The Jeeves Omnibus (75 page)

‘But why should either of us go to evening service?’

‘Ass! Harold sings in the choir, doesn’t he?’

‘What about it? I can’t stop him dislocating his neck over a high note, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’

‘Fool! Steggles sings in the choir too. There may be dirty work after the service.’

‘What absolute rot!’

‘Is it?’ said young Bingo. ‘Well, let me tell you that in
Jenny, the Girl Jockey
, the villain kidnapped the boy who was to ride the favourite the night before the big race, and he was the only one who understood and could control the horse, and if the heroine hadn’t dressed up in riding things and –’

‘Oh, all right, all right. But, if there’s any danger, it seems to me the simplest thing would be for Harold not to turn out on Sunday evening.’

‘He must turn out. You seem to think the infernal kid is a monument of rectitude, beloved by all. He’s got the shakiest reputation of any kid in the village. He’s played hookey from the choir so often that the vicar told him, if one more thing happened, he would fire him out. Nice chumps we should look if he was scratched the night before the race!’

Well, of course, that being so, there was nothing for it but to toddle along.

There’s something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall was up in the pulpit, and he has a kind of regular, bleating delivery that assists thought. They had left the door open, and the air was full of a mixed scent of trees and honeysuckle and mildew and villagers’ Sunday clothes. As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the stained-glass windows, birds were twittering in the trees, the women’s dresses crackled gently in the stillness. Peaceful. That’s what I’m driving at. I felt peaceful. Everybody felt peaceful. And that is why the explosion, when it came, sounded like the end of all things.

I call it an explosion, because that was what it seemed like when it broke loose. One moment a dreamy hush was all over the place, broken only by old Heppenstall talking about our duty to our neighbours; and then, suddenly, a sort of piercing, shrieking squeal that
got
you right between the eyes and ran all the way down your spine and out at the soles of your feet.

‘EE-ee-ee-ee-ee! Oo-ee! Ee-ee-ee-ee!’

It sounded like about six hundred pigs having their tails twisted simultaneously, but it was simply the kid Harold, who appeared to be having some species of fit. He was jumping up and down and slapping at the back of his neck. And about every other second he would take a deep breath and give out another of the squeals.

Well, I mean, you can’t do that sort of thing in the middle of the sermon during evening service without exciting remark. The congregation came out of its trance with a jerk, and climbed on the pews to get a better view. Old Heppenstall stopped in the middle of a sentence and spun round. And a couple of vergers with great presence of mind bounded up the aisle like leopards, collected Harold, still squealing, and marched him out. They disappeared into the vestry, and I grabbed my hat and legged it round to the stage-door, full of apprehension and what not. I couldn’t think what the deuce could have happened, but somewhere dimly behind the proceedings there seemed to me to lurk the hand of the blighter Steggles.

By the time I got there and managed to get someone to open the door, which was locked, the service seemed to be over. Old Heppenstall was standing in the middle of a crowd of choir-boys and vergers and sextons and what not, putting the wretched Harold through it with no little vim. I had come in at the tail-end of what must have been a fairly fruity oration.

‘Wretched boy! How dare you –’

‘I got a sensitive skin!’

‘This is no time to talk about your skin –’

‘Somebody put a beetle down my back!’

‘Absurd!’

‘I felt it wriggling –’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Sounds pretty thin, doesn’t it?’ said someone at my side.

It was Steggles, dash him. Clad in a snowy surplice or cassock, or whatever they call it, and wearing an expression of grave concern, the blighter had the cold, cynical crust to look me in the eyeball without a blink.

‘Did you put a beetle down his neck?’ I cried.

‘Me!’ said Steggles. ‘Me!’

Old Heppenstall was putting on the black cap.

‘I do not credit a word of your story, wretched boy! I have warned you before, and now the time has come to act. You cease from this moment to be a member of my choir. Go, miserable child!’

Steggles plucked at my sleeve.

‘In that case,’ he said, ‘those bets, you know – I’m afraid you lose your money, dear old boy. It’s a pity you didn’t put it on SP. I always think SP’s the only safe way.’

I gave him one look. Not a bit of good, of course.

‘And they talk about the Purity of the Turf!’ I said. And I meant it to sting, by Jove!

