Mr. Adams examined the audience with the eye of an expert, and declared that there wasn’t a penny less than £80 in the house. I told him I was just about to make up the takings, and if he cared to go through the vouchers with me we could then divide the amount. He said he would do so after he had put his baby show advertisements and ‘readers’ in the local newspaper office for the morning’s paper, and went off to do so, leaving Mr. Bodger with me.
He had barely left the vestibule when that gentleman turned a pair of red-rimmed, spectacled eyes on me, and remarked, in an unpleasant falsetto voice:
“Is that Adams a pal of yours, mister?”
When he heard that my first meeting with Mr. Adams had taken place the previous day he sighed deeply, and remarked:
“Well, I think he’s a rogue, but I can’t find out for certain. That’s why I asked you, for you acting fellows generally know each other pretty well. You’d lift a great weight off my mind if you’d tell me, mister.”
“Why are you going into partnership with him if you have that opinion of him?” I asked, evading his question.
“Because I didn’t know it in time. A friend of mine in for the sports told me he was the biggest take-down in New Zealand, but that was after Adams had talked me out of my fifty pounds. He has the persuasive powers of the devil, mister. Since then, I’ve heard that this buildin’ has been put up on tick, so where do I come in if he should take it into his head to do a get?”
“I neither know nor care,” I replied. “Here’s Mr. Adams back. Why don’t you speak to him—not me.”
“I’ve spoken to him already, mister, but I can’t get any satisfaction. It’s you I’ve been talking about, Mister Adams,” he added, as that gentleman joined us. “I’ve just been telling your friend here that I heard you were a rogue.”
“Now, look here, Bodger, I’ve heard just about enough of this talk,” said Mr. Adams, quite unruffled at this reflection on his probity. “Once for all, if you want to pull out of this baby show, say so, and forfeit your money.”
“Forfeit my money, mister? I’ll have the law on you.”
“Oh, law be jiggered! If you go out you don’t get your money back—not a penny. So do what you like—stay in and take your chance, or go out.”
“ll’l stay in, mister, because I know there’s a lot of money in this baby show.”
“Then stay in and shut up your rat’s squeak.”
“All right, mister. Don’t get shirty. I’ve worked it out and I don’t see how you can beat me, seeing that it’s in the agreement that I’m to take the money at the doors.”
“Very well. Now, clear out. I’ve had just as much of you as I am able to stand to-night.”
“Don’t get shirty, mister—I’m going. But I’ve heard you’re a rogue, mister, and I’ll watch you close.” With these words of emphatic warning Mr. Bodger disappeared.
“Fancy having to endure the company of that wretched little worm for a whole week for a miserable fifty pounds!” exclaimed Mr. Adams. “It is worth four times the amount.”
“Where did you pick him up?” I asked.
“He stopped to inquire what the stadium was for—being one of those depressing specimens of the race who are always poking their noses into other people’s business—and I explained. His cupidity was instantly aroused when I told him that I was going to hold the largest baby show ever seen (the idea came into my head as I talked to him) and he almost insisted on being taken into partnership. He’s an undertaker here.”
“I thought he looked like one.”
“Yes, he’s been robbing the widow and fatherless all his life—battening on their groans and tears by overcharging them—and now he wants to rob me. But he’ll find Charlie Adams a different sort of bird to pluck. By Jove, when I think of that miserable little vampire waxing rich by sending in his bills when the widows’ eyes are too full of tears to scrutinise the items, I have not the slightest compunction about taking him down. D’ye know what he did the other day? Tried to force a man into a coffin at least three sizes too small for him, because the widow’s previous husbands had been small men. What kind of a man is that—trying to carry out a cheeseparing policy in a house of mourning! He went into another house where the dead husband and father was about to be removed by another undertaker, and stopped the funeral to demand of the weeping widow what he had done to lose the family business. When I think of those widows’ anguished moans I feel it my sacred duty to rook him!”
