The inimitable Jeeves

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 service?’
    ‘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