The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  Early in the afternoon a man arrived from Padgebury’s. He was a mild, colorless person, in shabby corduroys, and he had come, he explained, because Mr. Padgebury and his head man were out on business, and the telegram seemed to be important.

  “Yes,” replied Mr. Dowdall, impressively, “it was—for Mr. Padgebury; most important. The fact is, when I sent that telegram I had reluctantly decided to part with my tiger—the most magnificent and talented creature ever placed upon the market. I’m not so sure about it now, but a sufficiently good offer might tempt me. It’s in the stable-yard; go and look at it while I wait here.”

  The man shook his head feebly. “Tigers ain’t my department, sir,” he said; “it’s the canaries what I look after. If it ’ad a-been a pipin’ bullfinch now—”

  “Oh, but surely,” protested Mr. Dowdall, “as a responsible man from Padgebury’s—a leading man on the staff, you know—you can deal with just a simple matter of an ordinary tiger. Come now; just go and run your eye over him.”

  But the man shook his head again. “I ain’t no judge of a tiger,” he replied. “I don’t know ’is p’ints. Anything in the way of a redpoll I could take on easy. An’ if you ain’t sure you really want to sell ’im, p’r’aps you’d better think it over for a day or two.”

  “Oh, no—not at all,” Mr. Dowdall interposed, hastily. “I’d rather get the parting over at once and have done with it. I’d like you to go and tell Mr. Padgebury about it as soon as he gets back. It’s a most extraordinary tiger—wrestles, and does card tricks, and all that. When will Mr. Padgebury be back?”

  The canary-tamer was not quite certain, but it was pretty sure to be some time in the afternoon.

  “Very well, get him to come along at once with a van. But there’s one thing you might tell me,” Mr. Dowdall proceeded, confidentially. “You’d scarcely believe it, but some of my servants are foolishly nervous about that tiger. Now, you are a man of experience. Couldn’t you give it something to keep it quiet till Mr. Padgebury comes?”

  “Beef?” suggested the canary-man, interrogatively.

  “It’s got beef,” Mr. Dowdall replied. “But I don’t mean food. Something to send it to sleep, for instance?”

  “Whisky,” replied the shabby man promptly. “They tame hedgehogs with that.”

  “But how can I give a tiger whisky?”

  The canary-man rubbed his ear thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said: “force ’is mouth open and pour it down ’is throat.”

  But a very little more conversation made it clear that neither Mr. Dowdall nor the man from Padgebury’s was prepared to adopt this method personally; and after a little more negotiation it was agreed that Padgebury’s retainer should visit the stable-yard with a view to devising a less adventurous means of administering the whisky.

  Presently he returned and reported his plan. “There’s precious little room between the planks,” he said. “In fact, you can’t properly see in without shoving your eye rayther too close to the door. But there’s a bit of an iron trough fixed inside, with water, an’ if I’d got a good large basinful o’ whisky, an’ the garden squirt, I think I could get some of it into the trough.”

  A quart of whisky was produced accordingly, and the garden squirt; and in five minutes more the canary-man returned to report complete success, and to receive a fee of half a crown. Furthermore, he received fervid injunctions to send the whole Padgebury tiger-staff at the earliest possible moment; and so departed.

  Perfect silence fell upon the stable-yard. Not a growl could be heard by a listener from any window at the back of the house, and the boot-boy, reconnoitring the stable-yard, reported that the tiger was motionless at the bottom of the cage—probably asleep. The household excitement was relieved, and household affairs began to resume their course.

  Half an hour—an hour—an hour and a half—two hours passed in peace and quiet; and then, with a sudden burst of frantic shrieks, the cook, the boot-boy, and Selina came up the kitchen stairs in a rush. The tiger! The tiger! The tiger was climbing through the scullery window!

  Who was first and who was last of the whole household out of the front door will never be known; it is merely conjectured that Mr. Dowdall was not the last, because foremost in this moment of peril, he was certainly first round the street corner, where he was so fortunate as to butt heavily into a policeman.

  “Good evening, constable,” gasped Mr. Dowdall, maintaining his balance by hugging the policeman’s arm; “good evening! There’s an interesting pet of my wife’s gone astray in the house, and I think if you were to keep guard at the front door while I send for Padgebury’s—”

  “Padgebury’s?” repeated the policeman, suspiciously. “Padgebury’s? What’s this ’ere pet? Is it the tiger as there’s been such a fuss about?”

