And don't stand there looking like a dying duck,"
said the Captain, addressing Bill, who, one is
compelled to admit, was giving a rather close
impersonation of such a bird in articulo
mortis. "Since I saw you two beauties
last," he continued, helping himself to another whisky
and soda, "I have been thinking over the situation, and
I have now got it all taped out. It suddenly
came to me, quick as a flash. I said to myself "The
pendant!""
Bill blinked feebly. His heart, which had
crashed against the back of his front teeth, was
slowly returning to its base, but it seemed to him
that the shock which he had just sustained must have
left his hearing impaired. It had sounded
exactly as if the Captain had said "The
pendant!" which, of course, made no sense
whatever.
"The pendant?" he echoed, groping.
"Mrs. Spottsworth is wearing a diamond
pendant, m'lord," said Jeeves. "It is to this,
no doubt, that the gentleman alludes."
It was specious, but Bill found himself still far from
convinced.
"You think so?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"He alludes to that, in your opinion?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"But why does he allude to it, Jeeves?"
"That, one is disposed to imagine, m'lord, one will
ascertain when the gentleman has resumed his
remarks."
"Gone on speaking, you mean?"
"Precisely, m'lord."
"Well, if you say so," said Bill
doubtfully. "But it seems a ... what's the
expression you're always using?"
"Remote contingency, m'lord?"
"That's right. It seems a very remote
contingency."
Captain Biggar had been fuming silently.
He now spoke with not a little asperity.
"If you have quite finished babbling, Patch
Rowcester--"
"Was I babbling?"
"Certainly you were babbling. You were babbling like a
... like a ... well, like whatever the dashed things
are that babble."
"Brooks," said Jeeves helpfully, "are
sometimes described as doing so, sir. In his
widely-read poem of that name, the late Lord
Tennyson puts the words "Oh, brook, oh,
babbling brook" into the mouth of the character Edmund, and
later describes the rivulet, speaking in its
own person, as observing "I chatter over stony
ways in little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying
bays, I babble on the pebbles"."
Captain Biggar frowned.
"Ai deng hahp kamoo for the late Lord
Tennyson," he said impatiently. "What
I'm interested in is this pendant."
Bill looked at him with a touch of hope.
"Are you going to explain about that pendant? Throw
light upon it, as it were?"
"I am. It's worth close on three thousand
quid, and," said Captain Biggar, throwing out the
observation almost casually "you're going to pinch it,
Patch Rowcester."
Bill gaped.
"Pinch it?"
"This very night."
It is always difficult for a man who is
feeling as if he has just been struck over the
occiput by a blunt instrument to draw himself to his
full height and stare at someone censoriously, but
Bill contrived to do so.
"What!" he cried, shocked to the core. "Are
you, a bulwark of the Empire, a man who goes
about setting an example to Dyaks seriously
suggesting that I rob one of my guests?"
"Well, I'm one of your guests, and you robbed
me."
"Only temporarily."
"And you'll be robbing Mrs. Spottsworth
only temporarily. I shouldn't have used the word
"pinch". All I want you to do is borrow that
pendant till tomorrow afternoon, when it will be returned."
Bill clutched his hair.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"Rally round, Jeeves. My brain's
tottering. Can you make any sense of what this
rhinoceros-biffer is saying?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"You can? Then you're a better man than I
am, Gunga Din."
"Captain Biggar's thought-processes seem
to me reasonably clear, m'lord. The gentleman
is urgently in need of money with which to back the
horse Ballymore in tomorrow's Derby, and his
proposal, as I take it, is that the pendant shall
be abstracted and pawned and the proceeds employed
for that purpose. Have I outlined your suggestion
correctly, sir?"
"You have."
"At the conclusion of the race, one presumes,
the object in question would be redeemed, brought back
to the house, discovered, possibly by myself, in some
spot where the lady might be supposed to have
dropped it, and duly returned to her. Do I err
in advancing this theory, sir?"
"You do not."
"Then, could one be certain beyond the peradventure
of a doubt that Ballymore will win--"
"He'll win all right. I told you he had
twice broken the course record."
"That is official, sir?"
"Straight from the feed-box."
"Then I must confess, m'lord, I see little or
no objection to the scheme."
Bill shook his head, unconvinced.
"I still call it stealing."
Captain Biggar clicked his tongue.
"It isn't anything of the sort, and I'll
tell you why. In a way, you might say that that
pendant was really mine."
"Really ... what was that last word?"
"Mine. Let me," said Captain Biggar,
"tell you a little story."
He sat musing for a while. Coming out of his
reverie and discovering with a start that his glass was
empty, he refilled it. His attitude was that
of a man, who, even if nothing came of the business
transaction which he had proposed, intended to save
something from the wreck by drinking as much as possible of
his host's whisky. When the refreshing draught had
finished its journey down the hatch, he wiped his
lips on the back of his hand, and began.
"Do either of you chaps know the Long Bar at
Shanghai? No? Well, it's the Caf`e de
la Paix of the East. They always say that if you
sit outside the Caf`e de la Paix in
Paris long enough, you're sure sooner or later
to meet all your pals, and it's the same with the
Long Bar. A few years ago, chancing to be in
Shanghai, I had dropped in there, never dreaming
that Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar were within a
thousand miles of the place, and I'm dashed if the
first thing I saw wasn't the two old bounders
sitting on a couple of stools as large as
life. "Hullo, there, Bwana, old boy,"
they said when I rolled up, and I said,
"Hullo, there, Tubby! Hullo there,
Subahdar, old chap," and Tubby said
"What'll you have, old boy?"' and I said
"What are you boys having?"' and they said
stingahs, so I said that would do me all right, so
Tubby ordered a round of stingahs, and we started
talking about chowluangs and nai bahn rot
fais and where we had all met last and whatever
became of the poogni at Lampang and all that
sort of thing. And when the stingahs were finished, I
said "The next are on me. What for you,
Tubby, old boy?"' and he said he'd
stick to stingahs. "And for you, Subahdar, old
boy?"' I said, and the Subahdar said he'd stick
to stingahs, too, so I wig-wagged the barman and
ordered stingahs all round, and, to cut a long
story short, the stingahs came, a stingah for
Tubby, a stingah for the Subahdar, and a stingah for
me. "Luck, old boys!" said Tubby.
"Luck, old boys!" said the Subahdar.
"Cheerio, old boys!" I said, and we
drank the stingahs."
Jeeves coughed. It was a respectful cough,
but firm.
"Excuse me, sir."
"Eh?"
"I am reluctant to interrupt the flow of your
narrative, but is this leading somewhere?"
Captain Biggar flushed. A man who is
telling a crisp, well-knit story does not like
to be asked if it is leading somewhere.
"Leading somewhere? What do you mean, is it leading
somewhere? Of course it's leading somewhere. I'm coming
to the nub of the thing now. Scarcely had we finished
this second round of stingahs, when in through the door,
sneaking along like a chap that expects at any
moment to be slung out on his fanny, came this
fellow in the tattered shirt and dungarees."
The introduction of a new and unexpected character
took Bill by surprise.
"Which fellow in the tattered shirt and
dungarees?"
"This fellow I'm telling you about."
"Who was he?"
"You may well ask. Didn't know him from
Adam, and I could see Tubby Frobisher
didn't know him from Adam. Nor did the
Subahdar. But he came sidling up to us and the first
thing he said, addressing me, was "Hullo,
Bimbo, old boy", and I stared and said "Who
on earth are you, old boy?"' because I hadn't
been called Bimbo since I left school.
Everybody called me that there, God knows why, but
out East it's been "Bwana" for as long as I
can remember. And he said "Don't you know me,
old boy? I'm Sycamore, old boy". And
I stared again, and I said "What's that, old
boy? Sycamore? Sycamore? Not Beau
Sycamore that was in the Army Class at
Uppingham with me, old boy?"' and he said
"That's right, old boy. Only it's Hobo
Sycamore now"."
The memory of that distressing encounter unmanned
Captain Biggar for a moment. He was obliged
to refill his glass with Bill's whisky before he
could proceed.
"You could have knocked me down with a feather," he
said, resuming. "This chap Sycamore had been the
smartest, most dapper chap that ever adorned an
Army Class, even at Uppingham."
Bill was following the narrative closely
now.
"They're dapper in the Army Class at
Uppingham, are they?"
"Very dapper, and this chap Sycamore, as I
say, the most dapper of the lot. His dapperness was
a byword. And here he was in a tattered shirt and
dungarees, not even wearing a school tie."
Captain Biggar sighed. "I saw at once
what must have happened. It was the old, old story.
Morale can crumble very easily out East.
Drink, women and unpd gambling debts ..."
"Yes, yes," said Bill. "He'd gone
under, had he?"
"Right under. It was pitiful. The chap was nothing
but a bally beachcomber."
"I remember a story of Maugham's about a
fellow like that."
"I'll bet your friend Maugham, whoever he
may be, never met such a derelict as
Sycamore. He had touched bottom, and the
problem was what was to be done about it. Tubby
Frobisher and the Subahdar, of course, not having
been introduced, were looking the other way and taking
no part in the conversation, so it was up to me. Well,
there isn't much you can do for these chaps who have let the
East crumble their morale except give them
something to buy a couple of drinks with, and I was just
starting to feel in my pocket for a baht or a
tical, when from under that tattered shirt of his this
chap Sycamore produced something that brought a
gasp to my lips. Even Tubby Frobisher and the
Subahdar, though they hadn't been introduced,
had to stop trying to pretend there wasn't anybody
there and sit up and take notice.
"Sabatga!" said Tubby. "Pom
bahoo!" said the Subahdar. And I don't
wonder they were surprised. It was this pendant which you
have seen tonight on the neck ..." Captain Biggar
faltered for a moment. He was remembering how that
neck had felt beneath his fingers. "... on the
neck," he proceeded, calling all his
manhood to his aid, "of Mrs.
Spottsworth."
"Golly!" said Bill, and even Jeeves, from
the fact that the muscle at the side of his mouth
twitched briefly, seemed to be feeling that after a
slow start the story had begun to move. One saw
now that all that stingah stuff had been merely the
artful establishing of atmosphere, the setting of the
stage for the big scene.
""I suppose you wouldn't care to buy this,
Bimbo, old boy?"' this chap Sycamore said,
waggling the thing to make it glitter. And I said
"Fry me in olive oil, Beau, old boy,
where did you get that?"'."
"That's just what I was going to ask," said
Bill, all agog. "Where did he?"
"God knows. I ought not to have inquired. It was
dashed bad form. That's one thing you learn very early
out East of Suez. Never ask questions. No doubt
there was some dark history behind the thing ... robbery
... possibly murder. I didn't ask.
All I said was "How much?"' and he named a
price far beyond the resources of my purse, and it
looked as though the thing was going to be a washout. But
fortunately Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar--
I'd introduced them by this time--offered to chip in,
and between us we met his figure and he went off,
back into the murk and shadows from which he had emerged.
Sad thing, very sad. I remember seeing this chap
Sycamore make a hundred and forty-six in a
house cricket match at school before being caught
low down in the gully off a googly that dipped and
swung away late. On a sticky wicket,
too," said Captain Biggar, and was silent for
awhile, his thoughts in the past.
He came back into the present.
"So there you are," he said, with the air of one who
has told a well-rounded tale.
"But how did you get it?" said Bill.
"Eh?"
"The pendant. You said it was yours, and the way I
see it is that it passed into the possession of a
syndicate."
"Oh, ah, yes, I didn't tell you that,
did I? We shook dice for it and I won.
Tubby was never lucky with the bones. Nor was the
Subahdar."
"And how did Mrs. Spottsworth get it?"
"I gave it her."
"You gave it her?"
"Why not? The dashed thing was no use to me, and
I had received many kindnesses from Mrs.
Spottsworth and her husband. Poor chap was
killed by a lion and what was left of him shipped
off to Nairobi, and when Mrs. Spottsworth was
leaving the camp on the following day I thought it would
be a civil thing to give her something as a memento and
all that, so I lugged out the pendant and asked her
if she'd care to have it. She said she would, so I
slipped it to her, and she went off with it. That's
what I meant when I said you might say that the
bally thing was really mine," said Captain Biggar,
and helped himself to another whisky.
Bill was impressed.
"This puts a different complexion on things,
Jeeves."
"Distinctly, m'lord."
"After all, as Pop Biggar says, the
pendant practically belongs to him, and he merely
wants to borrow it for an hour or two."
"Precisely, m'lord."
Bill turned to the Captain. His mind was
made up.
"It's a deal," he said.
"You'll do it?"
"I'll have a shot."
"Stout fellow!"
"Let's hope it comes off."
"It'll come off all right. The clasp is
loose."
"I meant I hoped nothing would go wrong."
Captain Biggar scouted the idea. He was
all buoyancy and optimism.
"Go wrong? What can possibly go wrong?
You'll be able to think of a hundred ways of getting
the dashed thing, two brainy fellers like you.
Well," said the Captain, finishing his whisky,
"I'll be going out and doing my exercises."
"At this time of night?"
"Breathing exercises," explained Captain
Biggar. "Yoga. And with it, of course, communion
with the Jivatma or soul. Toodle-oo, chaps."
He pushed the curtains aside, and passed through
the French window.



A long and thoughtful silence followed his
departure. The room seemed very still, as rooms
always did when Captain Biggar went out
of them. Bill was sitting with his chin supported
by his hand, like Rodin's Penseur. Then he
looked at Jeeves and, having looked, shook his
head.
"No, Jeeves," he said.
"M'lord?"
"I can see that feudal gleam in your eye,
Jeeves. You are straining at the leash, all
eagerness to lend the young master a helping hand. Am
I right?"
"I was certainly feeling, m'lord, that in view
of our relationship of thane and vassal it was my
duty to afford your lordship all the assistance that
lay within my power."
Bill shook his head again.
"No, Jeeves, that's out. Nothing will induce
me to allow you to go getting yourself mixed up in an
enterprise which, should things not pan out as planned,
may quite possibly culminate in a five-year
stretch at one of our popular prisons. I shall
handle this binge alone, and I want no back-chat
about it."
"But, m'lord--"
"No back-chat, I said, Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
"All I require from you is advice and
counsel. Let us review the position of
affairs. We have here a diamond pendant which at
the moment of going to press is on the person of
Mrs. Spottsworth. The task confronting me
--I said me, Jeeves--is somehow to detach this
pendant from this person and nip away with it
unobserved. Any suggestions?"
"The problem is undoubtedly one that presents
certain points of interest, m'lord."
"Yes, I'd got as far as that myself."
"One rules out anything in the nature of
violence, I presume, placing reliance wholly
on stealth and finesse."
"One certainly does. Dismiss any idea that
I propose to swat Mrs. Spottsworth on
the napper with a blackjack."
"Then I would be inclined to say, m'lord, that the
best results would probably be obtained from what
I might term the spider sequence."
"I don't get you, Jeeves."
"If I might explain, m'lord. Your lordship
will be joining the lady in the garden?"
"Probably on a rustic seat."
"Then, as I see it, m'lord,
conditions will be admirably adapted to the plan I
advocate. If shortly after entering into conversation
with Mrs. Spottsworth, your lordship were to affect
to observe a spider on her hair, the spider
sequence would follow as doth the night the day. It
would be natural for your lordship to offer to brush the
insect off. This would enable your lordship to operate with
your lordship's fingers in the neighbourhood of the
lady's neck. And if the clasp, as Captain
Biggar assures us, is loose, it will be a
simple matter to unfasten the pendant and cause
it to fall to the ground. Do I make myself clear,
m'lord?"
"All straight so far. But wouldn't she pick
it up?"