In the presence of so much righteous indignation I could only remain silent, though it did occur to me that Mr. Adams might find it difficult to carry out his mission of avenging the widow and the fatherless after having given Mr. Bodger the privilege of collecting his own money at the door. As it was no business of mine I dismissed the matter from my thoughts, and entered upon the pleasing duty of dividing the night’s takings, which came within a few shillings of Mr. Adams’s estimate.
The Rotorua appetite for sound drama was sufficiently healthy to bring us another equally good house the next night. Mr. Adams’s naturally exuberant spirits were so exhilarated by the addition of another forty pounds to his funds that he foresaw a way to amass a competency in twelve months by building stadiums in every small town in New Zealand and exploiting the moneyed fools, who, he was convinced, flourished in unplucked profusion in the rustic solitudes adjacent thereto. He suggested that the Merry Marauders should become partners in this enterprise, but I took it upon myself to decline the offer without acquainting the others that it had been made, for although Mr. Adams had treated the company fairly and honestly, his standard of morality was too eccentric to be easily acquired by one of my narrow upbringing. Besides which, both Barney and Mr. Baker still distrusted him, declaring that he had already put up such an astounding record of fair dealing in his transactions with the company that a reaction might be expected at any moment. They assured me that I would be no match for Mr. Adams if his keen commercial instincts awoke where we were concerned. I told them they need be under no apprehension, as I was going to terminate all business relations with Mr. Adams after the baby show, in which I had promised him my assistance.
The baby show was organised by Mr. Adams with so much energy and skill that it bid fair to overshadow all the other attractions of the holiday week, and I feared for our final night’s house after it opened. Handsome prizes were offered for every type of infant that our complex human nature has been known to produce, and the proud progenitors of these prodigies were also to be rewarded for their enterprise, as Mr. Adams poetically described parenthood on the handbills. The promises of liberal prize-money brought entries so numerous that I could scarcely believe a district of a few thousand people was able to produce so many babies. Mr. Adams told me, however, that some of them were coming from long distances, as news of the forthcoming show had spread far and wide.
“Who’s going to judge the babies?” I asked Mr. Adams on the morning of the show, as we approached the stadium and saw a large number of red-faced, flustered mothers clamouring impatiently at the door for admission.
“Oh, that’s Bodger’s job. It’ll keep him quiet for a while.”
“Good morning, mister,” said that person himself, who had joined us unperceived. “I’ve been down here these two hours waiting for you. I wasn’t going to let you get ahead of me, because I have my doubts about you, mister, and I’m going to watch you close. Now I’m going into that ticket-box, and there I stay till the doors open, to take the money.”
“Go into the box, and be d——d,” said Mr. Adams impatiently. “I’ll be glad to get rid of you. We had better get round to the back entrance to get in, though, else these ladies will rush you, and get in for nothing.”
We got into the stadium from the rear. Mr. Adams installed Mr. Bodger in the ticket-box, and gave him a bundle of admission tickets. “Remember it’s a uniform tariff all round of two shillings a head,” he said, as he did so, “and a ticket for every person. People who have babies can afford luxuries.�
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“All right, mister, I wont forget,” said Mr. Bodger, craning his neck through the pigeon-hole to see the crowd outside. “You’d better open the doors, mister. The ladies is lining up thick, and they’re getting rarely impatient.”
“How many should you say are there now?” inquired Mr. Adams, with considerable interest.
“Two hundred at least, mister, and they’re coming with more babies every minute.”
Mr. Adams deliberately slammed the door of the ticket-box, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and smiled pleasantly through the glass at Mr. Bodger. Then, with equal deliberation, he sauntered to the rear of the stadium and opened the back door, ejaculating in stentorian tones as he did so:
“This way to the baby show, ladies!”
