'What does Jeeves suggest?' asked Biffy eagerly.
'Jeeves doesn't suggest anything.'
'But you said it was all right.'
'Jeeves isn't the only thinker in the Wooster home, my lad. I have
taken over your little problem, and I can tell you at once that I have
the situation well in hand.'
'You?' said Biffy.
His tone was far from flattering. It suggested a lack of faith in my
abilities, and my view was that an ounce of demonstration would be
worth a ton of explanation. I shoved the bouquet at him.
'Are you fond of flowers, Biffy?' I said.
'Eh?'
'Smell these.'
Biffy extended the old beak in a careworn sort of way, and I pressed
the bulb as per printed instructions on the label.
I do like getting my money's-worth. Elevenpence-ha'penny the thing had
cost me, and it would have been cheap at double. The advertisement on
the outside of the box had said that its effects were 'indescribably
ludicrous', and I can testify that it was no overstatement. Poor old
Biffy leaped three feet in the air and smashed a small table.
'There!' I said.
The old egg was a trifle incoherent at first, but he found words fairly
soon and began to express himself with a good deal of warmth.
'Calm yourself, laddie,' I said, as he paused for breath. 'It was no
mere jest to pass an idle hour. It was a demonstration. Take this,
Biffy, with an old friend's blessing, refill the bulb, shove it into
Sir Roderick's face, press firmly, and leave the rest to him. I'll
guarantee that in something under three seconds the idea will have
dawned on him that you are not required in his family.'
Biffy stared at me.
'Are you suggesting that I squirt Sir Roderick?'
'Absolutely. Squirt him good. Squirt as you have never squirted before.'
'But--'
He was still yammering at me in a feverish sort of way when there was a
ring at the front-door bell.
'Good Lord!' cried Biffy, quivering like a jelly. 'There he is. Talk to
him while I go and change my shirt.'
I had just time to refill the bulb and shove it beside Biffy's plate,
when the door opened and Sir Roderick came in. I was picking up the
fallen table at the moment, and he started talking brightly to my back.
'Good afternoon. I trust I am not--Mr Wooster!'
I'm bound to say I was not feeling entirely at my ease. There is
something about the man that is calculated to strike terror into the
stoutest heart. If ever there was a bloke at the very mention of whose
name it would be excusable for people to tremble like aspens, that
bloke is Sir Roderick Glossop. He has an enormous bald head, all the
hair which ought to be on it seeming to have run into his eyebrows, and
his eyes go through you like a couple of Death Rays.
'How are you, how are you, how are you?' I said, overcoming a slight
desire to leap backwards out of the window. 'Long time since we met,
what?'
'Nevertheless, I remember you most distinctly, Mr Wooster.'
'That's fine,' I said. 'Old Biffy asked me to come and join you in
mangling a bit of lunch.'
He waggled the eyebrows at me.
'Are you a friend of Charles Biffen?'
'Oh, rather. Been friends for years and years.'
He drew in his breath sharply, and I could see that Biffy's stock had
dropped several points. His eye fell on the floor, which was strewn
with things that had tumbled off the upset table.
'Have you had an accident?' he said.
'Nothing serious,' I explained. 'Old Biffy had some sort of fit or
seizure just now and knocked over the table.'
'A fit!'
'Or seizure.'
'Is he subject to fits?'
I was about to answer, when Biffy hurried in. He had forgotten to brush
his hair, which gave him a wild look, and saw the old boy direct a keen
glance at him. It seemed to me that what you might call the preliminary
spade-work had been most satisfactorily attended to and that the
success of the good old bulb could be in no doubt whatever.
Biffy's man came in with the nose-bags and we sat down to lunch.
* * * * *
It looked at first as though the meal was going to be one of those
complete frosts which occur from time to time in the career of a
constant luncher-out. Biffy, a very C-3 host, contributed nothing to
the feast of reason and flow of soul beyond an occasional hiccup,
and every time I started to pull a nifty, Sir Roderick swung round
on me with such a piercing stare that it stopped me in my tracks.
Fortunately, however, the second course consisted of a chicken
fricassee of such outstanding excellence that the old boy, after
wolfing a plateful, handed up his dinner-pail for a second instalment
and became almost genial.
'I am here this afternoon, Charles,' he said, with what practically
amounted to bonhomie, 'on what I might describe as a mission. Yes, a
mission. This is most excellent chicken.'
'Glad you like it,' mumbled old Biffy.
