And then the world went to pieces again. The wheel had begun to spin, and there on Black lay twelve thousand francs. The croupier, though he had scooped, hadn’t scooped enough. All he had done was to remove from the board the eight hundred. On that last coup, you see, Bingo had come up against the limit. You can’t have more than twelve thousand on an even chance.
And, of course, eight hundred francs was no use to him whatever. It would enable him to pay off Erbut and the bookie, but what of the brooch?
It was at this point that he was aware that Mrs. Bingo was saying something to him. He came slowly out of his trance with a Where-am-I look.
“Eh?” he said.
“I said, ‘Don’t you think so?’ ”
“Think so?”
“I was saying that it didn’t seem much good wasting any more time in here. Millie Pringle was quite right. Lord Peter Shipbourne would never dream of coming to a place like this. He would never stand the smell, for one thing. I have drawn him as a most fastidious man. So shall I go on to the Sporting Club … Bingo?”
Bingo was watching the wheel, tense and rigid. He was tense and rigid, I mean, not the wheel. The wheel was spinning.
“Bingo!”
“Hullo?”
“Shall I go on to the Sporting Club and pay our entrance fees?”
A sudden bright light came into Bingo’s face, rendering it almost beautiful. His brow was bedewed with perspiration, and he rather thought his hair had turned snowy white, but the map was shining like the sun at noon, and he beamed as he had seldom beamed before.
For the returns were in. The wheel had stopped. And once again Black had come up, and even now the croupier was removing twelve thousand francs from the pile and adding them to the eight hundred before him.
“Yes, do,” said Bingo. “Do. Yes, do. That’ll be fine. Splendid. I think I’ll just stick on here for a minute or two. I like watching these weird blokes. But you go on and I’ll join you.”
Twenty minutes later he did so. He walked into the Sporting Club a little stiffly, for there were forty-eight thousand francs distributed about his person, some of it in his pockets, some of it in his socks, and quite a good deal tucked inside his shirt. He did not see Mrs. Bingo at first: then he caught sight of her sitting over in the bar with a bottle of Vittel in front of her.
“What ho, what ho,” he said, lumbering up.
Then he paused, for it seemed to him that her manner was rummy. Her face was sad and set, her eyes dull. She gave him an odd look, and an appalling suspicion struck him amidships. Could it be, he asked himself—was it possible that somehow, by some mysterious wifely intuition …
“There you are,” he said. He sat down beside her, hoping that he wasn’t going to crackle. “Er—how’s everything?” He paused. She was still looking rummy. “I’ve got that brooch,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I—er—thought you might like to have it, so I—ah - nipped out and got it.”
“I’m glad it arrived safely … Bingo!” said Mrs. Bingo.
She was staring sombrely before her. Bingo’s apprehension increased. He now definitely feared the worst. It was as if he could feel the soup plashing about his ankles. He took her hand in his and pressed it. It might, he felt, help. You never knew.
“Bingo,” said Mrs. Bingo, “we always tell each other everything, don’t we?”
“Do we? Oh, yes. Yes.”
“Because when we got married, we decided that that was the only way. I remember your saying so on the honeymoon.”
“Yes,” said Bingo, licking his lips and marvelling at the depths of fatheadedness to which men can sink on their honeymoons.
“I’d hate to feel that you were concealing anything from me.
It would make me wretched.”
“Yes,” said Bingo.
“So if you had been gambling, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Bingo drew a deep breath. It made him crackle all over, but he couldn’t help that. He needed air. Besides, what did it matter now if he crackled like a forest fire? He threw his mind back to those opening sentences which he had composed.
“Listen, darling,” he began.
“So I must tell you,” said Mrs. Bingo. “I’ve just made the most dreadful fool of myself. When I came in here, I went over to that table there to watch the play, and suddenly something came over me. …”
Bingo uttered a snort which rang through the Sporting Club like a bugle.
“You didn’t have a pop?”
“I lost over two hundred pounds in ten minutes–Oh, Bingo, can you ever forgive me?”
