The passage-window looked down on to a broad sort of paved courtyard, which ended after about twenty yards in an archway through a high wall. Beyond this archway you got to a strip of the drive, which curved round for another thirty yards or so, till it was lost behind a thick shrubbery. I put myself in the stripling’s place and thought what steps I would take with a second footman after me. There was only one thing to do – leg it for the shrubbery and take cover; which meant that at least fifty yards would have to be covered – an excellent test. If good old Harold could fight off the second footman’s challenge long enough to allow him to reach the bushes, there wasn’t a choir-boy in England who could give him thirty yards in the hundred. I waited, all of a twitter, for what seemed like hours, and then suddenly there was a confused noise without, and something round and blue and buttony shot through the back door and buzzed for the archway like a mustang. And about two seconds later out came the second footman, going his hardest.
There was nothing to it. Absolutely nothing. The field never had a chance. Long before the footman reached the half-way mark, Harold was in the bushes, throwing stones. I came away from the window thrilled to the marrow; and when I met Jeeves on the stairs I was so moved that I nearly grasped his hand.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘no discussion! The Wooster shirt goes on this boy!’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Jeeves.
The worst of these country meetings is that you can’t plunge as heavily as you would like when you get a good thing, because it alarms the Ring. Steggles, though pimpled, was, as I have indicated, no chump, and if I had invested all I wanted to he would have put two and two together. I managed to get a good solid bet down for the syndicate, however, though it did make him look thoughtful. I heard in the next few days that he had been making searching inquiries in the village concerning Harold; but nobody could tell him anything, and eventually he came to the conclusion, I suppose, that I must be having a long shot on the strength of that thirty-yards start. Public opinion wavered between Jimmy Goode, receiving ten yards, at seven-to-two, and Alexander Bartlett, with six yards start, at eleven-to-four. Willie Chambers, scratch, was offered to the public at two-to-one but found no takers.
We were taking no chances on the big event, and directly we had got our money on at a nice hundred-to-twelve, Harold was put into strict training. It was a wearing business, and I can understand now why most of the big trainers are grim, silent men, who look as though they had suffered. The kid wanted constant watching. It was no good talking to him about honour and glory and how proud his mother would be when he wrote and told her he had won a real cup – the moment blighted Harold discovered that training meant knocking off pastry, taking exercise, and keeping away from the cigarettes, he was all against it, and it was only by unceasing vigilance that we managed to keep him in any shape at all. It was the diet that was the stumbling-block. As far as exercise went, we could generally arrange for a sharp dash every morning with the assistance of the second footman. It ran into money, of course, but that couldn’t be helped. Still, when a kid has simply to wait till the butler’s back is turned to have the run of the pantry, and has only to nip into the smoking-room to collect a handful of the best Turkish, training becomes a rocky job. We could only hope that on the day his natural stamina would pull him through.
And then one evening young Bingo came back from the links with a disturbing story. He had been in the habit of giving Harold mild exercise in the afternoons by taking him out as a caddie.
At first he seemed to think it humorous, the poor chump! He bubbled over with merry mirth as he began his tale.
‘I say, rather funny this afternoon,’ he said. ‘You ought to have seen Steggles’s face.’
‘Seen Steggles’s face? What for?’
‘When he saw young Harold sprint, I mean.’
I was filled with a grim foreboding of an awful doom.
‘Good heavens! You didn’t let Harold sprint in front of Steggles?’
Young Bingo’s jaw dropped.
‘I never thought of that,’ he said, gloomily. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I was playing a round with Steggles, and after we’d finished we went into the club-house for a drink, leaving Harold with the clubs outside. In about five minutes we came out, and there was the kid on the gravel practising swings with Steggle’s driver and a stone. When he saw us coming, the kid dropped the club and was over the horizon like a streak. Steggles was absolutely dumbfounded. And I must say it was a revelation to me. The kid certainly gave of his best. Of course, it’s a nuisance in a way; but I don’t see, on second thoughts,’ said Bingo, brightening up, ‘what it matters. We’re in at a good price. We’ve nothing to lose by the kid’s form becoming known. I take it he will start odds-on, but that doesn’t affect us.’
