“I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew’s business, Mr. Wooster?”
“Oh, just business, don’t you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know.” I slid for the door. “Awfully sorry to leave you, but I’ve got to meet some of the lads elsewhere.”
Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
“Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?
“He’s upstairs now, having some tea.”
“What does he think of it all?”
“He’s absolutely rattled.”
“Ripping! I’ll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See you later.”
“Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy.”
He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and going down the other.
It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for dinner.
“Where’s everybody, Jeeves?” I said, finding no little feet pattering about the place. “Gone out?”
“His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective was Grant’s Tomb.”
“I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are going—what?”
“Sir?”
“I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans.”
“Not altogether, sir.”
“What’s his trouble now?”
“The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily, sir.”
“Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in business, and all that sort of thing?”
“Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr. Bickersteth’s monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary assistance.”
“Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful.”
“Somewhat disturbing, sir.”
“I never expected anything like this!”
“I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir.”
“I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?”
“Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir.”
My heart bled for Bicky.
“We must do something, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you think of anything?”
“Not at the moment, sir.”
“There must be something we can do.”
“It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir—as I believe I mentioned to you once before—the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the occasion—he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his title—when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have generally found his lordship’s aphorism based on sound foundations. No doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth’s difficulty, sir.”
“Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!”
“I will spare no pains, sir.”
I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there, hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the newspaper chappies call “some blunt instrument.”
“This is a bit thick, old thing—what!” I said.
He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact that it hadn’t anything in it.
“I’m done, Bertie!” he said.
He had another go at the glass. It didn’t seem to do him any good.
“If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month’s money was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I’ve been reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a hen—call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs. Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have more chickens. Why, in no time you’d have the place covered knee-deep in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You’d make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!” He had begun to get quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. “But, of course, it’s no good,” he said, “because I haven’t the cash.”