Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

Captain Biggar, even when seen through a mist, presented a spectacle which might well have intimidated the stoutest. His eyes seemed to Bill to be shooting out long, curling flames, and why they called a man with a face as red as that a White Hunter was more than he was able to understand.

Strong emotion, as always, had intensified the vermilion of the Captain's complexion, giving him something of the appearance of a survivor from an explosion in a tomato cannery.

Nor was his voice, when he spoke, of a timbre calculated to lull any apprehensions which his aspect might have inspired. It was the voice of a man who needed only a little sympathy and encouragement to make him whip out a revolver and start blazing away with it.

"So!" he said.

There are no good answers to the word "So!" particularly when uttered in the kind of voice just described, and Bill did not attempt to find one.

"So you are Honest Patch Perkins!"

Jeeves intervened, doing his best as usual.

"Well, yes and no, sir."

"What do you mean, yes and no? Isn't this the louse's patch?" demanded the Captain, brandishing Exhibit A. "Isn't that the hellhound's ginger moustache?" he said, giving Exhibit B a twiddle. "And do you think I didn't recognize that coat and tie?"

"What I was endeavouring to convey by the expression "Yes and no", sir, was that his lordship has retired from business."

"You bet he has. Pity he didn't do it sooner."

"Yes, sir. Oh, Iago, the pity of it, Iago."

"Eh?"

"I was quoting the Swan of Avon, sir."

"Well, stop quoting the bally Swan of Avon."

"Certainly, sir, if you wish it."

Bill had recovered his faculties to a certain extent. To say that even now he was feeling boomps-a-daisy would be an exaggeration, but he was capable of speech.

"Captain Biggar," he said, "I owe you an explanation."

"You owe me three thousand and five pounds two and six," said the Captain, coldly corrective.

This silenced Bill again, and the Captain took advantage of the fact to call him eleven derogatory names.

Jeeves assumed the burden of the defence, for Bill was still reeling under the impact of the eleventh name.

"It is impossible to gainsay the fact that in the circumstances your emotion is intelligible, sir, for one readily admits that his lordship's recent activities are of a nature to lend themselves to adverse criticism. But can one fairly blame his lordship for what has occurred?"

This seemed to the Captain an easy one to answer.

"Yes," he said.

"You will observe that I employed the adverb "fairly", sir. His lordship arrived on Epsom Downs this afternoon with the best intentions and a capital adequate for any reasonable emergency. He could hardly have been expected to foresee that two such meagrely favoured animals as Lucy Glitters and Whistler's Mother would have emerged triumphant from their respective trials of speed. His lordship is not clairvoyant."

"He could have laid the bets off."

"There I am with you sir. Rem acu tetigisti."

"Eh?"

"A Latin expression, which might be rendered in English by the American colloquialism "You said a mouthful". I urged his lordship to do so."

"You?"

"I was officiating as his lordship's clerk."

The Captain stared.

"You weren't the chap in the pink moustache?"

"Precisely, sir, though I would be inclined to describe it as russet rather than pink."

The Captain brightened.

"So you were his clerk, were you? Then when he goes to prison, you'll go with him."

"Let us hope there will be no such sad ending as that, sir."

"What do you mean, "sad" ending?" said Captain Biggar.

There was an uncomfortable pause. The Captain broke it.

"Well, let's get down to it," he said.

"No sense in wasting time. Properly speaking, I ought to charge this sheep-faced, shambling refugee from hell—"

"The name is Lord Rowcester, sir."

"No, it's not, it's Patch Perkins.

Properly speaking, Perkins, you slinking reptile, I ought to charge you for petrol consumed on the journey here from Epsom, repairs to my car, which wouldn't have broken down if I hadn't had to push it so hard in the effort to catch you ... and," he added, struck with an afterthought, "the two beers I had at the Goose and Gherkin while waiting for those repairs to be done. But I'm no hog.

I'll settle for three thousand and five pounds two and six. Write me a cheque."

Bill passed a fevered hand through his hair.

"How can I write you a cheque?"

Captain Biggar clicked his tongue, impatient of this shilly-shallying.

"You have a pen, have you not? And there is ink on the premises, I imagine? You are a strong, able-bodied young fellow in full possession of the use of your right hand, aren't you? No paralysis?

No rheumatism in the joints? If," he went on, making a concession, "what is bothering you is that you have run out of blotting paper, never mind.

I'll blow on it."

Jeeves came to the rescue, helping out the young master, who was still massaging the top of his head.

"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 sixpence, such a cheque, when presented at your bank, would not be honoured."

"Exactly," said Bill, well pleased with this 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—"