These heights he was touching now, for the thought that this woman had it in her power to take England's leading white elephant off his hands, thus stabilizing his financial position and enabling him to liquidate Honest Patch Perkins' honourable obligations, lent him an eloquence which he had not achieved since May Week dances at Cambridge. The golden words came trickling from his lips like syrup.
Captain Biggar was not fond of syrup, and he did not like the thought of the woman he loved being subjected to all this goo. For a moment he toyed with the idea of striding up and breaking Bill's spine in three places, but once more found his aspirations blocked by the code. He had eaten Bill's meat and drunk Bill's drink ... both excellent, especially the roast duck ... and that made the feller immune to assault. For when a feller has accepted a feller's hospitality, a feller can't go about breaking the feller's spine, no matter what the feller may have done. The code is rigid on that point.
He is at liberty, however, to docket the feller in his mind as a low-down, fortune-hunting son of a what not, and this was how Captain Biggar was docketing Bill as he lumbered back to the house. And it was—substantially—how he described him to Jill when, passing through the French window, he found her crossing the living-room on her way to deposit her things in her sleeping apartment.
"Good gracious!" said Jill, intrigued by his aspect. "You seem very upset, Captain Biggar. What's the matter? Have you been bitten by an alligator?"
Before proceeding, the Captain had to put her straight on this.
"No alligators in England," he said.
"Except, of course, in zoos. No, I have been shocked to the very depths of my soul."
"By a wombat?"
Again the Captain was obliged to correct her misapprehensions. An oddly ignorant girl, this, he was thinking.
"No wombats in England, either. What shocked me to the very depths of my soul was listening to a low-down, fortune-hunting English peer doing his stuff," he barked bitterly. "Lord Rowcester, he calls himself. Lord Gigolo's what I call him."
Jill started so sharply that she dropped her suitcase.
"Allow me," said the Captain, diving for it.
"I don't understand," said Jill. "Do you mean that Lord Rowcester—?"
One of the rules of the code is that a white man must shield women, and especially young, innocent girls, from the seamy side of life, but Captain Biggar was far too stirred to think of that now. He resembled Othello not only in his taste for antres vast and deserts idle but in his tendency, being wrought, to become perplexed in the extreme.
"He was making love to Mrs. Spottsworth in the moonlight," he said curtly.
"What!"
"Heard him with my own ears. He was cooing to her like a turtle dove. After her money, of course. All the same, these effete aristocrats of the old country. Make a noise like a rich widow anywhere in England, and out come all the Dukes and Earls and Viscounts, howling like wolves. Rats, we'd call them in Kuala Lumpur. You should hear Tubby Frobisher talk about them at the club. I remember him saying one day to Doc and Squiffy—the Subahdar wasn't there, if I recollect rightly—gone up country, or something—"Doc", he said ..."
It was probably going to be a most extraordinarily good story, but Captain Biggar did not continue it any further for he saw that his audience was walking out on him. Jill had turned abruptly, and was passing through the door. Her head, he noted, was bowed, and very properly, too, after a revelation like that. Any nice girl would have been knocked endways by such a stunning expos`e of the moral weaknesses of the British aristocracy.
He sat down and picked up the evening paper, throwing it from him with a stifled cry as the words "Whistler's Mother" leaped at him from the printed page. He did not want to be reminded of Whistler's Mother. He was brooding darkly on Honest Patch Perkins and wondering wistfully if Destiny (or Fate) would ever bring their paths together again, when Jeeves came floating in. Simultaneously, Rory entered from the library.
"Oh, Jeeves," said Rory, "will you bring me a flagon of strong drink? I am athirst."
With a respectful movement of his head Jeeves indicated the tray he was carrying, laden with the right stuff, and Rory accompanied him to the table, licking his lips.
"Something for you, Captain?" he said.
"Whisky, if you please," said Captain Biggar. After that ordeal in the moonlit garden, he needed a restorative.
"Whisky? Right. And for you, Mrs.
Spottsworth?" said Rory, as that lady came through the French window accompanied by Bill.
"Nothing, thank you, Sir Roderick. On a night like this, moonlight is enough for me.
Moonlight and your lovely garden, Billiken."
"I'll tell you something about that garden," said Rory. "In the summer months—" He broke off as Monica appeared in the library door.
The sight of her not only checked his observations on the garden, but reminded him of her injunction to boost the bally place to this Spottsworth woman. Looking about him for something in the bally place capable of being boosted, his eye fell on the dower chest in the corner and he recalled complimentary things he had heard said in the past about it.
It seemed to him that it would make a good point d'appui. "Yes," he proceeded, "the garden's terrific, and furthermore it must never be overlooked that Rowcester Abbey, though a bit shopsoiled and falling apart at the seams, contains many an objet d'art calculated to make the connoisseur sit up and say "What ho!"
Cast an eye on that dower chest, Mrs.
Spottsworth."
"I was admiring it when I first arrived. It's beautiful."
"Yes, it is nice, isn't it?" said Monica, giving her husband a look of wifely approval. One didn't often find Rory showing such signs of almost human intelligence.
"Duveen used to plead to be allowed to buy it, but of course it's an heirloom and can't be sold."
"Goes with the house," said Rory.
"It's full of the most wonderful old costumes."
"Which go with the house," said Rory, probably quite incorrectly, but showing zeal.
"Would you like to look at them?" said Monica, reaching for the lid.
Bill uttered an agonized cry.
"They're not in there!"
"Of course they are. They always have been. And I'm sure Rosalinda would enjoy seeing them."
"I would indeed."
"There's quite a romantic story attached to this dower chest, Rosalinda. The Lord Rowcester of that time—centuries ago—wouldn't let his daughter marry the man she loved, a famous explorer and discoverer."
"The old boy was against Discoverers," explained Rory. "He was afraid they might discover America. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, I beg your pardon."
"The lover sent his chest to the girl, filled with rare embroideries he had brought back from his travels in the East, and her father wouldn't let her have it. He told the lover to come and take it away. And the lover did, and of course inside it was the young man's bride. Knowing what was going to happen, she had hidden there."
"And the funny part of the story is that the old blister followed the chap all the way down the drive, shouting "Get that damn thing out of here!""
Mrs. Spottsworth was enchanted.
"What a delicious story. Do open it, Monica."
"I will. It isn't locked."
Bill sank bonelessly into a chair.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"Brandy!"
"Very good, m'lord."
"Well, for heaven's sake!" said Monica.
She was staring wide-eyed at a check coat of loud pattern and a tie so crimson, so intensely blue horseshoed, that Rory shook his head censoriously.