'Singularly toothsome,' said Sir Roderick, pronging another half ounce.
'Yes, as I was saying, a mission. You young fellows nowadays are, I
know, content to live in the centre of the most wonderful metropolis
the world has seen, blind and indifferent to its many marvels. I
should be prepared--were I a betting man, which I am not--to wager
a considerable sum that you have never in your life visited even so
historic a spot as Westminster Abbey. Am I right?'
Biffy gurgled something about always having meant to.
'Nor the Tower of London?'
No, nor the Tower of London.
'And there exists at this very moment, not twenty minutes by cab
from Hyde Park Corner, the most supremely absorbing and educational
collection of objects, both animate and inanimate, gathered from the
four corners of the Empire, that has ever been assembled in England's
history. I allude to the British Empire Exhibition now situated at
Wembley.'
'A fellow told me one about Wembley yesterday,' I said, to help on
the cheery flow of conversation. 'Stop me if you've heard it before.
Chap goes up to deaf chap outside the exhibition and says, "Is this
Wembley?" "Hey?" says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "Hey?"
says deaf chap. "Is this Wembley?" says chap. "No, Thursday," says deaf
chap. Ha, ha, I mean, what?'
The merry laughter froze on my lips. Sir Roderick sort of just waggled
an eyebrow in my direction and I saw that it was back to the basket for
Bertram. I never met a man who had such a knack of making a fellow feel
like a waste-product.
'Have you yet paid a visit to Wembley, Charles?' he asked. 'No?
Precisely as I suspected. Well, that is the mission on which I am here
this afternoon. Honoria wishes me to take you to Wembley. She says it
will broaden your mind, in which view I am at one with her. We will
start immediately after luncheon.'
Biffy cast an imploring look at me.
'You'll come too, Bertie?'
There was such agony in his eyes that I only hesitated for a second.
A pal is a pal. Besides, I felt that, if only the bulb fulfilled the
high expectations I had formed of it, the merry expedition would be
cancelled in no uncertain manner.
'Oh, rather,' I said.
'We must not trespass on Mr Wooster's good nature,' said Sir Roderick,
looking pretty puff-faced.
'Oh, that's all right,' I said. 'I've been meaning to go to the good
old exhibish for a long time. I'll slip home and change my clothes and
pick you up here in my car.'
There was a silence. Biffy seemed too relieved at the thought of not
having to spend the afternoon alone with Sir Roderick to be capable of
speech, and Sir Roderick was registering silent disapproval. And then
he caught sight of the bouquet by Biffy's plate.
'Ah, flowers,' he said. 'Sweet peas, if I am not in error. A charming
plant, pleasing alike to the eye and the nose.'
I caught Biffy's eye across the table. It was bulging, and a strange
light shone in it.
'Are you fond of flowers, Sir Roderick?' he croaked.
'Extremely.'
'Smell these.'
Sir Roderick dipped his head and sniffed. Biffy's fingers closed
slowly over the bulb. I shut my eyes and clutched the table.
'Very pleasant,' I heard Sir Roderick say. 'Very pleasant indeed.'
I opened my eyes, and there was Biffy leaning back in his chair with
a ghastly look, and the bouquet on the cloth beside him. I realized
what had happened. In that supreme crisis of his life, with his whole
happiness depending on a mere pressure of the fingers, Biffy, the poor
spineless fish, had lost his nerve. My closely reasoned scheme had gone
phut.
Jeeves was fooling about with the geraniums in the sitting-room
window-box when I got home.
'They make a very nice display, sir,' he said, cocking a paternal eye
at the things.
'Don't talk to me about flowers,' I said. 'Jeeves, I know now how a
general feels when he plans out some great scientific movement and his
troops let him down at the eleventh hour.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'Yes,' I said, and told him what had happened.
He listened thoughtfully.
'A somewhat vacillating and changeable young gentleman, Mr Biffen,' was
his comment when I had finished. 'Would you be requiring me for the
remainder of the afternoon, sir?'
'No. I'm going to Wembley. I just came back to change and get the car.
Produce some fairly durable garments which can stand getting squashed
by the many-headed, Jeeves, and then phone to the garage.'
'Very good, sir. The grey cheviot lounge will, I fancy, be suitable.
Would it be too much if I asked you to give me a seat in the car, sir?
I had thought of going to Wembley myself this afternoon.'
'Eh? Oh, all right.'
'Thank you very much, sir.'
