He was convinced that, if one went by the form book, he had but to lay his heart at her feet, and she would pick it up.
So far, so good. But here the thing began to get more complicated. She was rich and he was poor. That was the hitch. That was the snag. That was what was putting the good old sand in the bally machinery.
The thought that seared his soul and lent additional vigour to the kick he had directed at the frog was that, but for the deplorable financial methods of that black-hearted bookmaker, Honest Patch Rowcester, it would all have been so simple.
Three thousand pounds deposited on the nose of Ballymore at the current odds of fifty to one would have meant a return of a hundred and fifty thousand, just like finding it: and surely even Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar, rigid though their views were, could scarcely accuse a chap of not playing with the straight bat if he married a woman, however wealthy, while himself in possession of a hundred and fifty thousand of the best and brightest.
He groaned in spirit. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and he proceeded to torture himself with the recollection of how her neck had felt beneath his fingers as he fastened her pen—
Captain Biggar uttered a short, sharp exclamation. It was in Swahili, a language which always came most readily to his lips in moments of emotion, but its meaning was as clear as if it had been the "Eureka!" of Archimedes.
Her pendant! Yes, now he saw daylight.
Now he could start handling the situation as it should be handled.
Two minutes later, he was at the front door. Two minutes and twenty-five seconds later, he was in the living-room, eyeing the backs of Honest Patch Rowcester and his clerk as they stood—for some silly reason known only to themselves —crouching beside the curtains which they had pulled across the French window.
"Hi!" he cried. "I want to have another word with you two."
The effect of the observation on his audience was immediate and impressive. It is always disconcerting, when you are expecting a man from the north-east, to have him suddenly bark at you from the south-west, especially if he does so in a manner that recalls feeding-time in a dog hospital, and Bill went into his quaking and leaping routine with the smoothness that comes from steady practice. Even Jeeves, though his features did not lose their customary impassivity, appeared—if one could judge by the fact that his left eyebrow flickered for a moment as if about to rise—to have been stirred to quite a considerable extent.
"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.