"Not at all," said Jill aloofly.
She went out, carrying Pomona, and Bill advanced on Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Shall we dance?" he said.
Mrs. Spottsworth was surprised.
On the rustic seat just now, especially in the moments following the disappearance of her pendant, she had found her host's mood markedly on the Byronic side. She could not readily adjust herself to this new spirit of gaiety.
"You want to dance?"
"Yes, with you," said Bill, infusing into his manner a wealth of Restoration gallantry.
"It'll be like the old days at Cannes."
Mrs. Spottsworth was a shrewd woman.
She had not failed to observe Captain Biggar lurking in the background, and it seemed to her that an admirable opportunity had presented itself of rousing the fiend that slept in him ... far too soundly, in her opinion. What it was that was slowing up the White Hunter in his capacity of wooer, she did not know: but what she did know was that there is nothing that so lights a fire under a laggard lover as the spectacle of the woman he loves treading the measure in the arms of another man, particularly another man as good-looking as William, Earl of Rowcester.
"Yes, won't it!" she said, all sparkle and enthusiasm. "How well I remember those days!
Lord Rowcester dances so wonderfully," she added, addressing Captain Biggar and imparting to him a piece of first-hand information which, of course, he would have been sorry to have missed. "I love dancing.
The one unpunished rapture left on earth."
"What ho!" said Bill, concurring. "The old Charleston ... do you remember it?"
"You bet I do."
"Put a Charleston record on the gramophone. Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
When Jill returned from depositing Pomona in Mrs. Spottsworth's sleeping quarters, only Jeeves, Bill and Mrs.
Spottsworth were present in the living-room, for at the very outset of the proceedings Captain Biggar, unable to bear the sight before him, had plunged through the French window into the silent night.
The fact that it was he himself who had suggested this distressing exhibition, recalling, as it did in his opinion the worst excesses of the Carmagnole of the French Revolution combined with some of the more risqu`e features of native dances he had seen in Equatorial Africa, did nothing to assuage the darkness of his mood. The frogs on the lawn, which he was now pacing with a black scowl on his face, were beginning to get the illusion that it was raining number eleven boots.
His opinion of the Charleston, as rendered by his host and the woman he loved, was one which Jill found herself sharing. As she stood watching from the doorway, she was conscious of much the same rising feeling of nausea which had affected the White Hunter when listening to the exchanges on the rustic seat.
Possibly there was nothing in the way in which Bill was comporting himself that rendered him actually liable to arrest, but she felt very strongly that some form of action should have been taken by the police. It was her view that there ought to have been a law.
Nothing is more difficult than to describe in words a Charleston danced by, on the one hand, a woman who loves dancing Charlestons and throws herself right into the spirit of them, and, on the other hand, by a man desirous of leaving no stone unturned in order to dislodge from some part of his associate's anatomy a diamond pendant which has lodged there. It will be enough, perhaps, to say that if Major Frobisher had happened to walk into the room at this moment, he would instantly have been reminded of old days in Smyrna or Joppa or Stamboul or possibly Baghdad. Mrs. Spottsworth he would have compared favourably with the wife of the Greek consul, while Bill he would have patted on the back, recognizing his work as fully equal, if not superior, to his own.
Rory and Monica, coming out of the library, were frankly amazed.
"Good heavens!" said Monica.
"The old boy cuts quite a rug, does he not?" said Rory. "Come, girl, let us join the revels."
He put his arm about Monica's waist, and the action became general. Jill, unable to bear the degrading spectacle any longer, turned and went out. As she made her way to her room, she was thinking unpleasant thoughts of her betrothed. It is never agreeable for an idealistic girl to discover that she has linked her lot with a libertine, and it was plain to her now that William, Earl of Rowcester, was a debauchee whose correspondence course might have been taken with advantage by Casanova, Don Juan and the rowdier Roman Emperors.
"When I dance," said Mrs. Spottsworth, cutting, like her partner, quite a rug, "I don't know I've got feet."
Monica winced.
"If you danced with Rory, you'd know you've got feet. It's the way he jumps on and off that gets you down."
"Ouch!" said Mrs. Spottsworth suddenly.
Bill had just lifted her and brought her down with a bump which would have excited Tubby Frobisher's generous admiration, and she was now standing rubbing her leg. "I've twisted something," she said, hobbling to a chair.
"I'm not surprised," said Monica, "the way Bill was dancing."
"Oh, gee, I hope it is just a twist and not my sciatica come back. I suffer so terribly from sciatica, especially if I'm in a place that's at all damp."
Incredible as it may seem, Rory did not say "Like Rowcester Abbey, what?"' and go on to speak of the garden which, in the winter months, was at the bottom of the river. He was peering down at an object lying on the floor.
"Hullo," he said. "What's this? Isn't this pendant yours, Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"Oh, thank you," said Mrs. Spottsworth.
"Yes, it's mine. It must have ... Ouch!" she said, breaking off, and writhed in agony once more.
Monica was all concern.
"You must get straight to bed, Rosalinda."
"I guess I should."
"With a nice hot-water bottle."
"Yes."
"Rory will help you upstairs."
"Charmed," said Rory. "But why do people always speak of a "nice" hot-water bottle? We at Harrige's say "nasty" hot-water bottle. Our electric pads have rendered the hot-water bottle obsolete. Three speeds ... Autumn Glow, Spring Warmth and Mae West."
They moved to the door, Mrs. Spottsworth leaning heavily on his arm. They passed out, and Bill, who had followed them with a bulging eye, threw up his hands in a wide gesture of despair.
"Jeeves!"
"M'lord?"
"This is the end!"
"Yes, m'lord."
"She's gone to ground."
"Yes, m'lord."
"Accompanied by the pendant."
"Yes, m'lord."
"So unless you have any suggestions for getting her out of that room, we're sunk. Have you any suggestions?"
"Not at the moment, m'lord."
"I didn't think you would have. After all, you're human, and the problem is one which is not within ... what, Jeeves?"
"The scope of human power, m'lord."
"Exactly. Do you know what I am going to do?"
"No, m'lord?"
"Go to bed, Jeeves. Go to bed and try to sleep and forget. Not that I have the remotest chance of getting to sleep, with every nerve in my body sticking out a couple of inches and curling at the ends."
"Possibly if your lordship were to count sheep—"
"You think that would work?"
"It is a widely recognized specific, m'lord."
"H'm." Bill considered. "Well, no harm in trying it. Good night, Jeeves."
"Good night, m'lord."
Except for the squeaking of mice behind the wainscoting and an occasional rustling sound as one of the bats in the chimney stirred uneasily in its sleep, Rowcester Abbey lay hushed and still.
'Twas now the very witching time of night, and in the Blue Room Rory and Monica, pleasantly fatigued after the activities of the day, slumbered peacefully. In the Queen Elizabeth Room Mrs. Spottsworth, Pomona in her basket at her side, had also dropped off. In the Anne Boleyn Room Captain Biggar, the good man taking his rest, was dreaming of old days on the Me Wang river, which, we need scarcely inform our public, is a tributary of the larger and more crocodile-infested Wang Me.