  “Well,” admitted Mr. Dowdall, glancing back apprehensively, “as a matter of fact, it is what you might more or less call a tiger, so to speak, but there’s no need to feel alarmed on that account. I give you full authority to use your truncheon.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” observed the man, strangely ungratefully. Nevertheless, he looked cautiously round the corner, and then began to walk toward Mr. Dowdall’s front door, followed by that gentleman at some little distance. For it chanced that this was an ambitious young policeman, anxious to distinguish himself; and he hoped that there might be a possibility of doing it at no vast risk, after all. Wherefore it was with some irritation that he heard the shriek of a police-whistle farther up the road, where Mrs. Dowdall had taken refuge with a friend, who always kept the instrument handy.

  The whistle had the effect of hurrying the young policeman, who resolved, if he could not be the sole representative of the force on the spot, at any rate to be the first. He mounted the front steps, cautiously approached the open door, and looked in. He ventured as far as the mat, and then beyond it, listening intently. And then he cleared the doorstep in one bound, closing the door behind him with great agility, but turning instantly to peep through a clear part of the glass panel. For he had been scared by the apparition of a great yellow head rising over the lower stairs.

  “It’s gone upstairs!” he cried, presently, for the information of anybody within hearing; which was nobody.

  For the whistle was attracting stragglers to the house where its possessor, with distended countenance, was blowing it from the first-floor window, and Mr. Dowdall, in the doorway of a neighbor opposite, was dispatching a stream of telegrams to Padgebury, like minute-guns.

  And in the midst of all this arrived Padgebury’s van, with the great Padgebury himself and half a dozen stalwart retainers, and much tackle of iron and rope. Padgebury had started out immediately on the report of his canary-tamer, and so had escaped the fire of telegrams which Mr. Dowdall was still maintaining.

  The wild beast dealer shook his head when he learned the state of affairs. “You didn’t say he was loose in the house when you offered to sell him,” he observed, solemnly.

  “Well, I was thinking of allowing a discount in consideration of that,” replied Mr. Dowdall; “a moderate discount.”

  Padgebury shook his head again. “In our trade,” he said, “you’ll find there’s a deal of difference between a loose tiger and one in a cage. Loose tigers don’t command any price to speak of. There’s no demand for ’em.”

  Nevertheless, he consented to reconnoitre, with a view to securing Mr. Dowdall’s specimen, on the understanding that if no deal resulted he should charge for his services. And so, slowly, with many precautions, the front door was opened, and Padgebury and his staff, listening anxiously, approached the stairs a few steps at a time.

  After a pause of careful peeping Padgebury, greatly daring, crept up the stairs and listened on the landing. Then he beckoned silently to his men, who followed with as little noise as possible, and found their principal pointing significantly at a bedroom door, standing ajar, from beyond w
hich came distinct sounds of heavy breathing.

  The men gathered on the landing, awaiting orders. And then suddenly there arose from within the room the sound of a loud, horrible yawn, and following that, in a thick but cheerful voice, the chorus—

  “Put me among the girrls!

  Put me among the girrls!

  Do me a favor, do!

  I’ll do the same for you,

  If you’ll put—”

  Padgebury bounced into the room, and the chorus broke off; and his men, crowding behind him, saw the tiger lying at length on the bed, fur and teeth and whiskers complete, with a decanter hugged under one paw.

  “Whirroo!” cried the tiger. “Get out! ’Tis enough to give a man the palpitations to have yez jumpin’ out av nowhere like that, an ugly crowd! An’ me that unwell an’ all! Get out wid yez!”

  Padgebury turned one glance of amazement on his staff, and then, being a prompt man, seized the tiger by the jaw, forced it open, and peered into the cavernous skull. “Why, I believe it’s Lanigan!” he said.

  “What, Misther Padgebury!” cried the tiger. “’Tis the blessin’ av the wurrld to see ye, Misther Padgebury. Oh, Mr. Padgebury, ’tis moighty lonely I am! Nobody loves me in this—this—this here outrajis integument. They trate me like a leper; an’ ’tis drouthy work, growlin’ like a tiger two days together, an’ moighty poor conversation, wid no provisions but wan bag av biscuits. Misther Padgebury, is all av ’em you, or is there a dirthy crowd av ruffins in this room?”