Never in all my life have I heard—and I hope never to hear again—such disgraceful language as that used by the imprisoned Mr. Bodger, as he bounced about in the little box vainly trying to break out. He alternated his imprecations against Mr. Adams with shrill appeals to the struggling throng to buy their tickets at his window, but his voice was drowned by Mr. Adams’s, and was unheeded. Gradually his cries and curses grew fainter, and then ceased. I peeped compassionately through the little window and saw him crouching in a corner of the ticket-box. As I looked I heard him mutter to himself:
“They told me he was a rogue, and by——! he is.”
I left the stadium then, not wishing to be mixed up in Mr. Adams’s discreditable transactions any further, but I understand that Mr. Adams had the cruelty subsequently to point out Mr. Bodger to the anxious mothers as the judge and prize-giver of the show, before vanishing with the takings.
There was no performance by the Merry Marauders in the stadium that night. As soon as Mr. Adams’s disappearance became known, his creditors swooped down on the building like a pack of wolves, and literally tore it to pieces in their fury. I was glad not to see the builder again after his rascally conduct to poor Bodger, the wickedness of which he had aggravated by his hypocrisy in posing as the avenging instrument of providence.
“Do you know what made Bodger suspicious of him?” said Mr. Baker to me, as I communicated these thoughts shortly after we had started on our journey for the Bay of Plenty district. “It’s a strange sequel to the story I was going to tell you about Adams when we met him at the stadium. A farmer who entertained a theatrical company of Charlie’s some months ago told me. Adams, it appears, repaid the farmer’s hospitality by sneaking one of his bags of wheat into the company’s caravan. After getting safely away with the plunder, he pulled up a few miles further on to give the horse a good feed. To the great alarm of the lady members of the company the animal, after eating the wheat, swelled up so rapidly that he cracked the shafts, and then dropped dead. It seems that the wheat was poisoned grain, used by the farmer to destroy rabbits.”
“I don’t see much cleverness in that,” I said.
“The cleverness lay in the fact that Adams had the nerve to go back to the farmer and wheedle another horse out of him.”
Yours thoughtfully,
VAL.
VIII
TE ORUMU,
EAST COAST,
NORTH ISLAND, N.Z.
11th March, 1911.
MY DEAR DICK:
The Merry Marauders Dramatic Company, after a varied season in provincial towns which, while remote from city life are yet within railway reach of it, have turned their backs on the steel road that keeps us in touch with civilisation to tread the track which leads into the primeval fastness of the New Zealand bush. In other words, we have left the railway route far behind us to dive into the heart of the Bay of Plenty district, where we hope to turn the election excitement to profitable account.
It was necessary to break down our company going across from Rotorua to Te Orumu on account of the great expense of coaching, so I left the three utility men to follow us with the bulk of the scenery in a covered van. They were to rejoin us at Te Orumu, which is the largest seaport town on the East Coast, and my regret at having to take them off the weekly share-sheet for that brief period was mitigated by the knowledge that they had plenty of food and good, if portable lodgings. Mr. Baker, whose services in advance would not be required till we reached the East Coast, was to come with us and play their parts at our three stopping places on the way, so far as one man could take the place of three.
Coaching in the glorious New Zealand climate, through country whose scenic grandeur is second to none in the world, as the author of the New Zealand guide-book finely remarks, is an experience which is never forgotten by the soul susceptible to the charms in nature. I do not doubt the truth of these delightful words, but I must frankly admit that I did not enjoy the earlier part of the journey, owing to a most peculiar incident that occurred at the start.
I had hired a special coach from the landlord of the hotel at which we were staying, in order to make a detour from the regular coach track to play at Kaei, a partly Maori settlement, that night. Barney and Mr. Baker assured me that the Maoris were very fond of a theatrical show, and that they and the few white settlers would make up an audience sufficient to pay our expenses and perhaps a trifle over. It was not necessary to advertise a show in these remote hamlets, they told me, as the mere arrival of the coach would arouse the curiosity of every brown and white person in the place, every one of whom would patronise the show as a welcome break in the monotony of their isolated existence. They were a critical audience, too, it seemed.
