The Jeeves Omnibus (70 page)

‘My friend, Mr Wooster,’ said Bingo, completing the ceremonial.

Old Rowbotham looked at me and then he looked round the room, and I could see he wasn’t particularly braced. There’s nothing of absolutely Oriental luxury about the old flat, but I have managed to make myself fairly comfortable, and I suppose the surroundings jarred him a bit.

‘Mr Wooster?’ said old Rowbotham. ‘May I say Comrade Wooster?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Are you of the movement?’

‘Well – er –’

‘Do you yearn for the Revolution?’

‘Well, I don’t know that I exactly yearn. I mean to say, as far as I can make out, the whole hub of the scheme seems to be to massacre coves like me; and I don’t mind owning I’m not frightfully keen on the idea.’

‘But I’m talking him round,’ said Bingo. ‘I’m wrestling with him. A few more treatments ought to do the trick.’

Old Rowbotham looked at me a bit doubtfully.

‘Comrade Little has great eloquence,’ he admitted.

‘I think he talks something wonderful,’ said the girl, and young Bingo shot a glance of such succulent devotion at her that I reeled in my tracks. It seemed to depress Comrade Butt a good deal too. He scowled at the carpet and said something about dancing on volcanoes.

‘Tea is served, sir,’ said Jeeves.

‘Tea, Pa!’ said Charlotte, starting at the word like the old war-horse who hears the bugle; and we got down to it.

Funny how one changes as the years roll on. At school, I remember, I would cheerfully have sold my soul for scrambled eggs and sardines at five in the afternoon; but somehow, since reaching man’s estate, I had rather dropped out of the habit; and I’m bound to admit I was appalled to a goodish extent at the way the sons and daughter of the Revolution shoved their heads down and went for the foodstuffs. Even Comrade Butt cast off his gloom for a space and immersed his whole being in scrambled eggs, only coming to the surface at intervals to grab another cup of tea. Presently the hot water gave out, and I turned to Jeeves.

‘More hot water.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Hey! What’s this? What’s this?’ Old Rowbotham had lowered his
cup
and was eyeing us sternly. He tapped Jeeves on the shoulder. ‘No servility, my lad; no servility!’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Don’t call me “sir.” Call me Comrade. Do you know what you are, my lad? You’re an absolute relic of an exploded feudal system.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘If there’s one thing that makes my blood boil in my veins –’

‘Have another sardine,’ chipped in young Bingo – the first sensible thing he’d done since I had known him. Old Rowbotham took three and dropped the subject, and Jeeves drifted away. I could see by the look of his back what he felt.

At last, just as I was beginning to feel that it was going on for ever, the thing finished. I woke up to find the party getting ready to leave.

Sardines and about three quarters of tea had mellowed old Rowbotham. There was quite a genial look in his eye as he shook my hand.

‘I must thank you for your hospitality, Comrade Wooster,’ he said.

‘Oh, not at all! Only too glad –’

‘Hospitality?’ snorted the man Butt, going off in my ear like a depth-charge. He was scowling in a morose sort of manner at young Bingo and the girl, who were giggling together by the window. ‘I wonder the food didn’t turn to ashes in our mouths! Eggs! Muffins! Sardines! All wrung from the bleeding lips of the starving poor!’

‘Oh, I say! What a beastly idea!’

‘I will send you some literature on the subject of the Cause,’ said old Rowbotham. ‘And soon, I hope, we shall see you at one of our little meetings.’

Jeeves came in to clear away, and found me sitting among the ruins. It was all very well for Comrade Butt to knock the food, but he had pretty well finished the ham; and if you had shoved the remainder of the jam into the bleeding lips of the starving poor it would hardly have made them sticky.

‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘how about it?’

‘I would prefer to express no opinion, sir.’

‘Jeeves, Mr Little is in love with that female.’

‘So I gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage.’

I clutched my brow.

‘Slapping him?’

‘Yes, sir. Roguishly.’

‘Great Scott! I didn’t know it had got as far as that. How did Comrade Butt seem to be taking it? Or perhaps he didn’t see?’

‘Yes, sir, he observed the entire proceedings. He struck me as extremely jealous.’

‘I don’t blame him. Jeeves, what are we to do?’

‘I could not say, sir.’

‘It’s a bit thick.’

‘Very much so, sir.’

And that was all the consolation I got from Jeeves.

