The table stood a yard from the wall, with his back against which sat the banker, imperturbable, dexterous, Semitic, curled like an Assyrian bull. Packed in a bent and climbing heap about the three other sides of the table, the players swarmed like bees on a bush, reaching on tiptoe to play their stakes, clamorous in Yiddish, blasphemous in English of strange accent. Behind them stood a fringe of less active gamblers, peeping and craning and disputing among themselves; and beyond them wandered others, strays from the swarm, stumped to the last brad, or sold to some watchful speculator. No silent losers were there; English was the prevailing tongue, but English of a quality difficult to match. Any person who has been privileged to indulge the sense of hearing in the silver ring at Alexandra Park races may suppose that the resources of unprintable language have been fully disclosed to him; but five minutes of Ikey Cohen’s spieler would have taught him his error. The simplest sentence grew into a laborious rigmarole, so qualified, punctuated, and embellished as to burst the bonds of syntax and leave its purport buried and bemuddled; so that for a stranger it was needful to skip over the miry flood and pick up a word here and there to piece out the meaning.
To one side of the room stood the bar, just now little patronized. It consisted of two trestles and a board top, standing before a tenth-hand hanging book-shelf, stocked with bottles and glasses. Between the trestles and the liquor stood “the guv’nor”—not Ikey Cohen, however. That speculator reaped the profits from afar, and “the guv’nor” was his nominee, whose business it was to manage the place and bear the brunt of a possible police-raid in the character of proprietor. This man, like Bill Hooker, was a Christian; from which circumstance, and the other that no flies were reputed to abide on Ikey Cohen, the philosopher may draw whatever conclusions he pleases.
For some little while Bill Hooker travelled to and fro from the street door, admitting another gambler and a few more, and rarely letting one out. Meantime the game went steadily on, and the banker wasted not a second of time; for he was a man of business, and he sat in his place on a contract to play Ikey Cohen a fixed sum per hour.
One man, seated close in by the table, clamored above all the din at each turn, losing heavily, turn after turn. He cursed in succession the cards, the game, and himself, and, least reasonably but most angrily, the man who last had cut the cards. He was the worst sort of gambler, and paid the banker well, though his noise was a nuisance. A dozen times he swore to stop after the next turn, and as often he went on, plunging and cursing, and coming near to foaming at the mouth. At last, choking with curses, he turned on his neighbor, who had last cut the cards, and insensately struck at him.
“Now, then, there! Now, then!” roared the manager, with a quick glance at Bill Hooker.
Instantly Bill was in the thick of the crowd and took the fellow by the shoulder. The dealer, who had never looked up, went steadily on, made the pack and shuffled it and put it out to cut.
“All right, all right,” gasped the offender, cringing and abashed. “I beg pardon—I vashn’t myself—I—”
“All right, let ’im stop,” said the dealer, who wanted the rest of the man’s money. And Bill, who well enough understood his job, contented himself with a growl or two, standing handy at the man’s back.
Here he was well placed to gamble for Naty Green, and presently he began. Five times in succession he put a shilling on the wrong square; but the sixth shilling came back and brought another with it. Then he tried again, and lost. Then he won two shillings in succession; and so, in the course of twenty minutes of varying chance, he ended at the climax of a most unusual run of luck with a net gain of six shillings.
He slipped the money into his pocket, and, with a parting admonition to the bad loser over whom he had been keeping guard, he elbowed out of the crowd, to the speechless disgust of Naty Green, who—like the gambler he was—wanted to see the luck followed up till it vanished.
Bill ignored him, however, and as Moey Marks was still in the room Naty dared not murmur. He glared covertly at the door-keeper, anxious to signal him to resume; but Bill had unwrapped from a parcel in a corner a glass jar of cheap jelly, and was absorbed in the task of scraping away every scrap of the paper label.
Presently a gamester from the inner ring got up and straggled out of the crowd, and Moey Marks took his place, vanishing from outer view. At about the same time Bill Hooker, having scraped the jelly-jar to his satisfaction, made application behind the bar and thence extracted a penny bottle of ink and a pen. Also, from an inner pocket, he brought, with much care, two sheets of notepaper carefully wrapped up.
