'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
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 bomb-proof 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 Bridgworth. 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 five,
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.'