"No, m'lord, because in actual fact it would be
in your lordship's pocket. Your lordship would
institute a search in the surrounding grass, but
without avail, and eventually the search would be
abandoned until the following day. The object would
finally be discovered late tomorrow evening."
"After Biggar gets back?"
"Precisely, m'lord."
"Nestling under a bush?"
"Or on the turf some little distance away. It
had rolled."
"Do pendants roll?"
"This pendant would have done so, m'lord."
Bill chewed his lower lip thoughtfully.
"So that's the spider sequence?"
"That is the spider sequence, m'lord."
"Not a bad scheme at all."
"It has the merit of simplicity, m'lord. And
if your lordship is experiencing any uneasiness
at the thought of opening cold, as the theatrical
expression is, I would suggest our having what in
stage parlance is called a quick run through."
"A rehearsal, you mean?"
"Precisely, m'lord. It would enable your
lordship to perfect yourself in lines and business. In
the Broadway section of New York, where the
theatre industry of the United States of
America is centred, I am told that this is
known as ironing out the bugs."
"Ironing out the spiders."
"Ha, ha, m'lord. But, if I may venture
to say so, it is unwise to waste the precious
moments in verbal pleasantries."
"Time is of the essence?"
"Precisely, m'lord. Would your
lordship like to walk the scene?"
"Yes, I think I would, if you say it's
going to steady the nervous system. I feel as if
a troupe of performing fleas were practising
buck-and-wing steps up and down my spine."
"I have heard Mr. Wooster complain of a
similar malaise in moments of stress and
trial, m'lord. It will pass."
"When?"
"As soon as your lordship has got the feel
of the part. A rustic seat, your lordship said?"
"That's where she was last time."
"Scene, A rustic seat," murmured
Jeeves. "Time, A night in summer.
Discovered at rise, Mrs. Spottsworth.
Enter Lord Rowcester. I will portray Mrs.
Spottsworth, m'lord. We open with a few lines
of dialogue to establish atmosphere, then
bridge into the spider sequence. Your lordship
speaks."
Bill marshalled his thoughts.
"Er--Tell me, Rosie--"
"Rosie, m'lord?"
"Yes, Rosie, blast it. Any
objection?"
"None whatever, m'lord."
"I used to know her at Cannes."
"Indeed, m'lord? I was not aware. You were
saying, m'lord?"
"Tell me, Rosie, are you afraid of
spiders?"
"Why does your lordship ask?"
"There's rather an outsize specimen crawling on
the back of your hair." Bill sprang about six
inches in the direction of the ceiling. "What on
earth did you do that for?" he demanded irritably.
Jeeves preserved his calm.
"My reason for screaming, m'lord, was merely
to add verisimilitude. I supposed that that was
how a delicately nurtured lady would be
inclined to react on receipt of such a piece of
information."
"Well, I wish you hadn't. The top of my
head nearly came off."
"I am sorry, m'lord. But it was how I saw
the scene. I felt it, felt it here," said
Jeeves, tapping the left side of his
waistcoat. "If your lordship would be good enough to throw
me the line once more."
"There's rather an outsize specimen
crawling on the back of your hair."
"I would be grateful if your lordship would be so
kind as to knock it off."
"I can't see it now. Ah, there it goes.
On your neck."
"And that," said Jeeves, rising from the settee
on which in his role of Mrs. Spottsworth he
had seated himself, "is cue for business, m'lord.
Your lordship will admit that it is really quite
simple."
"I suppose it is."
"I am sure that after this try-out the performing
fleas to which your lordship alluded a moment ago will have
substantially modified their activities."
"They've slowed up a bit, yes. But I'm
still nervous."
"Inevitable on the eve of an opening performance,
m'lord. I think your lordship should be starting as soon
as possible. If 'twere done, then 'twere well
'twere done quickly. Our arrangements have been
made with a view to a garden set, and it would be
disconcerting were Mrs. Spottsworth to return
to the house, compelling your lordship to adapt your
technique to an interior."
Bill nodded.
"I see what you mean. Right ho, Jeeves.
Good-bye."
"Good-bye, m'lord."
"If anything goes wrong--"
"Nothing will go wrong, m'lord."
"But if it does ... You'll write to me in
Dartmoor occasionally, Jeeves? Just a chatty
letter from time to time, giving me the latest news from the
outer world?"
"Certainly, m'lord."
"It'll cheer me up as I crack my daily
rock. They tell me conditions are much better in
these modern prisons than they used to be in the
old days."
"So I understand, m'lord."
"I might find Dartmoor a regular home
from home. Solid comfort, I mean to say."
"Quite conceivably, m'lord."
"Still, we'll hope it won't come to that."
"Yes, m'lord."
"Yes ... Well, good-bye once again,
Jeeves."
"Good-bye, m'lord."
Bill squared his shoulders and strode out, a
gallant figure. He had summoned
the pride of the Rowcesters to his aid, and it
buoyed him up. With just this quiet courage had a
Rowcester of the seventeenth century mounted the
scaffold at Tower Hill, nodding affably to the
headsman and waving to friends and relations in the
audience. When the test comes, blood will tell.
He had been gone a few moments, when Jill
came in.
It seemed to Jeeves that in the course of the past
few hours the young master's betrothed had lost a
good deal of the animation which rendered her as a rule so
attractive, and he was right. Her recent
interview with Captain Biggar had left Jill
pensive and inclined to lower the corners of the mouth and
stare mournfully. She was staring mournfully now.
"Have you seen Lord Rowcester, Jeeves?"
"His lordship has just stepped into the garden,
miss."
"Where are the others?"
"Sir Roderick and her ladyship are still in the
library, miss."
"And Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"She stepped into the garden shortly before his
lordship."
Jill stiffened.
"Oh?" she said, and went into the library to join
Monica and Rory. The corners of her mouth were
drooping more than ever, and her stare had increased in
mournfulness some twenty per cent. She looked like
a girl who is thinking the worst, and that was
precisely the sort of girl she was.
Two minutes later, Captain Biggar came
bustling in with a song on his lips. Yoga and
communion with the Jivatma or soul seemed to have
done him good. His eyes were bright and his manner
alert. It is when the time for action has come that you
always catch these White Hunters at their best.
"Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar, where
are you now, where are you now?" sang Captain
Biggar. "I ... how does the dashed thing go ...
I sink beneath your spell. La, la, la ...
La, la, la, la. Where are you now? Where are
you now? For they're hanging Danny Deever in the
morning," he carolled, changing the subject.
He saw Jeeves, and suspended the painful
performance.
"Hullo," he said. "Quai hai, my
man. How are things?"
"Things are in a reasonably satisfactory
state, sir."
"Where's Patch Rowcester?"
"His lordship is in the garden, sir."
"With Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"Yes, sir. Putting his fate to the test,
to win or lose it all."
"You thought of something, then?"
"Yes, sir. The spider sequence."
"The how much?"
Captain Biggar listened attentively as
Jeeves outlined the spider sequence, and when he
had finished paid him a stately compliment.
"You'd do well out East, my boy."
"It is extremely kind of you to say so,
sir."
"That is to say if that scheme was your own."
"It was, sir."
"Then you'd be just the sort of fellow we want
in Kuala Lumpur. We need chaps like you,
chaps who can use their brains. Can't leave
brains all to the Dyaks. Makes the blighters
get above themselves."
"The Dyaks are exceptionally intelligent,
sir?"
"Are they! Let me tell you of something that
happened to Tubby Frobisher and me one day when
we--" He broke off, and the world was deprived of
another excellent story. Bill was coming through the
French window.
A striking change had taken place in the ninth
Earl in the few minutes since he had gone out
through that window, a young man of spirit setting forth on a
high adventure. His shoulders, as we have
indicated, had then been square. Now they sagged
like those of one who bears a heavy weight. His
eyes were dull, his brow furrowed. The pride of the
Rowcesters appeared to have packed up and withdrawn
its support. No longer was there in his bearing any suggestion of that seventeenth-century ancestor who
had infused so much of the party spirit into his
decapitation on Tower Hill. The ancestor he
most closely resembled now was the one who was
caught cheating at cards by Charles James Fox
at Wattier's in 1782.
"Well?" cried Captain Biggar.
Bill gave him a long, silent mournful
look, and turned to Jeeves.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"That spider sequence."
"Yes, m'lord?"
"I tried it."
"Yes, m'lord?"
"And things looked good for a moment. I detached
the pendant."
"Yes, m'lord?"
"Captain Biggar was right. The clasp was
loose. It came off."
Captain Biggar uttered a pleased exclamation
in Swahili.
"Gimme," he said.
"I haven't got it. It slipped out of my
hand."
"And fell?"
"And fell."
"You mean it's lying in the grass?"
"No," said Bill, with a sombre shake of the
head. "It isn't lying in any ruddy grass.
It went down the front of Mrs.
Spottsworth's dress, and is now somewhere in the
recesses of her costume."







It is not often that one sees three good men
struck all of a heap simultaneously, but
anybody who had chanced to stroll into the
living-room of Rowcester Abbey at this moment would
have been able to observe that spectacle. To say that
Bill's bulletin had had a shattering effect
on his companions would be, if anything, to understate
it. Captain Biggar was expressing his concern
by pacing the room with whirling arms, while the fact
that two of the hairs of his right eyebrow distinctly
quivered showed how deeply Jeeves had been
moved. Bill himself, crushed at last by the blows
of Fate, appeared formally to have given up the
struggle. He had slumped into a chair, and was
sitting there looking boneless and despairing. All
he needed was a long white beard, and the
resemblance to King Lear on one of his bad
mornings would have been complete.
Jeeves was the first to speak.
"Most disturbing, m'lord."
"Yes," said Bill dully. "Quite a
nuisance, isn't it? You don't happen to have any
little-known Asiatic poison on you, do
you, Jeeves?"
"No, m'lord."
"A pity," said Bill. "I could have used it."
His young employer's distress pained Jeeves,
and as it had always been his view that there was no
anodyne for the human spirit, when bruised, like a
spot of Marcus Aurelius, he searched in his
mind for some suitable quotation from the Emperor's
works. And he was just hesitating between "Whatever
may befall thee, it was preordained for thee from
everlasting" and "Nothing happens to any man which
he is not fitted by nature to bear", both
excellent, when Captain Biggar, who had been
pouring out a rapid fire of ejaculations in some
native dialect, suddenly reverted to English.
"Doi wieng lek!" he cried. "I've
got it! Fricassee me with stewed mushrooms
on the side, I see what you must do."
Bill looked up. His eyes were glazed, his
manner listless.
"Do?" he said. "Me?"
"Yes, you."
"I'm sorry," said Bill. "I'm in no
condition to do anything except possibly expire,
regretted by all."
Captain Biggar snorted, and having snorted
uttered a tchah, a pah and a bah.
"Mun py nawn lap lao!" he said
impatiently. "You can dance, can't you?"
"Dance?"
"Preferably the Charleston. That's all
I'm asking of you, a few simple steps of the
Charleston."
Bill stirred slightly, like a corpse moving
in its winding sheet. It was an acute spasm of
generous indignation that caused him to do so. He was
filled with what, in his opinion, was a justifiable
resentment. Here he was, in the soup and going down
for the third time? and this man came inviting him to dance
before him as David danced before Saul. Assuming
this to be merely the thin end of the wedge, one received the
impression that in next to no time the White
Hunter, if encouraged, would be calling for comic
songs and conjuring tricks and imitations of
footlight favourites who are familiar to you
all. What, he asked himself bitterly, did the
fellow think this was? The revival of
Vaudeville? A village concert in aid of the
church organ restoration fund?
Groping for words with which to express these
thoughts, he found that the Captain was beginning to tell
another of his stories. Like Marcus Aurelius,
Kuala Lumpur's favourite son always
seemed to have up his sleeve something apposite to the
matter in hand, whatever that matter might be. But
where the Roman Emperor, a sort of
primitive Bob Hope or Groucho Marx,
had contented himself with throwing off wisecracks,
Captain Biggar preferred the narrative form.
"Yes, the Charleston," said Captain
Biggar, "and I'll tell you why. I am thinking
of the episode of Tubby Frobisher and the wife of the
Greek consul. The recollection of it suddenly
flashed upon me like a gleam of light from above."
He paused. A sense of something omitted,
something left undone, was nagging at him. Then he
saw why this was so. The whisky. He moved to the
table and filled his glass.
"Whether it was Smyrna or Joppa or
Stamboul where Tubby was stationed at the time of which I
speak," he said, draining half the contents of his
glass and coming back with the rest, "I'm afraid
I can't tell you. As one grows older, one
tends to forget these details. It may even have
been Baghdad or half a dozen other places.
I admit frankly that I have forgotten. But the
point is that he was at some place somewhere and one
night he attended a reception or a soir@ee
or whatever they call these binges at one of the
embassies. You know the sort of thing I mean.
Fair women and brave men, all dolled up and
dancing their ruddy heads off. And in due season
it came to pass that Tubby found himself doing the
Charleston with the wife of the Greek consul as his
partner. I don't know if either of you have ever seen
Tubby Frobisher dance the Charleston?"
"Neither his lordship nor myself have had the
privilege of meeting Mr. Frobisher, sir,"
Jeeves reminded him courteously.
Captain Biggar stiffened.
"Major Frobisher, damn it."
"I beg your pardon, sir. Major
Frobisher. Owing to our never having met him, the
Major's technique when performing the Charleston
is a sealed book to us."
"Oh?" Captain Biggar refilled his
glass. "Well, his technique, as you call it,
is vigorous. He does not spare himself. He
is what in the old days would have been described as
a three-collar man. By the time Tubby
Frobisher has finished dancing the Charleston, his
partner knows she has been in a fight, all right.
And it was so on this occasion. He hooked on to the
wife of the Greek consul and he jumped her up and
he jumped her down, he whirled her about and he
spun her round, he swung her here and he swung
her there, and all of a sudden what do you think
happened?"
"The lady had heart failure, sir?"
"No, the lady didn't have heart failure,
but what occurred was enough to give it to all present
at that gay affair. For, believe me or
believe me not, there was a tinkling sound, and from
inside her dress there began to descend to the
floor silver forks, silver spoons and, Tubby
assures me, a complete toilet set in
tortoiseshell. It turned out that the female was
a confirmed kleptomaniac and had been using the
space between her dress and whatever she was wearing under
her dress--I'm not a married man myself, so
can't go into particulars--as a safe deposit."
"Embarrassing for Major Frobisher, sir."
Captain Biggar stared.
"For Tubby? Why? He hadn't been pinching the
things, he was merely the instrument for their recovery.
But don't tell me you've missed the whole
point of my story, which is that I am convinced that
if Patch Rowcester here were to dance the Charleston
with Mrs. Spottsworth with one tithe of Tubby
Frobisher's determination and will to win, we'd soon
rout that pendant out of its retreat. Tubby would have
had it in the open before the band had played a dozen
bars. And talking of that, we shall need music.
Ah, I see a gramophone over there in the
corner. Excellent. Well? Do you grasp the
scheme?"
"Perfectly, sir. His lordship dances with
Mrs. Spottsworth, and in due course the
pendant droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon
the place beneath."
"Exactly. What do you think of the idea?"
Jeeves referred the question to a higher court.
"What does your lordship think of it?" he
asked deferentially.
"Eh?" said Bill. "What?"
Captain Biggar barked sharply.
"You mean you haven't been listening? Well, of
all the--"
Jeeves intervened.
