“You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used
to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess
that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two
men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem
bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a
brewer’s van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the
accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with
such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately.
The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was
Nicholls and which Jackson. So they collected as much as they could,
and called it Nixon. I remember laughing very much at that story when I
was a child, sir.”