I HAD PROMISED
to meet young Bingo next day, to tell him what I thought of his infernal Charlotte, and I was mooching slowly up St James’s Street, trying to think how the dickens I could explain to him, without hurting his feelings, that I considered her one of the world’s foulest, when who should come toddling out of the Devonshire Club but old Bittlesham and Bingo himself. I hurried on and overtook them.

‘What ho!’ I said.

The result of this simple greeting was a bit of a shock. Old Bittlesham quivered from head to foot like a poleaxed blancmange. His eyes were popping and his face had gone sort of greenish.

‘Mr Wooster!’ He seemed to recover somewhat, as if I wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to him. ‘You gave me a severe start.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘My uncle,’ said young Bingo in a hushed, bedside sort of voice, ‘isn’t feeling quite himself this morning. He’s had a threatening letter.’

‘I go in fear of my life,’ said old Bittlesham.

‘Threatening letter?’

‘Written,’ said old Bittlesham, ‘in an uneducated hand and couched in terms of uncompromising menaces. Mr Wooster, do you recall a sinister, bearded man who assailed me in no measured terms in Hyde Park last Sunday?’

I jumped, and shot a look at young Bingo. The only expression on his face was one of grave, kindly concern.

‘Why – ah – yes,’ I said. ‘Bearded man. Chap with a beard.’

‘Could you identify him, if necessary?’

‘Well, I – er – how do you mean?’

‘The fact is, Bertie,’ said Bingo, ‘we think this man with the beard is at the bottom of all this business. I happened to be walking late last night through Pounceby Gardens, where Uncle Mortimer lives,
and
as I was passing the house a fellow came hurrying down the steps in a furtive sort of way. Probably he had just been shoving the letter in at the front door. I noticed that he had a beard. I didn’t think any more of it, however, until this morning, when Uncle Mortimer showed me the letter he had received and told me about the chap in the park. I’m going to make inquiries.’

‘The police should be informed,’ said Lord Bittlesham.

‘No,’ said young Bingo firmly, ‘not at this stage of the proceedings. It would hamper me. Don’t you worry, Uncle; I think I can track this fellow down. You leave it all to me. I’ll pop you into a taxi now, and go and talk it over with Bertie.’

‘You’re a good boy, Richard,’ said old Bittlesham, and we put him in a passing cab and pushed off. I turned and looked young Bingo squarely in the eyeball.

‘Did you send that letter?’ I said.

‘Rather! You ought to have seen it, Bertie! One of the best gent’s ordinary threatening letters I ever wrote.’

‘But where’s the sense of it?’

‘Bertie, my lad,’ said Bingo, taking me earnestly by the coat-sleeve, ‘I had an excellent reason. Posterity may say of me what it will, but one thing it can never say – that I have not a good solid business head. Look here!’ He waved a bit of paper in front of my eyes.

‘Great Scott!’ It was a cheque – an absolute, dashed cheque for fifty of the best, signed Bittlesham, and made out to the order of R. Little.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Expenses,’ said Bingo, pouching it. ‘You don’t suppose an investigation like this can be carried on for nothing, do you! I now proceed to the bank and startle them into a fit with it. Later I edge round to my bookie and put the entire sum on Ocean Breeze. What you want in situations of this kind, Bertie, is tact. If I had gone to my uncle and asked him for fifty quid, would I have got it? No! But by exercising tact – Oh! by the way, what do you think of Charlotte?’

‘Well – er –’

Young Bingo massaged my sleeve affectionately.

‘I know, old man, I know. Don’t try to find words. She bowled you over, eh? Left you speechless, what?
I
know! That’s the effect she has on everybody. Well, I leave you here, laddie. Oh, before we part – Butt! What of Butt? Nature’s worst blunder, don’t you think?’

‘I must say I’ve seen cheerier souls.’

‘I think I’ve got him licked, Bertie. Charlotte is coming to the Zoo with me this afternoon. Alone. And later on to the pictures. That looks like the beginning of the end, what? Well, toodle-oo, friend of my youth. If you’ve nothing better to do this morning, you might take a stroll along Bond Street and be picking out a wedding present.’

I lost sight of Bingo after that. I left messages a couple of times at the club, asking him to ring me up, but they didn’t have any effect. I took it that he was too busy to respond. The Sons of the Red Dawn also passed out of my life, though Jeeves told me he had met Comrade Butt one evening and had a brief chat with him. He reported Butt as gloomier than ever. In the competition for the bulging Charlotte, Butt had apparently gone right back in the betting.