“Here y’ are,” said Bill Hooker quietly to Naty Green. “One good turn deserves another. You can do different handwritin’s, can’t you?”
“Why?” asked Naty Green, with something of a start. For, in fact, a certain exploit in his previous career made the question a tactless one.
“Come on,” proceeded Bill, pulling the cork from the ink-bottle. “Write on this ’ere paper: With Lady Walker’s compliments. Write it in a woman’s hand.”
“What’s the ramp?” queried Naty, still doubtful. “Do I stand in?”
“’Tain’t a ramp,” replied Bill. “It’s—it’s just for my old woman what’s ill; just a jolly—bit of a lark. Come on.”
Naty Green took the pen and wrote as requested, angularly, with many long tails and flourishes.
“Fair knockout,” commented Bill admiringly, taking up the paper by a corner. “Now write on the other one. Write: With Lord Walker’s compliments. Write it like a toff.”
“This to guy your old woman, too?” asked Naty. “’Ow many more?”
“No more. That’s it—toppin’!” He took the second paper gingerly, and put it beside the first to dry. “’Ere—ketch ’old o’ your money,” he proceeded. “Moey Marks is deep in the push—sixteen bob.”
“No,” dissented Naty, stepping back and dropping his voice. “Go an’ get me a bit more.”
“What you’d like me to do is go an’ lose the lot,” replied Bill. “I know your sort. ’Ere—you ketch old, an’ ketch ’old quick ’fore they see you. It ain’t often anybody takes anythin’ away from ’ere, except the banker—you ought to know that.”
“Go on—be a pal. You stopped just when you was winnin’.”
“That’s the difference ’tween me an’ you. You don’t stop till you ain’t got no more to lose. You done me a little turn, an’ I got a bit for you. I ain’t goin’ to ’elp you lose it. For the last time, ketch ’old—else I’ll drop it on the floor.”
Naty, grumbling, and glancing swiftly over his shoulder, took the money with a covert grab and resumed his prowlings in the fringe of the crowd round the table.
And so in time the game flagged, as it did indeed at some time or other every night, even in Ikey Cohen’s spieler. The dealer stopped as soon as the number of punters fell below the paying point, and chemin de fer began in the common routine, with sixpence a coup for Ikey Cohen. Chemin de fer “gets the money quicker,” as some gamblers will say, and loses it quicker, as others experience. And it always finished the evening’s sport at Ikey Cohen’s spieler.
II.
THE door between the sponge-dealer’s and the slop-tailor’s closed behind him, and Bill Hooker, with his parcel under his arm, set off for home. It was not a long walk. He emerged into the street of new shops and warehouses which had lately been a slum, and turned away from the direction of Whitechapel High Street. A hundred yards farther, and he turned to traverse a short street of older and grimier shops, now fast closed; and off this was the street in which the emoluments of Ikey Cohen’s spieler permitted him the tenancy of two second-floor back rooms.
The house was high and black among others a little smaller and of the same blackness. The door opened to his latch-key and revealed a gulf of a greater blackness still. Through this he groped with no hesitation, and up the creaking staircase to the second lan
ding. Here no key was needed; but be turned the door-handle with care, for the sake of the sleeper within.
The room was poor and untidy, but clean; and it was lighted by a candle near the fireplace. He shut the door, again with care, lifted the candle, and went tiptoe toward a small bed in the farther corner.
A girl of twelve lay there asleep. Even thus she had the odd, motherly, responsible look so often to be noticed in girl-children of her age in poor parts of London, but its tenseness was gone, and did no more than qualify the ordinary placid, unseeing wonder that belongs to a sleeping child’s face. Bill Hooker took the candle away and entered the inner room.
Here was a larger bed, and on it, propped to near a sitting pose, was a puffy, blue-lipped woman, slack-faced and sallow. Her heavy lids lifted as the door opened, and she spoke peevishly.
“Late again, William,” she said. “They keep shockin’ late hours in the West End.”
“Yes,” he answered; “awful. An’ no buses runnin’ at this time. But it can’t be ’elped.”