I looked at Jeeves. Jeeves looked at me.
‘It affects us all right if he doesn’t start at all.’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Bingo.
‘If you ask me,’ I said, ‘I think Steggles will try to nobble him before the race.’
‘Good Lord! I never thought of that!’ Bingo blenched. ‘You don’t think he would really do it?’
‘I think he would have a jolly good try. Steggles is a bad man. From now on, Jeeves, we must watch Harold like hawks.’
‘Undoubtedly, sir.’
‘Ceaseless vigilance, what?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘You wouldn’t care to sleep in his room, Jeeves?’
‘No, sir, I should not.’
‘No, nor would I, if it comes to that. But dash it all,’ I said, ‘we’re letting ourselves get rattled! We’re losing our nerve. This won’t do. How can Steggles possibly get at Harold, even if he wants to?’
There was no cheering young Bingo up. He’s one of those birds who simply leap at the morbid view, if you give them half a chance.
‘There are all sorts of ways of nobbling favourites,’ he said, in a sort of death-bed voice. ‘You ought to read some of the racing novels. In Pipped on the Post Lord Jasper Maulevereras near as a toucher outed Bonny Betsy by bribing the head lad to slip a cobra into her saddle the night before the Derby!’
‘What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?’
‘Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake.’
‘Still, unceasing vigilance, Jeeves.’
‘Most certainly, sir.’
I must say I got a bit fed up with young Bingo in the next few days. It’s all very well for a fellow with a big winner in his stable to exercise proper care, but in my opinion Bingo overdid it. The blighter’s mind appeared to be absolutely saturated with racing fiction; and in stories of that kind, as far as I could make out, no horse is ever allowed to start in a race without at least a dozen attempts to put it out of action. He stuck to Harold like a plaster. Never let the unfortunate kid out of his sight. Of course, it meant a lot to the poor old egg if he could collect on this race, because it would give him enough money to chuck his tutoring job and get back to London; but all the same, he needn’t have woken me up at three in the morning twice running – once to tell me we ought to cook Harold’s food ourselves to prevent doping: the other time to say that he had heard mysterious noises in the shrubbery. But he reached the limit, in my opinion, when he insisted on my going to evening service on Sunday, the day before the sports.
‘Why on earth?’ I said, never being much of a lad for evensong.
‘Well, I can’t go myself. I shan’t be here. I’ve got to go to London today with young Egbert.’ Egbert was Lord Wickhammersley’s son, the one Bingo was tutoring. ‘He’s going for a visit down in Kent, and I’ve got to see him off at Charing Cross. It’s an infernal nuisance. I shan’t be back till Monday afternoon. In fact, I shall miss most of the sports, I expect. Everything, therefore, depends on you, Bertie.’
‘But why should either of us go to evening serv
ice?’
‘Ass! Harold sings in the choir, doesn’t he?’
‘What about it? I can’t stop him dislocating his neck over a high note, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’
‘Fool! Steggles sings in the choir too. There may be dirty work after the service.’
‘What absolute rot!’
‘Is it?’ said young Bingo. ‘Well, let me tell you that in Jenny, the Girl Jockey, the villain kidnapped the boy who was to ride the favourite the night before the big race, and he was the only one who understood and could control the horse, and if the heroine hadn’t dressed up in riding things and –’
‘Oh, all right, all right. But, if there’s any danger, it seems to me the simplest thing would be for Harold not to turn out on Sunday evening.’
‘He must turn out. You seem to think the infernal kid is a monument of rectitude, beloved by all. He’s got the shakiest reputation of any kid in the village. He’s played hookey from the choir so often that the vicar told him, if one more thing happened, he would fire him out. Nice chumps we should look if he was scratched the night before the race!’
Well, of course, that being so, there was nothing for it but to toddle along.