Bingo had still got hold of her hand, for he had been relying on the soothing effects of hanging on to it during the remarks which he had outlined. He squeezed it lovingly. Not immediately, however, because for perhaps half a minute he felt so boneless that he could not have squeezed a grape.
“There, there!” he said.
“Oh, Bingo!”
“There, there, there!”
“You do forgive me?”
“Of course. Of course.”
“Oh, Bingo,” cried Mrs. Bingo, her eyes like twin stars, and amp ones at that, “there’s nobody like you in the world. “Would you say that?”
“You remind me of Sir Galahad. Most husbands—”
“Ah,” said Bingo, “but I understand these sudden impulses, don’t have them myself, but I understand them. Not another word. Good gosh, what’s a couple of hundred quid, if it gave you moment’s pleasure?”
His emotions now almost overpowered him, so strenuously did they call for an outlet. He wanted to shout, but he couldn’t shout—the croupiers would object. He wanted to give three cheers, but couldn’t give three cheers—the barman wouldn’t like it. He wanted to sing, but he couldn’t sing—the customers would complain.
His eye fell on the bottle of Vittel.
“Ah!” said Bingo. “Darling!”
“Yes, darling?”
“Watch, darling,” said Bingo. “I place the bottle so. Then, maintaining a perfect equilibrium …”
Bingo and the Peke Crisis
A BEAN was showing his sore leg to some Eggs and Piefaces in the smoking-room of the Drones Club, when a Crumpet came in. Having paused at the bar to order an Annie’s Night Out, he made his way to the group. “What,” he asked, “is the trouble?”
It was a twice—or even more than that—told tale, but the Bean embarked upon it without hesitation.
“That ass Bingo Little. Called upon me at my residence the day before yesterday with a ravening Pekinese, and tried to land me with it.”
“Said he had brought it as a birthday present,” added one of the Eggs.
“That was his story,” assented the Bean. “It doesn’t hold water for an instant. It was not my birthday. And if it had been, he should have been well enough acquainted with my psychology to know that I wouldn’t want a blasted, man-eating Peke with teeth like needles and a disposition that led it to take offence at the merest trifle. Scarcely had I started to deflect the animal to the door, when it turned like a flash and nipped me in the calf. And if I hadn’t had the presence of mind to leap on to a table, the outcome might have been even more serious. Look!” said the Bean. “A nasty flesh wound.”
The Crumpet patted his shoulder and, giving as his reason the fact that he was shortly about to lunch, asked the other to redrape the limb.
“I don’t wonder that the episode has left you in something of a twitter,” he said, “But I am in a position to give you a full explanation. I saw Bingo last night, and he told me all. And when you have heard the story, you will, I feel sure, agree with me that he is more to be pitied than censured. Tout comprendre” said the Crumpet, who had taken French at school, “c’est tout pardoner”
You are all, he proceeded, more or less familiar with Bingo’s circumstances, and I imagine that you regard him as one of those rare birds who are absolutely on velvet. He eats well, sleeps well and is happily married to a charming gir
l well provided with the stuff—Rosie M. Banks, the popular female novelist, to wit—and life for him, you feel, must be one grand, sweet song.
But it seems to be the rule in this world that though you may have goose, it is never pure goose. In the most apparently Grade A ointment there is always a fly. In Bingo’s case it is the fact that he seldom, if ever, has in his possession more than the merest cigarette money. Mrs. Bingo seems to feel that it is best that this should be so. She is aware of his fondness for backing horses which, if they finish at all, come in modestly at the tail of the procession, and she deprecates it. A delightful girl—one of the best, and the tree, as you might say, on which the fruit of Bingo’s life hangs—she is deficient in sporting blood.
So on the morning on which this story begins it was in rather sombre mood that he seated himself at the breakfast-table and speared a couple of eggs and a rasher of ham. Mrs. Bingo’s six Pekes frolicked about his chair, but he ignored their civilities. He was thinking how bitter it was that he should have an absolute snip for the two o’clock at Hurst Park that afternoon and no means of cashing in on it. For his bookie, a man who seemed never to have heard of the words “Service and Co-operation”, had informed him some time back that he was no longer prepared to accept mere charm of manner as a substitute for money down in advance.
