Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

Rather a strange lot of birds out there, I gather."

Captain Biggar conceded this.

"A very strange lot of birds. But we generally manage to put salt on their tails. Do you know what happens to a welsher in Kuala Lumpur, Lord Rowcester?"

"No, I—er—don't believe I've ever heard. Don't go, Jeeves. Here's an ashtray you've missed. What does happen to a welsher in Kuala Lumpur?"

"We let the blighter have three days to pay up. Then we call on him and give him a revolver."

"That's rather nice of you. Sort of heaping coals of ... You don't mean a loaded revolver?"

"Loaded in all six chambers. We look the louse in the eye, leave the revolver on the table and go off. Without a word. He understands."

Bill gulped. The strain of the conversation was beginning to tell on him.

"You mean he's expected to ... Isn't that a bit drastic?"

Captain Biggar's eyes were cold and hard, like picnic eggs.

"It's the code, sir. Code! That's a big word with the men who live on the frontiers of Empire. Morale can crumble very easily out there. Drink, women and unpd gambling debts, those are the steps down," he said. "Drink, women and unpd gambling debts," he repeated, illustrating with jerks of the hand.

"That one's the bottom, is it? You hear that, Jeeves?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"Rather interesting."

"Yes, m'lord."

"Broadens the mind a bit."

"Yes, m'lord."

"One lives and learns, Jeeves."

"One does indeed, m'lord."

Captain Biggar took a Brazil nut, and cracked it with his teeth.

"We've got to set an example, we bearers of the white man's burden. Can't let the Dyaks beat us on code."

"Do they try?"

"A Dyak who defaults on a debt has his head cut off."

"By the other Dyaks?"

"Yes, sir, by the other Dyaks."

"Well, well."

"The head is then given to his principal creditor."

This surprised Bill. Possibly it surprised Jeeves, too, but Jeeves' was a face that did not readily register such emotions as astonishment. Those who knew him well claimed on certain occasions of great stress to have seen a very small muscle at the corner of his mouth give one quick, slight twitch, but as a rule his features preserved a uniform imperturbability, like those of a cigar-store Indian.

"Good heavens!" said Bill. "You couldn't run a business that way over here. I mean to say, who would decide who was the principal creditor?

Imagine the arguments there would be, Eh, Jeeves?"

"Unquestionably, m'lord. The butcher, the baker ..."

"Not to mention hosts who had entertained the Dyak for weekends, from whose houses he had slipped away on Monday morning, forgetting the Saturday night bridge game."

"In the event of his surviving, it would make such a Dyak considerably more careful in his bidding, m'lord."

"True, Jeeves, true. It would, wouldn't it? He would think twice about trying any of that psychic stuff?"

"Precisely, m'lord. And would undoubtedly hesitate before taking his partner out of a business double."

Captain Biggar cracked another nut. In the silence it sounded like one of those explosions which slay six.

"And now," he said, "with your permission, I would like to cut the ghazi havildar and get down to brass tacks, Lord Rowcester." He paused a moment, marshalling his thoughts. "About this bookie."

Bill blinked.

"Ah, yes, this bookie. I know the bookie you mean."

"For the moment he has got away, I am sorry to say. But I had the sense to memorize the number of his car."

"You did? Shrewd, Jeeves."

"Very shrewd, m'lord."

"I then made inquiries of the police. And do you know what they told me? They said that that car number, Lord Rowcester, was yours."

Bill was amazed. "Mine?"

"Yours."

"But how could it be mine?"

"That is the mystery which we have to solve. This Honest Patch Perkins, as he called himself, must have borrowed your car ... with or without your permission."

"Incredulous!"

"Incredible, m'lord."

"Thank you, Jeeves. Incredible! How would I know any Honest Patch Perkins?"

"You don't?"

"Never heard of him in my life. Never laid eyes on him. What does he look like?"

"He is tall ... about your height ... and wears a ginger moustache and a black patch over his left eye."

"No, dash it, that's not possible ... Oh, I see what you mean. A black patch over his left eye and a ginger moustache on the upper lip.

I thought for a moment ..."

"And a check coat and a crimson tie with blue horse-shoes on it."

"Good heavens! He must look the most ghastly outsider. Eh, Jeeves?"

"Certainly far from soign`e, m'lord."

"Very far from soign`e. Oh, by the way, Jeeves, that reminds me. Bertie Wooster told me that you once made some such remark to him, and it gave him the idea for a ballad to be entitled "Way down upon the soign`e river". Did anything ever come of it, do you know?"

"I fancy not, m'lord."

"Bertie wouldn't have been equal to whacking it out, I suppose, but one can see a song hit there, handled by the right person."

"No doubt, m'lord."

"Cole Porter could probably do it."

"Quite conceivably, m'lord."

"Or Oscar Hammerstein."

"It should be well within the scope of Mr.

Hammerstein's talents, m'lord."

It was with a certain impatience that Captain Biggar called the meeting to order.

"To hell with song hits and Cole Porters!" he said, with an abruptness on which Emily Post would have frowned. "I'm not talking about Cole Porter, I'm talking about this bally bookie who was using your car today."

Bill shook his head.

"My dear old pursuer of pumas and what-have-you, you say you're talking about bally bookies, but what you omit to add is that you're talking through the back of your neck. Neat that, Jeeves."

"Yes, m'lord. Crisply put."

"Obviously what happened was that friend Biggar got the wrong number."

"Yes, m'lord."

The red of Captain Biggar's face deepened to purple. His proud spirit was wounded.

"Are you telling me I don't know the number of a car that I followed all the way from Epsom Downs to Southmoltonshire? That car was used today by this Honest Patch Perkins and his clerk, and I'm asking you if you lent it to him."

"My dear good bird, would I lend my car to a chap in a check suit and a crimson tie, not to mention a black patch and a ginger moustache? The thing's not ... what, Jeeves?"

"Feasible, m'lord." Jeeves coughed.

"Possibly the gentleman's eyesight needs medical attention."

Captain Biggar swelled portentously.

"My eyesight? My eyesight? Do you know who you're talking to? I am Bwana Biggar."

"I regret that the name is strange to me, sir. But I still maintain that you have made the pardonable mistake of failing to read the licence number correctly."

Before speaking again, Captain Biggar was obliged to swallow once or twice, to restore his composure. He also took another nut.

"Look," he said, almost mildly. "Perhaps you're not up on these things. You haven't been told who's who and what's what. I am Biggar the White Hunter, the most famous White Hunter in all Africa and Indonesia. I can stand without a tremor in the path of an onrushing rhino ... and why? Because my eyesight is so superb that I know ... I know I can get him in that one vulnerable spot before he has come within sixty paces. That's the sort of eyesight mine is."

Jeeves maintained his iron front.

"I fear I cannot recede from my position, sir. I grant that you may have trained your vision for such a contingency as you have described, but, poorly informed as I am on the subject of the larger fauna of the East, I do not believe that rhinoceri are equipped with licence numbers."

It seemed to Bill that the time had come to pour oil on the troubled waters and dish out a word of comfort.