There’s something about evening service in a country church that makes a fellow feel drowsy and peaceful. Sort of end-of-a-perfect-day feeling. Old Heppenstall was up in the pulpit, and he has a kind of regular, bleating delivery that assists thought. They had left the door open, and the air was full of a mixed scent of trees and honeysuckle and mildew and villagers’ Sunday clothes. As far as the eye could reach, you could see farmers propped up in restful attitudes, breathing heavily; and the children in the congregation who had fidgeted during the earlier part of the proceedings were now lying back in a surfeited sort of coma. The last rays of the setting sun shone through the stained-glass windows, birds were twittering in the trees, the women’s dresses crackled gently in the stillness. Peaceful. That’s what I’m driving at. I felt peaceful. Everybody felt peaceful. And that is why the explosion, when it came, sounded like the end of all things.
I call it an explosion, because that was what it seemed like when it broke loose. One moment a dreamy hush was all over the place, broken only by old Heppenstall talking about our duty to our neighbours; and then, suddenly, a sort of piercing, shrieking squeal that got you right between the eyes and ran all the way down your spine and out at the soles of your feet.
‘EE-ee-ee-ee-ee! Oo-ee! Ee-ee-ee-ee!’
It sounded like about six hundred pigs having their tails twisted simultaneously, but it was simply the kid Harold, who appeared to be having some species of fit. He was jumping up and down and slapping at the back of his neck. And about every other second he would take a deep breath and give out another of the squeals.
Well, I mean, you can’t do that sort of thing in the middle of the sermon during evening service without exciting remark. The congregation came out of its trance with a jerk, and climbed on the pews to get a better view. Old Heppenstall stopped in the middle of a sentence and spun round. And a couple of vergers with great presence of mind bounded up the aisle like leopards, collected Harold, still squealing, and marched him out. They disappeared into the vestry, and I grabbed my hat and legged it round to the stage-door, full of apprehension and what not. I couldn’t think what the deuce could have happened, but somewhere dimly behind the proceedings there seemed to me to lurk the hand of the blighter Steggles.
By the time I got there and managed to get someone to open the door, which was locked, the service seemed to be over. Old Heppenstall was standing in the middle of a crowd of choir-boys and vergers and sextons and what not, putting the wretched Harold through it with no little vim. I had come in at the tail-end of what must have been a fairly fruity oration.
‘Wretched boy! How dare you –’
‘I got a sensitive skin!’
‘This is no time to talk about your skin –’
‘Somebody put a beetle down my back!’
‘Absurd!’
‘I felt it wriggling –’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Sounds pretty thin, doesn’t it?’ said someone at my side.
It was Steggles, dash him. Clad in a snowy surplice or cassock, or whatever they call it, and wearing an expression of grave concern, the blighter had the cold, cynical crust to look me in the eyeball without a blink.
‘Did you put a beetle down his neck?’ I cried.
‘Me!’ said Steggles. ‘Me!’
Old Heppenstall was putting on the black cap.
‘I do not credit a word of your story, wretched boy! I have warned you before, and now the time has come to act. You cease from this moment to be a member of my choir. Go, miserable child!’
Steggles plucked at my sleeve.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘those bets, you know – I’m afraid you lose your money, dear old boy. It’s a pity you didn’t put it on SP. I always think SP’s the only safe way.’
I gave him one look. Not a bit of good, of course.
‘And they talk about the Purity of the Turf!’ I said. And I meant it to sting, by Jove!
Jeeves received the news bravely, but I think the man was a bit rattled beneath the surface.
‘An ingenious young gentleman, Mr Steggles, sir.’
‘A bally swindler, you mean.’
‘Perhaps that would be a more exact description. However, these things will happen on the Turf, and it is useless to complain.’
‘I wish I had your sunny disposition, Jeeves!’
Jeeves bowed.
‘We now rely, then, it would seem, sir, almost entirely on Mrs Penworthy. Should she justify Mr Little’s encomiums and show real class in the Mothers’ Sack Race, our gains will just balance our losses.’
