The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  Wasn’t there a chance in this? Surely there ought to be. Why didn’t Hector Bushell come? Surely, if they were prompt enough, some little dodge might be built on this combination of circumstances, by which his picture might be brought to light again—this also without the thief. They knew, now, where the thief had been, and that he was gone. This was good news. Hector could certainly make something of that. Where was he?

  He was at the door in the Iobby, in the studio, even as the thought passed. Flushed and rumpled, wild of eye, with dust on his coat and a dint in his hat, Hector Bushell dropped into the nearest seat with an inarticulate “G’lor!”

  “What’s up?” cried Sydney. “The Gainsborough—do you know? They’ve got it!”

  “Blow the Gainsborough—where’s the Blenkinsop? Sydney, it’s a bust up!”

  “What is?”

  “The whole festive caboodle! The entire bag of tricks! My mother’s been and sent the roll of stair-carpet to the jumble sale!”

  “The what?”

  “Jumble sale—Mrs. Fewston’s jumble sale; Stockjobbers’ Almhouse fund!”

  “Great heavens!”—Sydney leapt for his hat—“where is it? When is it! What—”

  “No go!” interrupted Hector, with a feeble wave of the hand. “No go! It’s today—I’ve been there. Blazed off there the moment I knew it. They’d sold the carpet to an old woman just before I arrived. Nice girl I know, helping at Mrs. Fewston’s stall, told me that. Just then up came Mrs. Fewston herself, glaring straight over my head as though I was too small and too beastly to look at. A dead cut, if ever I saw one! I felt a bit uneasy at that. But the nice girl told me the name of the old woman who had the carpet and where she lived. So I streaked out after her and caught her two streets off; she was shoving her plunder home in a perambulator. I grabbed it with both hands and offered to buy it. I was a bit wild and sudden, I expect, and the old girl didn’t understand; started screaming, and laid into me with an umbrella. I wasn’t going to wait for a crowd, so I out with the stair-carpet and bowled it open all along the pavement. There was no picture in it—nothing! I kicked it the whole length out, all along the street, and then pelted round the next corner while the old party was tangled up with the other end. Sydney, my boy, Fewston’s got that picture now! The carpet was sent to the house!”

  “What in the world shall we do? We’re in a fine sort of mess!”

  For a time Hector Bushell had no answer: he was considering many things. Mrs. Fewston’s disdainful cut; the fact that the carpet—and the picture—had been in Fewston’s house since the evening of the day before yesterday. Also he wondered why Fewston had made no sign. He had had a full day and a half to flare up in, if he had felt that way inclined; but there had been no flare. Why? Hector’s faculties gradually ranged themselves and he began to understand. Could Fewston afford to stultify himself after the advertisement he had so eagerly snatched? And there were the interviews in the newspapers! And the County Council election! And the limited company! It grew plain that Mr. Fewston’s interests were not wholly divorced from their own, after all.

  “What shall we do?” reiterated Sydney, wildly. “We’re in a most hideous mess!”

  “Mess?” repeated Hector, straightening his hat and gradually assuming his customary placidity. “Mess? Oh, I don’t know, after all. I was a bit startled at first, but we haven’t accused anybody, you know. We’re perfectly innocent. If you like to authorize me to get in at your studio window to fetch a picture, why shouldn’t you? And if the police like to jump to conclusions—well, they ought to know better. Lend me a clothes-brush.”

  “But what about Fewston?”

  “That’s why I want the clothes-brush. He’s in it pretty deep, one way and another, eh? We’ll go round and collect that money.”

  CAP’EN JOLLYFAX’S GUN

  First published in The Metropolian Magazine, Feb 1907

  THE fame of Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun spread wide over Thames mouth and the coasts thereabout, in the years before and after the middle of the nineteenth century. The gun was no such important thing to look at, being a little brass cannon short of a yard long, standing in a neat little circle of crushed cockle-shell, with a border of nicely matched flints, by the side of Cap’en Jollyfax’s white flagstaff, before Cap’en Jollyfax’s blue front door, on the green ridge that backed the marshes and overlooked the sea. But small as Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun might be to look at, it was most amazingly large to hear; perhaps not so deep and thunderous as loud and angry, with a ringing bang that seemed to tear the ear-drums.

