P. G. WODEHOUSE
Eggs, Beans and Crumpets
BARRIE &JENKINS
CONTENTS
All’s Well with Bingo
Bingo and the Peke Crisis
The Editor Regrets
Sonny Boy
Anselm Gets His Chance
Romance at Droitgate Spa
A Bit of Luck for Mabel
Buttercup Day
Ukridge and the Old Stepper
All’s Well with Bingo
A BEAN and a Crumpet were in the smoking-room of the Drones Club having a quick one before lunch, when an Egg who had been seated at the writing-table in the corner rose and approached them.
“How many ‘r’s in ‘intolerable’?” he asked.
“Two,” said the Crumpet. “Why?”
“I am writing a strong letter to the Committee,” explained the Egg, “drawing their attention to the intolerable … Great Scot!” he cried, breaking off. “There he goes again!”
A spasm contorted his face. Outside in the passage a fresh young voice had burst into a gay song with a good deal of vo-de-o-de-o about it. The Bean cocked an attentive ear as it died away in the direction of the dining-room.
“Who is this linnet?” he inquired.
“Bingo Little, blast him. He’s always singing nowadays. That’s what I’m writing my strong letter to the Committee about the intolerable nuisance of this incessant heartiness of his. Because it isn’t only his singing. He slaps backs. Only yesterday he came sneaking up behind me in the bar and sloshed me between the shoulder-blades, saying ‘Aha!’ as he did so. Might have choked me. How many ‘s’ in ‘incessant’?”
“Three,” said the Crumpet.
“Thanks,” said the Egg.
He returned to the writing-table. The Bean seemed perplexed.
“Odd,” he said. “Very odd. How do you account for young Bingo carrying on like this?”
“Just joie de vivre.”
“But he’s married. Didn’t he marry some female novelist or other?”
“That’s right. Rosie M. Banks, authoress of Only A Factory Girl, Merveyne Keene, Clubman, ‘Twas Once In May, and other works. You see her name everywhere. I understand she makes a packet with the pen.”
“I didn’t know married men had any joie de vivre.”
“Not many, of course. But Bingo’s union has been an exceptionally happy one. He and the other half of the sketch have hit it off from the start like a couple of love-birds.”
“Well, he oughtn’t to slap backs about it.”
“You don’t know the inside facts. Bingo is no mere wanton back-slapper. What has made him that way at the moment is the fact that he recently had a most merciful escape. There was within a toucher of being very serious trouble in the home.”
“But you said they were like a couple of love-birds.”
“Quite. But even with love-birds circumstances can arise which will cause the female love-bird to get above herself and start throwing her weight about. If Mrs. Bingo had got on Bingo what at one time it appeared inevitable that she must get on him, it would have kept her in conversation for the remainder of their married lives. She is a sweet little thing, one of the best, but women are women and I think that there can be no doubt that she would have continued to make passing allusions to the affair right up to the golden wedding day. The way Bingo looks at it is that he has escaped the fate that is worse than death, and I am inclined to agree with him.”
The thing started one morning when Bingo returned to the love-nest for a bite of lunch after taking the Pekinese for a saunter. He was in the hall trying to balance an umbrella on the tip of his nose, his habit when at leisure, and Mrs. Bingo came out of her study with a wrinkled brow and a couple of spots of ink on her chin.
“Oh, there you are,” she said. “Bingo, have you ever been to Monte Carlo?”
Bingo could not help wincing a little at this. Unwittingly, the woman had touched an exposed nerve. The thing he had always wanted to do most in the world was to go to Monte Carlo, for he had a system which couldn’t fail to clean out the Casino; but few places, as you are probably aware, are more difficult for a married man to sneak off to.
“No,” he said with a touch of moodiness. Then, recovering his usual sunny aplomb: “Look,” he said. “Watch, old partner in sickness and in health. I place the umbrella so. Then, maintaining a perfect equilibrium …”
“I want you to go there at once,” said Mrs. Bingo.
Bingo dropped the umbrella. You could have knocked him down with a toothpick. For a moment, he tells me, he thought that he must be dreaming some beautiful dream.
