bicky comes up with a plan: starting a chicken-farm. bertie wants to lend him the money to start one, but bicky does not borrow money from friends. jeeves suggests that bicky could get the money from americans who would pay to shake hands with his grace. jeeves manages to make a deal with a convention of 87 gentlemen from birdsburg, missouri; they will each shake chiswick's hand and pay a total of one hundred and fifty dollars afterward. bertie will secretly increase that sum to five hundred dollars. bertie tells bicky about the convention, and bicky tells his uncle that some of his pals want to meet him. the gentlemen come, and things go smoothly until the birdsburg men ask for a guarantee that chiswick is really a duke, since they are paying money. chiswick, who did not know about this payoff, rebukes them. the deal is off, and the birdsburg men leave.