  Cap’en Jollyfax fired the gun at midnight on Christmas eve, to start the carollers. Again he fired it at midnight between the old year and the new, to welcome the year; on the ninth of January, because that was the anniversary of Nelson’s funeral, and on the twenty-eighth, because that was the date of the battle of Aliwal, then a recent victory. He fired it on the Queen’s birthday, on Waterloo day, Trafalgar day, St. Clement’s day—for Clement was the parish saint—and on the anniversary of the battle of the Nile; and on the fifth of November he fired it at intervals all day long, and as fast as he could clean and load it after dark. He also fired it on his own birthday, on Roboshobery Dove’s, Sam Prentice’s, old Tom Blyth’s, and any other casual birthday he might hear of. He fired it in commemoration of every victory reported during the Crimean war and the Indian Mutiny, he fired it to celebrate all weddings, some christenings, and once when they hanged a man at Springfield gaol.

  Cap’en Jollyfax was a retired master mariner of lusty girth and wide and brilliant countenance. In the intervals between the discharges of his gun he painted his cottage, his flagstaff, his garden fence and gate, and any other thing that was his on which paint would stay, except the gun, which he kept neatly scoured and polished.

  He painted the flagstaff white, the fence green, and the cottage in several colors; and the abiding mystery of Cap’en Jollyfax’s establishment was what ultimately became of the paint. For a new coat succeeded the last very soon after the surface was sufficiently dry, and the consumption of paint was vast; and yet the flagstaff never seemed to grow much thicker, nor did the fence, as a reasonable person would expect, develop into a continuous wall of paint, supported within by a timber skeleton.

  Cap’en Jollyfax was a popular man on the whole, though perhaps more particularly so with boys, because of his gun. They would congregate about the fence to watch him clean it and load it, and the happiest of all boys was the one who chanced to be nearest when it was fired, and whose ears were loudest assailed by the rending bang that was so delightful to every boy’s senses. Boys dreamed at night of some impossible adventure by the issue whereof the happy dreamer was accorded the reward of permission to fire Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun; and one boy at least formed a dark project of hoarding pennies, buying powder, escaping by perilous descent from his bedroom window, and firing Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun lawlessly in the depth of night.

  But if the gun enhanced Cap’en Jollyfax’s popularity among the boys, its tendency was otherway with the women—those in particular who lived near enough to be startled by its noise. The natural feminine distrust of all guns in all circumstances was increased in the case of a brass cannon, which might go off at any moment of Cap’en Jollyfax’s crowded calendar. And it was asserted that Mrs. Billing, the widow, who lived at the hill-foot, exactly under Cap’en Jolly-fax’s line of fire, had been startled into the destruction of three basins and a large dish within one month of many birthdays. Mrs. Billing, indeed, as was to be expected from her situation, was the brass gun’s chief enemy. Consequently, if Cap’en Jollyfax had dragged his gun up the aisle of Leigh church and fired it under the pulpit he could scarcely have startled the parishioners more than did he rector when he first read the banns of marriage between John Jolly-fax, bachelor, and Mary Ann Billing, widow, both of that parish.

  Except for the gun there need have been little to startle Leigh, for Cap’
en Jollyfax was none so old, as retired skippers went thereabout, and Mrs. Billing was as neat and pleasant a widow of forty-two as might be found in Essex, where the widows have always been admirable. Moreover, she had no incumbrance in the way of children.

  But there was no mistaking the fact now, even for the deaf who were not at church. For the succeeding fortnight and a day or two over Cap’en Jollyfax and Mrs. Billing were visible, day by day and arm-in-arm, from shop to shop, in Leigh High Street. The result was no great advance in the retail commerce of Leigh—in fact, none. The household appointments of both Cap’en Jollyfax and Mrs. Billing were fairly complete in their humble way; and when Mrs. Billing had triumphantly hauled Cap’en Jollyfax into an ironmonger’s in pursuit of a certain fish-kettle or a particular fender, she was certain presently to discover that just such an article embellished Cap’en Jollyfax’s kitchen, or her own. Nevertheless, she persevered, for a bout of shopping was the proper preliminary to any respectable wedding, and must be performed with full pomp and circumstance; and if nothing, or very little, was actually bought, so much the cheaper. Mrs. Billing was resolved to be baulked of no single circumstance of distinction and triumph appertaining to the occasion. And Cap’en Jollyfax was mightily relieved to find so much shopping cost so little after all; so that he grew gradually more cheerful as the wedding-day neared, which is said not to be invariably the case in these circumstances.

