"The whole trouble with women, Jeeves," he said, and the philosopher Schopenhauer would have slapped him on the back and told him he knew just how he felt, "is that practically all of them are dotty. Look at Mrs. Spottsworth.
Wacky to the eyebrows. Roosting in a ruined chapel in the hope of seeing Lady Agatha."
"Indeed, m'lord? Mrs. Spottsworth is interested in spectres?"
"She eats them alive. Is that balanced behaviour?"
"Psychical research frequently has an appeal for the other sex, m'lord. My Aunt Emily—"
Bill eyed him dangerously.
"Remember what I said about Pliny the Younger, Jeeves?"
"Yes, m'lord."
"That goes for your Aunt Emily as well."
"Very good, m'lord."
"I'm not interested in your Aunt Emily."
"Precisely, m'lord. During her long lifetime very few people were."
"She is no longer with us?"
"No, m'lord."
"Oh, well, that's something," said Bill.
Jeeves floated out, and he flung himself into a chair. He was thinking once more of that cryptic speech, and now his mood had become wholly pessimistic. It was no longer any question of a tinkle or a non-tinkle. He was virtually certain that the words "You're sure I shan't be in the way?"' had been spoken through clenched teeth and accompanied by a look of infinite meaning. They had been the words of a girl who had intended to make a nasty crack.
He was passing his hands through his hair with a febrile gesture, when Monica entered from the library. She had found the celebrants at the Derby Dinner a little on the long-winded side.
Rory was still drinking in every word, but she needed an intermission.
She regarded her hair-twisting brother with astonishment.
"Good heavens, Bill! Why the agony?
What's up?"
Bill glared unfraternally.
"Nothing's up, confound it! Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!"
Monica raised her eyebrows.
"Well, there's no need to be stuffy about it.
I was only being the sympathetic sister."
With a strong effort Bill recovered the chivalry of the Rowcesters. "I'm sorry, Moke old thing. I've got a headache."
"My poor lamb!"
"It'll pass off in a minute."
"What you need is fresh air."
"Perhaps I do."
"And pleasant society. Ma Spottsworth's in the ruined chapel. Pop along and have a chat with her."
"What!"
Monica became soothing.
"Now don't be difficult, Bill. You know as well as I do how important it is to jolly her along. A flash of speed on your part now may mean selling the house. The whole idea was that on top of my sales talk you were to draw her aside and switch on the charm. Have you forgotten what you said about cooing to her like a turtle dove? Dash off this minute and coo as you have never cooed before."
For a long moment it seemed as though Bill, his frail strength taxed beyond its limit of endurance, was about to suffer something in the nature of spontaneous combustion. His eyes goggled, his face flushed, and burning words trembled on his lips. Then suddenly, as if Reason had intervened with a mild "Tut, tut", he ceased to glare and his cheeks slowly resumed their normal hue. He had seen that Monica's suggestion was good and sensible.
In the rush and swirl of recent events, the vitally urgent matter of pushing through the sale of his ancestral home had been thrust into the background of Bill's mind. It now loomed up for what it was, the only existing life preserver bobbing about in the sea of troubles in which he was immersed.
Clutch it, and he was saved. When you sold houses, he reminded himself, you got deposits, paid cash down. Such a deposit would be sufficient to dispose of the Biggar menace, and if the only means of securing it was to go to Rosalinda Spottsworth and coo, then go and coo he must.
Simultaneously there came to him the healing thought that if Jill had gone home to provide herself with things for the night, it would be at least half an hour before she got back, and in half an hour a determined man can do a lot of cooing.
"Moke," he said, "you're right. My place is at her side."
He hurried out, and a moment later Rory appeared at the library door.
"I say, Moke," said Rory, "can you speak Spanish?"
"I don't know. I've never tried. Why?"
"There's a Spaniard or an Argentine or some such bird in there telling us about his horse in his native tongue. Probably a rank outsider, still one would have been glad to hear his views. Where's Bill? Don't tell me he's still in there with the White Man's Burden?"
"No, he came in here just now, and went out to talk to Mrs. Spottsworth."
"I want to confer with you about old Bill," said Rory. "Are we alone and unobserved?"
"Unless there's someone hiding in that dower chest.
What about Bill?"
"There's something up, old girl, and it has to do with this chap Biggar. Did you notice Bill at dinner?"
"Not particularly. What was he doing? Eating peas with his knife?"
"No, but every time he caught Biggar's eye, he quivered like an Ouled Nail stomach dancer.
For some reason Biggar affects him like an egg-whisk. Why? That's what I want to know.
Who is this mystery man? Why has he come here?
What is there between him and Bill that makes Bill leap and quake and shiver whenever he looks at him? I don't like it, old thing. When you married me, you never said anything about fits in the family, and I consider I have been shabbily treated. I mean to say, it's a bit thick, going to all the trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon that you've become brother-in-law to a fellow with St. Vitus Dance."
Monica reflected.
"Come to think of it," she said, "I do remember, when I told him a Captain Biggar had clocked in, he seemed a bit upset.
Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish pallor and a drooping lower jaw. And I came in here just now and found him tearing his hair. I agree with you. It's sinister."
"And I'll tell you something else," said Rory. "When I left the dining-room to go and look at the Derby Dinner, Bill was all for coming too. "How about it?"' he said to Biggar, and Biggar, looking very puff-faced, said "Later, perhaps. At the moment, I would like a word with you, Lord Rowcester". In a cold, steely voice, like a magistrate about to fine you a fiver for pinching a policeman's helmet on Boat Race night. And Bill gulped like a stricken bull pup and said "Oh, certainly, certainly" or words to that effect. It sticks out a mile that this Biggar has got something on old Bill."
"But what could he possibly have on him?"
"Just the question I asked myself, my old partner of joys and sorrows, and I think I have the solution.
Do you remember those stories one used to read as a kid? The Strand Magazine used to be full of them."
"Which stories?"
"Those idol's eye stories. The ones where a gang of blighters pop over to India to pinch the great jewel that's the eye of the idol. They get the jewel all right, but they chisel one of the blighters out of his share of the loot, which naturally makes him as sore as a gumboil, and years later he tracks the other blighters down one by one in their respectable English homes and wipes them out to the last blighter, by way of getting a bit of his own back. You mark my words, old Bill is being chivvied by this chap Biggar because he did him out of his share of the proceeds of the green eye of the little yellow god in the temple of Vishnu, and I shall be much surprised if we don't come down to breakfast tomorrow morning and find him weltering in his blood among the kippers and sausages with a dagger of Oriental design in the small of his back."
"Ass!"