"Hoy!"
"—moves on, nor all your piety and wit can lure it back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out one word of it. You were saying, m'lord?"
"I was only going to ask you to cheese it."
"Certainly, m'lord."
"Not in the mood."
"Quite so, m'lord. It was only the appositeness of the quotation—from the works of the Persian poet Omar Khayy@am—that led me to speak. I wonder if I might ask a question, m'lord?"
"Yes, Jeeves?"
"Is Miss Wyvern aware of your lordship's professional connection with the turf?"
Bill quivered like an aspen at the mere suggestion.
"I should say not. She would throw fifty-seven fits if she knew. I've rather given her the idea that I'm employed by the Agricultural Board."
"A most respectable body of men."
"I didn't actually say so in so many words.
I just strewed the place with Agricultural Board report forms and took care she saw them.
Did you know that they issue a hundred and seventy-nine different blanks other than the seventeen questionnaires?"
"No, m'lord. I was not aware. It shows zeal."
"Great zeal. They're on their toes, those boys."
"Yes, m'lord."
"But we're wandering from the point, which is that Miss Wyvern must never learn the awful truth.
It would be fatal. At the outset of our betrothal she put her foot down firmly on the subject of my tendency to have an occasional flutter, and I promised her faithfully that I would never punt again. Well, you might argue that being a Silver Ring bookie is not the same thing as punting, but I doubt if you would ever sell that idea to Miss Wyvern."
"The distinction is certainly a nice one, m'lord."
"Let her discover the facts, and all would be lost."
"Those wedding bells would not ring out."
"They certainly wouldn't. She would return me to store before I could say "What ho". So if she comes asking questions, reveal nothing. Not even if she sticks lighted matches between your toes."
"The contingency is a remote one, m'lord."
"Possibly. I'm merely saying, whatever happens, Jeeves, secrecy and silence."
"You may rely on me, m'lord. In the inspired words of Pliny the Younger—"
Bill held up a hand. "Right ho, Jeeves."
"Very good, m'lord."
"I'm not interested in Pliny the Younger."
"No, m'lord."
"As far as I'm concerned, you may take Pliny the Younger and put him where the monkey put the nuts."
"Certainly, m'lord."
"And now leave me, Jeeves. I have a lot of heavy brooding to do. Go and get me a stiffish whisky and soda."
"Very good, m'lord. I will attend to the matter immediately."
Jeeves melted from the room with a look of respectful pity, and Bill sat down and put his head between his hands. A hollow groan escaped him, and he liked the sound of it and gave another.
He was starting on a third, bringing it up from the soles of his feet, when a voice spoke at his side.
"Good heavens, Bill. What on earth's the matter?"
Jill Wyvern was standing there.
In the interval which had elapsed since her departure from the living room, Jill had rubbed American ointment on Mike the Irish terrier, taken a look at a goldfish belonging to the cook, which had caused anxiety in the kitchen by refusing its ants' eggs, and made a routine tour of the pigs and cows, giving one of the latter a bolus. She had returned to the house agreeably conscious of duty done and looking forward to a chat with her loved one, who, she presumed, would by now be back from his Agricultural Board rounds and in a mood for pleasant dalliance. For even when the Agricultural Board know they have got hold of an exceptionally good man and wish (naturally) to get every possible ounce of work out of him, they are humane enough to let the poor peon call it a day round about the hour of the evening cocktail.
To find him groaning with his head in his hands was something of a shock.
"What on earth's the matter?" she repeated.
Bill had sprung from his chair with a convulsive leap. That loved voice, speaking unexpectedly out of the void when he supposed himself to be alone with his grief, had affected him like a buzz-saw applied to the seat of his trousers. If it had been Captain C. G. Brabazon-Biggar, of the United Rovers Club, Northumberland Avenue, he could not have been much more perturbed.
He gaped at her, quivering in every limb.
Jeeves, had he been present, would have been reminded of Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo.
"Matter?" he said, inserting three m's at the beginning of the word.
Jill was looking at him with grave, speculative eyes. She had that direct, honest gaze which many nice girls have, and as a rule Bill liked it. But at the moment he could have done with something that did not pierce quite so like a red-hot gimlet to his inmost soul. A sense of guilt makes a man allergic to direct, honest gazes.
"Matter?" he said, getting the word shorter and crisper this time. "What do you mean, what's the matter? Nothing's the matter. Why do you ask?"
"You were groaning like a foghorn."
"Oh, that. Touch of neuralgia."
"You've got a headache?"
"Yes, it's been coming on some time. I've had rather an exhausting afternoon."
"Why, aren't the crops rotating properly?
Or are the pigs going in for smaller families?"
"My chief problem today," said Bill dully, "concerned horses."
A quick look of suspicion came into Jill's gaze. Like all nice girls, she had, where the man she loved was concerned, something of the Private Eye about her.
"Have you been betting again?"
Bill stared.
"Me?"
"You gave me your solemn promise you wouldn't. Oh, Bill, you are an idiot.
You're more trouble to look after than a troupe of performing seals. Can't you see it's just throwing money away? Can't you get it into your fat head that the punters haven't a hope against the bookmakers?
I know people are always talking about bringing off fantastic doubles and winning thousands of pounds with a single fiver, but that sort of thing never really happens. What did you say?"
Bill had not spoken. The sound that had proceeded from his twisted lips had been merely a soft moan like that of an emotional red Indian at the stake.
"It happens sometimes," he said hollowly.
"I've heard of cases."
"Well, it couldn't happen to you. Horses just aren't lucky for you."
Bill writhed. The illusion that he was being roasted over a slow fire had become extraordinarily vivid.
"Yes," he said, "I see that now."
Jill's gaze became more direct and penetrating than ever.
"Come clean, Bill. Did you back a loser in the Oaks?"
This was so diametrically opposite to what had actually occurred that Bill perked up a little.
"Of course I didn't."
"You swear?"
"I may begin to at any moment."
"You didn't back anything in the Oaks?"
"Certainly not."
"Then what's the matter?"
"I told you. I've got a headache."
"Poor old thing. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thanks. Jeeves is bringing me a whisky and soda."
"Would a kiss help, while you're waiting?"
"It would save a human life."
Jill kissed him, but absently. She appeared to be thinking.
"Jeeves was with you today, wasn't he?" she said.
"Yes. Yes, Jeeves was along."
"You always take him with you on these expeditions of yours."
"Yes."
"Where do you go?"
"We make the rounds."
"Doing what?"
"Oh, this and that."
"I see. How's the headache?"
"A little better, thanks."
"Good."
There was silence for a moment.
"I used to have headaches a few years ago," said Jill.