  “There’s enough of us here to see you safely to the police-station, anyhow,” answered Padgebury, grimly. “What’s this game?”

  “Misther Padgebury, dear, if ye shpake to me like that I’ll cry like a babby, an’ me that broken-hearted too. Take a drop from the decanther—’tis good stuff in this house. An’ where’s that gallows-hoppin’ thief, Filer?”

  “Filer? I don’t know.”

  “Filer’s Circus started for the Continent the day afore yesterday, so I heard,” observed one of Padgebury’s men.

  “What?” wailed the tiger. “The day before yesterday? Then I’m robbed to the skin an’ bones av me! Sivin months have I been doin’ the wrestlin’ tiger an’ makin’ the fortune av the show, an’ not two months’ pay have I got out av it! An’ now he’s given me the shake afther all! The curse o’ the wurrld on the ugly head av him! I’ll tell ye, Misther Padgebury. The wrestling tiger was the only thing that brought the show a pinny, though ’tis meself that says ut. Night afther night I towld Filer I’d give the swindle away in the middle av the show if I didn’t get my money, an’ night afther night he blarneyed me into goin’ through once more. Ye see, we’d thumpin’ thick bars to the cage, an’ ’twasn’t likely anybody not b’longing to the show was comin’ investigatin’ too close, let alone goin’ wrestlin’ with a tiger; so we faced it out aisy enough till I threatened, an’ thin Filer blarneyed me. But at last I’d be blarneyed no more, an’ I got a rale paper summons for him; an’ thin says Filer, frightened by the paper summons; ‘I’m at the bottom av my finances, Lanigan, me boy, an’ what I haven’t got I can’t pay. But we’ll raise some,’ says he, ‘if ye’ll tear up that nasty summons an’ do as I tell ye. Now, there’s a troublesome ould parrty as calls himself a shareholder,’ says he, ‘an’ I’ll put ye in a close-nailed case and sind ye to him. An’ I’ll be along there as soon as you will an’ sooner,’ says Filer, ‘bekase I’ll go by passenger thrain an’ you by goods. An’ whin the ould man’s terrified into fits with havin’ a rampin’, ragin’ tiger brought to his peaceful risidence, why, I’ll get him to pay a call on his shares on conditions av takin’ you away again. Thin,’ says Filer, ‘I’ll pay every cint av your money and a present to the top av it!’ Misther Padgebury, I did ut; an’ afther that niver again ask me to be a tiger, nor a package on any goods thrain! I’m bruised all over me like a toad, and the lovely featherbed itself is hard to me bones.”

  “Well,” remarked Padgebury, “you don’t seem to have done much good for yourself since you left me, and you’re in a bigger scrape now than ever. There’s Mr. Dowdall and a policeman at the front door.”

  “Misther Dowdall’s a jintleman,” said the tiger. “He’s the only man that iver gave me whisky out av a garden squirrt. Plensheous whisky. It was the whisky, an’ nothing but ut, that gave me the courage to open the padlock and come to look for some more. Give my compliments to Misther Dowdall an’ tell him he’s a betther man than his partner, an’ I’d rather dale with him. The firrm owes me thirty-wan pound ten an’ six.”

  And the tiger pulled its mouth open with its right paw, and thrust the neck of the decanter once again between the cruel fangs.

  THE ABSENT THREE

  THERE was never a more popular man in Essex than Dan Fisk, whom I have heard called the biggest liar in the county. But that was said in the old days of innocence, when there were no newly built parts, where liars now flourish exceedingly among the other improvements.

  If Dan were a liar (a thing I expressly decline to admit), he had the excuse—the justification, rather—of the artist. Thick and round of body, with a face whereon a vast grin and a dazzling squint perpetually struggled for mastery, Dan was a humorist, first and Iast. A solemn person was Dan Fisk’s natural prey, and with subtle art and unchanging feature Dan would urge his solemnity over the edge of unseemliness into the abysm of the ridiculous; and any archer of the long-bow found in Dan an ever-ready abettor and puller of the unconscious leg.