He had a shot, of course, at bracing the little woman for a trifle, but without any real hope of accomplishing anything constructive. He is a chap who knows when he is chasing rainbows.
“I suppose, my dear old in-sickness-and-in-health-er,” he began diffidently, “you wouldn’t care for me to make a little cash for jam to-day?”
“How do you mean?” said Mrs. Bingo who was opening letters behind the coffee apparatus.
“Well, it’s like this. There’s a horse–”,
“Now, precious, you know I don’t like you to bet.’
“I would hardly call this betting. Just reaching out and gathering in the stuff is more the way I would describe it. This horse, you see, is called Pimpled Charlie–”
“What an odd name.”
“Most peculiar. And when I tell you that last night I dreamed that I was rowing in a boat on the fountain in Trafalgar Square with Oofy Prosser, you will see its extraordinary significance.”
“Why?”
“Oofy’s name,” said Bingo in a low, grave voice, “is Alexander Charles, and what we were talking about in the boat was whether he ought not to present his collection of pimples to the nation.”
Mrs. Bingo laughed a silvery laugh.
“You are silly!” she said indulgently, and Bingo knew that hope, never robust, must now be considered dead. If this was the attitude she proposed to take towards what practically amounted to a divine revelation, there was little to be gained by pursuing the subject. He cheesed it, accordingly, and the conversation turned to the prospects of Mrs. Bingo having a fine day for her journey. For this morning she was beetling off to Bognor Regis to spend a couple of weeks with her mother.
And he had just returned to his meditations after dealing with this topic, when he was jerked out of them by a squeal of ecstasy from behind the coffee-pot, so piercing in its timbre that it dislodged half an egg from his fork. He looked up and saw that Mrs. Bingo was brandishing a letter, beaming the while like. billy-o.
“Oh, sweetie-pie,” she cried, for it is in this fashion that she often addresses him, “I’ve heard from Mr. Purkiss!”
“This Purkiss being who?”
“You’ve never met him. He’s an old friend of mine. He lives quite near here. He owns a children’s magazine called Wee Tots”
“So what?” said Bingo, still about six parasangs from getting the gist.
“I didn’t like to tell you before, darling, for fear it might not come to anything, but some time ago he happened to mention to me that he was looking out for a new editor for Wee Tots, and I asked him to try you. I told him you had had no experience, of course, but I said you were awfully clever, and he would be there to guide you, and so on. Well, he said he would think it over, but that his present idea was to make a nephew of his the editor. But now I’ve had this letter from him, saying that the nephew has been county-courted by his tailor, and this has made Mr. Purkiss think his nature is too frivolous, and he wants to see you and have a talk. Oh, Bingo, I’m sure he means to give you the job.”
Bingo had to sit for a moment to let this sink in. Then he rose and kissed Mrs. Bingo tenderly.
“My little helpmeet!” he said.
He was extraordinarily bucked. The appointment, he presumed, carried with it something in the nature of a regular salary, and a regular salary was what he had been wanting for years. Judiciously laid out on those tips from above which he so frequently got in the night watches, he felt, such a stipend could speedily be built up into a vast fortune. And, even apart from the sordid angle, the idea of being an editor, with all an editor’s unexampled opportunities for putting on dog and throwing his weight about, enchanted him. He looked forward with a bright enthusiasm to getting fellow-members of the Drones to send in contributions to the Kiddies’ Korner, and then bunging them back as not quite up to his standard.
“He has been staying with his wife with an aunt at Tunbridge Wells, and he is coming back this morning, and he wants you to meet him under the clock at Charing Cross at twelve. Can you be there?”
“I can,” said Bingo. “And not only there, but there with my hair in a braid.”
“You will be able to recognize him, he says, because he will be wearing a grey tweed suit and a Homburg hat.”
