The Gem Collector

Gem Collector, The

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Title: The Gem Collector
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
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[Transcriber's note: The Gem Collector was revised and republished in
1910 as The Intrusion of Jimmy, also known as A Gentleman of Leisure.
This version, as published in _Ainslee's_, had two chapters headed
"Chapter XVIII" and ended with "Chapter XIX"; the last two chapters
are now labelled "Chapter XIX" and "Chapter XX." The word
"pubrescent" in Chapter VI has been changed to "putrescent."]

THE GEM COLLECTOR

By P. G. WODEHOUSE
Published in _Ainslee's Magazine_, December 1909.
CHAPTER I.
The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and
gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom,
looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt
moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he
was very much alone in it.
He felt old.
If it is ever allowable for a young man of twenty-six to give himself up

to melancholy reflections, Jimmy Pitt might have been excused for
doing so, at that moment. Nine years ago he had dropped out, or, to put
it more exactly, had been kicked out, and had ceased to belong to
London. And now he had returned to find himself in a strange city.
Jimmy Pitt's complete history would take long to write, for he had
contrived to crowd much into those nine years. Abridged, it may be
told as follows: There were two brothers, a good brother and a bad
brother. Sir Eustace Pitt, the latter, married money. John, his younger
brother, remained a bachelor. It may be mentioned, to check needless
sympathy, that there was no rivalry between the two. John Pitt had not
the slightest desire to marry the lady of his brother's choice, or any
other lady. He was a self-sufficing man who from an early age showed
signs of becoming some day a financial magnate.
Matters went on much the same after the marriage. John continued to
go to the city, Eustace to the dogs. Neither brother had any money of
his own, the fortune of the Pitts having been squandered to the ultimate
farthing by the sportive gentleman who had held the title in the days of
the regency, when White's and the Cocoa Tree were in their prime, and
fortunes had a habit of disappearing in a single evening. Four years
after the marriage, Lady Pitt died, and the widower, having spent three
years and a half at Monte Carlo, working out an infallible system for
breaking the bank, to the great contentment of Mons. Blanc and the
management in general, proceeded to the gardens, where he shot
himself in the orthodox manner, leaving many liabilities, few assets,
and one son.
The good brother, by this time a man of substance in Lombard Street,
adopted the youthful successor to the title, and sent him to a series of
schools, beginning with a kindergarten and ending with Eton.
Unfortunately Eton demanded from Jimmy a higher standard of
conduct than he was prepared to supply, and a week after his
seventeenth birthday, his career as an Etonian closed prematurely. John
Pitt thereupon delivered an ultimatum. Jimmy could choose between
the smallest of small posts in his uncle's business, and one hundred
pounds in banknotes, coupled with the usual handwashing and

disowning. Jimmy would not have been his father's son if he had not
dropped at the money. The world seemed full to him of possibilities for
a young man