"In the circumstances, sir, his
lordship may, I think, be excused for being
distrait," he said reprovingly. "You can see from
his lordship's lack-lustre eye that the native
hue of his resolution is sicklied o'er with the
pale cast of thought. Captain Biggar's
suggestion is, m'lord, that your lordship shall invite
Mrs. Spottsworth to join you in performing the dance
known as the Charleston. This, if your lordship
infuses sufficient vigour into the steps, will
result in the pendant becoming dislodged and falling
to the ground, whence it can readily be recovered and
placed in your lordship's pocket."
It was perhaps a quarter of a minute before the gist of
these remarks penetrated to Bill's numbed mind,
but when it did, the effect was electric. His
eyes brightened, his spine stiffened. It was plain that
hope had dawned, and was working away once more at
the old stand. As he rose from his chair,
jauntily andwiththe air of a man who is ready for
anything, he might have been that debonair
ancestor of his who in the days of the Restoration had
by his dash and gallantry won from the ladies of
King Charles the Second's Court the
affectionate sobriquet of Tabasco
Rowcester.
"Lead me to her!" he said, and his voice rang
out clear and resonant. "Lead me to her, that is
all I ask, and leave the rest to me."
But it was not necessary, as it turned out, to lead him
to Mrs. Spottsworth, for at this moment she
came in through the French window with her Pekinese
dog Pomona in her arms.
Pomona, on seeing the assembled company,
gave vent to a series of piercing shrieks. It
sounded as if she were being torn asunder by red-hot
pincers, but actually this was her method of
expressing joy. In moments of ecstasy she always
screamed partly like a lost soul and partly like a
scalded cat.
Jill came running out of the library, and
Mrs. Spottsworth calmed her fears.
"It's nothing, dear," she said. "She's just
excited. But I wish you would put her in my
room, if you are going upstairs. Would it be
troubling you too much?"
"Not at all," said Jill aloofly.
She went out, carrying Pomona, and Bill
advanced on Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Shall we dance?" he said.
Mrs. Spottsworth was surprised.
On the rustic seat just now, especially in the
moments following the disappearance of her pendant,
she had found her host's mood markedly on the
Byronic side. She could not readily adjust
herself to this new spirit of gaiety.
"You want to dance?"
"Yes, with you," said Bill, infusing into his
manner a wealth of Restoration gallantry.
"It'll be like the old days at Cannes."
Mrs. Spottsworth was a shrewd woman.
She had not failed to observe Captain Biggar
lurking in the background, and it seemed to her that an
admirable opportunity had presented itself of
rousing the fiend that slept in him ... far too
soundly, in her opinion. What it was that was slowing
up the White Hunter in his capacity of wooer,
she did not know: but what she did know was that there is
nothing that so lights a fire under a laggard lover
as the spectacle of the woman he loves treading
the measure in the arms of another man,
particularly another man as good-looking as
William, Earl of Rowcester.
"Yes, won't it!" she said, all sparkle and
enthusiasm. "How well I remember those days!
Lord Rowcester dances so wonderfully," she added,
addressing Captain Biggar and imparting to him a
piece of first-hand information which, of course, he would
have been sorry to have missed. "I love dancing.
The one unpunished rapture left on earth."
"What ho!" said Bill, concurring. "The old
Charleston ... do you remember it?"
"You bet I do."
"Put a Charleston record on the
gramophone. Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
When Jill returned from depositing Pomona
in Mrs. Spottsworth's sleeping quarters,
only Jeeves, Bill and Mrs.
Spottsworth were present in the living-room, for
at the very outset of the proceedings Captain
Biggar, unable to bear the sight before him, had
plunged through the French window into the silent night.
The fact that it was he himself who had suggested this
distressing exhibition, recalling, as it did in his
opinion the worst excesses of the Carmagnole
of the French Revolution combined with some of the more
risqu`e features of native dances he had
seen in Equatorial Africa, did nothing
to assuage the darkness of his mood. The frogs on
the lawn, which he was now pacing with a black
scowl on his face, were beginning to get the illusion
that it was raining number eleven boots.
His opinion of the Charleston, as rendered by his
host and the woman he loved, was one which Jill found
herself sharing. As she stood watching from the doorway,
she was conscious of much the same rising feeling of
nausea which had affected the White Hunter when
listening to the exchanges on the rustic seat.
Possibly there was nothing in the way in which Bill
was comporting himself that rendered him actually liable
to arrest, but she felt very strongly that some form of
action should have been taken by the police. It was her
view that there ought to have been a law.
Nothing is more difficult than to describe in
words a Charleston danced by, on the one hand, a
woman who loves dancing Charlestons and throws
herself right into the spirit of them, and, on the other hand, by a
man desirous of leaving no stone unturned in
order to dislodge from some part of his associate's
anatomy a diamond pendant which has lodged
there. It will be enough, perhaps, to say that if Major
Frobisher had happened to walk into the room at this
moment, he would instantly have been reminded of old
days in Smyrna or Joppa or Stamboul or
possibly Baghdad. Mrs. Spottsworth he
would have compared favourably with the wife of the Greek
consul, while Bill he would have patted on the
back, recognizing his work as fully equal, if
not superior, to his own.
Rory and Monica, coming out of the library, were
frankly amazed.
"Good heavens!" said Monica.
"The old boy cuts quite a rug, does he
not?" said Rory. "Come, girl, let us join the
revels."
He put his arm about Monica's waist, and the
action became general. Jill, unable to bear the
degrading spectacle any longer, turned and
went out. As she made her way to her room, she
was thinking unpleasant thoughts of her betrothed. It
is never agreeable for an idealistic girl
to discover that she has linked her lot with a
libertine, and it was plain to her now that William,
Earl of Rowcester, was a debauchee whose
correspondence course might have been taken with
advantage by Casanova, Don Juan and the
rowdier Roman Emperors.
"When I dance," said Mrs. Spottsworth,
cutting, like her partner, quite a rug, "I don't
know I've got feet."
Monica winced.
"If you danced with Rory, you'd know you've got
feet. It's the way he jumps on and off that
gets you down."
"Ouch!" said Mrs. Spottsworth suddenly.
Bill had just lifted her and brought her down with a
bump which would have excited Tubby Frobisher's
generous admiration, and she was now standing rubbing her
leg. "I've twisted something," she said, hobbling
to a chair.
"I'm not surprised," said Monica, "the
way Bill was dancing."
"Oh, gee, I hope it is just a twist and not
my sciatica come back. I suffer so terribly
from sciatica, especially if I'm in a place
that's at all damp."
Incredible as it may seem, Rory did not
say "Like Rowcester Abbey, what?"' and go on
to speak of the garden which, in the winter months, was at
the bottom of the river. He was peering down at an
object lying on the floor.
"Hullo," he said. "What's this? Isn't this
pendant yours, Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"Oh, thank you," said Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Yes, it's mine. It must have ... Ouch!" she
said, breaking off, and writhed in agony once more.
Monica was all concern.
"You must get straight to bed, Rosalinda."
"I guess I should."
"With a nice hot-water bottle."
"Yes."
"Rory will help you upstairs."
"Charmed," said Rory. "But why do people always
speak of a "nice" hot-water bottle? We
at Harrige's say "nasty" hot-water
bottle. Our electric pads have rendered the
hot-water bottle obsolete. Three speeds
... Autumn Glow, Spring Warmth and Mae
West."
They moved to the door, Mrs. Spottsworth
leaning heavily on his arm. They passed out, and
Bill, who had followed them with a bulging eye,
threw up his hands in a wide gesture of
despair.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"This is the end!"
"Yes, m'lord."
"She's gone to ground."
"Yes, m'lord."
"Accompanied by the pendant."
"Yes, m'lord."
"So unless you have any suggestions for getting her
out of that room, we're sunk. Have you any
suggestions?"
"Not at the moment, m'lord."
"I didn't think you would have. After all, you're
human, and the problem is one which is not within ...
what, Jeeves?"
"The scope of human power, m'lord."
"Exactly. Do you know what I am going
to do?"
"No, m'lord?"
"Go to bed, Jeeves. Go to bed and try
to sleep and forget. Not that I have the remotest chance
of getting to sleep, with every nerve in my body
sticking out a couple of inches and curling at the
ends."
"Possibly if your lordship were to count
sheep--"
"You think that would work?"
"It is a widely recognized specific,
m'lord."
"H'm." Bill considered. "Well, no harm
in trying it. Good night, Jeeves."
"Good night, m'lord."



Except for the squeaking of mice behind the
wainscoting and an occasional rustling sound as one
of the bats in the chimney stirred uneasily in its
sleep, Rowcester Abbey lay hushed and still.
'Twas now the very witching time of night, and in the
Blue Room Rory and Monica, pleasantly
fatigued after the activities of the day, slumbered
peacefully. In the Queen Elizabeth Room
Mrs. Spottsworth, Pomona in her basket
at her side, had also dropped off. In the
Anne Boleyn Room Captain Biggar, the
good man taking his rest, was dreaming of old days
on the Me Wang river, which, we need scarcely
inform our public, is a tributary of the larger and
more crocodile-infested Wang Me.
Jill, in the Clock Room, was still awake,
staring at the ceiling with hot eyes, and Bill,
counting sheep in the Henry the Eighth Room, had
also failed to find oblivion. The specific
recommended by Jeeves might be widely
recognized but so far it had done nothing
toward enabling him to knit up the ravelled
sleeve of care.
"Eight hundred and twenty-two," murmured
Bill. "Eight hundred and twenty-three.
Eight hundred and--"
He broke off, leaving the eight hundred and
twenty-fourth sheep, an animal with a more than
usually vacuous expression on its face,
suspended in the air into which it had been conjured up.
Someone had knocked on the door, a knock so
soft and deferential that it could have proceeded from the
knuckle of only one man. It was consequently
without surprise that a moment later he perceived
Jeeves entering.
"Your lordship will excuse me," said Jeeves
courteously. "I would not have disturbed your lordship,
had I not, listening at the door, gathered from your
lordship's remarks that the stratagem which I
proposed had proved unsuccessful."
"No, it hasn't worked yet," said Bill,
"but come in, Jeeves, come in." He would have
been glad to see anything that was not a sheep.
"Don't tell me," he said, starting as he
noted the gleam of intelligence in his visitor's
eye, "that you've thought of something?"
"Yes, m'lord, I am happy to say that I
fancy I have found a solution to the problem which
confronted us."
"Jeeves, you're a marvel!"
"Thank you very much, m'lord."
"I remember Bertie Wooster saying to me
once that there was no crisis which you were unable
to handle."
"Mr. Wooster has always been far too
flattering, m'lord."
"Nonsense. Not nearly flattering enough. If
you have really put your finger on a way of overcoming
the superhuman difficulties in our path--"
"I feel convinced that I have, m'lord."
Bill quivered inside his mauve pyjama
jacket.
"Think well, Jeeves," he urged.
"Somehow or other we have got to get Mrs.
Spottsworth out of her room for a lapse of time
sufficient to enable me to bound in, find that
pendant, scoop it up and bound out again, all this
without a human eye resting upon me. Unless I have
completely misinterpreted your words owing to having
suffered a nervous breakdown from counting sheep, you
seem to be suggesting that you can do this. How?
That is the question that springs to the lips. With
mirrors?"
Jeeves did not speak for a moment. A pained
look had come into his finely-chiselled face.
It was as though he had suddenly seen some sight which
was occasioning his distress.
"Excuse me, m'lord. I am reluctant
to take what is possibly a liberty on my
part--"
"Carry on, Jeeves. You have our ear. What
is biting you?"
"It is your pyjamas, m'lord. Had I been
aware that your lordship was in the habit of sleeping in
mauve pyjamas, I would have advised against it.
Mauve does not become your lordship. I was
once compelled, in his best interests, to speak in a
similar vein to Mr. Wooster, who at that time was
also a mauve-pyjama addict."
Bill found himself at a loss.
"How have we got on to the subject of
pyjamas?" he asked, wonderingly.
"They thrust themselves on the notice, m'lord. That
very aggressive purple. If your lordship would be
guided by me and substitute a quiet blue or
possibly a light pistachio green--"
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"This is no time to be prattling of pyjamas."
"Very good m'lord."
"As a matter of fact, I rather fancy myself in
mauve. But that, as I say, is neither here nor
there. Let us postpone the discussion to a more suitable
moment. I will, however, tell you this. If you really
have something to suggest with reference to that pendant and that
something brings home the bacon, you may take these
mauve pyjamas and raze them to the ground and sow
salt on the foundations."
"Thank you very much, m'lord."
"It will be a small price to pay for your
services. Well, now that you've got me all
worked up, tell me more. What's the good news?
What is this scheme of yours?"
"A quite simple one, m'lord. It is based
on--"
Bill uttered a cry.
"Don't tell me. Let me guess. The
psychology of the individual?"
"Precisely, m'lord."
Bill drew in his breath sharply.
"I thought as much. Something told me that
was it. Many a time and oft, exchanging dry
Martinis with Bertie Wooster in the bar of the
Drones Club, I have listened to him, rapt, as
he spoke of you and the psychology of the
individual. He said that, once you get your
teeth into the psychology of the individual, it's
all over except chucking one's hat in the air
and doing Spring dances. Proceed, Jeeves. You
interest me strangely. The individual whose
psychology you have been brooding on at the
present juncture is, I take it, Mrs.
Spottsworth? Am I right or wrong,
Jeeves?"
"Perfectly correct, m'lord. Has it
occurred to your lordship what is Mrs.
Spottsworth's principal interest, the thing
uppermost in the lady's mind?"
Bill gaped.
"You haven't come here at two in the morning
to suggest that I dance the Charleston with her again?"
"Oh, no, m'lord."
"Well, when you spoke of her principal
interest--"
"There is another facet of Mrs.
Spottsworth's character which you have overlooked, m'lord.
I concede that she is an enthusiastic Charleston
performer, but what principally occupies her thoughts
is psychical research. Since her arrival at
the Abbey, she has not ceased to express a hope
that she may be granted the experience of seeing the
spectre of Lady Agatha. It was that that I had
in mind when I informed your lordship that I had
formulated a scheme for obtaining the pendant,
based on the psychology of the individual."
Bill sank back on the pillows, a
disappointed man.
"No, Jeeves," he said. "I won't do
it."
"M'lord?"
"I see where you're heading. You want me
to dress up in a farthingale and wimple and sneak
into Mrs. Spottsworth's room, your contention
being that if she wakes and sees me, she will
simply say "Ah, the ghost of Lady
Adela", and go to sleep again. It can't be done,
Jeeves. Nothing will induce me to dress up in
women's clothes, not even in such a deserving
cause as this one. I might stretch a point and
put on the old moustache and black patch."
"I would not advocate it, m'lord.
Even on the racecourse I have observed
clients, on seeing your lordship, start back with
visible concern. A lady, discovering such an
apparition in her room, might quite conceivably
utter a piercing scream."
Bill threw his hands up with a despondent
groan.
"Well, there you are, then. The thing's off. Your
scheme falls to the ground and becomes null and
void."
"No, m'lord. Your lordship has not, if I
may say so, grasped the substance of the plan I
am putting forward. The essential at which one
aims is the inducing of Mrs. Spottsworth
to leave her room thus rendering it possible for your
lordship to enter and secure the pendant. I
propose now, with your lordship's approval,
to knock on Mrs. Spottsworth's door and
request the loan of a bottle of smelling
salts."
Bill clutched at his hair.
"You said, Jeeves?"
"Smelling salts, m'lord."
Bill shook his head.
"Counting those sheep has done something to me," he
said. My hearing has become affected. It sounded
to me just as if you had said "Smelling salts"."
"I did, m'lord. I would explain that I
required them in order to restore your lordship
to consciousness."
"There again. I could have sworn that I heard you
say "restore your lordship to consciousness"."
