FILER’S ROYAL AND IMPERIAL CIRCUS, LIMITED,. May 18th.
MY DEAR MR. DOWDALL, — It grieves me to perceive, from your last letter, that my fear of a certain irritation on your part of late was well-founded, and I hasten to remove all occasion for an asperity which I feel sure you have already regretted. My sorrow is chiefly that you should cut yourself off from participation in the noble revenues which are shortly to accrue to this enterprise; but, rather than my honor should be in any way called in question, I will even encounter the bitterness of this disappointment. It would increase my distress, if, in addition to your sacrifice of the golden opportunity, you were to incur legal expense; and therefore I am now freely handing over to you a valuable part of the property of this company, more than equivalent to the sum you have invested. It should arrive in the course of a day or so, by rail, in a large case, carriage forward. I am now leaving England, with the enterprise, for an extended Continental tour, and take the opportunity of tendering you my heartiest farewells, and expressing my pleasure that our business connection terminates in friendly concord.
Your late partner, but eternal well-wisher,. PLANTAGENET FILER
P.S. — The case should be handled with care. It is not a new one, and in some places it is not altogether what one might wish. — P. F.
This was far more satisfactory, and Mr. Dowdall beamed as he passed the letter to his wife, who beamed again as she handed it back. Plainly he had gone the right way to work to bring such a fellow as Filer to his senses. Clearly Filer had realized at last that Nathaniel Dowdall was not to be trifled with, and had offered the best composition in his power without waiting for a legal seizure. Perhaps, also, there was a little in Mrs. Dowdall’s suggestion that some traces of honesty lingered in Filer’s system yet; for, in truth, he might have left the country without notice, and so have removed his goods beyond the reach of bailiffs.
There were possible awkwardnesses to be considered, of course. Showmen’s accessories were of little use to Mr. Dowdall, and might prove difficult to dispose of. But that was a matter best left till the goods came to hand. For the rest of that day and for some part of the next Mr. Dowdall was patient and hopeful. And then the case arrived.
Mr. Dowdall was sitting in the inconvenient little back room which the household was taught to call his study, and Mrs. Dowdall was consulting him on the eternal domestic question, beef or mutton; when the blank and bewildered face of Selina the housemaid appeared at the door, and the hand of Selina extended towards Mr. Dowdall a large biscuit-colored delivery sheet.
“It’s the railway van, sir,” announced Selina; “and they’ve brought a tiger.”
“A tiger!” gasped Mr. Dowdall, quite forgetting to shut his mouth after the utterance.
And “A tiger!” echoed Mrs. Dowdall, faintly, opening her mouth wider still.
“Yes, m’m,” replied the housemaid. “It’s in a big wooden cage, a-howlin’ an’ stampin’ an’ goin’ on dreadful. And there’s six pound four and eightpence to pay.”
In the blank pause that followed, vague rumblings, shouts, and yelps from the direction of the street reached the ears of Mr. Dowdall, like the ancestral voices that prophesied war to Kubla Khan. He rose, murmuring helplessly; his murmurs increased as he reached the study door, and the burden of their plaint was, “Six pound four and eightpence!”
Then he turned suddenly on Selina. “I won’t have it!” he exclaimed. “Send it away.”
And Mrs. Dowdall, awakened to a sudden sense of danger, caught his arm, pushed Selina into the passage, and shut the door after her in one complicated spasm of presence of mind.
The noises from the street grew in volume, and it was clear that a public attraction had been scented, and the inevitable torrent of shouting boys had set in. Presently Selina returned with the report that, whether Mr. Dowdall paid the railway charges or waited to be sued for them, the tiger addressed to him would be delivered there and then. The men, it seemed, had given her to understand that the tiger’s society was no longer desired, either by themselves or by any other person connected with the railway.
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Dowdall, recovering something of his natural sense of civic propriety. “People can’t be expected to take in any tigers anybody likes to address to them! It would undermine the whole fabric of society. I — I won’t be bullied. Is the front door shut?”
The front door was shut, and with so much of assured security Mr. Dowdall betook himself to the drawing-room, the window whereof commanded the nearest view of the street and the area railings. Boys were competing for seats on those same railings, and the standing-room in the street was growing rapidly less. From the tail of a large van stout planks sloped, and down these planks slid a huge wooden, iron-bound case, lowered by many ropes in the hands of several excited men. From within the case came angry growls, and as it reached the pavement, Mr. Dowdall observed that its front was a sort of door of stout iron-clamped planks, with narrow intervals between them, through which intervals came glimpses of restless fiery yellow fur.
The case came to rest before the railings, and the carman, perceiving Mr. Dowdall at the window, waved the biscuit-colored delivery sheet and hailed him. Mr. Dowdall raised the sash and parleyed.
“Are you goin’ to pay this ‘ere money now, sir?” demanded the carman.
“Certainly not,” retorted Mr. Dowdall. “I don’t want a tiger — I didn’t order one — the whole thing’s a — a clerical error. Mark it ‘Dead Parcels Office’ and take it back!”
“Dead parcels!” repeated the carman, with withering scorn. “It about the livest parcel I ever see, an’ it’s pretty near marked some of us gettin’ it ‘ere. Dead parcels! It’s my orders to leave it ‘ere, pay or not, sign or not; an’ the comp’ny’ll see you about the charges afterwards. Dead parcels! ‘Ere, git up!”
And with that the carman sought his perch, and the van clattered away with its retinue of ropes, planks, and wholly untipped porters.