“No,” replied the woman. “I ain’t complainin’—I’m too thankful to know you got a place so respectable. It’s always bin such a worry to me all along, bein’ so low. You mustn’t lose it, whatever ’appens.”
“Right, old gal—it ain’t likely.” He bent his bullet head and kissed the blue lips. “Bin all right?” he proceeded. “’Ere, you must ’ave yer dose.”
He turned to the mantelpiece and measured the digitalis which, quieting the diseased heart and abating the dropsy, was all that kept her alive.
She took it and let her head fall back again. “I ’ad a bad flutter about ’leven o’clock,” she said. “Polly was abed, an’ I couldn’t call ’er. Is Lady Walker better?”
“Yus,” replied Bill. “She’s gettin’ on fust-rate. Took a ’and o’ cards tonight with a lot o’ the other toffs. She gimme another jar o’ jelly for you—the sort what she makes herself; an’ she wrote a note with it this time, feelin’ so much better.” And with that he produced the carefully scraped jar and Naty Green’s exercise in feminine writing.
The lined and discolored face lighted up with joy. “Well, that is kind, ain’t it, William?” she said. “It’s ’er bein’ bad, too, as makes ’er feel for me like this. I’ll try and write to ’er tomorrow if I can. I ain’t wrote anything for ever so long.”
Bill was fiddling with the residue of his parcel. “An’ ’ere’s a bottle o’ port wine ’is Lordship sent,” he said. “’E wrote ’is compliments, too.”
“Ain’t it beautiful of ’im?” cried the poor creature on the bed. “What it is to be a real gentleman! Bill—William—I do ’ope you’ll do all you can to please ’im, an’ keep the job. It ain’t what you been used to, an’ you must be careful.”
“Right oh, ’Liza, old gal—I’m careful. ’Ave a drop o’ wine now, an’ get to sleep again.”
“Sit on the bed Bill—William. I’ll kiss you again, William. I want to tell you—you’ve bin a good ’usband to me, an’ I never kep’ nothing from you. But forgive me—I doubted you in my own mind once or twice about this job at Lord Walker’s. I thought you might ’a’ bin makin’ it up to please me, me bein’ that worried about anythink low. But I know it’s right now, an’ I oughtn’t to ’a’ mistrusted you before—I ain’t quite right sometimes, I think, what with one thing an’ another to worry.”
“That’s all right, old gal,” responded Bill, staring very hard at the candlestick. “Don’t you worry. ’Ave a drop o’ port wine.”
“Put it in that tea-cup, an’ you ’ave some, too. You ’ad to leave the porterin’ at the market, so’s to look after me all day, but, you see, it’s turned out for the best. Porterin’ was low to what this is. It used to worry me—Mother havin’ bin in the dressmakin’ and Father ’andin’ the plate at chapel o’ Sunday ’fore he died. So I don’t grudge bein’ bad, if it’s made us more respectable. We never ’ad no quarrels, William, ’cept over that, you an’ me. You was in steady work when we was fust married, an’ it was only you goin’ in trainin’ again that upset me. We never quarrelled, only over that.”
“All right, ’Liza,—never mind all that. We was glad o’ what I won that time, but it’s all over—’tain’t likely any one’s goin’ to back me nowadays. Ketch ’old o’ the cup, an’ I’ll get ready to turn in.”
She took the cup, and sipped with relish. “It’s lovely, William,” she said. “Taste it.”
It had cost Bill a hardly-spared half-crown at a Shoreditch grocer’s; so he sipped with discretion, for the bottle must be made to last.
“Nobby,” he commented, returning the cup. “It’s just the same as what they drink with their supper every night, at Lord Walker’s; an’ often ’is Lordship says, after supper, ‘Wrop up a bottle, William, for me to take to the theayter.’”
“Lor’, now—but there, expense don’t matter to them, I s’pose. An’ what did he say when he give you this B—William?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Bill. “Just what any ord’nary chap ’ud say. It was when her ladyship wrote the compliments, a-settin’ up on the sofa where she’d bin layin’. ‘Damme, Mariar,’ says ’is Lordship—”
“What?”
