‘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 shop-soiled 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 agonised 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 Discoveries,’ 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.
Chapter 11
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 underside 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 recognise 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 h
im 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 his 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 his 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.
‘“Enterprises 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 sympathise 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 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’ 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?’
Ring For Jeeves Page 11