Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

"And don't stand there looking like a dying duck," said the Captain, addressing Bill, who, one is compelled to admit, was giving a rather close impersonation of such a bird in articulo mortis. "Since I saw you two beauties last," he continued, helping himself to another whisky and soda, "I have been thinking over the situation, and I have now got it all taped out. It suddenly came to me, quick as a flash. I said to myself "The pendant!""

Bill blinked feebly. His heart, which had crashed against the back of his front teeth, was slowly returning to its base, but it seemed to him that the shock which he had just sustained must have left his hearing impaired. It had sounded exactly as if the Captain had said "The pendant!" which, of course, made no sense whatever.

"The pendant?" he echoed, groping.

"Mrs. Spottsworth is wearing a diamond pendant, m'lord," said Jeeves. "It is to this, no doubt, that the gentleman alludes."

It was specious, but Bill found himself still far from convinced.

"You think so?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"He alludes to that, in your opinion?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"But why does he allude to it, Jeeves?"

"That, one is disposed to imagine, m'lord, one will ascertain when the gentleman has resumed his remarks."

"Gone on speaking, you mean?"

"Precisely, m'lord."

"Well, if you say so," said Bill doubtfully. "But it seems a ... what's the expression you're always using?"

"Remote contingency, m'lord?"

"That's right. It seems a very remote contingency."

Captain Biggar had been fuming silently.

He now spoke with not a little asperity.

"If you have quite finished babbling, Patch Rowcester—"

"Was I babbling?"

"Certainly you were babbling. You were babbling like a ... like a ... well, like whatever the dashed things are that babble."

"Brooks," said Jeeves helpfully, "are sometimes described as doing so, sir. In his widely-read poem of that name, the late Lord Tennyson puts the words "Oh, brook, oh, babbling brook" into the mouth of the character Edmund, and later describes the rivulet, speaking in its own person, as observing "I chatter over stony ways in little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles"."

Captain Biggar frowned.

"Ai deng hahp kamoo for the late Lord Tennyson," he said impatiently. "What I'm interested in is this pendant."

Bill looked at him with a touch of hope.

"Are you going to explain about that pendant? Throw light upon it, as it were?"

"I am. It's worth close on three thousand quid, and," said Captain Biggar, throwing out the observation almost casually "you're going to pinch it, Patch Rowcester."

Bill gaped.

"Pinch it?"

"This very night."

It is always difficult for a man who is feeling as if he has just been struck over the occiput by a blunt instrument to draw himself to his full height and stare at someone censoriously, but Bill contrived to do so.

"What!" he cried, shocked to the core. "Are you, a bulwark of the Empire, a man who goes about setting an example to Dyaks seriously suggesting that I rob one of my guests?"

"Well, I'm one of your guests, and you robbed me."

"Only temporarily."

"And you'll be robbing Mrs. Spottsworth only temporarily. I shouldn't have used the word "pinch". All I want you to do is borrow that pendant till tomorrow afternoon, when it will be returned."

Bill clutched his hair.

"Jeeves!"

"M'lord?"

"Rally round, Jeeves. My brain's tottering. Can you make any sense of what this rhinoceros-biffer is saying?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"You can? Then you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

"Captain Biggar's thought-processes seem to me reasonably clear, m'lord. The gentleman is urgently in need of money with which to back the horse Ballymore in tomorrow's Derby, and his proposal, as I take it, is that the pendant shall be abstracted and pawned and the proceeds employed for that purpose. Have I outlined your suggestion correctly, sir?"

"You have."

"At the conclusion of the race, one presumes, the object in question would be redeemed, brought back to the house, discovered, possibly by myself, in some spot where the lady might be supposed to have dropped it, and duly returned to her. Do I err in advancing this theory, sir?"

"You do not."

"Then, could one be certain beyond the peradventure of a doubt that Ballymore will win—"

"He'll win all right. I told you he had twice broken the course record."

"That is official, sir?"

"Straight from the feed-box."

"Then I must confess, m'lord, I see little or no objection to the scheme."

Bill shook his head, unconvinced.

"I still call it stealing."

Captain Biggar clicked his tongue.

"It isn't anything of the sort, and I'll tell you why. In a way, you might say that that pendant was really mine."

"Really ... what was that last word?"

"Mine. Let me," said Captain Biggar, "tell you a little story."

He sat musing for a while. Coming out of his reverie and discovering with a start that his glass was empty, he refilled it. His attitude was that of a man, who, even if nothing came of the business transaction which he had proposed, intended to save something from the wreck by drinking as much as possible of his host's whisky. When the refreshing draught had finished its journey down the hatch, he wiped his lips on the back of his hand, and began.

"Do either of you chaps know the Long Bar at Shanghai? No? Well, it's the Caf`e de la Paix of the East. They always say that if you sit outside the Caf`e de la Paix in Paris long enough, you're sure sooner or later to meet all your pals, and it's the same with the Long Bar. A few years ago, chancing to be in Shanghai, I had dropped in there, never dreaming that Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar were within a thousand miles of the place, and I'm dashed if the first thing I saw wasn't the two old bounders sitting on a couple of stools as large as life. "Hullo, there, Bwana, old boy," they said when I rolled up, and I said, "Hullo, there, Tubby! Hullo there, Subahdar, old chap," and Tubby said "What'll you have, old boy?"' and I said "What are you boys having?"' and they said stingahs, so I said that would do me all right, so Tubby ordered a round of stingahs, and we started talking about chowluangs and nai bahn rot fais and where we had all met last and whatever became of the poogni at Lampang and all that sort of thing. And when the stingahs were finished, I said "The next are on me. What for you, Tubby, old boy?"' and he said he'd stick to stingahs. "And for you, Subahdar, old boy?"' I said, and the Subahdar said he'd stick to stingahs, too, so I wig-wagged the barman and ordered stingahs all round, and, to cut a long story short, the stingahs came, a stingah for Tubby, a stingah for the Subahdar, and a stingah for me. "Luck, old boys!" said Tubby.

"Luck, old boys!" said the Subahdar.

"Cheerio, old boys!" I said, and we drank the stingahs."

Jeeves coughed. It was a respectful cough, but firm.

"Excuse me, sir."

"Eh?"

"I am reluctant to interrupt the flow of your narrative, but is this leading somewhere?"

Captain Biggar flushed. A man who is telling a crisp, well-knit story does not like to be asked if it is leading somewhere.

"Leading somewhere? What do you mean, is it leading somewhere? Of course it's leading somewhere. I'm coming to the nub of the thing now. Scarcely had we finished this second round of stingahs, when in through the door, sneaking along like a chap that expects at any moment to be slung out on his fanny, came this fellow in the tattered shirt and dungarees."

The introduction of a new and unexpected character took Bill by surprise.

"Which fellow in the tattered shirt and dungarees?"

"This fellow I'm telling you about."