"Doi wieng lek!" he cried. "I've got it! Fricassee me with stewed mushrooms on the side, I see what you must do."
Bill looked up. His eyes were glazed, his manner listless.
"Do?" he said. "Me?"
"Yes, you."
"I'm sorry," said Bill. "I'm in no condition to do anything except possibly expire, regretted by all."
Captain Biggar snorted, and having snorted uttered a tchah, a pah and a bah.
"Mun py nawn lap lao!" he said impatiently. "You can dance, can't you?"
"Dance?"
"Preferably the Charleston. That's all I'm asking of you, a few simple steps of the Charleston."
Bill stirred slightly, like a corpse moving in its winding sheet. It was an acute spasm of generous indignation that caused him to do so. He was filled with what, in his opinion, was a justifiable resentment. Here he was, in the soup and going down for the third time? and this man came inviting him to dance before him as David danced before Saul. Assuming this to be merely the thin end of the wedge, one received the impression that in next to no time the White Hunter, if encouraged, would be calling for comic songs and conjuring tricks and imitations of footlight favourites who are familiar to you all. What, he asked himself bitterly, did the fellow think this was? The revival of Vaudeville? A village concert in aid of the church organ restoration fund?
Groping for words with which to express these thoughts, he found that the Captain was beginning to tell another of his stories. Like Marcus Aurelius, Kuala Lumpur's favourite son always seemed to have up his sleeve something apposite to the matter in hand, whatever that matter might be. But where the Roman Emperor, a sort of primitive Bob Hope or Groucho Marx, had contented himself with throwing off wisecracks, Captain Biggar preferred the narrative form.
"Yes, the Charleston," said Captain Biggar, "and I'll tell you why. I am thinking of the episode of Tubby Frobisher and the wife of the Greek consul. The recollection of it suddenly flashed upon me like a gleam of light from above."
He paused. A sense of something omitted, something left undone, was nagging at him. Then he saw why this was so. The whisky. He moved to the table and filled his glass.
"Whether it was Smyrna or Joppa or Stamboul where Tubby was stationed at the time of which I speak," he said, draining half the contents of his glass and coming back with the rest, "I'm afraid I can't tell you. As one grows older, one tends to forget these details. It may even have been Baghdad or half a dozen other places.
I admit frankly that I have forgotten. But the point is that he was at some place somewhere and one night he attended a reception or a soir@ee or whatever they call these binges at one of the embassies. You know the sort of thing I mean.
Fair women and brave men, all dolled up and dancing their ruddy heads off. And in due season it came to pass that Tubby found himself doing the Charleston with the wife of the Greek consul as his partner. I don't know if either of you have ever seen Tubby Frobisher dance the Charleston?"
"Neither his lordship nor myself have had the privilege of meeting Mr. Frobisher, sir,"
Jeeves reminded him courteously.
Captain Biggar stiffened.
"Major Frobisher, damn it."
"I beg your pardon, sir. Major Frobisher. Owing to our never having met him, the Major's technique when performing the Charleston is a sealed book to us."
"Oh?" Captain Biggar refilled his glass. "Well, his technique, as you call it, is vigorous. He does not spare himself. He is what in the old days would have been described as a three-collar man. By the time Tubby Frobisher has finished dancing the Charleston, his partner knows she has been in a fight, all right.
And it was so on this occasion. He hooked on to the wife of the Greek consul and he jumped her up and he jumped her down, he whirled her about and he spun her round, he swung her here and he swung her there, and all of a sudden what do you think happened?"
"The lady had heart failure, sir?"
"No, the lady didn't have heart failure, but what occurred was enough to give it to all present at that gay affair. For, believe me or believe me not, there was a tinkling sound, and from inside her dress there began to descend to the floor silver forks, silver spoons and, Tubby assures me, a complete toilet set in tortoiseshell. It turned out that the female was a confirmed kleptomaniac and had been using the space between her dress and whatever she was wearing under her dress—I'm not a married man myself, so can't go into particulars—as a safe deposit."
"Embarrassing for Major Frobisher, sir."
Captain Biggar stared.
"For Tubby? Why? He hadn't been pinching the things, he was merely the instrument for their recovery.
But don't tell me you've missed the whole point of my story, which is that I am convinced that if Patch Rowcester here were to dance the Charleston with Mrs. Spottsworth with one tithe of Tubby Frobisher's determination and will to win, we'd soon rout that pendant out of its retreat. Tubby would have had it in the open before the band had played a dozen bars. And talking of that, we shall need music.
Ah, I see a gramophone over there in the corner. Excellent. Well? Do you grasp the scheme?"
"Perfectly, sir. His lordship dances with Mrs. Spottsworth, and in due course the pendant droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath."
"Exactly. What do you think of the idea?"
Jeeves referred the question to a higher court.
"What does your lordship think of it?" he asked deferentially.
"Eh?" said Bill. "What?"
Captain Biggar barked sharply.
"You mean you haven't been listening? Well, of all the—"
Jeeves intervened.
"In the circumstances, sir, his lordship may, I think, be excused for being distrait," he said reprovingly. "You can see from his lordship's lack-lustre eye that the native hue of his resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. Captain Biggar's suggestion is, m'lord, that your lordship shall invite Mrs. Spottsworth to join you in performing the dance known as the Charleston. This, if your lordship infuses sufficient vigour into the steps, will result in the pendant becoming dislodged and falling to the ground, whence it can readily be recovered and placed in your lordship's pocket."
It was perhaps a quarter of a minute before the gist of these remarks penetrated to Bill's numbed mind, but when it did, the effect was electric. His eyes brightened, his spine stiffened. It was plain that hope had dawned, and was working away once more at the old stand. As he rose from his chair, jauntily andwiththe air of a man who is ready for anything, he might have been that debonair ancestor of his who in the days of the Restoration had by his dash and gallantry won from the ladies of King Charles the Second's Court the affectionate sobriquet of Tabasco Rowcester.
"Lead me to her!" he said, and his voice rang out clear and resonant. "Lead me to her, that is all I ask, and leave the rest to me."
But it was not necessary, as it turned out, to lead him to Mrs. Spottsworth, for at this moment she came in through the French window with her Pekinese dog Pomona in her arms.
Pomona, on seeing the assembled company, gave vent to a series of piercing shrieks. It sounded as if she were being torn asunder by red-hot pincers, but actually this was her method of expressing joy. In moments of ecstasy she always screamed partly like a lost soul and partly like a scalded cat.
Jill came running out of the library, and Mrs. Spottsworth calmed her fears.
"It's nothing, dear," she said. "She's just excited. But I wish you would put her in my room, if you are going upstairs. Would it be troubling you too much?"