“You want to stand a bit farther away from it,” I said.
“You’re perfectly right!” he snorted. “I do! I want to stand so far
away from it that I can’t see the thing with a telescope!” He turned on
Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk
of meat. “And this—this—is what you have been wasting your time and my
money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn’t let you paint a house
of mine! I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a competent
worker, and this—this—this extract from a comic coloured supplement is
the result!” He swung towards the door, lashing his tail and growling
to himself. “This ends it! If you wish to continue this foolery of
pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for idleness,
please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report at my
office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and start
in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should
have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent—not another cent—not
another—Boosh!”
Then the door closed, and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out
of the bombproof shelter.
“Corky, old top!” I whispered faintly.
Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was
a hunted look in his eye.
“Well, that finishes it!” he muttered brokenly.
“What are you going to do?”
“Do? What can I do? I can’t stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You
heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I knew exactly how he felt about
the office. I don’t know when I’ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It
was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who’s just
been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
“If I might make a suggestion, sir!”
It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at
the picture. Upon my word, I can’t give you a better idea of the
shattering effect of Corky’s uncle Alexander when in action than by
saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves
was there.
“I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr. Digby
Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him?
He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgnorth. It was a favourite
saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him
use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which
he promoted.”
“Jeeves,” I said, “what on earth are you talking about?”
“I mentioned Mr. Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a
parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not
despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o,
guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was
advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a
billiard-ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial
fortune that Mr. Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage
for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr. Corcoran looks
into the matter, he will find, like Mr. Thistleton, that there is
always a way. Mr. Worple himself suggested the solution of the
difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an
extract from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a
very valuable one, sir. Mr. Corcoran’s portrait may not have pleased
Mr. Worple as a likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that
editors would gladly consider it as a foundation for a series of
humorous drawings. If Mr. Corcoran will allow me to make the
suggestion, his talent has always been for the humorous. There is
something about this picture—something bold and vigorous, which arrests
the attention. I feel sure it would be highly popular.”
Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking
noise with his mouth. He seemed completely overwrought.
And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
“Corky, old man!” I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor
blighter was hysterical.
He began to stagger about all over the floor.
“He’s right! The man’s absolutely right! Jeeves, you’re a life-saver!
You’ve hit on the greatest idea of the age! Report at the office on
Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I’ll buy the business if I
feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the _Sunday
Star_. He’ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the other day how
hard it was to get a good new series. He’ll give me anything I ask for
a real winner like this. I’ve got a gold-mine. Where’s my hat? I’ve got
an income for life! Where’s that confounded hat? Lend me a fiver,
Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!”
Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal
muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to
smiling.
“If I might make the suggestion, Mr. Corcoran—for a title of the series
which you have in mind—‘The Adventures of Baby Blobbs.’”
Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way.
Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
* * * * *
“Jeeves,” I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished
looking at the comic section of the _Sunday Star_. “I’m an optimist. I
always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare
and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn
and there’s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up
on the roundabouts. Look at Mr. Corcoran, for instance. There was a
fellow, one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To
all appearances he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now.
Have you seen these pictures?”
“I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you,
sir. Extremely diverting.”
“They have made a big hit, you know.”
“I anticipated it, sir.”