Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

"Oh, you mean his ticket?" said Bill, enlightened.

"Precisely, m'lord. As he left the racecourse 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.

With fiendish cunning, Captain Biggar, instead of entering, as expected, through the French window, had circled the house and come in by the front door.

Although the actual time which had elapsed between Captain Biggar's departure and return had been only about five minutes, scarcely long enough for him to take half a dozen turns up and down the lawn, pausing in the course of one of them to kick petulantly at a passing frog, it had been ample for his purposes. If you had said to him as he was going through the French window "Have you any ideas, Captain?"' he would have been forced to reply "No more than a rabbit". But now his eye was bright and his manner jaunty. He had seen the way.

On occasions of intense spiritual turmoil the brain works quickly. Thwarted passion stimulates the little grey cells, and that painful scene on the rustic seat, when love had collided so disastrously with the code that governs the actions of the men who live on the frontiers of Empire, had stirred up those of Captain Biggar till, if you had X-rayed his skull, you would have seen them leaping and dancing like rice in a saucepan. Not thirty seconds after the frog, rubbing its head, had gone off to warn the other frogs to watch out for atom bombs, he was rewarded with what he recognized immediately as an inspiration.

Here was his position in a nutshell. He loved. Right. He would go further, he loved like the dickens. And unless he had placed a totally wrong construction on her words, her manner and the light in her eyes, the object of his passion loved him. A woman, he meant to say, does not go out of her way to bring the conversation round to the dear old days when a feller used to whack her over the top-knot with clubs and drag her into caves, unless she intends to convey a certain impression. True, a couple of minutes later she had been laughing and giggling with the frightful Rowcester excrescence, but that, it seemed to him now that he had had time to simmer down, had been merely a guest's conventional civility to a host. He dismissed the Rowcester gumboil as negligible.

He was convinced that, if one went by the form book, he had but to lay his heart at her feet, and she would pick it up.

So far, so good. But here the thing began to get more complicated. She was rich and he was poor. That was the hitch. That was the snag. That was what was putting the good old sand in the bally machinery.

The thought that seared his soul and lent additional vigour to the kick he had directed at the frog was that, but for the deplorable financial methods of that black-hearted bookmaker, Honest Patch Rowcester, it would all have been so simple.

Three thousand pounds deposited on the nose of Ballymore at the current odds of fifty to one would have meant a return of a hundred and fifty thousand, just like finding it: and surely even Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar, rigid though their views were, could scarcely accuse a chap of not playing with the straight bat if he married a woman, however wealthy, while himself in possession of a hundred and fifty thousand of the best and brightest.

He groaned in spirit. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and he proceeded to torture himself with the recollection of how her neck had felt beneath his fingers as he fastened her pen—

Captain Biggar uttered a short, sharp exclamation. It was in Swahili, a language which always came most readily to his lips in moments of emotion, but its meaning was as clear as if it had been the "Eureka!" of Archimedes.

Her pendant! Yes, now he saw daylight.

Now he could start handling the situation as it should be handled.

Two minutes later, he was at the front door. Two minutes and twenty-five seconds later, he was in the living-room, eyeing the backs of Honest Patch Rowcester and his clerk as they stood—for some silly reason known only to themselves —crouching beside the curtains which they had pulled across the French window.

"Hi!" he cried. "I want to have another word with you two."

The effect of the observation on his audience was immediate and impressive. It is always disconcerting, when you are expecting a man from the north-east, to have him suddenly bark at you from the south-west, especially if he does so in a manner that recalls feeding-time in a dog hospital, and Bill went into his quaking and leaping routine with the smoothness that comes from steady practice. Even Jeeves, though his features did not lose their customary impassivity, appeared—if one could judge by the fact that his left eyebrow flickered for a moment as if about to rise—to have been stirred to quite a considerable extent.