"Precisely, m'lord. Your lordship has
sustained a severe shock. Happening to be in the
vicinity of the ruined chapel at about the hour of
midnight, your lordship observed the wraith of
Lady Agatha and was much overcome. How your
lordship contrived to totter back to your room, your
lordship will never know, but I found your lordship there in
a what appeared to be a coma and immediately applied
to Mrs. Spottsworth for the loan of her smelling
salts."
Bill was still at a loss.
"I don't get the gist, Jeeves."
"If I might elucidate my meaning still
further, m'lord. The thought I had in mind was that,
learning that Lady Agatha was, if I may so
term it, on the wing, Mrs. Spottsworth's
immediate reaction would be an intense desire to hasten
to the ruined chapel in order to observe the
manifestation for herself. I would offer to escort her
thither, and during her absence ..."
It is never immediately that the ordinary man,
stunned by some revelation of genius, is able to find
words with which to express his emotion. When Alexander
Graham Bell, meeting a friend one morning in the
year 1876, said "Oh, hullo, George,
heard the latest? I invented the telephone
yesterday", it is probable that the friend merely
shuffled his feet in silence. It was the same with Bill now. He could not speak. He lay there
dumbly, while remorse flooded over him that
he could ever have doubted this man. It was just as
Bertie Wooster had so often said. Let this
fish-fed mastermind get his teeth into the
psychology of the individual, and it was all over
except chucking your hat in the air and doing
Spring dances.
"Jeeves," he began, at length finding
speech, but Jeeves was shimmering through the door.
"Your smelling salts, m'lord," he said,
turning his head on the threshold. "If your
lordship will excuse me."
It was perhaps two minutes, though to Bill it
seemed longer, before he returned, bearing a
small bottle.
"Well?" said Bill eagerly.
"Everything has gone according to plan, m'lord. The
lady's reactions were substantially as I had
anticipated. Mrs. Spottsworth, on receiving
my communication, displayed immediate interest. Is your
lordship familiar with the expression "Jiminy
Christmas!"?"
"No, I don't think I ever heard it. You
don't mean "Merry Christmas"?"
"No, m'lord. "Jiminy Christmas!" It
was what Mrs. Spottsworth observed on receiving
the information that the phantasm of Lady Agatha was
to be seen in the ruined chapel. The words, I
gathered, were intended to convey surprise and elation.
She assured me that it would take her but a brief
time to hop into a dressing-gown and that at the conclusion
of that period she would be with me with, I understood her
to say, her hair in a braid. I am to return
in a moment and accompany her to the scene of the
manifestation. I will leave the door open a few
inches, so that your lordship, by applying your lordship's
eye to the crack, may be able to see us depart. As
soon as we have descended the staircase, I would
advocate instant action, for I need
scarcely remind your lordship that time is--"
"Of the essence? No, you certainly don't have
to tell me that. You remember what you were saying about
cheetahs?"
"With reference to their speed of foot, m'lord?"
"That's right. Half a mile in forty-five
seconds, I think you said?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"Well, the way I shall move would leave the
nippiest cheetah standing at the post."
"That will be highly satisfactory, m'lord.
I, on my side, may mention that on the
dressing-table in Mrs. Spottsworth's room
I observed a small jewel-case, which I have
no doubt contains the pendant. The dressing-table
is immediately beneath the window. Your lordship will have no
difficulty in locating it."
He was right, as always. It was the first thing that
Bill saw when, having watched the little procession
of two out of sight down the stairs, he hastened
along the corridor to the Queen Elizabeth
Room. There, as Jeeves had stated, was the
dressing-table. On it was the small jewel-case
of which he had spoken. And in that jewel-case, as
he opened it with shaking hands, Bill saw the
pendant. Hastily he slipped it into the pocket
of his pyjamas, and was turning to leave, when the
silence, which had been complete but for his heavy
breathing, was shattered by a series of dreadful
screams.
Reference has been made earlier to the
practice of the dog Pomona of shrieking loudly
to express the ecstasy she always felt on
beholding a friend or even what looked to her like a
congenial stranger. It was ecstasy that was animating
her now. In the course of that session on the rustic
seat, when Bill had done his cooing, she had
taken an immediate fancy to her host, as all dogs
did. Meeting him now in this informal fashion, just
at a moment when she had been trying to reconcile
herself to the solitude which she so disliked, she made
no attempt to place any bounds on her
self-expression.
Screams sufficient in number and volume to have
equipped a dozen Baronets stabbed in the back
in libraries burst from her lips and their effect
on Bill was devastating. The author of The
Hunting Of The Snark says of one of his
protagonists in a powerful passage:

"So great was his fright
That his waistcoat turned white"

and the experience through which he was passing nearly caused
Bill's mauve pyjamas to do the same.
Though fond of Pomona, he did not linger
to fraternize. He shot out of the door at a
speed which would have had the most athletic cheetah
shrugging its shoulders helplessly, and arrived in the
corridor just as Jill, roused from sleep by those
awful cries, came out of the Clock Room.
She watched him steal softly into the Henry the
Eighth Room, and thought in bitter mood that a more
suitable spot for him could scarcely have been found.
It was some quarter of an hour later, as
Bill, lying in bed, was murmuring "Nine
hundred and ninety-eight ... Nine hundred and
ninety-nine ... One thousand ..." that Jeeves
entered.
He was carrying a salver.
On that salver was a ring.
"I encountered Miss Wyvern in the corridor a few moments ago, m'lord," he said. "She
desired me to give this to your lordship."



Wyvern Hall, the residence of Colonel
Aubrey Wyvern, father of Jill and Chief
Constable of the county of Southmoltonshire, lay
across the river from Rowcester Abbey, and on the
following afternoon Colonel Wyvern, having worked his
way scowlingly through a most inferior lunch,
stumped out of the dining room and went to his study and
rang for his butler. And in due course the butler
entered, tripping over the rug with a muffled
"Whoops!", his invariable practice when
crossing any threshold.
Colonel Wyvern was short and stout, and this
annoyed him, for he would have preferred to be tall
and slender. But if his personal appearance gave
him pangs of discomfort from time to time, they were as
nothing compared to the pangs the personal appearance of
his butler gave him. In England today the
householder in the country has to take what he can
get in the way of domestic help, and all
Colonel Wyvern had been able to get was the
scrapings and scourings of the local parish school.
Bulstrode, the major-domo of Wyvern
Hall, was a skinny stripling of some
sixteen summers, on whom Nature in her
bounty had bestowed so many pimples that there was
scarcely room on his face for the vacant grin which
habitually adorned it.
He was grinning now, and once again, as always
happened at these staff conferences, his overlord was
struck by the closeness of the lad's resemblance to a
half-witted goldfish peering out of a bowl.
"Bulstrode," he said, with a parade-ground
rasp in his voice.
"Yus?" replied the butler affably.
At another moment, Colonel Wyvern would have
had something to say on the subject of this
unconventional verbal approach but today he was after
bigger game. His stomach was still sending up
complaints to the front office about the lunch, and he
wanted to see the cook.
"Bulstrode," he said, "bring the cook
to me."
The cook, conducted into the presence, proved also
to be one of the younger set. Her age was fifteen.
She bustled in, her pigtails swinging behind her,
and Colonel Wyvern gave her an unpleasant
look.
"Trelawny!" he said.
"Yus?" said the cook.
This time there was no reticence on the part of the
Chief Constable. The Wyverns did not as a rule
war upon women, but there are times when chivalry is
impossible.
"Don't say "Yus?"', you piefaced little
excrescence," he thundered. "Say "Yes,
sir?"', and say it in a respectful and
soldierly manner, coming smartly to attention with the
thumbs on the seam of the trousers. Trelawny, that
lunch you had the temerity to serve up today was an
insult to me and a disgrace to anyone daring to call
herself a cook, and I have sent for you to inform you that if
there is any more of this spirit of slackness and
laissez faire on your part ..." Colonel
Wyvern paused. The "I'll tell your mother",
with which he had been about to conclude his sentence,
seemed to him to lack a certain something. "You'll
hear of it," he said and, feeling that even this was not as
good as he could have wished, infused such vigour and
venom into his description of underdone chicken,
watery brussels sprouts and potatoes you
couldn't get a fork into that a weaker girl might
well have wilted.
But the Trelawnys were made of tough
stuff. They did not quail in the hour of peril.
The child met his eye with iron resolution, and came back strongly.
"Hitler!" she said, putting out her tongue.
The Chief Constable started.
"Did you call me Hitler?"
"Yus, I did."
"Well, don't do it again," said Colonel
Wyvern sternly. "You may go, Trelawny."
Trelawny went, with her nose in the air, and
Colonel Wyvern addressed himself
to Bulstrode.
A proud man is never left unruffled when
worsted in a verbal duel with a cook, especially
a cook aged fifteen with pigtails, and in the
Chief Constable's manner as he turned on his
butler there was more than a suggestion of a rogue
elephant at the height of its fever. For some
minutes he spoke well and forcefully, with
particular reference to the other's habit of chewing his
sweet ration while waiting at table, and when at
length he was permitted to follow Evangeline
Trelawny to the lower regions in which they had their
being, Bulstrode, if not actually shaking in every
limb, was at any rate subdued enough to omit
to utter his customary "Whoops!" when tripping
over the rug.
He left the Chief Constable, though feeling a
little better after having cleansed his bosom of the
perilous stuff that weighs upon the soul, still
definitely despondent. "Ichabod", he was
saying to himself, and he meant it. In the golden age
before the social revolution, he was thinking, a
gaping, pimpled tripper over rugs like this
Bulstrode would have been a lowly hall-boy, if
that. It revolted a Tory of the old school's
finer feelings to have to regard such a blot on the
Southmoltonshire scene in the sacred light of a
butler.
He thought nostalgically of his young manhood in
London at the turn of the century and of the vintage
butlers he had been wont to encounter in those
brave days ... butlers who weighed two
hundred and fifty pounds on the hoof, butlers with
three chins and bulging abdomens, butlers with
large, gooseberry eyes and that austere,
supercilious, butlerine manner which has passed
away so completely from the degenerate world of the
nineteen-fifties. Butlers had been butlers
then in the deepest and holiest sense of the
word. Now they were mere chinless boys who sucked
toffee and said "Yus?"' when you spoke to them.
It was almost inevitable that a man living so near
to Rowcester Abbey and starting to brood on butlers
should find his thoughts turning in the direction of the
Abbey's principal ornament, and it was with a warm
glow that Colonel Wyvern now began to think of
Jeeves. Jeeves had made a profound
impression on him. Jeeves, in his opinion, was
the goods. Young Rowcester himself was a fellow the
Colonel, never very fond of his juniors, could
take or leave alone, but this man of his, this
Jeeves, he had recognized from their first meeting
as something special. Out of the night that covered the
Chief Constable, black as the pit--after that
disturbing scene with Evangeline Trelawny--from
pole to pole, there shone a sudden gleam of light.
He himself might have his Bulstrode, but at least
he could console himself with the thought that his daughter was
marrying a man with a butler in the fine old
tradition on his payroll. It put heart
into him. It made him feel that this was not such a bad
little old world, after all.
He mentioned this to Jill when she came in a
moment later, looking cold and proud, and Jill
tilted her chin and looked colder and prouder. She
might have been a Snow Queen or something of that
sort.
"I am not going to marry Lord Rowcester," she
said curtly.
It seemed to Colonel Wyvern that his child must be
suffering from some form of amnesia, and he set himself
to jog her memory.
"Yes, you are," he reminded her. "It was in
The Times. I saw it with my own eyes. The
engagement is announced between--"
"I have broken off the engagement."
That little gleam of light of which we were speaking a
moment ago, the one we showed illuminating
Colonel Wyvern's darkness, went out with a pop,
like a stage moon that has blown a fuse. He
stared incredulously.
"Broken off the engagement?"
"I am never going to speak to Lord Rowcester
again."
"Don't be an ass," said Colonel
Wyvern. "Of course you are. Not going to speak
to him again? I never heard such nonsense. I
suppose what's happened is that you've had one of
these lovers' tiffs."
Jill did not intend to allow without protest
what was probably the world's greatest tragedy
since the days of Romeo and Juliet to be
described in this inadequate fashion. One
really must take a little trouble to find the mot
juste.
"It was not a lovers' tiff," she said, all the
woman in her flashing from her eyes. "If you
want to know why I broke off the engagement, it was
because of the abominable way he has been behaving with
Mrs. Spottsworth."
Colonel Wyvern put a finger to his brow.
"Spottsworth? Spottsworth? Ah, yes.
That's the American woman you were telling me
about."
"The American trollop," corrected
Jill coldly.
"Trollop?" said Colonel Wyvern,
intrigued.
"That was what I said."
"Why do you call her that? Did you catch them--
er--trolloping?"
"Yes, I did."
"Good gracious!"
Jill swallowed once or twice, as if
something jagged in her throat was troubling her.
"It all seems to have started," she said, speaking
in that toneless voice which had made such a painful
impression on Bill, "in Cannes some years
ago. Apparently she and Lord Rowcester used
to swim together at Eden Roc and go for long drives
in the moonlight. And you know what that sort of thing
leads to."
"I do indeed," said Colonel Wyvern with
animation, and was about to embark on an anecdote of
his interesting past, when Jill went on, still speaking
in that same strange, toneless voice.
"She arrived at the Abbey yesterday. The
story that has been put out is that Monica
Carmoyle met her in New York and invited
her to stay, but I have no doubt that the whole thing was
arranged between her and Lord Rowcester, because it was
obvious how matters stood between them. No sooner
had she appeared than he was all over her ...
making love to her in the garden, dancing with her like a
cat on hot bricks, and," said Jill
nonchalantly, wearing the mask like the Mrs.
Fish who had so diverted Captain Biggar by doing
the can-can in her step-ins in Kenya, "coming out of her
room at two o'clock in the morning in
mauve pyjamas."
Colonel Wyvern choked. He had been about
to try to heal the rift by saying that it was quite possible
for a man to exchange a few civil remarks with a
woman in a garden and while away the long evening
by partnering her in the dance and still not be in any way
culpable, but this statement wiped the words from his
lips.
"Coming out of her room in mauve pyjamas?"
"Yes."
"Mauve pyjamas?"
"Bright mauve."
"God bless my soul!"
A club acquaintance, annoyed by the
eccentricity of the other's bridge game, had
once told Colonel Wyvern that he looked like
a retired member of Sanger's troupe of
midgets who for years had been doing himself too
well on the starchy foods, and this was in a measure
true. He was, as we have said, short and stout.
But when the call to action came, he could triumph
over his brevity of stature and rotundity of
waistcoat and become a figure of dignity and
menace. It was an impressive Chief Constable
who strode across the room and rang the bell for
Bulstrode.
"Yus?" said Bulstrode.
Colonel Wyvern choked down the burning words
he would have liked to utter. He told himself that he
must conserve his energies.
"Bulstrode," he said, "bring me my
horsewhip."
Down in the forest of pimples on the butler's
face something stirred. It was a look of guilt.
"It's gorn," he mumbled.
Colonel Wyvern stared.
"Gone? What do you mean, gone? Gone where?"
Bulstrode choked. He had been hoping that this
investigation might have been avoided. Something had
told him that it would prove embarrassing.
"To the mender's. To be mended. It got
cracked."
"Cracked?"
"Yus," said Bulstrode, in his emotion adding
the unusual word "Sir". "I was cracking it
in the stable yard, and it cracked. So I took it
to the mender's."
Colonel Wyvern pointed an awful finger at
the door.
"Get out, you foul blot," he said.
"I'll talk to you later." Seating himself at his
desk, as he always did when he wished to think, he
drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "I'll
have to borrow young Rowcester's," he said at length,
clicking his tongue in evident annoyance.