“It’s for my book. I can’t get on without some local colour.”
Bingo grasped the gist. Mrs. Bingo had often discussed this business of local colour with him. Nowadays he knew, if you are providing wholesome fiction for the masses, you have simply got to get your atmosphere right. The customers have become cagey. They know too much. Chance your arm with the mise en scēne, and before you can say “What ho,” you’ve made some bloomer and people are writing you nasty letters, beginning “Dear
Madam, Are you aware…?”
“And I can’t go myself. There’s the Pen and Ink dinner on Friday, and on Tuesday the Writers’ Club is giving a luncheon to Mrs. Carrie Melrose Bopp, the American novelist. And any moment now I shall be coming to the part where Lord Peter Shipbourne breaks the bank. So do you think you could possibly go, Bingo darling?”
Bingo was beginning to understand how the Israelites must have felt when that manna started descending in the wilderness.
“Of course I’ll go, old egg,” he said heartily. “Anything I can–”
His voice trailed away., A sudden thought had come, biting into his soul like acid. He had remembered that he hadn’t a bean to his name. He had lost every penny he possessed two weeks before on a horse called Bounding Beauty which was running— if you could call it running—in the two-thirty at Haydock Park.
The trouble with old Bingo is that he will allow his cooler judgment to be warped by dreams and omens. Nobody had known better than he that by the ruling of the form-book Bounding Beauty hadn’t a chance: but on the eve of the race he had a nightmare in which he saw his Uncle Wilberforce dancing the rumba in the nude on the steps of the National Liberal Club and, like a silly ass, accepted this as a bit of stable information. And bang, as I say, had gone every penny he had in the world.
For a moment he reeled a bit. Then he brightened. Rosie, he reasoned, would scarcely expect him to undertake an irksome job like sweating all the way over to Monte Carlo without financing the tedious expedition.
“Of course, of course, of course,” he said. “Yes, rather! I’ll start to-morrow. And about expenses. I suppose a hundred quid would see me through, though two would be still better, and even three wouldn’t hurt. …”
“Oh, no, that’s all right,” said Mrs. Bingo. “You won’t need any money.”
Bingo gulped like an ostrich swallowing a brass door-knob. “Not … need … any … money?”
“Except a pound or two for tips and so on. Everything is arranged. Dora Spurgeon is at Cannes, and I’m going to ‘phone her to get you a room at the Hotel de Paris at Monte Carlo, and all the bills will be sent to my bank.”
Bingo had to gulp a couple more times before he was able to continue holding up his end of the duologue.
“But I take it,” he said in a low voice, “that you want me to hobnob with the international spies and veiled women and so forth and observe their habits carefully, don’t you? This will run into money. You know what international spies are. It’s champagne for them every time, and no half-bots, either.”
“You needn’t bother about the spies. I can imagi
ne them. All I want is the local colour. An exact description of the Rooms and the Square and all that. Besides, if you had a lot of money, you might be tempted to gamble.”
“What!” cried Bingo. “Gamble? Me?”
“No, no,” said Mrs. Bingo remorsefully. “I’m wronging you, of course. Still, I think I’d sooner we did it in the way I’ve arranged.”
So there you have the position of affairs, and you will not be surprised to learn that poor old Bingo made an indifferent lunch, toying with the minced chicken and pushing the roly-poly pudding away untasted. His manner during the meal was distrait, for his brain was racing like a dynamo. Somehow he had got to get the stuff. But how? How?
Bingo, you see, is not a man who finds it easy to float a really substantial loan. People know too much about his financial outlook. He will have it in sackfuls some day, of course, but until he realizes on his Uncle Wilberforce—who is eighty-six and may quite easily go to par—the wolf, so far as he is concerned, will always be in or about the vestibule. The public is aware of this, and it makes the market sluggish.
It seemed to him, brooding over the thing, that his only prospect for the sort of sum he required was Oofy Prosser. Oofy, while not an easy parter, is a millionaire, and a millionaire was what he even required. So round about cocktail time he buzzed off to the club, only to be informed that Oofy was abroad. The disappointment need was so severe that he was compelled to go to the smoking-room and have a restorative. I was there when he came in, and so haggard and fishlike was his demeanour that I asked him what was up, and he told me all.