“I,” said Bingo, with a touch of superiority, “shall be in a morning coat and the old topper.”
Once again he kissed Mrs. Bingo, even more tenderly than before. And pretty soon after that it was time for her to climb aboard the car which was to take her to Bognor Regis. He saw her off at the front door, and there were unshed tears in her eyes as she made her farewells. For the poignancy of departure was intensified by the fact that, her mother’s house being liberally; staffed with cats, she was leaving the six Pekes behind her.
“Take care of them while I’m away,” she murmured brokenly, as the animals barged into the car and got shot out again by Bagshaw, the butler. “You will look after them, won’t you, darling?”
“Like a father,” said Bingo. “Their welfare shall be my constant concern.”
And he spoke’ sincerely. He liked those Pekes. His relations with them had always been based on a mutual affection and esteem. They licked his face, he scratched their stomachs. Pleasant give and take, each working for each.
“Don’t forget to give them their coffee-sugar every night.”
“Trust me,” said Bingo, “to the death.”
“And call in at Boddington and Biggs’s for Ping-Poo’s harness. They are mending it. Oh, and by the way,” said Mrs. Bingo, opening her bag and producing currency, “when you go to Boddington and Biggs, will you pay their bill. It will save me writing out a cheque.”
She slipped him a couple of fivers, embraced him fondly and drove off, leaving him waving on the front steps.
I mention this fact of his waving particularly, because it has so important a bearing on what followed. You cannot wave a hand with a couple of fivers in it without them crackling. And a couple of fivers cannot crackle in the hand of a man who has received direct information from an authoritative source that a seven-to-one shot is going to win the two o’clock race at Hurst Park without starting in his mind a certain train of thought. The car was scarcely out of sight before the Serpent had raised its head in this Garden of Eden—the Little home was one of those houses that stand in spacious grounds along the edge of Wimbledon Common —and was whispering in Bingo’s ear: “How about it, old top?”
Now at ordinary times and in normal circumstances, Bingo is, of course, the soul of honesty and would never dream of diverting a Bond Street firm’s legitimate earnings into more private and personal channels. But here, the Serpent pointed out, and Bingo agr
eed with him, was plainly a special case.
There could be no question, argued the Serpent, of doing down Boddington and Biggs. That could be dismissed right away. All it meant, if Bingo deposited these fivers with his bookie, to go on Pimpled Charlie’s nose for the two o’clock, was that Boddington and his boy-friend would collect to-morrow instead of to-day. For if by some inconceivable chance Pimpled Charlie failed to click, all he, Bingo, had to do was to ask for a small advance on his alary from Mr. Purkiss, who by that time would have become his employer. Probably, said the Serpent, Purkiss would himself suggest some such arrangement. He pointed out to Bingo that it rash not likely that he would have much difficulty in fascinating the man. Quite apart from the morning coat and the sponge-bag trousers, that topper of his was bound to exercise a spell. Once let Parkiss get a glimpse of it, and there would be very little sales resistance from him. The thing, in short, was as good as in the bag.
It was with the lightest of hearts, accordingly, that Bingo proceeded to London an hour later, lodged the necessary with his bookie, whose office was in Oxford Street, and sauntered along to Charing Cross Station, arriving under the clock as its hands pointed to five minutes to twelve. And promptly at the hour a stout elderly man in a grey tweed suit and a Homburg hat rolled up.
The following conversation then took place.
“Mr. Little?”
“How do you do?”
“How do you do? Lovely day.”
“Beautiful.”
“You are punctual, Mr. Little.”
“I always am.”
“A very admirable trait.”
“What ho!”
And it was at this moment, just as everything was going as smooth as syrup and Bingo could see the awe and admiration burgeoning in his companion’s eyes as they glued themselves on the topper, that out of the refreshment-room, wiping froth from his lips, came B. B. Tucker, Gents’ Hosier and Bespoke Shirt Maker, of Bedford Street, Strand, to whom for perhaps a year and a quarter Bingo had owed three pounds, eleven and fourpence for goods supplied.