"Infernally awkward, calling on a fellow you're
going to horsewhip and having to ask him for the loan of
his horsewhip to do it with. Still, there it is," said
Colonel Wyvern philosophically. "That's
how it goes."
He was a man who could always adjust himself
to circumstances.



Lunch at Rowcester Abbey had been a much more
agreeable function than lunch at Wyvern
Hall, on a different plane altogether. Where
Colonel Wyvern had been compelled to cope with the
distressing efforts of a pigtailed incompetent
apparently under the impression that she was catering for a
covey of buzzards in the Gobi Desert, the
revellers at the Abbey had been ministered to by an
expert. Earlier in this chronicle passing
reference was made to the virtuosity of Bill's
O.c. Kitchen, the richly gifted Mrs.
Piggott, and in dishing up the midday meal today she
had in no way fallen short of her high ideals.
Three of the four celebrants at the table had
found the food melting in their mouths and had downed it
with cries of appreciation.
The exception was the host himself, in whose mouth it
had turned to ashes. What with one thing and another--
the instability of his financial affairs, last
night's burglarious interlude and its devastating
sequel, the shattering of his romance--Bill was far
from being the gayest of all that gay company. In
happier days he had sometimes read novels in which
characters were described as pushing their food away
untasted, and had often wondered, being a man who
enjoyed getting his calories, how they could have
brought themselves to do it. But at the meal which was now coming
to an end he had been doing it himself, and, as we
say, what little nourishment he had contrived to take
had turned to ashes in his mouth. He had filled in
the time mostly by crumbling bread, staring wildly and
jumping like a galvanized frog when spoken to.
A cat in a strange alley would have been more at
its ease.
Nor had the conversation at the table done
anything to restore his equanimity. Mrs.
Spottsworth would keep bringing it round to the
subject of Captain Biggar, regretting his
absence from the feast, and each mention of the White
Hunter's name had had a seismic effect on his
sensitive conscience. She did it again now.
"Captain Biggar was telling me--" she
began, and Rory uttered one of his jolly
laughs.
"He was, was he?" he said in his tactful
way. "Well, I hope you didn't believe
him."
Mrs. Spottsworth stiffened. She sensed a
slur on the man she loved.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Awful liar, that chap."
"Why do you say that, Sir Roderick?"
"I was thinking of those yarns of his at dinner last
night."
"They were perfectly true."
"Not a bit of it," said Rory buoyantly.
"Don't you let him pull your leg, my dear
Mrs. Dogsbody. All these fellows from out
East are the most frightful liars. It's due, I
believe, to the ultra-violet rays of the sun in
those parts. They go out without their solar topees, and
it does something to them. I have this from an
authoritative source. One of them used to come
to headquarters a lot when I was in the Guns,
Pistols and Ammunition, and we became matey.
And one night, when in his cups, he warned me not
to swallow a single word any of them said. "Look
at me", he reasoned. "Did you ever hear a
chap tell the ghastly lies I do? Why, I
haven't spoken the truth since I was so high.
And so low are standards east of Suez that my
nickname out there is George Washington"."
"Coffee is served in the living-room,
m'lord," said Jeeves, intervening in his polished
way and averting what promised, judging from the
manner in which Mrs. Spottsworth's eyes had
begun to glitter, to develop into an ugly
brawl.
Following his guests into the living-room, Bill
was conscious of a growing sense of uneasiness and
alarm. He had not supposed that anything could have
increased his mental discomfort, but Rory's words
had done so a hundredfold. As he lowered himself
into a chair, accepted a cup of coffee and
spilled it over his trousers, one more
vulture had added itself to the little group already gnawing
at his bosom. For the first time he had begun to question the
veracity of Captain Biggar's story of the
pendant, and at the thought of what he had let himself
in for if that story had not been true his imagination
boggled.
Dimly he was aware that Rory and Monica
had collected all the morning papers and were
sitting surrounded by them their faces grave and
tense. The sands were running out. Less than an
hour from now the Derby would be run, and soon, if
ever, they must decide how their wagers were to be
placed.
"Racing News," said Monica, calling the
meeting to order. "What does the Racing
News say, Rory?"
Rory studied that sheet in his slow, thorough
way.
"Lot of stuff about the Guineas form. Perfect
rot, all of it. You can't go by the Guineas. Too
many unknowns. If you want my considered
opinion, there's nothing in sight to beat Taj
Mahal. The Aga has the mares, and that's what
counts. The sires don't begin to matter compared
with the mares."
"I'm glad to hear you pay this belated
tribute to my sex."
"Yes, I think for my two quid it's Taj
Mahal on the nose."
"That settles Taj Mahal for me. Whenever
you bet on them, they start running backwards.
Remember that dog-race."
Rory was obliged to yield this point.
"I admit my nominee let the side down
on that occasion," he said. "But when a real rabbit
gets loose on a dog track, it's bound
to cause a bit of confusion. Taj Mahal gets
my two o'goblins."
"I thought your money was going on Oratory."
"Oratory is my outsider bet, ten bob
each way."
"Well, here's another hunch for you.
Escalator."
"Escalator?"
"Wasn't H's the first store to have
escalators?"
"By jove, yes. We've got the cup, you
know. Our safety-landing device has enabled us
to clip three seconds off the record. The
Oxford Street boys are livid. I
must look into this Escalator matter."
"Lester Piggott is riding it."
"That settles it. L. Piggott is the name
of the chap stationed in the Trunks, Bags and
Suit-cases, as fine a man as ever punched a
time-clock. I admit his L stands for
Lancelot, but that's a good enough omen for me."
Monica looked across at Mrs.
Spottsworth.
"I suppose you think we're crazy,
Rosalinda?"
Mrs. Spottsworth smiled indulgently.
"Of course not, dear. This brings back the old
days with Mr. Bessemer. Racing was all he ever
thought of. We spent our honeymoon at
Sheepshead Bay. It's the Derby, is it,
you're so interested in?"
"Just our silly little annual flutter. We
don't bet high. Can't afford to. We have
to watch the pennies."
"Rigidly," said Rory. He chuckled
amusedly, struck by a whimsical idea. "I was
just thinking," he went on in explanation of his
mirth, "that the smart thing for me to have done would have
been to stick to that pendant of yours I picked up
last night and go off to London with it and pawn it,
thus raising a bit of ... Yes, old man?"
Bill swallowed.
"I didn't speak."
"I thought you did."
"No, just a hiccup."
"To which," Rory conceded, "you were fully
entitled. If a man can't hiccup in his own
house, in whose house can he hiccup? Well,
summing up, Taj Mahal two quid.
Escalator ten bob each way. I'll go and
send off my wire." He paused. "But wait.
Is it not rash to commit oneself without consulting
Jeeves?"
"Why Jeeves?"
"My dear Moke, what that man doesn't know
about form isn't worth knowing. You should have heard him
yesterday when I asked him if he had any
views on the respective contestants in
England's premier classic race. He just
stood there rattling off horses and times and
records as if he were the Archbishop of
Canterbury."
Monica was impressed.
"I didn't know he was as hot as that.
Are there no limits to the powers of this wonder
man? We'll go and confer with him at once."
They hurried out, and Bill, having cleared his
throat, said "Er".
Mrs. Spottsworth looked up inquiringly.
"Er, Rosie. That pendant of yours. The one
Rory was speaking of."
"Yes?"
"I was admiring it last night."
"It's nice, isn't it?"
"Beautiful. You didn't have it at Cannes,
did you?"
"No. I hadn't met Mr. Spottsworth
then. It was a present from him."
Bill leaped. His worst suspicions had
been confirmed.
"A present from Mr. Sp--?" he gasped.
Mrs. Spottsworth laughed.
"It's too funny," she said. "I was talking
to Captain Biggar about it last night, and I
told him one of my husbands gave it to me, but
I couldn't remember which. It was Mr.
Spottsworth, of course. So silly of me to have
forgotten."
Bill gulped.
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, quite."
"It ... it wasn't given to you by some fellow
on one of those hunting expeditions ... as a ...
as a sort of memento?"
Mrs. Spottsworth stared.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I thought ... fellow grateful for
kindnesses ... saying good-bye ... might have said
"Won't you accept this as a little memento ... and
all that sort of thing"."
The suggestion plainly offended Mrs.
Spottsworth.
"Do you imagine that I accept diamond
pendants from "fellows", as you call them?"
"Well, I--"
"I wouldn't dream of such a thing. Mr.
Spottsworth bought that pendant when we were in
Bombay. I can remember it as if it were
yesterday. A funny little shop with a very fat
Chinaman behind the counter, and Mr. Spottsworth
would insist on trying to speak Chinese. And just as
he was bargaining, there was an earthquake. Not a
bad one, but everything was all red dust for about ten
minutes, and when it cleared, Mr.
Spottsworth said "Let's get out of here!"
and paid what the man was asking and grabbed the pendant
and we raced out and never stopped running till we
had got back to the hotel."
A dull despair had Bill in its grip.
He heaved himself painfully to his feet.
"I wonder if you would excuse me," he said.
"I have to see Jeeves about something."
"Well, ring for Jeeves."
Bill shook his head.
"No, I think, if you don't mind, I'll
go and see him in his pantry."
It had occurred to him that in Jeeves's
pantry there would be a drop of port, and a drop
of port or some similar restorative was what his
stricken soul craved.



When Rory and Monica entered Jeeves's
pantry, they found its proprietor reading a
letter. His fine face, always grave, seemed a little
graver than usual, as if the letter's contents had
disturbed him.
"Sorry to interrupt you, Jeeves," said
Monica.
"Not at all, m'lady."
"Finish your reading."
"I had already done so, m'lady. A
communication from Mr. Wooster."
"Oh?" said Rory. "Bertie Wooster, eh?
How is the old bounder? Robust?"
"Mr. Wooster says nothing to indicate the
contrary, sir."
"Good. Rosy cheeks, eh? Eating his
spinach, no doubt? Capital. Couldn't be
better. Still, be that as it may," said Rory,
"what do you think of Taj Mahal for this afternoon's
beano at Epsom Downs? I thought of slapping
my two quid on its nose, with your
approval."
"And Moke the Second," said Monica.
"That's my fancy."
Jeeves considered.
"I see no objection to a small wager on
the animal you have named sir, nor on yours,
m'lady. One must bear in mind, however, that the
Derby is always an extremely open race."
"Don't I know it!"
"It would be advisable, therefore, if the
funds are sufficient, to endeavour to save your
stake by means of a bet each way on some other
horse."
"Rory thought of Escalator. I'm
hesitating."
Jeeves coughed.
"Has your ladyship considered the Irish
horse, Ballymore?"
"Oh, Jeeves, for heaven's sake. None
of the nibs even mention it. No, not Ballymore,
Jeeves. I'll have to think of something."
"Very good, m'lady. Would there be anything
further?"
"Yes," said Rory. "Now that we're all
here together, cheek by jowl as it were, a word from our
sponsor on a personal matter, Jeeves.
What was all that that Mrs. Dogsbody was saying
at lunch about you and her being out on the tiles last
night?"
"Sir?"
"Weren't you in the room when she was talking about
it?"
"No, m'lady."
"She said you bowled off together in the small hours
to the ruined chapel."
"Ah, yes, m'lady. I apprehend Sir
Roderick's meaning now. Mrs. Spottsworth
did desire me to escort her to the ruined chapel
last night. She was hoping to see the wraith of
Lady Agatha, she informed me."
"Any luck?"
"No, m'lady."
"She says Bill saw the old girl."
"Yes, m'lady."
Rory uttered the gratified exclamation of one
who has solved a mystery.
"So that's why Bill's looking like a piece of
cheese today. It must have scared him stiff."
"I believe Lord Rowcester was somewhat moved
by the experience, Sir Roderick. But I fancy
that if, as you say, there is a resemblance between his
lordship and a portion of cheese, it is occasioned more
by the circumstance of his lordship's matrimonial
plans having been cancelled than by any
manifestation from the spirit world."
Monica squeaked excitedly.
"You don't mean Bill's engagement is
off?"
"That is what I was endeavouring to convey,
m'lady. Miss Wyvern handed me the
ring in person, to return to his lordship. "Am
I to infer, miss," I ventured to inquire,
"that there is a symbolical significance
attached to this gesture?"' and Miss Wyvern
replied in the affirmative."
"Well, I'll be blowed. Poor old
Bill!"
"Yes, m'lady."
"The heart bleeds."
"Yes, Sir Roderick."
It was at this moment that Bill came charging in.
Seeing his sister and her husband, he stopped.
"Oh, hullo, Rory," he said. "Hullo,
Moke. I'd forgotten you were here."
Rory advanced with outstretched hand. The
dullest eye could have seen he was registering
compassion. He clasped Bill's right hand in his
own, and with his left hand kneaded Bill's shoulder.
A man, he knew, wants sympathy at a time
like this. It is in such a crisis in his affairs that
he thanks heaven that he has an understanding
brother-in-law, a brother-in-law who knows how
to give a pep talk.
"We are not only here, old man," he said,
"but we have just heard from Jeeves a bit of news
that has frozen our blood. He says the girl
Jill has returned you to store. Correct?
I see it is. Too bad, too bad. But
don't let it get you down, boy. You must ...
how would you put it, Jeeves?"
"Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Sir Roderick."
"Precisely. You want to take the big,
broad, spacious view, Bill. You are a
fianc@ee short, let's face it, and your immediate
reaction is, no doubt, a disposition to rend the
garments and scatter ashes on the head. But you've
got to look at these things from every angle, Bill,
old man. Remember what Shakespeare said:
"A woman is only a woman, but a good
cigar is a smoke.""
Jeeves winced.
"Kipling, Sir Roderick."
"And here's another profound truth. I don't
know who said this one. All cats are grey in the
dark."
Monica spoke. Her lips, as she listened,
had been compressed. There was a strange light in
her eyes.
"Splendid. Go on."
Rory stopped kneading Bill's shoulder and
patted it.
"At the moment," he resumed, "you are reeling
from the shock, and very naturally, too. You feel
you've lost something valuable, and of course I
suppose one might say you have, for Jill's a
nice enough kid, no disputing that. But don't be too
depressed about it. Look for the silver lining,
whenever clouds appear in the blue, as I have
frequently sung in my bath and you, I
imagine, in yours. Don't forget you are back in
circulation again. Personally, I think it's an
extremely nice slice of luck for you that this
has happened. A bachelor's life is the
only happy one, old man. When it comes
to love, there's a lot to be said for the "@a la
carte" as opposed to the "table d'h@ote"."
"Jeeves," said Monica.
"M'lady?"
"What was the name of the woman who drove a
spike into her husband's head? It's in the Bible
somewhere."
"I fancy your ladyship is thinking of the story
of Jael. But she and the gentleman into whose head she
drove the spike were not married, merely good
friends."
"Still, her ideas were basically sound."
"It was generally considered so in her circle of
acquaintance, m'lady."
"Have you a medium-sized spike, Jeeves?
No? I must look in at the ironmonger's," said
Monica. "Good-bye, Table d'h@ote."
She walked out, and Rory watched her go,
concerned. His was not a very quick mind, but he seemed
to sense something wrong.
"I say! She's miffed. Eh, Jeeves?"
"I received that impression, Sir Roderick."
"Dash it all, I was only saying that stuff
about marriage to cheer you up, Bill. Jeeves,
where can I get some flowers? And don't say
"At the flower shop", because I simply can't
sweat all the way to the town. Would there be flowers
in the garden?"
"In some profusion, Sir Roderick."
"I'll go and pluck her a bouquet. That's a
thing you'll find it useful to remember, Bill,
if ever you get married, not that you're likely to,
of course, the way things are shaping. Always
remember that when the gentler sex get miffed,
flowers will bring them round every time."
