"Wouldn't I!"
"One doesn't want unpleasantness."
"What one wants and what one is going to get are two different things," said Captain Biggar, and went out, grinding his teeth, to cool off in the garden.
He left behind him one of those silences often called pregnant. Bill was the first to speak.
"We're in the soup, Jeeves."
"Certainly a somewhat sharp crisis in our affairs would appear to have been precipitated, m'lord."
"He wants his pound of flesh."
"Yes, m'lord."
"And we haven't any flesh."
"No, m'lord. It is a most disagreeable state of affairs."
"He's a tough egg, that Biggar. He looks like a gorilla with stomach-ache."
"There is, perhaps, a resemblance to such an animal, afflicted as your lordship suggests."
"Did you notice him at dinner?"
"To which aspect of his demeanour during the meal does your lordship allude?"
"I was thinking of the sinister way he tucked into the roast duck. He flung himself on it like a tiger on its prey. He gave me the impression of a man without ruth or pity."
"Unquestionably a gentleman lacking in the softer emotions, m'lord."
"There's a word that just describes him. Begins with a V. Not vapid. Not vermicelli.
Vindictive. The chap's vindictive. I can understand him being sore about not getting his money, but what good will it do him to ruin me?"
"No doubt he will derive a certain moody satisfaction from it, m'lord."
Bill brooded.
"I suppose there really is nobody one could borrow a bit of cash from?"
"Nobody who springs immediately to the mind, m'lord."
"How about that financier fellow, who lives out Ditchingham way—Sir Somebody Something?"
"Sir Oscar Wopple, m'lord? He shot himself last Friday."
"Oh, then we won't bother him."
Jeeves coughed.
"If I might make a suggestion, m'lord?"
"Yes, Jeeves?"
A faint ray of hope had stolen into Bill's sombre eyes. His voice, while still scarcely to be described as animated, no longer resembled that of a corpse speaking from the tomb.
"It occurred to me as a passing thought, m'lord, that were we to possess ourselves of Captain Biggar's ticket, our position would be noticeably stabilized."
Bill shook his head.
"I don't get you, Jeeves. Ticket?
What ticket? You speak as if this were a railway station."
"I refer to the ticket which, in my capacity of your lordship's clerk, I handed to the gentleman as a record of his wager on Lucy Glitters and Whistler's Mother, m'lord."
"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.