“You couldn’t lend me between twenty and twenty-five, or, better still, thirty quid, could you?” he said.
I said “No, I couldn’t,” and he heaved a long, low, quivering sigh.
“And so it goes on,” he said. “That’s Life. Here I am with this unique opportunity of making a stupendous fortune, and crippled for lack of capital. Did you ever hear of a chap called Garcia?”
“No.”
“Skinned the Monte Carlo Administration of a hundred thousand quid in his day. Ever hear of a chap called Darnborough?”
“No.”
“Eighty-three thousand of the best was what he pocketed. Did you ever hear of a chap called Owers?”
“No.”
“His winning streak lasted for more than twenty years. These three birds of whom I speak simply went to Monte Carlo and lolled back in their chairs with fat cigars, and the Casino just thrust the money on them. And I don’t suppose any of them had a system like mine. Oh, hell, a thousand curses,” said Bingo.
Well, there isn’t much you can say when a fellow’s in the depths like that. The only thing I could suggest was that he should put some little trinket up the spout temporarily. His cigarette-case, for instance, I said; and it was then that I learned that that really cigarette-case of his is not the solid gold we have always imagined. Tin, really. And except for the cigarette-case, it appeared, the only trinket he had ever possessed was a diamond brooch which, quite being in funds at the time as the result of a fortunate speculation at Catterick Bridge, he had bought Mrs. Bingo for a birthday present.
It all seemed pretty hopeless, accordingly, so I merely offered
my heartfelt sympathy and another snootful. And next morning he steamed off on the eleven o’clock express, despair in his soul and in his pocket a notebook, four pencils, his return ticket, and about three pounds for tips and so on. And shortly before lunch on the following day he was alighting at Monte Carlo station.
I don’t know if you remember a song some years ago that went Ti-um-ti-um-ti-um-ti-um, Ti-um-ti-um-ti-ay,” and then, after a bit more of that, finished up:
Ti-um-ti-um-ti-um-ti-UM,
The curse of an aching heart.
You don’t hear it much nowadays, but at one time you were extraordinarily apt to get it shot at you by bassos at smoking concerts and entertainments in aid of the Church Organ Fund in the old village hall. They would pause for a moment after the “UM” and take a breath that came up from their ankle bones, and then:
It’s the curse of an A-ching heart.
Most unpleasant, of course, the whole thing, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only the phrase absolutely puts in a nutshell the way poor old Bingo felt during his first two days at Monte Carlo. He had an aching heart, and he cursed like billy-o. And I’m not surprised, poor chap, for he was suffering severe torments.
All day long, though it was like twisting the knife in the wound, he would wander through the Rooms, trying out that system of his on paper; and the more he tried it out, the more iron-clad it revealed itself. Simply couldn’t lose.
By bedtime on the second night he found that, if he had been playing in hundred-franc chips, he would have been no less than two hundred and fifty pounds ahead—just like that. In short, there was all that stuff—his for the picking up, as you might say—and he couldn’t get it.
Garcia would have got it. Darnborough would have got it. So would Owers. But he couldn’t. Simply, mark you, for lack of a trifling spot of initial capital which a fellow like Oofy Prosser could have slipped him and never felt it. Pretty bitter.
And then, on the third morning, as he sat glancing through the newspaper over the breakfast-table, he saw a news item which brought him up in his chair with a jerk, choking over his coffee.
Among the recent arrivals at the Hotel Magnifique at Nice, it said, were Their Serene Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Graustark, His Majesty the ex-King of Ruritania, Lord Percy Poffin, the Countess of Goffin, Major-General Sir Everard Slurk, K.V.O., and Mr. Prosser.
Well, of course, it might be some other brand of Prosser, but Bingo didn’t think so. An hotel where Serene Highnesses were to be found was just the place for which a bally snob like Oofy would have made a bee-line. He rushed to the telephone and was presently in communication with the concierge.