The door closed. Jeeves turned to Bill.
"Your lordship wished to see me about something?" he
said courteously.
Bill passed a hand over his throbbing brow.
"Jeeves," he said, "I hardly know how
to begin. Have you an aspirin about you?"
"Certainly, m'lord. I have just been taking one
myself."
He produced a small tin box, and held it
out.
"Thank you, Jeeves. Don't slam the
lid."
"No, m'lord."
"And now," said Bill, "to tell you all."
Jeeves listened with gratifyingly close
attention while he poured out his tale. There was no
need for Bill at its conclusion to ask him if he
had got the gist. It was plain from the gravity of his
"Most disturbing, m'lord" that he had got it
nicely. Jeeves always got gists.
"If ever a man was in the soup," said Bill,
summing up, "I am. I have been played up and
made a sucker of. What are those things people get
used as, Jeeves?"
"Cat's-paws, m'lord?"
"That's right. Cat's-paws. This blighted
Biggar has used me as a cat's-paw. He
told me the tale. Like an ass, I believed
him. I pinched the pendant, swallowing that whole
story of his about it practically belonging to him and he
only wanted to borrow it for a few hours, and off
he went to London with it, and I don't
suppose we shall ever see him again. Do you?"
"It would appear improbable, m'lord."
"One of those remote contingencies, what?"
"Extremely remote, I fear, m'lord."
"You wouldn't care to kick me, Jeeves?"
"No, m'lord."
"I've been trying to kick myself, but it's so
dashed difficult if you aren't a contortionist.
All that stuff about stingahs and long bars and the chap
Sycamore! We ought to have seen through it in an
instant."
"We ought, indeed, m'lord."
"I suppose that when a man has a face as
red as that, one tends to feel that he must be telling
the truth."
"Very possibly, m'lord."
"And his eyes were so bright and blue. Well, there
it is," said Bill. "Whether it was the
red face or the blue eyes that did it, one cannot
say, but the fact remains that as a result of the
general colour scheme I allowed myself to be used
as a cat's-paw and pinched an expensive
pendant which the hellhound Biggar has gone off
to London with, thus rendering myself liable to an extended sojourn in the cooler ... unless--"
"M'lord?"
"I was going to say "Unless you have something
to suggest". Silly of me," said Bill, with a
hollow laugh. "How could you possibly have anything
to suggest?"
"I have, m'lord."
Bill stared.
"You wouldn't try to be funny at a time like this,
Jeeves?"
"Certainly not, m'lord."
"You really have a life-belt to throw me before the
gumbo closes over my head?"
"Yes, m'lord. In the first place, I would
point out to your lordship that there is little or no
likelihood of your lordship becoming suspect of the
theft of Mrs. Spottsworth's ornament. It
has disappeared. Captain Biggar has
disappeared. The authorities will put two and two
together, m'lord, and automatically credit him with the
crime."
"Something in that."
"It would seem impossible, m'lord, for them
to fall into any other train of thought."
Bill brightened a little, but only a little.
"Well, that's all to the good, I agree, but it
doesn't let me out. You've overlooked something,
Jeeves."
"M'lord?"
"The honour of the Rowcesters. That is the snag
we come up against. I can't go through life feeling that
under my own roof--leaky, but still a roof--I have
swiped a valuable pendant from a guest filled
to the eyebrows with my salt. How am I
to reimburse La Spottsworth? That is the
problem to which we have to bend our brains."
"I was about to touch on that point, m'lord. Your
lordship will recall that in speaking of suspicion
falling upon Captain Biggar I said "In the
first place". In the second place, I was about
to add, restitution can readily be made to Mrs.
Spottsworth, possibly in the form of notes
to the correct amount dispatched anonymously to her
address, if the lady can be persuaded
to purchase Rowcester Abbey."
"Great Scott, Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"The reason I used the expression "Great
Scott!"" said Bill, his emotion still causing
him to quiver from head to foot, "was that in the rush
and swirl of recent events I had absolutely
forgotten all about selling the house. Of course!
That would fix up everything, wouldn't it?"
"Unquestionably, m'lord. Even a sale at a
sacrifice price would enable your lordship to do--"
"The square thing?"
"Precisely, m'lord. I may add that while
on our way to the ruined chapel last night,
Mrs. Spottsworth spoke in high terms of the
charms of Rowcester Abbey and was equally cordial
in her remarks as we were returning. All in
all, m'lord, I would say that the prospects were
distinctly favourable, and if I might offer the
suggestion, I think that your lordship should now withdraw
to the library and obtain material for what is
termed a sales talk by skimming through the
advertisements in Country Life, in which, as
your lordship is possibly aware, virtually every
large house which has been refused as a gift by the
National Trust is offered for sale. The
language is extremely persuasive."
"Yes, I know the sort of thing. "This lordly
demesne, with its avenues of historic oaks,
its tumbling streams alive with trout and tench, its
breath-taking vistas lined with flowering shrubs ...'
Yes, I'll bone up."
"It might possibly assist your lordship if
I were to bring a small bottle of champagne to the
library."
"You think of everything, Jeeves."
"Your lordship is too kind."
"Half a bot should do the trick."
"I think so, m'lord, if adequately iced."
It was some minutes later, as Jeeves was
passing through the living-room with the brain-restorer on
a small tray, that Jill came in through the
French window.



It is a characteristic of women as a sex, and one
that does credit to their gentle hearts, that--unless
they are gangster's molls or something of that kind--
they shrink from the thought of violence. Even
when love is dead, they dislike the idea of the man
to whom they were once betrothed receiving a series of
juicy ones from a horsewhip in the competent hands
of an elderly, but still muscular, Chief Constable
of a county. When they hear such a Chief Constable
sketching out plans for an operation of this nature,
their instinct is to hurry to the prospective
victim's residence and warn him of his peril
by outlining the shape of things to come.
It was to apprise Bill of her father's hopes
and dreams that Jill had come to Rowcester Abbey
and, not being on speaking terms with her former
fianc`e, she had been wondering a little how the
information she was bringing could be conveyed to him. The
sight of Jeeves cleared up this point. A few
words of explanation to Jeeves, coupled with the
suggestion that he should advise Bill to lie low
till the old gentleman had blown over, would
accomplish what she had in mind, and she could then go
home again, her duty done and the whole unpleasant
affair disposed of.
"Oh, Jeeves," she said.
Jeeves had turned, and was regarding her with
respectful benevolence.
"Good afternoon, miss. You will find his lordship in the
library."
Jill stiffened haughtily. There was not much of
her, but what there was she drew to its full height.
"No, I won't," she replied in a voice
straight from the frigidaire, "because I'm jolly
well not going there. I haven't the slightest wish
to speak to Lord Rowcester. I want you to give him
a message."
"Very good, miss."
"Tell him my father is coming here to borrow his
horsewhip to horsewhip him with."
"Miss?"
"It's quite simple, isn't it? You know my
father?"
"Yes, miss."
"And you know what a horsewhip is?"
"Yes, miss."
"Well, tell Lord Rowcester the combination is
on its way over."
"And if his lordship should express curiosity as
to the reason for Colonel Wyvern's annoyance?"
"You may say it's because I told him about what
happened last night. Or this morning, to be
absolutely accurate. At two o'clock this
morning. He'll understand."
"At two o'clock this morning, miss? That would have
been at about the hour when I was escorting Mrs.
Spottsworth to the ruined chapel. The lady had
expressed a wish to establish contact with the
apparition of Lady Agatha. The wife of Sir
Caradoc the Crusader, miss, who did well,
I believe, at the Battle of Joppa. She
is reputed to haunt the ruined chapel."
Jill collapsed into a chair. A sudden
wild hope, surging through the cracks in her
broken heart, had shaken her from stem to stern,
making her feel boneless.
"What ... what did you say?"
Jeeves was a kindly man, and not only a
kindly man but a man who could open a bottle of
champagne as quick as a flash. It was in something of the
spirit of the Sir Philip Sidney who gave the
water to the stretcher case that he now whisked the
cork from the bottle he was carrying. Jill's
need, he felt, was greater than Bill's.
"Permit me, miss."
Jill drank gratefully. Her eyes had
widened, and the colour was returning to her face.
"Jeeves, this is a matter of life and
death," she said. "At two o'clock this morning I
saw Lord Rowcester coming out of Mrs.
Spottsworth's room looking perfectly
frightful in mauve pyjamas. Are you telling me
that Mrs. Spottsworth was not there?"
"Precisely, miss. She was with me in the
ruined chapel, holding me spellbound with her
account of recent investigations of the Society of
Psychical Research."
"Then what was Lord Rowcester doing in her room?"
"Purloining the lady's pendant, miss."
It was unfortunate that as he said these words
Jill should have been taking a sip of champagne,
for she choked. And as her companion would have considered
it a liberty to slap her on the back, it was some
moments before she was able to speak.
"Purloining Mrs. Spottsworth's
pendant?"
"Yes, miss. It is a long and somewhat
intricate story, but if you would care for me to run
through the salient points, I should be delighted to do
so. Would it interest you to hear the inside history of
his lordship's recent activities, culminating,
as I have indicated, in the abstracting of Mrs.
Spottsworth's ornament?"
Jill drew in her breath with a hiss.
"Yes, Jeeves, it would."
"Very good, miss. Then must I speak of one who
loved not wisely but too well, of one whose
subdued eyes, albeit unused to the melting
mood, drop tears as fast as the Arabian
trees their medicinal gum."
"Jeeves!"
"Miss?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
Jeeves looked a little hurt.
"I was endeavouring to explain that it was for love of
you, miss, that his lordship became a Silver Ring
bookmaker."
"A what?"
"Having plighted his troth to you, miss, his
lordship felt--rightly, in my opinion--that in
order to support a wife he would require a
considerably larger income than he had been
enjoying up to that moment. After weighing and rejecting
the claims of other professions, he decided
to embark on the career of a bookmaker in the
Silver Ring, trading under the name of Honest
Patch Perkins. I officiated as his lordship's
clerk. We wore false moustaches."
Jill opened her mouth, then, as if feeling that
any form of speech would be inadequate, closed it
again.
"For a time the venture paid very handsomely. In
three days at Doncaster we were so fortunate as
to amass no less a sum than four hundred and
twenty pounds, and it was in optimistic mood that
we proceeded to Epsom for the Oaks. But disaster was
lurking in wait for his lordship. To use the
metaphor that the tide turned would be inaccurate.
What smote his lordship was not so much the tide as a
single tidal wave. Captain Biggar, miss.
He won a double at his lordship's expense--
five pounds on Lucy Glitters at a
hundred to six, all to come on Whistler's Mother,
S.p."
Jill spoke faintly.
"What was the S.p.?"
"I deeply regret to say, miss,
thirty-three to one. And as he had rashly
refused to lay the wager off, this cataclysm
left his lordship in the unfortunate position of owing
Captain Biggar in excess of three thousand
pounds, with no assets with which to meet his
obligations."
"Golly!"
"Yes, miss. His lordship was compelled to make
a somewhat hurried departure from the course,
followed by Captain Biggar, shouting
"Welsher!", but when we were able to shake off our
pursuer's challenge some ten miles from the
Abbey, we were hoping that the episode was concluded
and that to Captain Biggar his lordship would remain
merely a vague, unidentified figure in a
moustache by Clarkson. But it was not to be, miss.
The Captain tracked his lordship here, penetrated
his incognito and demanded an immediate settlement."
"But Bill had no money."
"Precisely, miss. His lordship did not
omit to stress that point. And it was then that
Captain Biggar proposed that his lordship should
secure possession of Mrs. Spottsworth's
pendant, asserting, when met with a nolle
prosequi on his lordship's part, that the object
in question had been given by him to the lady some years
ago, so that he was morally entitled to borrow it.
The story, on reflection, seems somewhat thin,
but it was told with so great a wealth of
corroborative detail that it convinced us at the
time, and his lordship, who had been vowing that he would
ne'er consent, consented. Do I make myself clear,
miss?"
"Quite clear. You don't mind my head
swimming?"
"Not at all, miss. The question then arose of how
the operation was to be carried through, and eventually it was
arranged that I should lure Mrs. Spottsworth
from her room on the pretext that Lady Agatha
had been seen in the ruined chapel, and during her
absence his lordship should enter and obtain the trinket.
This ruse proved successful. The pendant was
duly handed to Captain Biggar, who has taken it
to London with the purpose of pawning it and investing
the proceeds on the Irish horse, Ballymore,
concerning whose chances he is extremely sanguine.
As regards his lordship's mauve pyjamas, to which
you made a derogatory allusion a short while
back, I am hoping to convince his lordship that a
quiet blue or a pistachio green--"
But Jill was not interested in the Rowcester
pyjamas and the steps which were being taken to correct
their mauveness. She was hammering on the library
door.
"Bill! Bill!" she cried, like a woman
wailing for her demon lover, and Bill,
hearing that voice, came out with the promptitude of a
cork extracted by Jeeves from a bottle.
"Oh, Bill!" said Jill, flinging herself
into his arms. "Jeeves has told me
everything!"
Over the head that rested on his chest Bill shot
an anxious glance at Jeeves.
"When you say everything, do you mean everything?"
"Yes, m'lord. I deemed it advisable."
"I know all about Honest Patch Perkins and
your moustache and Captain Biggar and Whistler's
Mother and Mrs. Spottsworth and the pendant," said
Jill, nestling closely.
It seemed so odd to Bill that a girl who
knew all this should be nestling closely that he was
obliged to release her for a moment and step across and
take a sip of champagne.
"And you really mean," he said, returning and
folding her in his embrace once more, "that you
don't recoil from me in horror?"
"Of course I don't recoil from you in
horror. Do I look as if I were recoiling from
you in horror?"
"Well, no," said Bill, having considered
this. He kissed her lips, her forehead, her ears
and the top of her head. "But the trouble is that you
might just as well recoil from me in horror, because
I don't see how the dickens we're ever going
to get married. I haven't a bean, and I've
somehow got to raise a small fortune to pay
Mrs. Spottsworth for her pendant.
Noblesse oblige, if you follow my
drift. So if I don't sell her the
house--"
"Of course you'll sell her the house."
"Shall I? I wonder--I'll certainly try.
Where on earth's she disappeared to? She was in here
when I came through into the library just now. I wish
she'd show up. I'm all full of that Country
Life stuff, and if she doesn't come soon,
it will evaporate."
"Excuse me, m'lord," said Jeeves, who
during the recent exchanges had withdrawn
discreetly to the window. "Mrs. Spottsworth and
her ladyship are at this moment crossing the
lawn."
With a courteous gesture he stepped to one
side, and Mrs. Spottsworth entered, followed
by Monica.
"Jill!" cried Monica, halting,
amazed. "Good heavens!"
"Oh, it's all right," said Jill. "There's
been a change in the situation. Sweethearts
still."
"Well, that's fine. I've been showing
Rosalinda round the place--"
"--with its avenues of historic oaks, its
tumbling streams alive with trout and tench, and its
breath-taking vistas lined with flowering shrubs ...
How did you like it?" said Bill.
Mrs. Spottsworth clasped her hands and
closed her eyes in an ecstasy.
"It's wonderful, wonderful!" she said. "I
can't understand how you can bring yourself to part with it,
Billiken."
Bill gulped. "Am I going to part with it?"
"You certainly are," said Mrs.
Spottsworth emphatically, "if I have anything
to say about it. This is the house of my dreams.
How much do you want for it--lock, stock and
barrel?"
"You've taken my breath away."
