For the next three weeks I didn’t see Bingo. He became a sort of Voice Heard Off, developing a habit of ringing me up on long-distance and consulting me on various points arising at rehearsal, until the day when he got me out of bed at eight in the morning to ask whether I thought Merry Christmas! was a good title. I told him then that this nuisance must now cease, and after that he cheesed it, and practically passed out of my life, till one afternoon when I got back to the flat to dress for dinner and found Jeeves inspecting a whacking big poster sort of thing which he had draped over the back of an armchair.
“Good Lord, Jeeves!” I said. I was feeling rather weak that day, and the thing shook me. “What on earth’s that?”
“Mr. Little sent it to me, sir, and desired me to bring it to your notice.”
“Well, you’ve certainly done it!”
I took another look at the object. There was no doubt about it, he caught the eye. It was about seven feet long, and most of the lettering in about as bright red ink as I ever struck.
This was how it ran:
Twing Village Hall,
Friday, December 23rd,
Richard Little
presents
A New and Original Revue
Entitled
What Ho, Twing!!
Book by
Richard Little
Lyrics by
Richard Little
Music by
Richard Little.
With the Full Twing Juvenile
Company and Chorus.
Scenic Effects by
Richard Little
Produced by
Richard Little.
“What do you make of it, Jeeves?” I said.
“I confess I am a little doubtful, sir. I think Mr. Little would have done better to follow my advice and confine himself to good works about the village.”
“You think the things will be a frost?”
“I could not hazard a conjecture, sir. But my experience has been that what pleases the London public is not always so acceptable to the rural mind. The metropolitan touch sometimes proves a trifle too exotic for the provinces.”
“I suppose I ought to go down and see the dashed thing?”
“I think Mr. Little would be wounded were you not present, sir.”
The Village Hall at Twing is a smallish building, smelling of apples. It was full when I turned up on the evening of the twenty-third, for I had purposely timed myself to arrive not long before the kickoff. I had had experience of one or two of these binges, and didn’t want to run any risk of coming early and finding myself shoved into a seat in one of the front rows where I wouldn’t be able to execute a quiet sneak into the open air halfway through the proceedings, if the occasion seemed to demand it. I secured a nice strategic position near the door at the back of the hall.
From where I stood I had a good view of the audience. As always on these occasions, the first few rows were occupied by the Nibs—consisting of the Squire, a fairly mauve old sportsman with white whiskers, his family, a platoon of local parsons and perhaps a couple of dozen of prominent pew-holders. Then came a dense squash of what you might call the lower middle classes. And at the back, where I was, we came down with a jerk in the social scale, this end of the hall being given up almost entirely to a collection of frankly Tough Eggs, who had rolled up not so much for any love of the drama as because there was a free tea after the show. Take it for all in all, a representative gathering of Twing life and thought. The Nibs were whispering in a pleased manner to each other, the Lower Middles were sitting up very straight, as if they’d been bleached, and the Tough Eggs whiled away the time by cracking nuts and exchanging low rustic wheezes. The girl, Mary Burgess, was at the piano playing a waltz. Beside her stood the curate, Wingham, apparently recovered. The temperature, I should think, was about a hundred and twenty-seven.
Somebody jabbed me heartily in the lower ribs, and I perceived the man Steggles.
“Hallo!” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming down.”
I didn’t like the chap, but we Woosters can wear the mask. I beamed a bit.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Bingo wanted me to roll up and see his show.”
“I hear he’s giving us something pretty ambitious,” said the man Steggles. “Big effects and all that sort of thing.”
“I believe so.”
“Of course, it means a lot to him, doesn’t it? He’s told you about the girl, of course?”
“Yes. And I hear you’re laying seven to one against him,” I said, eyeing the blighter a trifle austerely.
He didn’t even quiver.
“Just a little flutter to relieve the monotony of country life,” he said. “But you’ve got the facts a bit wrong. It’s down in the village that they’re laying seven to one. I can do you better than that, if you feel in a speculative mood. How about a tenner at a hundred to eight?”
“Good Lord! Are you giving that?”
“Yes. Somehow,” said Steggles meditatively, “I have a sort of feeling, a kind of premonition that something’s going to go wrong tonight. You know what Little is. A bungler, if ever there was one. Something tells me that this show of his is going to be a frost. And if it is, of course, I should think it would prejudice the girl against
