The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (17 page)

‘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. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, 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, goodbye once again, Jeeves.’

‘Goodbye, 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.’