"Well, that's me. I never could endure beating
about the bush. If I want a thing, I say so and
write a note. I'll tell you what let's
do. Suppose I pay you a deposit of two
thousand, and we can decide on the purchase price
later?"
"You couldn't make it three thousand?"
"Sure." Mrs. Spottsworth unscrewed
her fountain pen and having unscrewed it, paused.
"There's just one thing, though, before I sign on the
dotted line. This place isn't damp, is it?"
"Damp?" said Monica. "Why, of course
not."
"You're sure?"
"Dry as a bone."
"That's swell. Damp is death to me.
Fibrositis and sciatica."
Rory came in through the French window, laden with
roses.
"A nosegay for you, Moke, old girl, with
comps. of R. Carmoyle," he said, pressing the
blooms into Monica's hands. "I say,
Bill, it's starting to rain."
"What of it?"
"What of it?" echoed Rory, surprised.
"My dear old boy, you know what happens in this
house when it rains. Water through the roof, water
through the walls, water, water everywhere.
I was merely about to suggest in a kindly Boy
Scout sort of spirit that you had better put
buckets under the upstairs skylight. Very damp
house, this," he said, addressing Mrs.
Spottsworth in his genial, confidential way.
"So near the river, you know. I often say that
whereas in the summer months the river is at the
bottom of the garden, in the winter months the garden
is at the bottom of the--"
"Excuse me, m'lady," said the housemaid
Ellen, appearing in the doorway. "Could I
speak to Mrs. Spottsworth, m'lady?"
Mrs. Spottsworth, who had been staring,
aghast, at Rory, turned, pen in hand.
"Yes?"
"Moddom," said Ellen, "your pendant's been
pinched."
She had never been a girl for breaking things
gently.



With considerable gratification Ellen found herself
the centre of attraction. All eyes were focused
upon her, and most of them were bulging. Bill's, in
particular, struck her as being on the point of
leaving their sockets.
"Yes," she proceeded, far too refined
to employ the Bulstrode-Trelawny
"Yus", "I was laying out your clothes for the
evening, moddom, and I said to myself that you'd
probably be wishing to wear the pendant again tonight, so
I ventured to look in the little box, and it wasn't
there, moddom. It's been stolen."
Mrs. Spottsworth drew a quick breath. The
trinket in question was of little intrinsic worth--it could
not, as she had said to Captain Biggar, have cost more
than ten thousand dollars--but, as she had also said
to Captain Biggar, it had a sentimental value
for her. She was about to express her concern in words,
but Bill broke in.
"What do you mean, it's been stolen?" he
demanded hotly. You could see that the suggestion
outraged him. "You probably didn't look
properly."
Ellen was respectful, but firm.
"It's gone, m'lord."
"You may have dropped it somewhere, Mrs.
Spottsworth," said Jill. "Was the clasp
loose?"
"Why, yes," said Mrs. Spottsworth.
"The clasp was loose. But I distinctly
remember putting it in its case last night."
"Not there now, moddom," said Ellen, rubbing it
in.
"Let's go up and have a thorough search," said
Monica.
"We will," said Mrs. Spottsworth. "But
I'm afraid ... very much afraid--"
She followed Ellen out of the room. Monica,
pausing at the door, eyed Rory balefully for
an instant.
"Well, Bill," she said, "so you don't
sell the house, after all. And if Big Mouth
there hadn't come barging in prattling about water and
buckets, that cheque would have been signed."
She swept out, and Rory looked at Bill,
surprised.
"I say, did I drop a brick?"
Bill laughed hackingly.
"If one followed you about for a month, one would have
enough bricks to build a house."
"In re this pendant. Anything I can do?"
"Yes, keep out of it."
"I could nip off in the car and fetch some of the
local constabulary."
"Keep right out of it." Bill looked at his
watch. "The Derby will be starting in a few
minutes. Go in there and get the television working."
"Right," said Rory. "But if I'm needed,
give me a shout."
He disappeared into the library, and Bill
turned to Jeeves, who had once again effaced
himself. In times of domestic crisis, Jeeves
had the gift, possessed by all good butlers, of
creating the illusion that he was not there. He was standing
now at the extreme end of the room, looking
stuffed.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?" said Jeeves, coming to life like a
male Galatea.
"Any suggestions?"
"None of practical value, m'lord. But a
thought has just occurred which enables me to take a
somewhat brighter view of the situation. We were speaking
not long since of Captain Biggar as a
gentleman who had removed himself permanently from
our midst. Does it not seem likely to your
lordship that in the event of Ballymore emerging
victorious the Captain, finding himself in
possession of ample funds, will carry out his
original plan of redeeming the pendant, bringing
it back and affecting to discover it on the
premises?"
Bill chewed his lip.
"You think so?"
"It would be the prudent course for him
to pursue, m'lord. Suspicion, as I say,
must inevitably rest upon him, and failure
to return the ornament would place him in the
disagreeable position of becoming a hunted man in
hourly danger of being apprehended by the
authorities. I am convinced that if Ballymore
wins, we shall see Captain Biggar again."
"If Ballymore wins."
"Precisely, m'lord."
"Then one's whole future hangs on whether
it does."
"That is how matters stand, m'lord."
Jill uttered a passionate cry.
"I'm going to start praying!"
"Yes, do," said Bill. "Pray that
Ballymore will run as he has never run before.
Pray like billy-o. Pray all over the house.
Pray--"
Monica and Mrs. Spottsworth came
back.
"Well," said Monica, "it's gone. There's
no doubt about that.
I've just phoned for the police."
Bill reeled.
"What!"
"Yes. Rosalinda didn't want me to,
but I insisted. I told her you wouldn't dream of
not doing everything you could to catch the thief."
"You ... You think the thing's been stolen?"
"It's the only possible explanation."
Mrs. Spottsworth sighed.
"Oh, dear! I really am sorry to have started
all this trouble."
"Nonsense, Rosalinda. Bill doesn't
mind. All Bill wants is to see the crook
caught and bunged into the cooler. Isn't it,
Bill?"
"Yes, sir!" said Bill.
"For a good long stretch, too, let's hope."
"We mustn't be vindictive."
"No," said Mrs. Spottsworth. "You're
quite right. Justice, but not vengeance."
"Well, one thing's certain," said
Monica. "It's an inside job."
Bill stirred uneasily.
"Oh, do you think so?"
"Yes, and I've got a pretty shrewd
idea who the guilty party is."
"Who?"
"Someone who was in a terrible state of nerves this
morning."
"Oh?"
"His cup and saucer were rattling like
castanets."
"When was this?"
"At breakfast. Do you want me to name names?"
"Go ahead."
"Captain Biggar!"
Mrs. Spottsworth started.
"What!"
"You weren't down, Rosalinda, or I'm
sure you would have noticed it, too. He was as
nervous as a treeful of elephants."
"Oh, no, no! Captain Biggar? That I
can't and won't believe. If Captain Biggar
were guilty, I should lose my faith in human
nature. And that would be a far worse blow than
losing the pendant."
"The pendant is gone, and he's gone. It
adds up, don't you think? Oh, well," said
Monica, "we shall soon know."
"What makes you so sure of that?"
"Why, the jewel-case, of course. The
police will take it away and test it for
fingerprints. What on earth's the matter,
Bill?"
"Nothing's the matter," said Bill, who had
leaped some eighteen inches into the air but saw no
reason for revealing the sudden agonized thought which had
motivated this adagio exhibition. "Er,
Jeeves."
"M'lord?"
"Lady Carmoyle is speaking of Mrs.
Spottsworth's jewel-case."
"Yes, m'lord?"
"She threw out the interesting suggestion that the
miscreant might have forgotten to wear gloves, in
which event the bally thing would be covered with his
fingerprints. That would be lucky, wouldn't it?"
"Extremely fortunate, m'lord."
"I'll bet he's wishing he hadn't been such
an ass."
"Yes, m'lord."
"And that he could wipe them off."
"Yes, m'lord."
"You might go and get the thing, so as to have it ready
for the police when they arrive."
"Very good, m'lord."
"Hold it by the edges, Jeeves. You don't
want to disturb those fingerprints."
"I will exercise the greatest care, m'lord," said
Jeeves, and went out, and almost simultaneously
Colonel Wyvern came in through the French
window.
At the moment of his entry Jill, knowing that when
a man is in a state of extreme agitation there
is nothing he needs more than a woman's gentle
sympathy, had put her arms round Bill's
neck and was kissing him tenderly. The spectacle
brought the Colonel to a halt. It confused him.
With this sort of thing going on, it was difficult
to lead up to the subject of horsewhips.
"Ha, hrr'mph!" he said, and Monica
spun round, astounded.
"My goodness!" she said. "You have been quick.
It's only five minutes since I phoned."
"Eh?"
"Hullo, father," said Jill. "We were just
waiting for you to show up. Have you brought your
bloodhounds and magnifying glass?"
"What the dickens are you talking about?"
Monica was perplexed.
"Didn't you come in answer to my phone call,
Colonel?"
"You keep talking about a phone call. What
phone call? I came to see Lord Rowcester on
a personal matter. What's all this about a
phone call?"
"Mrs. Spottsworth's diamond pendant
has been stolen, father."
"What? What? What?"
"This is Mrs. Spottsworth," said
Monica. "Colonel Wyvern, Rosalinda,
our Chief Constable."
"Charmed," said Colonel Wyvern, bowing
gallantly, but an instant later he was the keen,
remorseless police officer again. "Had your
pendant stolen, eh? Bad show, bad show." He
took out a note-book and a pencil. "An
inside job, was it?"
"That's what we think."
"Then I'll have to have a list of everybody in the
house."
Jill stepped forward, her hands extended.
"Wyvern, Jill," she said. "Slip on the
bracelets, officer. I'll come quietly."
"Oh, don't be an ass," said Colonel
Wyvern.
Something struck the door gently. It might have
been a foot. Bill opened the door, revealing
Jeeves. He was carrying the jewel-case, a
handkerchief at its extreme edges.
"Thank you, m'lord," he said.
He advanced to the table and lowered the case on
to it very carefully.
"Here is the case the pendant was in," said
Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Good." Colonel Wyvern eyed Jeeves with
approval. "Glad to see you were careful about
handling it, my man."
"Oh, trust Jeeves for that," said Bill.
"And now," said Colonel Wyvern, "for the
names."
As he spoke, the library door burst open,
and Rory came dashing out, horror written on
his every feature.




"I say, chaps," said Rory, "the most
appalling thing has happened!"
Monica moaned.
"Not something more?"
"This is the absolute frozen limit. The
Derby is just starting--"
"Rory, the Chief Constable is here."
"--andthe television set has gone on the
blink. Oh, it's my fault, I suppose.
I was trying to get a perfect adjustment, and I
must have twiddled the wrong thingummy."
"Rory, this is Colonel Wyvern, the
Chief Constable."
"How are you, Chief C.? Do you know anything
about television?"
The Colonel drew himself up.
"I do not!"
"You couldn't fix a set?" said Rory
wistfully. "Not that there's time, of course. The
race will be over. What about the radio?"
"In the corner, Sir Roderick," said
Jeeves.
"Oh, thank Heaven!" cried
Rory, galloping to it. "Come on and give me a
hand, Jeeves."
The Chief Constable spoke coldly.
"Who is this gentleman?"
"Such as he is," said Monica
apologetically, "my husband, Sir Roderick
Carmoyle."
Colonel Wyvern advanced on Rory as
majestically as his lack of inches permitted, and
addressed the seat of his trousers, the only portion
of him visible as he bent over the radio.
"Sir Roderick, I am conducting an
investigation."
"But you'll hold it up to listen to the Derby?"
"When on duty, Sir Roderick, I allow
nothing to interfere. I want a list--"
The radio, suddenly blaring forth, gave him
one.
"... Taj Mahal, Sweet William,
Garniture, Moke the Second, Voleur
... Quite an impressive list, isn't it?" said
the radio. "There goes Gordon Richards.
Lots of people think this will be his lucky day. I
don't see Bellwether ... Oh, yes, he's
turning round now and walking back to the gate ...
They should be off in just a moment ... Sorry, no.
Two more have turned round. One of them is being very
temperamental. It looks like Simple Simon.
No, it's the Irish outsider, Ballymore."
The Chief Constable frowned. "Really, I must
ask--"
"Okay. I'll turn it down," said Rory,
and immediately, being Rory, turned it up.
"They're in line now," yelled the radio, like
a costermonger calling attention to his blood
oranges, "all twenty-six of them ...
They're OFF ... Ballymore is left at the
post."
Jill screamed shrilly. "Oh, no!"
"Vaurien," proceeded the radio, now, owing
to Rory's ministrations, speaking in an almost
inaudible whisper, like an invalid uttering a few
last words from a sick-bed, "is in front, the
Boussac pacemaker." Its voice strengthened a
little. "Taj Mahal is just behind. I see
Escalator. Escalator's going very strong.
I see Sweet William. I see Moke the
Second. I see ..." Here the wasting sickness
set in again, and the rest was lost in a sort of
mouselike squeak.
The Chief Constable drew a relieved breath.
"Ha! At last! Now then, Lord Rowcester.
What servants have you here?"
Bill did not answer. Like a mechanical
figure he was moving toward the radio, as if
drawn by some invisible force.
"There's a cook," said Monica.
"A widow, sir," said Jeeves. "Mary
Jane Piggott."
Rory looked round.
"Piggott? Who said Piggott?"
"A housemaid," said Monica, as Jill,
like Bill, was drawn toward the radio as if in a
trance. "Her name's Ellen. Ellen what,
Jeeves?"
"French, m'lady. Ellen Tallulah
French."
"The French horse," bellowed the radio,
suddenly acquiring a new access of strength,
"is still in front, then Moke the Second,
Escalator, Taj Mahal ..."
"What about the gardener?"
"No, not Gardener," said Rory. "You mean
Garniture."
"... Sweet William, Oratory ...
Vaurien's falling back, and Garniture--"
"You see?" said Rory.
"--and Moke the Second moving up."
"That's mine," said Monica, andwitha strange,
set look on her face began to move toward the
radio.
"Looks quite as though Gordon Richards might
be going to win the Derby at last. They're down the
hill and turning Tattenham Corner, Moke the
Second in front, with Gordon up. Only
three and a half furlongs to go ..."
"Yes, sir," said Jeeves, completely
unmoved, "there is a gardener, an old man named
Percy Wellbeloved."
The radio suddenly broke into a frenzy of
excitement.
"Oo! ... Oo! ... There's a horse coming
up on the outside. It's coming like an express
train. I can't identify ..."
"Gee, this is exciting, isn't it!" said
Mrs. Spottsworth.
She went to the radio. Jeeves alone
remained at the Chief Constable's side.
Colonel Wyvern was writing laboriously in his
note-book.
"It's Ballymore. The horse on the outside
is Ballymore. He's challenging the Moke.
Hear that crowd roaring "Come on,
Gordon!"."
"Moke ... The Moke ... Gordon,"
wrote Colonel Wyvern.
"Come on, Gordon!" shouted Monica.
The radio was now becoming incoherent.
"It's Ballymore ... No, it's the Moke
... No, Ballymore ... No, the Moke ...
No ..."
"Make up your mind," advised Rory.
For some moments Colonel Wyvern had been
standing motionless, his note-book frozen in his hand.
Now a sort of shudder passed through him, and his
eyes grew wide and wild. Brandishing his
pencil, he leaped toward the radio.
"Come on, Gordon!" he roared. "COME
ON, GORDON!!!"
"Come on, Ballymore," said Jeeves with
quiet dignity.
The radio had now given up all thoughts of
gentlemanly restraint. It was as though on
honeydew it had fed and drunk the milk of
Paradise.