‘Yes; but that’s not much consolation when you’ve been looking forward to a big win.’
‘It is just possible that we may still find ourselves on the right side of the ledger after all, sir. Before Mr Little left, I persuaded him to invest a small sum for the syndicate of which you were kind enough to make me a member, sir, on the Girls’ Egg and Spoon Race.’
‘On Sarah Mills?’
‘No, sir. On a long-priced outsider. Little Prudence Baxter, sir, the child of his lordship’s head gardener. Her father assures me she has a very steady hand. She is accustomed to bring him a mug of beer from the cottage each afternoon, and he informs me she has never spilled a drop.’
Well, that sounded as though young Prudence’s control was good. But how about speed? With seasoned performers like Sarah Mills entered, the thing practically amounted to a classic race, and in these big events you must have speed.
‘I am aware that it is what is termed a long shot, sir. Still, I thought it judicious.’
‘You backed here for a place, too, of course?’
‘Yes, sir. Each way.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s all right. I’ve never known you make a bloomer yet.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
I’m bound to say that, as a general rule, my idea of a large afternoon would be to keep as far away from a village school-treat as possible. A sticky business. But with such grave issues toward, if you know what I mean, I sank my prejudices on this occasion and rolled up. I found the proceedings about as scaly as I had expected. It was a warm day, and the hall grounds were a dense, practically liquid mass of peasantry. Kids seethed to and fro. One of them, a small girl of sorts, grabbed my hand and hung on to it as I clove my way through the jam to where the Mothers’ Sack Race was to finish. We hadn’t been introduced, but she seemed to think I would do as well as anyone else to talk to about the rag-doll she had won in the Lucky Dip, and she rather spread herself on the topic.
‘I’m going to call it Gertrude,’ she said. ‘And I shall undress it every night and put it to bed, and wake it up in the morning and dress it, and put it to bed at night, and wake it up next morning and dress it –’
‘I say, old thing,’ I said, ‘I don’t w
ant to hurry you and all that, but you couldn’t condense it a bit, could you? I’m rather anxious to see the finish of this race. The Wooster fortunes are by way of hanging on it.’
‘I’m going to run in a race soon,’ she said, shelving the doll for the nonce and descending to ordinary chit-chat.
‘Yes?’ I said. Distrait, if you know what I mean, and trying to peer through the chinks in the crowd. ‘What race is that?’
‘Egg ’n’ Spoon.’
‘No really? Are you Sarah Mills?’
‘Na-ow!’ Registering scorn. ‘I’m Prudence Baxter.’
Naturally this put our relations on a different footing. I gazed at her with considerable interest. One of the stable. I must say she didn’t look much of a flier. She was short and round. Bit out of condition, I thought.
‘I say,’ I said, ‘that being so, you mustn’t dash about in the hot sun and take the edge off yourself. You must conserve your energies, old friend. Sit down here in the shade.’
‘Don’t want to sit down.’
‘Well, take it easy, anyhow.’
The kid flitted to another topic like a butterfly hovering from flower to flower.
‘I’m a good girl,’ she said.
‘I bet you are. I hope you’re a good egg-and-spoon racer, too.’
‘Harold’s a bad boy. Harold squealed in church and isn’t allowed to come to the treat. I’m glad,’ continued this ornament of her sex, wrinkling her nose virtuously, ‘because he’s a bad boy. He pulled my hair, Friday. Harold isn’t coming to the treat! Harold isn’t coming to the treat! Harold isn’t coming to the treat!’ she chanted, making a regular song of it.
‘Don’t rub it in, my dear old gardener’s daughter,’ I pleaded. ‘You don’t know it, but you’ve hit on a rather painful subject.’
‘Ah Wooster, my dear fellow! So you have made friends with this little lady?’
It was old Heppenstall, beaming pretty profusely. Life and soul of the party.
‘I am delighted, my dear Wooster,’ he went on, ‘quite delighted at the way you young men are throwing yourselves into the spirit of this little festivity of ours.’