“I played ‘Hamlet’ to ten white men and about thirty Maoris, of the blue-blooded Ngati-Pihi tribe, going through this way some years ago,” said Mr. Baker, “and the intelligent appreciation of those brown children of nature would have done you good to see. Indeed, after the performance, an old chieftainess of royal blood, named Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke, which in English means ‘The Lonely Sparrow,’ made honorable proposals of marriage, and offered to settle the lands of the whole tribe on me. When I gently declined this flattering offer she pressed on my acceptance a greenstone ornament that had been in her family for more than a thousand years. I forget what it is called by the Maoris, but it is a distinguished honour to receive it, and one of the conditions of the gift is that you must tie it to your leg by the band of human hair that is fastened to it, and reveal it in position to the giver whenever you meet. I took the gift and put it in my box and soon forgot all about it. But the gift and the conditions attached to it were destined to be brought back to my recollection years afterwards in rather embarrassing fashion. I had the management of a new picture house in Auckland, and had arranged for the opening ceremony to be performed by the mayoress of that city, in the presence of a large and fashionable audience. On the night in question, just as I was introducing the mayoress to the audience, Te Pihoihoi Mokemoke suddenly appeared from the wings, rushed up to me, and started eagerly to roll up my right trouser leg. I shall never know how she got down to Auckland from her lonely forest home, for the poor soul died soon afterwards.”
It was while I was musing over this romantic passage in Mr. Baker’s career, and watching from the window of my room the preparation of our coach in the hotel stable-yard beneath, that the incident I refer to as spoiling my drive—or the beginning of it—commenced. One of the coach team, a big black horse, played up while being harnessed in a way that absolutely terrified me, for I had been told by Barney that the road to Kaei skirted a dangerous gorge for some distance, where the slightest false step on the part of the horses would precipitate the coach and its occupants over a precipice 500 feet deep. The black horse was eventually subjugated and bound into his place with kicking straps and other equine paraphernalia, but not until he had savagely kicked several of the volunteer helpers, and severely bitten one of the stablemen as the man was stooping to disentangle the reins, which the brute had got under his fore-feet in the struggle. Feeling much alarmed for our safety, I finished dressing with all possible speed and hastened downstairs intending to remonstrate with the landlord, but when I got down the
coach was outside the hotel, with all the members of our company in their places, impatiently awaiting my arrival. As it would have been in the last degree imprudent to frighten the girls, I clambered up on the box seat alongside of Mr. Baker and the driver without saying anything, comforting myself with the reflection that the driver was hardly likely to have been there if there had been any great danger, for even if he were indifferent to the lives of his passengers, he doubtless set store on his own.
My surprise was great, as I settled in my seat, to observe the black horse, with his head turned round, regarding the driver with an intense stare which, beyond all possible doubt, had a note of interrogation in it. I glanced at the driver, and to my added astonishment, he was returning the look with equal intentness. I thought at first that the driver might be hypnotizing the beast to prevent it’s jibbing during the journey, but it seemed improbable that a man possessing the gift of mesmerism to a degree capable of bending the brute creation to his will, would be occupying a menial position in the New Zealand back-blocks. My cogitations on the problem were interrupted by the driver demanding the stipulated amount for the coach. This sum I had in readiness, and as soon as I placed it in his hands he bawled out “Yes!” The black horse bowed his head as though the exclamation were addressed to him, and took the team off down the road at the rate of fifteen miles an hour.
I sat in my place with dazed senses, wondering whether the mysteries of the Arabian Nights were possible in the twentieth century, or whether Swift’s Houyhnhnms had been rediscovered in the New Zealand bush.
“Will you tell me the meaning of this remarkable occurrence?” I asked the driver, when I had recovered some measure of self-possession.
The Merry Marauders Page 8