“Mariar,” repeated the innocent Bill—“that’s ’er pet name.”
“But you said ‘damme,’” replied the amazed invalid. “He don’t talk low, do he?”
“Why, no,” admitted Bill awkwardly; “not in general. ’E’d bin havin’ some o’ the port wine, you see. ’E said, ‘I’ll write some compliments, too,’ ’e said, ‘an’ send a bottle o’ that port wine. I ’ope it’ll do ’er good,’ ’e said, ‘an’ I’m sorry she’s so bad.’”
Bill looked a little anxiously at his wife, for he never felt sure of himself in these excursions into romance. But she was only surprised, after all.
“I shouldn’t ha’ thought ’e ’d talk to a lady like that,” she said; “but I s’pose they ain’t so partic’lar just among ’emselves. But they’re very kind, an’ I do ’ope you’ll keep the place, although they only called it temp’ry to begin with. If I was well enough to move, we’d go an’ live nearer, in a more respectable place.”
Bill breathed more freely, and trusted his invention no further, but prepared to take his rest in the jumbled bed that lay on the floor by the aide of his wife’s. The chief perplexity of his life was to maintain as best he could the broken-winded fiction that he had achieved the situation of supernumerary butler for evening duty at a house in the West End. His work at Spitalfields Market had ended when the doctor told him that his wife must no longer be left alone during the day. Polly must keep to school, or the “chunk” would be calling, with threats of a summons. So of necessity Bill Hooker must stay within during the day, to nurse his wife and measure her several doses of the physic that kept her alive, and to take his share—the child took the rest—of the household work; and only at night, when Polly stood guard, could he leave the place. So that it seemed something vastly like a gift of providence when he got his job at Ikey Cohen’s spieler.
He had slid into his deception almost unconsciously, never at first dreaming of the mountain of fiction into which it had since grown. His wife had aspirations of gentility to him incomprehensible but no doubt quite proper, and he humored them. The office of butler’s help in the West End sounded much better than that of guard and bully at a Whitechapel den, and so the deception began, with the invalid’s joyful concurrence. To her it represented a rise in the world, and she so brightened in its contemplation that Bill was tempted to elaborate and embellish and so run into danger, for he was a simple and unpractised liar. Even the name Walker he had used as a sort of compromise with his natural tendency toward honesty, for among his acquaintance it was the badge and ensign of gammon, and he experienced an odd relief of conscience in its use.
And so Bill Hooker laid his battered head to rest and slept. And, the morning
being come, be rose and busied himself in the rooms with Polly till school-time, and after that alone. He washed cups and saucers, and he washed his wife’s face. He watered the scarlet runners on strings that climbed from the box on the sill of the window by her bed, and he wiped over most things in the place with a duster, beginning with the three little memorial cards in sixpenny frames that hung in remembrance of the three boy-babies that ’Liza had failed to rear. And so the day went its common round, and ’Liza tried to write to Lady Walker, and didn’t do it very well and decided to try again tomorrow.
That night Bill Hooker was home much earlier than usual. Lord and Lady Walker had gone out, and the butler had given him leave, it seemed; and perhaps he might not be wanted for a night or two. But out in Spitalfields and Whitechapel, where ’Liza could not hear, they said that Ikey Cohen’s spieler had been raided at last, and most of those found there had been taken. Bill Hooker’s agility had saved him for the moment, it seemed; but he must have been spotted; and it was said he had spilt a policeman.
Thus it came to pass on the morning following that a police-sergeant with an urgent message for William Hooker walked in at the front door of the house—it was mostly open in the day-time—and made his way to the second floor. Polly was at school, and the sergeant, with the easy familiarity of the police in these parts, finding nobody in the first room, walked across and looked in at the second.
Bill’s back was turned as he stood washing saucers. The sudden apparition of the sergeant, with his familiar, business-like nod, struck the woman like a blow of ice. What was this—this? She gave a cry that brought Bill round with a start. The sergeant nodded again, very knowingly. “’Mornin’, Hooker!” he said.
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 172