The Jeeves Omnibus (186 page)

‘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 six pence, 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. ‘“Enter
prises
of great pith and moment” is the exact quotation, sir.’

‘These chaps have a big SP 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 sympathize 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?’

Bill recovered the use of his vocal cords.

‘Who from?’ he demanded peevishly. ‘You talk as if borrowing money was as simple as falling off a log.’

‘The point his lordship is endeavouring to establish,’ explained Jeeves, ‘is the almost universal tendency of gentlemen to prove uncooperative when an attempt is made to float a loan at their expense.’

‘Especially if what you’re trying to get into their ribs for is a whacking great sum like three thousand and five pounds two and six.’

‘Precisely, m’lord. Confronted by such figures, they become like
the
deaf adder that hearkens not to the voice of the charmer, charming never so wisely.’

‘So putting the bite on my social circle is off,’ said Bill. ‘It can’t be done. I’m sorry.’

Captain Biggar seemed to blow flame through his nostrils.

‘You’ll be sorrier,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you when. When you and this precious clerk of yours are standing in the dock at the Old Bailey, with the judge looking at you over his bifocals and me in the well of the court making faces at you. Then’s the time when you’ll be sorry … then and shortly afterwards, when the judge pronounces sentence, accompanied by some strong remarks from the bench, and they lead you off to Wormwood Scrubs to start doing your two years hard or whatever it is.’

Bill gaped.

‘Oh, dash it!’ he protested. ‘You wouldn’t proceed to that … what, Jeeves?’

‘Awful extreme, m’lord.’

‘You surely wouldn’t proceed to that awful extreme?’

‘Wouldn’t I!’

‘One doesn’t want unpleasantness.’

‘What one wants and what one is going to get are two different things,’ said Captain Biggar, and went out, grinding his teeth, to cool off in the garden.

He left behind him one of those silences often called pregnant. Bill was the first to speak.

‘We’re in the soup, Jeeves.’

‘Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in our affairs would appear to have been precipitated, m’lord.’

‘He wants his pound of flesh.’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘And we haven’t any flesh.’

‘No, m’lord. It is a most disagreeable state of affairs.’

‘He’s a tough egg, that Biggar. He looks like a gorilla with stomach ache.’

‘There is, perhaps, a resemblance to such an animal, afflicted as your lordship suggests.’

‘Did you notice him at dinner?’

‘To which aspect of his demeanour during the meal does your lordship allude?’

‘I was thinking of the sinister way he tucked into the roast duck. He flung himself on it like a tiger on its prey. He gave me the impression of a man without ruth or pity.’

‘Unquestionably a gentleman lacking in the softer emotions, m’lord.’

‘There’s a word that just describes him. Begins with a V. Not vapid. Not vermicelli. Vindictive. The chap’s vindictive. I can understand him being sore about not getting his money, but what good will it do him to ruin me?’

‘No doubt he will derive a certain moody satisfaction from it, m’lord.’

Bill brooded.

‘I suppose there really is nobody one could borrow a bit of cash from?’

‘Nobody who springs immediately to the mind, m’lord.’

‘How about that financier fellow, who lives out Ditchingham way – Sir Somebody Something?’

‘Sir Oscar Wopple, m’lord? He shot himself last Friday.’

‘Oh, then we won’t bother him.’

Jeeves coughed.

‘If I might make a suggestion, m’lord?’

‘Yes, Jeeves?’

A faint ray of hope had stolen into Bill’s sombre eyes. His voice, while still scarcely to be described as animated, no longer resembled that of a corpse speaking from the tomb.

‘It occurred to me as a passing thought, m’lord, that were we to possess ourselves of Captain Biggar’s ticket, our position would be noticeably stabilized.’

Bill shook his head.

‘I don’t get you, Jeeves. Ticket? What ticket? You speak as if this were a railway station.’

‘I refer to the ticket which, in my capacity of your lordship’s clerk, I handed to the gentleman as a record of his wager on Lucy Glitters and Whistler’s Mother, m’lord.’

‘Oh, you mean his
ticket
?’ said Bill, enlightened.

‘Precisely, m’lord. As he left the race-course so abruptly, it must still be upon his person, and it is the only evidence that exists that the wager was ever made. Once we had deprived him of it, your lordship would be in a position to make payment at your lordship’s leisure.’

‘I see. Yes, that would be nice. So we get the ticket from him, do we?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘May I say one word, Jeeves?’

‘Certainly, m’lord.’

‘How?’

‘By what I might describe as direct action, m’lord.’

Bill stared. This opened up a new line of thought.

‘Set on him, you mean?
Scrag
him? Choke it out of him?’

‘Your lordship has interpreted my meaning exactly.’

Bill continued to stare.

‘But, Jeeves, have you
seen
him? That bulging chest, those rippling muscles?’

‘I agree that Captain Biggar is well-nourished, m’lord, but we would have the advantage of surprise. The gentleman went out into the garden. When he returns, one may assume that it will be by way of the french window by which he made his egress. If I draw the curtains, it will be necessary for him to enter through them. We will see him fumbling, and in that moment a sharp tug will cause the curtains to descend upon him, enmeshing him, as it were.’

Bill was impressed, as who would not have been.

‘By Jove, Jeeves! Now you’re talking. You think it would work?’

‘Unquestionably, m’lord. The method is that of the Roman retiarius, with whose technique your lordship is no doubt familiar.’

‘That was the bird who fought with net and trident?’

‘Precisely, m’lord. So if your lordship approves –’

‘You bet I approve.’

‘Very good, m’lord. Then I will draw the curtains now, and we will take up our stations on either side of them.’

It was with deep satisfaction that Bill surveyed the completed preparations. After a rocky start, the sun was coming through the cloud wrack.

‘It’s in the bag, Jeeves!’

‘A very apt image, m’lord.’

‘If he yells, we will stifle his cries with the … what do you call this stuff?’

‘Velours, m’lord.’

‘We will stifle his cries with the velours. And while he’s grovelling on the ground, I shall get a chance to give him a good kick in the tailpiece.’

‘There
is
that added attraction, m’lord. For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, as the playwright Congreve informs us.’

Bill breathed heavily.

‘Were you in the First World War, Jeeves?’

‘I dabbled in it to a certain extent, m’lord.’

‘I missed that one because I wasn’t born, but I was in the Commandos in this last one. This is rather like waiting for zero hour, isn’t it?’

‘The sensation is not dissimilar, m’lord.’

‘He should be coming soon.’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘On your toes, Jeeves!’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘All set?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘Hi!’ said Captain Biggar in their immediate rear. ‘I want to have another word with you two.’

A lifetime of braving the snares and perils of the wilds develops in those White Hunters over the years a sort of sixth sense, warning them of lurking danger. Where the ordinary man, happening upon a tiger trap in the jungle would fall in base over apex, your White Hunter, saved by his sixth sense, walks round it.