‘Mr Little would appear to have eclipsed him entirely, sir,’ said Jeeves.

‘Bad news, Jeeves; bad news.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I suppose what it amounts to, Jeeves, is that, when young Bingo really takes his coat off and starts in, there is no power of God or man that can prevent him making a chump of himself.’

‘It would seem so, sir,’ said Jeeves.

Then Goodwood came along, and I dug out the best suit and popped down.

I never know, when I’m telling a story, whether to cut the thing down to plain facts or whether to drool on and shove in a lot of atmosphere, and all that. I mean, many a cove would no doubt edge into the final spasm of this narrative with a long description of Goodwood, featuring the blue sky, the rolling prospect, the joyous crowds of pickpockets, and the parties of the second part who were having the pockets picked, and – in a word, what not. But better give it a miss, I think. Even if I wanted to go into details about the bally meeting I don’t think I’d have the heart to. The thing’s too recent. The anguish hasn’t had time to pass. You see, what happened was that Ocean Breeze (curse him!) finished absolutely nowhere for the Cup. Believe me, nowhere.

These are the times that try men’s souls. It’s never pleasant to be caught in the machinery when a favourite comes unstitched, and in the case of this particular dashed animal, one had come to look on the running of the race as a pure formality, a sort of quaint, old-world ceremony to be gone through before one sauntered up to the bookie and collected. I had wandered out of the paddock to try and
forget
, when I bumped into old Bittlesham: and he looked so rattled and purple, and his eyes were standing out of his head at such an angle, that I simply pushed my hand out and shook his in silence.

‘Me, too,’ I said. ‘Me, too. How much did
you
drop?’

‘Drop?’

‘On Ocean Breeze.’

‘I did not bet on Ocean Breeze.’

‘What! You owned the favourite for the Cup, and didn’t back it!’

‘I never bet on horse-racing. It is against my principles. I am told that the animal failed to win the contest.’

‘Failed to win! Why, he was so far behind that he nearly came in first in the next race.’

‘Tut!’ said old Bittlesham.

‘Tut is right,’ I agreed. Then the rumminess of the thing struck me. ‘But if you haven’t dropped a parcel over the race,’ I said, ‘why are you looking so rattled?’

‘That fellow is here!’

‘What fellow?’

‘That bearded man.’

It will show you to what an extent the iron had entered into my soul when I say that this was the first time I had given a thought to young Bingo. I suddenly remembered now that he had told me he would be at Goodwood.

‘He is making an inflammatory speech at this very moment, specifically directed at me. Come! Where that crowd is.’ He lugged me along and, by using his weight scientifically, got us into the front rank. ‘Look! Listen!’

Young Bingo was certainly tearing off some ripe stuff. Inspired by the agony of having put his little all on a stumer that hadn’t finished in the first six, he was fairly letting himself go on the subject of the blackness of the hearts of plutocratic owners who allowed a trusting public to imagine a horse was the real goods when it couldn’t trot the length of its stable without getting its legs crossed and sitting down to rest. He then went on to draw what I’m bound to say was a most moving picture of a working man’s home, due to this dishonesty. He showed us the working man, all optimism and simple trust, believing every word he read in the papers about Ocean Breeze’s form; depriving his wife and children of food in order to back the brute; going without beer so as to be able to cram an extra bob on; robbing the baby’s money-box with a hatpin on the eve of
the
race; and finally getting let down with a thud. Dashed impressive it was. I could see old Rowbotham nodding his head gently, while poor old Butt glowered at the speaker with ill-concealed jealousy. The audience ate it.

‘But what does Lord Bittlesham care,’ shouted Bingo, ‘if the poor working man loses his hard-earned savings? I tell you, friends and comrades, you may talk, and you may argue and you may cheer, and you may pass resolutions, but what you need is Action! Action! The world won’t be a fit place for honest men to live in till the blood of Lord Bittlesham and his kind flows down the gutters of Park Lane!’

Roars of approval from the populace, most of whom, I suppose, had had their little bit on blighted Ocean Breeze, and were feeling it deeply. Old Bittlesham bounded over to a large, sad policeman who was watching the proceedings, and appeared to be urging him to rally round. The policeman pulled at his moustache, and smiled gently, but that was as far as he seemed inclined to go; and old Bittlesham came back to me, puffing not a little.