I got dressed, and we drove round to Biffy's flat. Biffy and Sir
Roderick got in at the back and Jeeves climbed into the front seat next
to me. Biffy looked so ill-attuned to an afternoon's pleasure that my
heart bled for the blighter and I made one last attempt to appeal to
Jeeves's better feelings.
'I must say, Jeeves,' I said, 'I'm dashed disappointed in you.'
'I am sorry to hear that, sir.'
'Well, I am. Dashed disappointed. I do think you might rally round. Did
you see Mr Biffen's face?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, then.'
'If you will pardon my saying so, sir, Mr Biffen has surely only
himself to thank if he has entered upon matrimonial obligations which
do not please him.'
'You're talking absolute rot, Jeeves. You know as well as I do that
Honoria Glossop is an Act of God. You might just as well blame a fellow
for getting run over by a truck.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Absolutely yes. Besides, the poor ass wasn't in a condition to resist.
He told me all about it. He had lost the only girl he had ever loved,
and you know what a man's like when that happens to him.'
'How was that, sir?'
'Apparently he fell in love with some girl on the boat going over to
New York, and they parted at the Customs sheds, arranging to meet next
day at her hotel. Well, you know what Biffy's like. He forgets his own
name half the time. He never made a note of the address, and it passed
clean out of his mind. He went about in a sort of trance, and suddenly
woke up to find that he was engaged to Honoria Glossop.'
'I did not know of this, sir.'
'I don't suppose anybody knows of it except me. He told me when I was
in Paris.'
'I should have supposed it would have been feasible to make inquiries,
sir.'
'That's what I said. But he had forgotten her name.'
'That sounds remarkable, sir.'
'I said that too. But it's a fact. All he remembered was that her
Christian name was Mabel. Well, you can't go scouring New York for a
girl named Mabel, what?'
'I appreciate the difficulty, sir.'
'Well, there it is, then.'
'I see, sir.'
We had got into a mob of vehicles outside the Exhibition by this
time, and, some tricky driving being indicated, I had to suspend the
conversation. We parked ourselves eventually and went in. Jeeves
drifted away, and Sir Roderick took charge of the expedition. He headed
for the Palace of Industry, with Biffy and myself trailing behind.
Well, you know, I have never been much of a lad for exhibitions. The
citizenry in the mass always rather puts me off, and after I have been
shuffling along with the multitude for a quarter of an hour or so I
feel as if I were walking on hot bricks. About this particular binge,
too, there seemed to me a lack of what you might call human interest. I
mean to say, millions of people, no doubt, are so constituted that they
scream with joy and excitement at the spectacle of a stuffed porcupine
fish or a glass jar of seeds from Western Australia--but not Bertram.
No; if you will take the word of one who would not deceive you, not
Bertram. By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast village and
were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to my
shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of that rather jolly
Planters' Bar in the West Indian section. Sir Roderick had whizzed us
past this at a high rate of speed, it touching no chord in him; but I
had been able to observe that there was a sprightly sportsman behind
the counter mixing things out of bottles and stirring them up with a
stick in long glasses that seemed to have ice in them, and the urge
came upon me to see more of this man. I was about to drop away from
the main body and become a straggler, when something pawed at my coat
sleeve. It was Biffy, and he had the air of one who has had about
sufficient.
There are certain moments in life when words are not needed. I looked
at Biffy, Biffy looked at me. A perfect understanding linked our two
souls.
'?'
'!'
Three minutes later we had joined the Planters.
I have never been in the West Indies, but I am in a position to state
that in certain of the fundamentals of life they are streets ahead
of our European civilization. The man behind the counter, as kindly
a bloke as I ever wish to meet, seemed to guess our requirements the
moment we hove in view. Scarcely had our elbows touched the wood before
he was leaping to and fro, bringing down a new bottle with each leap.
A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it
contains at least seven ingredients, and I'm not saying, mind you, that
he isn't right. The man behind the bar told us the things were called
Green Swizzles; and, if ever I marry and have a son, Green Swizzle
Wooster is the name that will go down on the register, in memory of the
day his father's life was saved at Wembley.
After the third, Biffy breathed a contented sigh.
'Where do you think Sir Roderick is?' he said.
'Biffy, old thing,' I replied frankly, 'I'm not worrying.'
'Bertie, old bird,' said Biffy, 'nor am I.'
He sighed again, and broke a long silence by asking the man for a straw.
'Bertie,' he said, 'I've just remembered something rather rummy. You
know Jeeves?'