  Dan is gathered to his fathers long since, and so long that his tombstone has acquired a rollicking inclination to the left, and moss and weather have so painted it that the fat cherub’s face that overlooks the inscription meets the gaze with a permanent wink; which is the properest accident in the world, and exactly as Dan Fisk would have had it.

  He was a sober man, yet at this distance of time I can never call up the memory of his jolly face without a background from the parlor of the Castle Inn; either the enormous geraniums that stood in the bow-window at the front, or the settle in the corner, or the wide fireplace and its blazing embers, stuck with black extinguisher-shaped beer-warmers. And it was a very good background, too, being also excellently suitable to Sam Prentice, Roboshobery Dove, and Abel Pennyfather, with his big walking-stick made out of a thistle-stem from Burton’s farm; the tale whereof Abel Pennyfather told nightly in this place, beginning with a mighty bang of the stick itself on the table, and a challenge to everybody to guess what the timber was.

  It was a challenge that nobody accepted, well known as the stick and its story were. For Abel Pennyfather instantly began to shout the tale over again in the voice of a contentious bull, so that every other sound was drowned till the tale was told.

  “Ha! ha!” Abel concluded on one such night; “‘How d’ye like my walkin’-stick?’ says I. ‘fine bit o’ timber, ben’t it? Much obliged to ye for it,’ I says. ‘Got it out of a wheatfield o’ yourn, an’ left plenty more behind. Why don’t ye grow walkin’-sticks for reg’lar crop?’ Lord, that mad he were!”

  And with that Abel Pennyfather took a vast drink from the fullest mug on the table, which chanced to be the mug of Banham the carrier.

  Banham stared at Pennyfather and the mugs, and began: “Why, ben’t that—”

  “Better sarve him out next time,” observed Dan Fisk, squinting into Abel Pennyfather’s own mug. “This ain’t wuth reachin’ for.”

  “Why,” cried Abel, with wide eyes, “I han’t a-drunk o’ the wrong mug, hey I? Well, well, now, ’tis wonnerful how absent I be, a-thinkin’!”

  “Wonnerful deep thinkin’ it be, too,” pursued Dan Fisk, transferring his squint to the outraged mug, and tilting it the better to peep. “Wonnerful deep. Nothin’ could make it deeper but a bigger mug.”

  “But ’tis my way, neighbors,” Pennyfather went on loftily. “You might scarce believe as I walked past my own gate the other day, think-in’ hard about a sic
k cow. Ay, an’ when I remembered, an’ turned back, danged if I den’t get a-thinkin’ agen, an’ walk past the gate a second time, just as far as fust. Danged if I den’t!”

  “If I couldn’t shorten my thoughts, I’d widen the gate,” commented Dan. “Ben’t proper to hey ordinary furniture for such an extraordinary man.”

  Sarcasm was not a thing that Abel Penny-father understood. “’Tis like not,” he replied, with plain gratification. “And anyhow, I count I can claim there ben’t so absent a man as me, one time or another, no, not in arl Essex.”

  For it was a failing of Abel Pennyfather to claim pre-eminence, at the top of a very large voice, in anything whatsoever that might come under discussion in his presence—anything in the world, even if it were only bunions.

  “Ah,” Dan Fisk replied with a shake of the head and an almost imperceptible brightening of the squint, “you be absent-minded enough, I make no doubt. I don’t call to memory many with mind more absent from their heads than you, sarten to say.”

  “No, not one, I say,” Abel pursued, with growing pride. “Never one in arl Essex.”

  “Ah, but you can be beat. There’s the three Brewitts.”

  “I dunno no Brewitts, but I uphold they ben’t a touch to me. Why, I tell ’ee, t’other day, an’ none so long ago neither, I sat an’ made up my market cipherin’ with my lighted pipe, a-smokin’ my pencil all the time. Ah, I did that!”

  “’Twere a true notable feat, that, no doubt, but it were only once. Now, oad Tom Brewitt, he never lit a candle but what he hulled it out o’ winder and set up the match to read by.”

  “Allus did it?”

  “Ay, allus. Oad Sim Cloyse paid a boy two shillun a week to sit outside of evenings an’’ pick up candles. Rare eye to business had oad Sim Cloyse.”