Jeeves received the news bravely, but I think the man was a bit rattled beneath the surface.

‘An ingenious young gentleman, Mr Steggles, sir.’

‘A bally swindler, you mean.’

‘Perhaps that would be a more exact description. However, these things will happen on the Turf, and it is useless to complain.’

‘I wish I had your sunny disposition, Jeeves!’

Jeeves bowed.

‘We now rely, then, it would seem, sir, almost entirely on Mrs Penworthy. Should she justify Mr Little’s encomiums and show real class in the Mothers’ Sack Race, our gains will just balance our losses.’

‘Yes; but that’s not much consolation when you’ve been looking forward to a big win.’

‘It is just possible that we may still find ourselves on the right side of the ledger after all, sir. Before Mr Little left, I persuaded him to invest a small sum for the syndicate of which you were kind enough to make me a member, sir, on the Girls’ Egg and Spoon Race.’

‘On Sarah Mills?’

‘No, sir. On a long-priced outsider. Little Prudence Baxter, sir, the child of his lordship’s head gardener. Her father assures me she has a very steady hand. She is accustomed to bring him a mug of beer from the cottage each afternoon, and he informs me she has never spilled a drop.’

Well, that sounded as though young Prudence’s control was good. But how about speed? With seasoned performers like Sarah Mills entered, the thing practically amounted to a classic race, and in these big events you must have speed.

‘I am aware that it is what is termed a long shot, sir. Still, I thought it judicious.’

‘You backed here for a place, too, of course?’

‘Yes, sir. Each way.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s all right. I’ve never known you make a bloomer yet.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

I’m bound to say that, as a general rule, my idea of a large afternoon would be to keep as far away from a village school-treat as possible. A sticky business. But with such grave issues toward, if you know what I mean, I sank my prejudices on this occasion and rolled up. I found the proceedings about as scaly as I had expected. It was a warm day, and the hall grounds were a dense, practically liquid mass of peasantry. Kids seethed to and fro. One of them, a small girl of sorts, grabbed my hand and hung on to it as I clove my way through the jam to where the Mothers’ Sack Race was to finish. We hadn’t been introduced, but she seemed to think I would do as well as anyone else to talk to about the rag-doll she had won in the Lucky Dip, and she rather spread herself on the topic.

‘I’m going to call it Gertrude,’ she said. ‘And I shall undress it every night and put it to bed, and wake it up in the morning and dress it, and put it to bed at night, and wake it up next morning and dress it –’

‘I say, old thing,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to hurry you and all that, but you couldn’t condense it a bit, could you? I’m rather anxious to see the finish of this race. The Wooster fortunes are by way of hanging on it.’

‘I’m going to run in a race soon,’ she said, shelving the doll for the nonce and descending to ordinary chit-chat.

‘Yes?’ I said. Distrait, if you know what I mean, and trying to peer through the chinks in the crowd. ‘What race is that?’

‘Egg ’n’ Spoon.’

‘No really? Are you Sarah Mills?’

‘Na-ow!’ Registering scorn. ‘I’m Prudence Baxter.’

Naturally this put our relations on a different footing. I gazed at her with considerable interest. One of the stable. I must say she didn’t look much of a flier. She was short and round. Bit out of condition, I thought.

‘I say,’ I said, ‘that being so, you mustn’t dash about in the hot
sun
and take the edge off yourself. You must conserve your energies, old friend. Sit down here in the shade.’

‘Don’t want to sit down.’

‘Well, take it easy, anyhow.’

The kid flitted to another topic like a butterfly hovering from flower to flower.

‘I’m a good girl,’ she said.

‘I bet you are. I hope you’re a good egg-and-spoon racer, too.’

‘Harold’s a bad boy. Harold squealed in church and isn’t allowed to come to the treat. I’m glad,’ continued this ornament of her sex, wrinkling her nose virtuously, ‘because he’s a bad boy. He pulled my hair, Friday. Harold isn’t coming to the treat! Harold isn’t coming to the treat! Harold isn’t coming to the treat!’ she chanted, making a regular song of it.

‘Don’t rub it in, my dear old gardener’s daughter,’ I pleaded. ‘You don’t know it, but you’ve hit on a rather painful subject.’