"Photo finish!" it shrieked. "Photo
finish! Photo finish! First time in the history
of the Derby. Photo finish. Escalator in
third place."
Rather sheepishly the Chief Constable turned away
and came back to Jeeves.
"The gardener's name you said was what? Clarence
Wilberforce, was it?"
"Percy Wellbeloved, sir."
"Odd name."
"Shropshire, I believe, sir."
"Ah? Percy Wellbeloved. Does that
complete the roster of the staff?"
"Yes, sir, except for myself."
Rory came away from the radio, mopping his
forehead.
"Well, that Taj Mahal let me down with a
bang," he said bitterly. "Why is it one can
never pick a winner in this bally race?"
""The Moke" didn't suggest a winner
to you?" said Monica.
"Eh? No. Why? Why should it?" "God bless you, Roderick Carmoyle."
Colonel Wyvern was himself again now.
"I would like," he said, in a curt,
official voice, "to inspect the scene of the
robbery."
"I will take you there," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "Will you come too, Monica?"
"Yes, yes, of course," said Monica.
"Listen in, some of you, will you, and see what that
photo shows."
"And I'll send this down to the station," said
Colonel Wyvern, picking up the jewel-case
by one corner, "and find out what it shows."
They went out, and Rory moved to the door of the
library.
"I'll go and see if I really have damaged that
T.v. set," he said. "All I did was
twiddle a thingummy." He stretched himself with a
yawn. "Dam dull Derby," he said. "Even
if Moke the Second wins, the old girl's
only got ten bob on it at eights."
The library door closed behind him.
"Jeeves," said Bill, "I've got to have a
drink."
"I will bring it immediately, m'lord."
"No, don't bring it. I'll come to your
pantry."
"And I'll come with you," said Jill. "But we
must wait to hear that result. Let's hope
Ballymore had sense enough to stick out his tongue."
"Ha!" cried Bill.
The radio had begun to speak.
"Hundreds of thousands of pounds hang on what
that photograph decides," it was saying in the rather
subdued voice of a man recovering from a
hangover. It seemed to be a little ashamed of its
recent emotion. "The number should be going up at
any moment. Yes, here it is ..."
"Come on, Ballymore!" cried Jill.
"Come on, Ballymore!" shouted Bill.
"Come on, Ballymore," said Jeeves
reservedly.
"Moke the Second wins," said the radio.
"Hard luck on Ballymore. He ran a
wonderful race. If it hadn't been for that bad
start, he would have won in a canter. His defeat
saves the bookies a tremendous loss. A
huge sum was bet on the Irish horse ten
minutes before starting time, obviously one of those
S.p. jobs which are so ..."
Dully, with something of the air of a man laying a
wreath on the tomb of an old friend, Bill
turned the radio off.
"Come on," he said. "After all, there's still
champagne."



Mrs. Spottsworth came slowly down the
stairs. Monica and the Chief Constable were still
conducting their examination of the scene of the crime, but
they had been speaking freely of Captain
Biggar, and the trend of their remarks had been such as
to make her feel that knives were being driven through
her heart. When a woman loves a man with every
fibre of a generous nature, it can never be
pleasant for her to hear this man alluded to as a
red-faced thug (monica) and as a scoundrel who
can't possibly get away but must inevitably
ere long be caught and slapped into the jug
(colonel Wyvern). It was her intention to make
for that rustic seat and there sit and think of what
might have been.
The rustic seat stood at a junction of two
moss-grown paths facing the river which lay--though
only, as we have seen, during the summer months--
at the bottom of the garden. Flowering bushes
masked it from the eye of one approaching, and it was not
till she had turned the last corner that Mrs.
Spottsworth was able to perceive that it already had an
occupant. At the sight of that occupant she
stood for a moment transfixed. Then there burst from
her lips a cry so like that of a zebu calling to its
mate that Captain Biggar, who had been sitting
in a deep reverie, staring at a snail, had the
momentary illusion that he was back in Africa.
He sprang to his feet, and for a long instant they
stood there motionless, gazing at each other
wide-eyed while the various birds, bees,
wasps, gnats and other insects operating in the
vicinity went about their business as if nothing at
all sensational had happened. The snail, in
particular, seemed completely unmoved.
Mrs. Spottsworth did not share its
detached aloofness. She was stirred to her depths.
"You!" she cried. "Oh, I knew you would
come. They said you wouldn't, but I knew."
Captain Biggar was hanging his head. The man
seemed crushed, incapable of movement. A
rhinoceros, seeing him now, would have plucked up
heart and charged on him without a tremor, feeling
that this was going to be easy.
"I couldn't do it," he muttered.
"I got to thinking of you and of the chaps at the club,
and I couldn't do it."
"The club?"
"The old Anglo-Malay Club in Kuala
Lumpur, where men are white and honesty goes for
granted. Yes, I thought of the chaps. I thought of
Tubby Frobisher. Would I ever be able to look
him again in that one good eye of his? And then I
thought that you had trusted me because ... because I was an
Englishman. And I said to myself, it isn't only
the old Anglo-Malay and Tubby and the
Subahdar and Doc and Squiffy, Cuthbert
Biggar--you're letting down the whole British
Empire."
Mrs. Spottsworth choked.
"Did ... did you take it?"
Captain Biggar threw up his chin and squared his
shoulders. He was so nearly himself again, now that he
had spoken those brave words, that the rhinoceros,
taking a look at him, would have changed its mind and
decided to remember an appointment elsewhere.
"I took it, and I brought it back," he said
in a firm, resonant voice, producing the
pendant from his hip pocket. "The idea was
merely to borrow it for the day, as security for a
gamble. But I couldn't do it. It might have meant
a fortune, but I couldn't do it."
Mrs. Spottsworth bent her head.
"Put it round my neck, Cuthbert," she
whispered.
Captain Biggar stared incredulously at her
back hair.
"You want me to? You don't mind if I
touch you?"
"Put it round my neck," repeated Mrs.
Spottsworth.
Reverently the Captain did so, and there was a
pause.
"Yes," said the Captain, "I might have
made a fortune, and shall I tell you why I
wanted a fortune? Don't run away with the idea
that I'm a man who values money. Ask any
of the chaps out East, and they'll say "Give
Bwana Biggar his .505 Gibbs, his eland steak
of a night, let him breathe God's clean air and
turn his face up to God's good sun and he
asks nothing more". But it was imperative that I
should lay my hands on a bit of the stuff so that I
might feel myself in a position to speak my
love. Rosie ... I heard them
calling you that, and I must use that name ...
Rosie, I love you. I loved you from that first
moment in Kenya when you stepped out of the car and I
said "Ah, the memsahib". All these years
I have dreamed of you, and on this very seat last night
it was all I could do to keep myself from pouring out my
heart. It doesn't matter now. I can speak
now because we are parting for ever. Soon I shall be
wandering out into the sunset ... alone."
He paused, and Mrs. Spottsworth
spoke. There was a certain sharpness in her voice.
"You won't be wandering out into any old sunset
alone," she said. "Jiminy Christmas! What do
you want to wander out into sunsets alone for?"
Captain Biggar smiled a faint, sad
smile.
"I don't want to wander out into sunsets
alone, dear lady. It's the code. The code that
says a poor man must not propose marriage
to a rich woman, for if he does, he loses his
self-respect and ceases to play with a straight
bat."
"I never heard such nonsense in my life.
Who started all this apple-sauce?"
Captain Biggar stiffened a little.
"I cannot say who started it, but it is the rule
that guides the lives of men like Squiffy and Doc
and the Subahdar and Augustus Frobisher."
Mrs. Spottsworth uttered an exclamation.
"Augustus Frobisher? For Pete's
sake! I've been thinking all along that there was
something familiar about that name Frobisher, and now you
say Augustus ... This friend of yours, this
Frobisher. Is he a fellow with a red face?"
"We all have red faces east of Suez."
"And a small, bristly moustache?"
"Small, bristly moustaches, too."
"Does he stammer slightly? Has he a
small mole on the left cheek? Is one of his
eyes green and the other glass?"
Captain Biggar was amazed.
"Good God! That's Tubby. You've met
him?"
"Met him? You bet I've met him. It was
only a week before I left the States that I was
singing "Oh, perfect love" at his wedding."
Captain Biggar's eyes widened.
"Howki wa hoo!" he exclaimed.
"Tubby is married?"
"He certainly is. And do you know who
he's married to? Cora Rita
Rockmetteller, widow of the late Sigsbee
Rockmetteller, the Sardine King, a woman
with a darned sight more money than I've got myself.
Now you see how much your old code amounts to.
When Augustus Frobisher met Cora and heard
that she had fifty million smackers hidden
away behind the brick in the fireplace, did he
wander out into any sunset alone? No, sir! He
bought a clean collar and a gardenia for his
buttonhole and snapped into it."
Captain Biggar had lowered himself on to the
rustic seat and was breathing heavily through the
nostrils.
"You have shaken me, Rosie!"
"And you needed shaking, talking all that
malarkey. You and your old code!"
"I can't take it in."
"You will, if you sit and think it over for a while.
You stay here and get used to the idea of waLking
down the aisle with me, and I'll go in and phone the
papers that a marriage has been arranged and will
shortly take place between Cuthbert ... have you
any other names, my precious lamb?"
"Gervase," said the Captain in a low
voice. "And it's Brabazon-Biggar. With a
hyphen."
"... between Cuthbert Gervase
Brabazon-Biggar and Rosalinda Bessemer
Spottsworth. It's a pity it isn't Sir
Cuthbert. Say!" said Mrs. Spottsworth,
struck with an idea. "What's wrong with buying you
a knighthood? I wonder how much they cost these
days. I'll have to ask Sir Roderick. I
might be able to get it at Harrige's. Well,
good-bye for the moment, my wonder man. Don't go
wandering off into any sunsets."
Humming gaily, for her heart was light,
Mrs. Spottsworth tripped down the
moss-grown path, tripped across the lawn and
tripped through the French window into the living-room.
Jeeves was there. He had left Bill and
Jill trying mournfully to console each other in his
pantry, and had returned to the living-room
to collect the coffee-cups. At the sight of the
pendant encircling Mrs. Spottsworth's
neck, no fewer than three hairs of his left
eyebrow quivered for an instant, showing how
deeply he had been moved by the spectacle.
"You're looking at the pendant, I
see," said Mrs. Spottsworth, beaming
happily. "I don't wonder you're
surprised. Captain Biggar found it just now in the
grass by that rustic seat where we were sitting last
night."
It would be too much to say that Jeeves stared, but
his eyes enlarged, the merest fraction, a thing they
did only on special occasions.
"Has Captain Biggar returned, madam?"
"He got back a few minutes ago. Oh,
Jeeves, do you know the telephone number of The
Times?"
"No, madam, but I could ascertain."
"I want to announce my engagement
to Captain Biggar."
Four hairs of Jeeves's right eyebrow
stirred slightly, as if a passing breeze had
disturbed them.
"Indeed, madam? May I wish you every
happiness?"
"Thank you, Jeeves."
"Shall I telephone The Times, madam?"
"If you will, and the Telegraph and Mail and
Express. Any others?"
"I think not, madam. Those you have mentioned should be
quite sufficient for an announcement of this nature."
"Perhaps you're right. Just those, then."
"Very good, madam. Might I venture to ask,
madam, if you and Captain Biggar will be taking
up your residence at the Abbey?"
Mrs. Spottsworth sighed.
"No, Jeeves, I wish I could buy it
... I love the place ... but it's damp. This
English climate!"
"Our English summers are severe."
"And the winters worse."
Jeeves coughed.
"I wonder if I might make a suggestion,
madam, which I think should be satisfactory to all
parties."
"What's that?"
"Buy the house, madam, take it down stone
by stone and ship it to California."
"And put it up there?" Mrs. Spottsworth
beamed. "Why, what a brilliant idea!"
"Thank you, madam."
"William Randolph Hearst used to do it,
didn't he? I remember visiting at San
Simeon once, and there was a whole French
Abbey lying on the grass near the
gates. I'll do it, Jeeves. You've solved
everything. Oh, Lord Rowcester," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "Just the man I wanted to see."
Bill had come in with Jill, walking with slow,
despondent steps. As he saw the pendant,
despondency fell from him like a garment. Unable
to speak, he stood pointing a trembling finger.
"It was discovered in the grass adjoining a
rustic seat in the garden, m'lord, by Mrs.
Spottsworth's fianc`e, Captain Biggar,"
said Jeeves.
Bill found speech, though with difficulty.
"Biggar's back?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"And he found the pendant?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"And he's engaged to Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"Yes, m'lord. And Mrs. Spottsworth
has decided to purchase the Abbey."
"What!"
"Yes, m'lord."
"I do believe in fairies!" said Bill, and
Jill said she did, too.
"Yes, Billiken," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "I'm going to buy the Abbey.
I don't care what you're asking for it. I
want it, and I'll write you a cheque the moment
I come back from apologizing to that nice Chief
Constable. I left him very abruptly just now, and
I'm afraid he may be feeling offended. Is
he still up in my room, Jeeves?"
"I believe so, madam. He rang for me not
long ago to ask if I could provide him with a
magnifying glass."
"I'll go and see him," said Mrs.
Spottsworth. "I'm taking the Abbey with me
to America, Billiken. It was Jeeves's
idea."
She went out, and Jill hurled herself
into Bill's arms.
"Oh, Bill! Oh, Bill! Oh,
Bill!" she cried. "Though I don't know why
I'm kissing you," she said. "I ought to be kissing
Jeeves. Shall I kiss you, Jeeves?"
"No, miss."
"Just think, Jeeves. You'll have to buy that fish
slice after all."
"It will be a pleasure and a privilege,
miss."
"Of course, Jeeves," said
Bill, "you must never leave us, wherever we go,
whatever we do."
Jeeves sighed apologetically.
"I am very sorry, m'lord, but I fear I cannot
avail myself of your kindness. Indeed, I fear I
am compelled to hand in my notice."
"Oh, Jeeves!"
"With the deepest regret, miss, I need
scarcely say. But Mr. Wooster needs me.
I received a letter from him this morning."
"Has he left that school of his, then?"
Jeeves sighed again. "Expelled, m'lord."
"Good heavens!"
"It is all most unfortunate, m'lord. Mr.
Wooster was awarded the prize for sock-darning.
Two pairs of his socks were actually exhibited
on Speech Day. It was then discovered that he had
used a crib ... an old woman whom he
smuggled into his study at night."
"Poor old Bertie!"
"Yes, m'lord. I gather from the tone of his
communication that the scandal has affected him
deeply. I feel that my place is at his
side."
Rory came in from the library, looking
moody.
"I can't fix it," he said.
"Rory," said Bill, "do you know what's
happened?"
"Yes, old boy, I've bust the television
set."
"Mrs. Spottsworth is going to marry
Captain Biggar, and she's buying the Abbey."
"Oh?" said Rory. His manner was listless.
"Well, as I was saying, I can't fix the bally
thing, and I don't believe any of the local
yokels can, either, so the only thing to do is to go to the
fountain head." He went to the telephone.
"Give me Square one two three four," he
said.
Captain Biggar came bustling through the French
window, humming a Swahili wedding march.
"Where's my Rosie?" he asked.
"Upstairs," said Bill. "She'll be down
in a minute. She's just been telling us the news.
Congratulations, Captain."
"Thank you, thank you."
"I say," said Rory, the receiver at his ear,
"I've just remembered another one. Which is
bigger, Captain Biggar or Mrs.
Biggar? Mrs. Biggar, because she became Biggar.
Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha! Meanwhile, I'm
trying to get--"
His number came through.
"Oh, hullo," he said. "Harrige's?"

THE END
