The Jeeves Omnibus (187 page)

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 gum-boil 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 Café de la Paix of the East. They always say that if you sit outside the Café 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 unpaid 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.’