Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

"This bookie of yours, Captain. I think I can strike a note of hope. We concede that he legged it with what appears to have been the swift abandon of a bat out of hell, but I believe that when the fields are white with daisies he'll pay you. I get the impression that he's simply trying to gain time."

"I'll give him time," said the Captain morosely. "I'll see that he gets plenty.

And when he has paid his debt to Society, I shall attend to him personally. A thousand pities we're not out East. They understand these things there.

If they know you for a straight shooter and the other chap's a wrong 'un ... well, there aren't many questions asked."

Bill started like a frightened fawn.

"Questions about what?"

""Good riddance" sums up their attitude.

The fewer there are of such vermin, the better for Anglo-Saxon prestige."

"I suppose that's one way of looking at it."

"I don't mind telling you that there are a couple of notches on my gun that aren't for buffaloes ... or lions ... or elands ... or rhinos."

"Really? What are they for?"

"Cheaters."

"Ah, yes. Those are those leopard things that go as fast as racehorses."

Jeeves had a correction to make.

"Somewhat faster, m'lord. A half-mile in forty-five seconds."

"Great Scott! Pretty nippy, what?

That's travelling, Jeeves."

"Yes, m'lord."

"That's a cheetah, that was, as one might say."

Captain Biggar snorted impatiently.

"Chea-ters was what I said. I'm not talking about cheetah, the animal ... though I have shot some of those, too."

"Too?"

"Too."

"I see," said Bill, gulping a little.

"Too."

Jeeves coughed.

"Might I offer a suggestion, m'lord?"

"Certainly, Jeeves. Offer several."

"An idea has just crossed my mind, m'lord.

It has occurred to me that it is quite possible that this racecourse character against whom Captain Biggar nurses a justifiable grievance may have substituted for his own licence plate a false one—"

"By Jove, Jeeves, you've hit it!"

"—and that by some strange coincidence he selected for this false plate the number of your lordship's car."

"Exactly. That's the solution. Odd we didn't think of that before. It explains the whole thing, doesn't it, Captain?"

Captain Biggar was silent. His thoughtful frown told that he was weighing the idea.

"Of course it does," said Bill buoyantly. "Jeeves, your bulging brain, with its solid foundation of fish, has solved what but for you would have remained one of those historic mysteries you read about. If I had a hat on, I would raise it to you."

"I am happy to have given satisfaction, m'lord."

"You always do, Jeeves, you always do. It's what makes you so generally esteemed."

Captain Biggar nodded.

"Yes, I suppose that might have happened.

There seems to be no other explanation."

"Jolly, getting these things cleared up," said Bill. "More port, Captain?"

"No, thank you."

"Then suppose we join the ladies. They're probably wondering what the dickens has happened to us and saying "He cometh not", like ... who, Jeeves?"

"Mariana of the Moated Grange, m'lord.

Her tears fell with the dews at even; her tears fell ere the dews were dried. She could not look on the sweet heaven either at morn or eventide."

"Oh, well, I don't suppose our absence has hit them quite as hard as that. Still, it might be as well ... Coming, Captain?"

"I should first like to make a telephone call."

"You can do it from the living-room."

"A private telephone call."

"Oh, right ho. Jeeves, conduct Captain Biggar to your pantry and unleash him on the instrument."

"Very good, m'lord."

Left alone, Bill lingered for some moments, the urge to join the ladies in the living-room yielding to a desire to lower just one more glass of port by way of celebration. Honest Patch Perkins had, he felt, rounded a nasty corner.

The only thought that came to mar his contentment had to do with Jill. He was not quite sure of his standing with that lodestar of his life. At dinner, Mrs. Spottsworth, seated on his right, had been chummy beyond his gloomiest apprehensions, and he fancied he had detected in Jill's eye one of those cold, pensive looks which are the last sort of look a young man in love likes to see in the eye of his betrothed.

Fortunately, Mrs. Spottsworth's chumminess had waned as the meal proceeded and Captain Biggar started monopolizing the conversation. She had stopped talking about the old Cannes days and had sat lingering in rapt silence as the White Hunter told of antres vast and deserts idle and of the cannibals that each other eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.

This to hear had Mrs. Spottsworth seriously inclined, completely switching off the Cannes motif, so it might be that all was well.

Jeeves returned, and he greeted him effusively as one who had fought the good fight.

"That was a brain wave of yours, Jeeves."

"Thank you, m'lord."

"It eased the situation considerably. His suspicions are lulled, don't you think?"

"One would be disposed to fancy so, m'lord."

"You know, Jeeves, even in these disturbed post-war days, with the social revolution turning handsprings on every side and Civilization, as you might say, in the melting-pot, it's still quite an advantage to be in big print in Debrett's Peerage."

"Unquestionably so, m'lord. It gives a gentleman a certain standing."

"Exactly. People take it for granted that you're respectable. Take an Earl, for instance. He buzzes about, and people say "Ah, an Earl" and let it go at that. The last thing that occurs to them is that he may in his spare moments be putting on patches and false moustaches and standing on a wooden box in a check coat and a tie with blue horseshoes, shouting "Five to one the field, bar one!""

"Precisely, m'lord."

"A satisfactory state of things."

"Highly satisfactory, m'lord."

"There have been moments today, Jeeves, I don't mind confessing, when it seemed to me that the only thing to do was to turn up the toes and say "This is the end", but now it would take very little to start me singing like the Cherubim and Seraphim. It was the Cherubim and Seraphim who sang, wasn't it?"

"Yes, m'lord. Hosanna, principally."

"I feel a new man. The odd sensation of having swallowed a quart of butterflies, which I got when there was a burst of red fire and a roll of drums from the orchestra and that White Hunter shot up through a trap at my elbow, has passed away completely."

"I am delighted to hear it, m'lord."

"I knew you would be, Jeeves, I knew you would be. Sympathy and understanding are your middle names. And now," said Bill, "to join the ladies in the living-room and put the poor souls out of their suspense."

Arriving in the living-room, he found that the number of ladies available for being joined there had been reduced to one—reading from left to right, Jill. She was sitting on the settee twiddling an empty coffee-cup and staring before her with what are sometimes described as unseeing eyes. Her air was that of a girl who is brooding on something, a girl to whom recent happenings have given much food for thought.

"Hullo there, darling," cried Bill with the animation of a ship-wrecked mariner sighting a sail. After that testing session in the dining-room, almost anything that was not Captain Biggar would have looked good to him, and she looked particularly good.

Jill glanced up.

"Oh, hullo," she said.

It seemed to Bill that her manner was reserved, but he proceeded with undiminished exuberance.

"Where's everybody?"

"Rory and Moke are in the library, looking in at the Derby Dinner."

"And Mrs. Spottsworth?"

"Rosie," said Jill in a toneless voice, "has gone to the ruined chapel. I believe she is hoping to get a word with the ghost of Lady Agatha."