“Good man!” said Bingo. “Now I can see daylight. Say I have a tenner on Heppenstall, and cop! And then, I’ll go to my uncle. He’s a snob, you know, and when he hears that I’m going to marry the daughter of an earl—”
“I say, old man, aren’t you looking ahead rather far?”
“Oh, that’s all right. She practically told me yesterday she was fond of me.”
“What!”
“Well, she said that the sort of man she liked was the self-reliant, manly man with strength, good looks, character, ambition, and initiative.”
“Leave me,” I said. “Leave me to my breakfast.”
I went to the phone, and instructed Eustace to put a tenner on the Twing flier at current odds for each of the syndicate; and after lunch Eustace rang me up to say that he had done business seven-toone[189], owing to a rumour that the Rev. was subject to hay-fever[190]. And it was lucky, I thought next day, that we had managed to get the money on in time, for on the Sunday morning old Heppenstall gave us thirty-six solid minutes on Certain Popular Superstitions. I was sitting next to Steggles. He was a little rat-faced fellow, with shifty eyes and a suspicious nature. And he was pale.
On Tuesday afternoon, when, as I was strolling up and down in front of the house with a cigarette, Claude and Eustace came up the drive on bicycles, with momentous news.
“Bertie,” said Claude, deeply agitated, “unless we take immediate action and do something, we’re ruined.”
“What’s the matter?”
“G. Hayward,” said Eustace morosely. “The Lower Bingley starter.”
“We never even considered him,” said Claude. “Somehow or other, he got overlooked. It’s always like this. Steggles overlooked him. We all overlooked him. But Eustace and I were riding through Lower Bingley this morning, and there was a wedding on at the church, and G. Hayward delivered a speech of twenty-six minutes by Claude’s watch. At a village wedding, mark you! What’ll we do when he really extends himself!”
“There’s only one thing to be done, Bertie,” said Claude. “You must give us some more money, so that we can put on Hayward and save ourselves.”
“But—”
“Well, it’s the only way out.”
“But I say, you know, I hate the idea to throw money away.”
“What else can you suggest? You don’t suppose the Rev. can give us four minutes more and win, do you?”
“I know what to do!” I said.
“What?”
“I see a way by which we can make it safe for our nominee. I’ll meet him this afternoon, and ask him to preach that sermon of his on Brotherly Love on Sunday.”
Claude and Eustace looked at each other.
“It’s a scheme,” said Claude.
“An excellent scheme,” said Eustace. “Bravo, Bertie.”
“Then carry on,” said Claude.
Old Heppenstall seemed pleased and touched that I should have remembered the sermon all these years, and said he had once or twice had an idea of preaching it again, only it had seemed to him that it was perhaps very long.
“Long?” I said. “Why, my goodness! You don’t call that Brotherly Love sermon of yours long, do you?”
“It takes fully fifty minutes to deliver.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Are you sure that it is not necessary to make certain excisions and eliminations? I might, for example, delete the rather exhaustive excursus into the family life of the early Assyrians[191].”
“Don’t touch a word of it, or you’ll spoil the whole thing,” I said earnestly.
“I am delighted to hear you say so, and I shall preach the whole sermon next Sunday morning.”
But you can never tell what’s going to happen. I’d hardly finished my breakfast on the Saturday morning, when Jeeves came to my bedside to say that Eustace wanted me on the telephone.
“Good Lord, Jeeves, what’s the matter?”
“Mr Eustace did not confide in me, sir.”
“Do you know what I think, Jeeves? Something’s gone wrong with the favourite.”
“Which is the favourite, sir?”
“Mr Heppenstall. He was intending to preach a sermon on Brotherly Love. I wonder if anything’s happened to him.”
“Sir, Mr Eustace is on the telephone.”
I put on a dressing gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind. The moment I heard Eustace’s voice I knew we were ruined.
“Bertie?”
“Here I am.”
“Bertie, we’re dead. The favourite’s blown up[192].”
“No!”
“Yes. Coughing in his stable all last night.”
“What!”
“Absolutely! Hay-fever.”
“Oh, my Lord!”
“The doctor is with him now, and it’s only a question of minutes before he’s officially out of the race. That means the curate will show up at the post instead, and he’s no good at all. A hundred-to-six, but nobody wants. What shall we do?”
“Eustace.”
“Hallo?”
“What can you get on G. Hayward?”
“Only four to one now. I think Steggles has heard something.”
“Well, four to one will clear us. Put another fiver all round on G. Hayward for the syndicate.”
“If he wins.”
“What do you mean? I thought you considered him a winner, after Heppenstall.”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Eustace gloomily, “if there’s such a thing as a winner, in this world. I’m told the Rev. Joseph Tucker did an extraordinarily fine trial gallop at a meeting over at Badgwick yesterday. However, it seems our only chance. So-long.”
I had my choice of churches next morning, and naturally I didn’t hesitate. I chose Lower Bingley that was ten miles away, but I borrowed a bicycle and ran off. Eustace had been right. The man was a tall greybeard, and he went off from the start with a nice, easy action, pausing and clearing his throat at the end of each sentence, and it wasn’t five minutes before I realized that here was the winner. His habit of stopping and looking round the church at intervals was worth minutes to us. At the twenty-minute mark he had merely settled down. And when he finally finished with a good burst, the clock showed thirty-five minutes fourteen seconds. I hopped on to the old bike and started back to the Hall for lunch.
Bingo was talking on the phone when I arrived.
“Fine! Splendid!” he was saying. “Eh? Oh, we needn’t worry about him. I’ll tell Bertie.” He hung up the receiver and caught sight of me. “Oh, hallo, Bertie; I was just talking to Eustace. It’s all right, old man. The report from Lower Bingley has just got in. G. Hayward won.”
“I knew he would. I’ve just come from there.”
“Oh, were you there? I went to Badgwick. Tucker ran a splendid race, but what could he do? Starkie had a sore throat and was nowhere. Roberts, of Fale-by-the-Water, ran third. Good old G. Hayward!” said Bingo affectionately, and we strolled out on to the terrace.
“Are the results clear, then?” I asked.
“All except Gandle-by-the-Hill. But we needn’t worry about Bates. He never had a chance. By the way, poor old Jeeves loses his tenner. Silly ass!”
“Jeeves? What do you mean?”
“He came to me this morning, just after you had left, and asked me to put a tenner on Bates for him. I told him he was a chump, and begged him not to throw his money away, but he would do it.”
“I beg your pardon, sir. This note arrived for you just after you had left the house this morning.” Jeeves had materialized from nowhere, and was standing at my elbow.
“Eh? What? Note?”
“The Reverend Mr Heppenstal’s butler brought it over from the Vicarage, sir. It came too late to be delivered to you at the moment.”
Young Bingo was talking to Jeeves. The yell I gave made him bite his tongue in the middle of a sentence.