  The wedding was fixed for the morning of a certain Wednesday, and on the evening before the day Mrs. Billing spent some little time in glorious authority on Cap’en Jollyfax’s premises, superintending the labor of Mrs. Packwood, who did charing, and was now employed to make the domestic arrangements of the place suit the fancies of its coming mistress. Flushed with hours of undisputed command, Mrs. Billing emerged in the little garden, whereunto Cap’en Jollyfax had retreated early in the operations; and there perceived tomorrow’s bridegroom in the act of withdrawing a broomstick from the mouth of the brass gun.

  “What ha’ you been a-doing to that gun, John?” demanded Mrs. Billing rather peremptorily, eyeing the weapon askant.

  “A-givin’ her a rub up inside an’ out,” answered Cap’en Jollyfax placably. “An’ I’ve just rammed her with a good big charge ready for tomorrow.”

  “Why for tomorrow?” Mrs. Billing’s voice was a trifle sharper still, and she turned a fresh glance of unmistakable dislike on the gun.

  “Why for tomorrow?” Cap’en Jollyfax repeated wonderingly. “Why, weddin’-day, o’ course. Touch her off when we come home from church.”

  “Nothin’ o’ the sort.” She spoke now with a positive snap. “A nasty, dangerous, banging thing as frightens people out of their seven senses. I won’t hey it. Why, ’twere almost more’n I could stand down there at the bottom o’ the hill, an’ hey that thing go off near me I will not, so there.”

  Cap’en Jollyfax stared blankly. “What!” he jerked out, scarce believing his ears, “not fire the gun on the weddin’-day?”

  “No,” Mrs. Billing replied emphatically, “nor any other day, neither. Folk ’ud think you were a little boy, a-playin’ with sich toys; an’ I can’t abear to be near the thing.”

  The staring wonder faded gradually from Cap’en Jollyfax’s face, and a certain extra redness succeeded it. “I be goin’ to fire my gun on my weddin’-day,” he said firmly.

  “You ben’t nothin’ o’ the sort,” rejoined the widow, no less firmly; “not on my weddin’-day. Nayther then nor after, if I’m your wife. Just you take the charge out o’ that gun.”

  Cap’en Jollyfax shook his head, with something like triumph in his eye. “Won’t come out ’cept you fire it,” he said. “That’s the only way.”

  “Very well then, fire it now—not now, but as soon as I be gone, fire off your gun for the last time tonight, and be done with sich foolishness.”

  “Ben’t nothin’ to fire it for today,” the old sailor returned shortly. “This gun’s my department, an’ I’m goin’ to ’tend to it. I’m goin’ to put the tarpaulin over it now, an’ tomorrow, Polly, when we’re back from church, I’m goin’ to fire it.”

  Mrs. Billing bridled. “You’re a-goin’ to fire that gun before I go to church with ’ee, John Jollyfax, an’ not load it agin, nayther.”

  “I’m a-goin’ to fire this gun when we’re back from church, an’ afterwards when proper.”

  “Cap’en John Jollyfax, I ben’t goin’ to church with ’ee till after that gun be fired. So now you know. If you don’t fire it tonight you must fire it tomorrow before I turn a step toward church. That’s my word on it.”

  “I’m a-goin’ to fire my gun when I like,” growled Cap’en Jollyfax, dogged and sulky.

  “Very well,” replied the widow, tossing her head and turning away, “then if you want me to wed ’ee, an’ when you want me to wed ’ee, you’ll fire it first. Then, maybe, I’ll consider of it. But no wife o’ yours I’ll be till that powder be fired off. An’ so good-evenin’ to ’ee, Cap’en Jollyfax.”