‘Ah Wooster, my dear fellow! So you have made friends with this little lady?’

It was old Heppenstall, beaming pretty profusely. Life and soul of the party.

‘I am delighted, my dear Wooster,’ he went on, ‘quite delighted at the way you young men are throwing yourselves into the spirit of this little festivity of ours.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said.

‘Oh, yes! Even Rupert Steggles. I must confess that my opinion of Rupert Steggles has materially altered for the better this afternoon.’

Mine hadn’t. But I didn’t say so.

‘I have always considered Rupert Steggles, between ourselves, a rather self-centred youth, by no means the kind who would put himself out to further the enjoyment of his fellows. And yet twice within the last half-hour I have observed him escorting Mrs Penworthy, our worthy tobacconist’s wife, to the refreshment.’

I left him standing. I shook off the clutching hand of the Baxter kid and hared it rapidly to the spot where the Mothers’ Sack Race was just finishing. I had a horrid presentiment that there had been more dirty work at the crossroads. The first person I ran into was young Bingo. I grabbed him by the arm.

‘Who won?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t notice.’ There was bitterness in the chappie’s voice. ‘It wasn’t Mrs Penworthy, dash her! Bertie, that hound Steggles is nothing more nor less than one of our leading snakes. I
don’t
know how he heard about her, but he must have got on to it that she was dangerous. Do you know what he did? He lured that miserable woman into the refreshment-tent five minutes before the race and brought her out so weighed down with cake and tea that she blew up in the first twenty yards. Just rolled over and lay there! Well, thank goodness, we still have Harold!’

I gaped at the poor chump.

‘Harold! Haven’t you heard?’

‘Heard?’ Bingo turned a delicate green. ‘Heard what? I haven’t heard anything. I only arrived five minutes ago. Came here straight from the station. What has happened? Tell me!’

I slipped him the information. He stared at me for a moment in a ghastly sort of way, then with a hollow groan, tottered away and was lost in the crowd. A nasty knock, poor chap. I didn’t blame him for being upset.

They were clearing the decks now for the Egg and Spoon Race, and I thought I might as well stay where I was and watch the finish. Not that I had much hope. Young Prudence was a good conversationalist, but she didn’t seem to me to be the build for a winner.

As far as I could see through the mob, they got off to a good start. A short, red-haired child was making the running with a freckled blonde second, and Sarah Mills lying up an easy third. Our nominee was straggling along with the field, well behind the leaders. It was not hard even as early as this to spot the winner. There was a grace, a practised precision, in the way Sarah Mills held her spoon that told its own story. She was cutting out a good pace, but her egg didn’t even wobble. A natural egg-and-spooner, if ever there was one.

Class will tell. Thirty yards from the tape, the red-haired kid tripped over her feet and shot her egg on to the turf. The freckled blonde fought gamely, but she had run herself out half-way down the straight, and Sarah Mills came past and home on a tight rein by several lengths, a popular winner. The blonde was second. A sniffing female in blue gingham beat a pie-faced kid in pink for the place-money, and Prudence Baxter, Jeeves’s long shot, was either fifth or sixth, I couldn’t see which.

And then I was carried along with the crowd to where old Heppenstall was going to present the prizes. I found myself standing next to the man Steggles.

‘Hallo, old chap!’ he said, very bright and cheery. ‘You’ve had a bad day, I’m afraid.’

I looked at him with silent scorn. Lost on the blighter, of course.

‘It’s not been a good meeting for any of the big punters,’ he went on. ‘Poor old Bingo Little went down badly over that Egg and Spoon Race.’

I hadn’t been meaning to chat with the fellow, but I was startled.

‘How do you mean badly?’ I said. ‘We – he only had a small bet on.’

‘I don’t know what you call small. He had thirty quid each way on the Baxter kid.’

The landscape reeled before me.

‘What!’

‘Thirty quid at ten to one. I thought he must have heard something, but apparently not. The race went by the form-book all right.’

I was trying to do sums in my head. I was just in the middle of working out the syndicate’s losses, when old Heppenstall’s voice came sort of faintly to me out of the distance. He had been pretty fatherly and debonair when ladling out the prizes for the other events, but now he had suddenly grown all pained and grieved. He peered sorrowfully at the multitude.