‘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 unpaid gambling debts, those are the steps down,’ he said. ‘Drink, women and unpaid 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 memorise 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.
‘Mi
ne?’
‘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 horseshoes on it.’
‘Good heavens! He must look the most ghastly outsider. Eh, Jeeves?’
‘Certainly far from soigné, m’lord.’
‘Very far from soigné. 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 Soigné 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 race horses.’
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 o
ur 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 monopolising 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 Civilisation, 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!”’
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