The crowd was bigger and noisier every minute, and the bolder among the boys were already tentatively pushing sticks between the planks, to the manifest disapproval of the tiger; and as he watched, Mr. Dowdall recalled the warning that the case was “not altogether what one might wish.” He broke into a sweat of apprehension, wildly wondering what would be the legal charge for an ordinary street boy devoured by a tiger. And as he wondered there appeared, towering above the heads by the street corner, a policeman’s helmet.
The policeman elbowed steadily through the crowd, sternly ordering it to “pass along there,” without any particular result. He walked cautiously round the case and observed the direction on the label. Then he ascended Mr. Dowdall’s front steps and was about to ring the bell; when Mr. Dowdall, with diplomatic resource, addressed him first from the window.
“Good morning, constable,” he said. “There’s a tiger down there I want cleared away from my doorstep.”
This would not seem to have been a request for which the policeman was prepared. He paused, looked back at the case, and then again at Mr. Dowdall.
“It’s your tiger, sir,” he said at length.
“Oh, no,” replied Mr. Dowdall, airily; “not at all. Somebody seems to have dropped it — out of a cart, I fancy.” He inwardly congratulated himself on the conscientious accuracy of this conjecture. “Yes,” he added, “I am pretty sure it was dropped out of a cart.”
“It’s got your name and address on it, anyhow,” retorted the policeman.
“Ah, yes, yes; that’s merely a — a coincidence. A tiger might have anybody’s name on it, you know; not at all uncommon. Done to throw you off the scent. I should think there’d be quite a handsome reward for finding a thing like that, if you took it to the station.”
The policeman, sternly contemptuous, disregarded the suggestion. “That tiger’s causin’ an obstruction,” he said severely.
“Yes,” assented Mr. Dowdall. “Shocking! I give it in charge.”
The constable, with rising wrath, su
rveyed the crowd that now filled the street, and turned once more to Mr. Dowdall. “That tiger’s your property,” he said, “and if you don’t take it indoors it’ll be my dooty to summons you.” And with that he produced a notebook and wrote laboriously.
And now as he wrote, a sergeant arrived, who positively ordered Mr. Dowdall to take his tiger indoors instantly. Mr. Dowdall desperately contemplated the prospect of standing a siege of public, police, and tiger combined; when there arrived on the heels of the others an inspector, a far better diplomatist than either of his inferior officers. He first carefully examined the case and its inscriptions, and then politely inquired if Mr. Dowdall were in any way connected with Filer’s Circus. Mr. Dowdall was cornered. To deny Filer’s Circus to a responsible police-officer meant to renounce the hope of redress from Filer. Mr. Dowdall first hesitated and then admitted his partnership; and straightway was deprived of all defence.
“Ah, just so,” said the diplomatic inspector. “I see you’ve a nice wide stable entrance in the side road — we’ll see about getting him in there. Three or four men with rollers and crowbars can do it in no time. I should think you could get the men and the tackle too from Brady’s in five minutes; I’ll send a man to see about it for you.”
Now, perhaps partly because of the soothing manner of the inspector, Mr. Dowdall was beginning to feel a little less alarmed at the state of affairs. The tiger had not killed anybody yet, and seemed to have grown a good deal quieter now that his not very roomy habitation had come to rest; and that same habitation had as yet shown no signs of giving way anywhere. The front planks were so strong, the padlock was so very large, and the air-spaces were so very narrow that the creature could scarcely see, let alone get out. And indeed a tiger was no doubt rather a valuable possession, if you could find a buyer. There would be no great risk in allowing the case and its prisoner to stand in the back garden, with all doors locked, for a little while — an hour or so — till he could get an offer for it. For by now Mr. Dowdall’s natural business instincts were beginning to assert themselves, and he had formed a plan.
He calmed the natural agitation of Mrs. Dowdall, and dispatched an urgent telegram to Padgebury, the eminent wild beast dealer of Shadwell, thus:
TO PADGEBURY, OR ANYBODY IN CHARGE, SHADWELL. — COME INSTANTLY. MAGNIFICENT BUSINESS OPENING. UNUSUAL OPPORTUNITY. — DOWDALL, 613, BRAMBLEBURY ROAD, S.W.
This done, Mr. Dowdall resigned himself, with comparative equanimity, to observing the exertions of a dozen dishevelled men, who, with strong arms and much stronger language, shoved and hauled and scuffled the iron-bound case along the pavement and round the corner, and so through the gates at the side, amid the enthusiasm of the populace, and to the newly aroused growls and flops of the tiger. Somebody suggested a joint of beef to keep the beast quiet, and all the men suggested beer for other purposes, when at last the case rested in the farthest corner of the stable-yard. The joint of beef was found to be too large to pass between the planks, when presented at the end of a pole, and so had to be hacked into small pieces; but the only distinct complaint about the beer was that it was not large enough. On the whole, considering these things and the railway company’s claims, Mr. Dowdall found himself making a considerable further investment in Filer.
Also he discovered that he had the honor of receiving the famous Wrestling Tiger, as announced by a bill which the thoughtful Filer had pasted on one side of the case; whereon it was made known that at Filer’s Royal and Imperial Circus the gifted quadruped would wrestle a fall every night in its cage, with its trainer, or with any gentleman in the house who would oblige; having already killed fifteen champion wrestlers in sundry European capitals, with great applause from the discriminating public. Mr. Dowdall was somewhat gratified to find himself in possession of so valuable an animal, and blamed himself for his early anxiety to repudiate its ownership.
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 th
e 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.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 244