  That was the beginning of a period of vast interest and excitement in Leigh and its neighborhood. Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun remained silent all that night, nor was it fired in the morning. What Mrs. Billing’s feelings were in the matter, whether she sat anxiously listening for the sound of the gun, as some averred, or dismissed the whole subject from her mind, as her subsequent conversation with Mrs. Peck suggested, are secrets I cannot pretend to have penetrated. Cap’en Jollyfax, on his part, consulted deeply in the morning with Roboshobery Dove, and evolved a scheme of strategy suited to the physical features of the place. As the hour fixed for the wedding drew near, Cap’en Jollyfax, in his best blue coat with brass buttons and his very shiniest hard glazed hat, approached the churchyard and took his seat, in a non-committal sort of way, on the low stone wall that bounded it, with his back toward the church. Roboshobery Dove crouched behind a corner of the same wall, vastly inconvenienced by his wooden leg, but steadily directing his telescope downhill, so that it bore exactly on the door of Mrs. Billing’s cottage. It was Roboshobery’s duty, as lookout man, to report instantly if Mrs. Billing were seen emerging from the door with her best bonnet on, in which event Cap’en Jollyfax would at once leave the wall and take up his position at the church door to receive her. Failing that, Cap’en Jollyfax would be spared the ignominy of waiting at the church for a bride who never came.

  At intervals Cap’en Jollyfax took his pipe from his mouth and roared: “Look-out ahoy!”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” came the unvarying reply.

  “Hev’ee sighted?”

  “Nothin’ but the door!”

  Whereat the watch would resume for ten minutes more.

  It was three-quarters of an hour past the time fixed, when the rector, himself never very punctual, came angrily to the church door, surveyed the small crowd which had gathered, and became aware of Cap’en Jollyfax’s strategy.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded of Mrs. Peck, who, in fact, was spying in the interests of the opposite party. “Where’s Mrs. Billing?”

  “Mrs. Billing, sir, she say she’ll never think o’ comin’ till Cap’en Jollyfax hey fired the gun.”

  The rector stared at Mrs. Peck for fifteen seconds, passed his fingers once backward and once forward through his hair, and then without a word retired to the vestry.

  Roboshobery Dove maintained his watch, and the little crowd waited patiently till the shadow of the dial over the church porch lay well past twelve o’clock, and the legal time for a wedding was over. Then Cap’en Jollyfax hauled out his silver watch and roared, though Roboshobery Dove was scarce a dozen yards off: “Look-out ahoy!”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  “Eight bells!”

  With that Roboshobery Dove hauled out his own watch, banged it, as usual, on the socket of his wooden leg, clapped it against his ear, and then held it before his eyes. Finally, having restored the watch
to his breeches-pocket, he shut the telescope, stood erect and rejoined his principal; and the two old sailors stumped off solemnly toward Cap’en Jollyfax’s cottage.

  All that day Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun remained silent, and all the next. The day after that was June the first, on which date Cap’en Jollyfax had been wont to fire the gun in celebration of Howe’s victory. But this time the Glorious First went unhonored, and it was perceived that Cap’en Jollyfax was mighty stubborn. Monday, the fourth, was Sam Prentice’s birthday, but Cap’en Jollyfax’s gun stood dumb still.

  Leigh had never before listened so eagerly for la bang as it listened now for the report that ‘should publish the submission of Cap’en Jolly-fax; but still the report did not come. People took sides, and bets were made. It was observed that Cap’en Jollyfax was grown peevish and morose, that he shunned his friends and moped at home.

  Mrs. Billing, on the other hand, went abroad as always, gay and smiling as ever. Cap’en Jollyfax might do as he pleased, said Mrs. Billing, but she wasn’t going to marry him while the charge remained in that gun. If he chose to fire it out—well, she might think over the matter again, but she was none so sure of even that, now.

  The days went on, and Cap’en Jollyfax’s friends grew concerned for him. He was obstinate enough, but brooding, it was plain. Roboshobery Dove, with much ingenuity, sought to convince him that by persisting in his determination he was defeating himself, since there was now an end of gun-fire altogether. Cap’en Jollyfax thought a little over that aspect of the case, but did not fire the gun. It was thought, however, that he could scarce hold out much longer. He was said to have been seen one afternoon stealthily rubbing over the gun and renewing the priming.

  A fortnight went, and with June the eighteenth everybody expected to see an end of the business; for in truth Waterloo day would have made the best excuse of the year. But for the first time since Cap’en Jollyfax came to the cottage Waterloo day passed unsaluted. People wondered and shook their heads; surely it couldn’t last much longer?