“Hullo? Yes?” said the concierge. “This is the Hotel Magnifique. Hall porter speaking.”
“Dites-moi” said Bingo. “Esker-vous avez dans votre hotel un monsieur nomme Prosser?”
“Yes, sir. Quite correct. There is a Mr. Prosser staying in the hotel.”
“Est-il un oiseau avec beaucoup de … Oh, hell, what’s the French for ‘pimples’?”
“The word you are trying to find is bouton,” said the concierge. “Yes, sir, Mr. Prosser is liberally pimpled.”
“Then put me through to his room,” said Bingo. And pretty soon he heard a sleepy and familiar voice hullo-ing.
“Hullo, Oofy, old man,” he cried. “This is Bingo Little.”
“Oh, my God!” said Oofy, and something in his manner warned Bingo that it would be well to proceed with snakiness and caution.
There were, he knew, two things which rendered Oofy Prosser a difficult proposition for the ear-biter. In the first place, owing to his habit of mopping it up at late parties, he nearly always had a dyspeptic headache. In the second place, his position as the official moneyed man of the Drones Club had caused him to become shy and wary, like a bird that’s been a good deal shot over. You can’t touch a chap like that on the telephone at ten in the morning. It would, he perceived, if solid results were to be obtained, be necessary to sweeten Oofy.
“I just this minute saw in the paper that you were in these parts, Oofy, old man. A wonderful surprise it was. ‘Gosh,’ I said. ‘Golly,’ I said. ‘Dear old Oofy,’ I said. ‘Well, well, well!’ “
“Get on with it,” said Oofy. “What do you want?”
“Why, to give you lunch, of course, old chap,” said Bingo.
Yes, he had made the great decision. That money which he had been earmarking for tips must be diverted to another end. It might lead to his having to sneak out of the hotel at the conclusion of his visit with his face scarlet and his ears hanging down, but the risk had to be taken. Nothing venture, nothing have.
At the other end of the telephone he heard a sort of choking gasp. “There must be something wrong with this wire,” said Oofy. “It
sounds just as if you were saying you want to give me lunch.”
“So I am.”
“Give me lunch?”
“That’s right.”
“What, pay the bill?”
“Yes.”
There was a silence.
“I must send this to Ripley,” said Oofy.
“Ripley?”
“The Believe-it-or-not man.”
“Oh!” said Bingo. He was not quite sure that he liked Oofy’s attitude, but he remained sunny. “Well, where and when? What time? What place?”
“We may as well lunch here. Come fairly early, because I’m going to the races this afternoon.”
“Right,” said Bingo. “I’ll be on the mat at one sharp.”
And at one sharp there he was, his little all in his pocket. His emotions, he tells me, as he drove in on the Monte Carlo-Nice ‘bus, were mixed. One moment, he was hoping that Oofy would have his usual dyspeptic headache, because that would blunt his, Oofy’s, appetite and enable him, Bingo, to save something out of the wreck: the next, he was reminding himself that an Oofy with dull, shooting pains about the temples would be less likely to come across. It was all very complex.
Well, as it turned out, Oofy’s appetite was the reverse of blunted. The extraordinary position in which he found himself—guest and not host to a fellow-member of the Drones—seemed to have put an edge on it. It is not too much to say that from the very outset he ate like a starving python. The light, casual way in which he spoke to the head waiter about hot-house grapes and asparagus froze Bingo to the marrow. And when—from force of habit, no doubt—he called for the wine list and ordered a nice, dry champagne, it began to look to Bingo as if the bill for this binge was going to resemble something submitted to Congress by President Roosevelt in aid of the American Farmer.
However, though once or twice—notably when Oofy started wading into the caviare—he had to clench his fists and summon up all his iron self-control, he did not on the whole repine. Each moment, as the feast proceeded, he could see his guest becoming more and more mellow. It seemed merely a question of time before the milk of human kindness would come gushing out of him as if the dam had burst. Feeling that a cigar and liqueur ought just about to do the trick, Bingo ordered them: and Oofy, unbuttoning the last three buttons of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair.