Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  The conjurer stepped between Johnson and the company, putting his pocket-handkerchief into his coat-tail pocket; and Johnson saw that something black went with it.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the conjurer, “the experiment I am about to make is one of the greatest interest to every law-abiding person. I propose to show you how, by proper scientific precautions known only to myself, all theft, all dishonesty, may be rendered ineffectual and useless.”

  Gesticulating and bowing elegantly as he spoke, the conjurer stepped so closely before Johnson that only one thing could happen, and that was inevitable. Johnson had nothing but one small talent, as I have said; he could pick a pocket very well indeed — probably better than the conjurer. He picked one now. The black thing was a little velvet bag, soft and flat, as Johnson felt when it was safely in his own pocket. And the conjurer, with all eyes on him, went on.

  “Just consider, now, how valuable my process would be to the Government of this country. Half the police force might be disbanded, and most of the magistrates pensioned off. People like our friend Johnson, alias Jones, alias Barker, alias Jenkinson, would have to turn honest, or starve. Now for the experiment.”

  He turned and caught Johnson once more by the collar. “Here you see, is the pickpocket whom I brought straight out of Oxford Street by the exercise of the wonderful scientific law to which I have alluded. Here he is, with your valuables in his pockets, as you have observed with your own eyes. Now I shall send Johnson away — turn him out, kick him out — from this place, and let him run where he likes; and when he is gone I shall endeavor, by my scientific process, to bring your valuables back here, just as I brought Johnson himself, and restore them to you in a way that I hope will surprise you. Now Johnson, alias Jones, alias Barker, alias Jenkinson, out you go, and keep what you’ve got if you can! Ladies and gentlemen you will agree that I could not afford to kick a confederate — he would give me away. So as a guarantee of good faith I kick Johnson off the platform. Hall-porter! Run this man off the premises, and never let him come here again!”

  He swung Johnson to the end of the platform, thrust him over the edge with hand and foot, and stood bowing and waving his wand as the porter bundled the victim out. “Good-bye, Mr. Johnson!” cried the conjurer; “good-bye! Run as hard as ever you can!”

  As soon as Johnson reached the street he obeyed this order with all the strength of his legs, barely observing from the corner of his eye that the front of the hall was covered with posters announcing afternoon and evening performances by the great Lucifo, the Wizard of Andalusia. And when he had run some distance he turned into a dark entry and there disentangled from the velvet bag the gold watch, the three rings, the chain, the gold pencil-case, and the silver match-box.

  “He was mighty anxious,” reflected Johnson, “for some proof that I wasn’t his pal. Well, he’s got it now, and I hope he’s satisfied.”

  For some days Johnson never ventured out till after dark; but his days at home were not dull, for he had bought a small collection of newspapers; wherefrom he derived solace and chuckles, as he read and read again under the headings: “Riotous Scene at an Entertainment,” “Extraordinary Occurrence at St. Basil’s Hall,” “Serious Attack on a Conjurer”; and, in the case of an irresponsible halfpenny evening paper, “Lucifo Lamentably Left.”

  ARTS AND CRAFTS

  IN the early fifties a stranger in the parlor of the Castle Inn at Hadleigh was rarity enough, but a stranger sleeping in the house for two nights was almost beyond precedent. But at the time of this tale the stranger was there, visible at a great distance because of his size and the redness of his face, and audible farther because of a very assertive and persistent voice, too large even for the man. The man was Mr. Peter Fossett of Kelvedon, who had come to take over a stock of sheep; and on the evening of his arrival the parlor at the Castle was so full of Mr. Peter Fossett that the more regular company seemed to be squeezed into the corners. Even Abel Pennyfather was less noisy and less boastful. Old Harry Prentice and Banham the carrier were much impressed, but the waggish sparkle of Dan Fisk’s squint waxed as the evening wore on.

  The stranger (“foreigner” was the word among the older Hadleigh people) was a farmer exceptionally well-to-do by the merit of his fathers before him. He had ridden the thirty miles on a handsome mare, with a man to drive the sheep back, and while the master took his ease with brandy-and-water in the parlor, the man took beer and dispensed information in the taproom. It was not so much of his possessions and his prosperity that Mr. Peter Fossett talked in the parlor — that matter expanded freely enough from the man in the taproom — but of his most amazing sagacity and unbounded smartness; whereof he had many anecdotes, not always clear in front, though all unfailingly satisfactory to Mr. Fossett, and mightily redounding to his glory and triumph.

  “I ha’n’t been a-nigh Hadleigh afore in my life,” said Mr. Fossett, unflaggingly providing the conversation and keeping it to the same subject. “Never before, though I’m turned o’ thirty. I’m a Kelvedon man, an’ I’ve took a rise out o’ some of ‘em in most parts of Essex — ah, an’ London too, once or twice — an’ now I’ve come here. You’ve got an oad chap here I mean to have a look at, ‘fore I go back. I’ve heard a deal of him here an’ there about Essex; him they call Cunning Murrell, I mean.”

  “Ah, Cunning Murrell, eh?” interjected Dan Fisk, scenting amusement. “If you’ve come here to take a rise out o’ he, you’d better stop a bit an’ rent a house.”

  Mr. Fossett turned his beefy face slowly toward Dan Fisk’s corner. “Ho!” he said, with a voice of vast scorn, “you’re one o’ them as believes in him, I count?”

  Dan beamed gently. “Ay, sarten to say,” he admitted, “Cunning Murrell be a monsus clever man.”

  “Herbs an’ cures an’ surveyin’,” murmured Banham.

  “Witchcraft an’ things stole,” Prentice added, with a shake of the head.

  “Fortunes in the stars,” added Jobson.

  “An’ visions in a pail,” said another. “Sayin’ nothen’ o’ warts cured overnight.”

  “Ah! fortunes in the stars an’ visions in a pail!” blared the stranger contemptuously. “A monsus clever man, sarten to say — for Hadleigh!”

  “Cunnin’ Murr’ll be knowed arl over Essex an’ farther,” maintained Jobson.

  “Ay, true enough. Fools an’ their gammick go everywhere. Your oad Murrell may be mighty clever for Hadleigh, but he wouldn’t do for Kelvedon — not he! Not with me at home, he wouldn’t! ’Tis sarten he seems to come it over you mighty easy, but I hoad a pound he can’t come over me! Not he! I’m going to have a look at this oad curiosity with his fortun’-tellin’ an’ wisions in buckets. He don’t come over me with such truck!”

  “Ay, I count you be a man not easy took in, Master Fossett, sir,” cooed Dan Fisk, in honeyed tones, whereat anybody who knew Dan would have taken warning. But the stranger knew not Dan, and went on vaingloriously.

  “Ay, I count I be,” he said. “You needn’t take it from me — ask anywhere I’m knowed. Lord, I dunno where I’d be if I weren’t. Why I’d ha’ bin married, for one thing, long afore this. But I ain’t!”

  “Ah,” murmured Dan, “I count there be a mortial great competition.”

  “Ay, mayhap,” answered Mr. Fossett, complacently, “though ‘taren’t my ways to talk o’ that. But I ain’t met man or woman yet as could get the better o’ me, an’ I’ve a-been about the world a bit, too — twice in Lon-don, an’ Ipswich an’ Colchester — an’ I’ve larned a sight too much to be took in by such oad fellars as this here Murrell o’ yourn.”

  “Well,” observed Prentice, “he ha’n’t tried to take you in yet.”

  “True ’tis,” replied Fossett, “though I most mighty wish he would! Ay, I count I’d like him to try!”

  “’Tis easy enough to let him try,” remarked Dan Fisk; “easy enough if you ben’t afeared of him.”

  “Afeared of him! Do I fare afeared of him? An — oad
— oad — why, I’ll show him up afore ye all! I’ll make ye laugh at him, here in Hadleigh, that I will! If he ben’t afeared to face me, that is!”

  “Oh, he’ll see ye, if ye go businesslike in the mornin’. He’s not to know his mortial danger. ’Tis a cur’ous venture!”

  “I’ll go! I’ll hev a joke on oad Murrell!”

  And so between the doubts of the rest and the careful management of Dan Fisk, alternately flattering and challenging, Mr. Peter Fossett was brought to promise a vast exposure of Murrell on the morrow. And by the time he had gone to bed he had been brought to hint darkly at schemes of preternatural sagacity whereby the whole Murrell superstition should be exposed to the eternal derision of Essex, beginning at Hadleigh itself; and generally to proclaim Cunning Murrell already a vanquished humbug.

  Nevertheless he went to bed far fuller of brandy-and-water than of schemes, and woke in the morning with no schemes at all. Indeed, Mr. Fossett was not a man of invention, though he was none the less self-confident on that account. He finished his large breakfast, stretched his large limbs, and rolled out into Hadleigh street resolved to gratify his curiosity by a call on Cunning Murrell, and in no sort doubtful of his ability to put the wise man’s inventions to rout. His scheme should come, he promised himself, when he heard what Murrell had to say. And so it did.

  It was scarce a score of lazy steps to Murrell’s cottage, in the little black row that stood almost by the side of the inn garden. Mr. Fossett’s lusty rap brought a high-pitched call of “Come yow in!” and with that he clicked the latch and met Cunning Murrell.

  The little old man sat at a little table, and the whole room about him was hung and stacked with dried herbs in bundles. Murrell’s eyes, sharp and quick as a weasel’s, ran the length of Mr. Fossett top to toe.

  “Shut the door and sit,” said Murrel sharply, pointing to a chair, “and tell me your business.”

  Mr. Fossett, in no way abashed by this abruptness, dropped into the chair, spread his legs and rolled his head waggishly.

  “No, no, Master Murrell,” he answered. “I come here to larn from you an’ first you ask me a question. Now I count so lamed an’ cunnin’ a man as you be should know me an’ my business afore I tell it.”

  “As to who you be,” the old man replied, “that I know well enough. Mr. Peter Fossett, o’ Gatpoles farm, Kelvedon. A man o’ money, if ’tis said true, an’ Gatpoles farm be five hundred acres. Am I right?”

  “Ay, ’tis true enough.”

  “But ’tis no claim o’ my art to know that,” the old man went on. “You’re the only stranger in the place, an’ folks talk. Your man talks, an’ arl Hadleigh knows as much as I’ve told ‘ee by this. But as to your business with me, ’tis no such plain matter. D’ye wish me to tell it?”

  “Ay, Master Murr’ll, I do.”

  “Then ’tis proper I work it by geomancy. ’Tis a cur’ous art, an’ known to few. I take a paper, thus, an’ I write your name, so. There be twelve letters in that name, and I divide them into fower threes. I putt down they fower threes one above another, so. Now take you the pen an’ make a row o’ plain strokes opposite each three. Stop when you please, and don’t count as you do’t, or arl will spile.”

  Mr. Peter Fossett, willing to give his victim plenty of rope, took the paper and obeyed. With a blot and a smudge here and there, four heavily fisted rows of strokes presently appeared on the paper opposite the letters, and then Murrell took the paper and considered it with anxious care.

  “You hey wrote these strokes in order opposite the letters in fower rows, without countin’ any row,” he said. “Good. Now I work this geomantic figure.”

  The old man’s pen hovered a moment over the letters and strokes, and then descended to describe a group of ciphers at the end of each row. This done, he began another group of ciphers below the whole muddle, dotting his pen here and there among the letters, strokes, and ciphers above, and deriving his lower group, by some mysterious mathematic, from his upper.

  “Right witness; left witness; judge,” he said thoughtfully, carrying his pen from one cipher to another. “Here I read much that would surprise you. Your reason for coming here now; you ask me to tell you that?”

  “Ay, I’d mighty like you to guess it!”

  “Guess it I will not, for there’s no need. By my cur’ous arts I can know for sarten. Master Fossett, you be most desperate in love!”

  Mr. Fossett’s first impulse was to guffaw aloud. Cunning Murrell’s guess was the farthest thing from his mind, and one he had never dreamed of. But he held in his mirth by a choking effort, and dissembled, for he began to scheme vaguely at last. More rope, he thought, more rope for this amazing old fool to hang himself high as Haman.

  “Master Murrell!” he exclaimed, “that be the most surprisin’ ‘zact guess that ever I hey heard! Wonnerful!”

  “‘Tais no guess, I tell ‘ee, Master Fossett. ’Tis no guess, but sarten knowledge by my lawful arts.”

  “Then if it be no guess,” answered Fossett, following his opportunity, “maybe you can just as easy tell me the lady’s name?”

  Cunning Murrell shook his head sadly. “You be mighty hard o’ belief, Master Fossett,” he said, “but if you want more proof, more you shall have, plensheous more. Can I tell ‘ee the lady’s name? for sarten truth I can an’ will, an’ that without another word.”

  He returned to his geomantic formula and studied it afresh. “You hey put your hand to this unknowin’,” he said, “and all your thoughts lie bare to him who hey the art to read the figure. Her name — her name — let me see now; her given name be Ann!”

  If Mr. Fossett had not been a stranger, he would have begun to feel uneasy. But, confident in ignorance, he chuckled inwardly, for the old man was adding blunder to blunder. The sole human creature called Ann whom Fossett could remember was his own grandmother. This should come out, that very night, in the Castle parlor to Murrell’s face, if but he could be brought there among his neighbors. Meanwhile, let the old humbug be drawn farther into the net.

  “Master Murrell, you surprise me more and more. ’Tis prophecy, nothin’ else. Though ’tis true Ann be a name christened to more’n one. D’ye get her other name too?”

  “Her other name,” Murrell answered deliberately, dropping his eyes and his pen once more to the paper, “her other name — yes; her — her other name is p’inted out by the figure in letters of your own name — the first two an’ the last two. Her other name I read is Pett — Pett with two is — Ann Pett is the whole name!”

  Fossett the stranger, apprehending nothing, gazed upward at the herbs depending from the ceiling, and whistled to keep his mouth from a grin. This was magnificent. Possibly there were people in the world of the name of Pett, but quite certainly he had never heard that name till this moment. The old simpleton was floundering worse at every step. What a show-up for him in the evening at the Castle! What an unadulterated lark! More rope for the self-strangulation of Cunning Murrell!

  “Whew! That do beat arl!” cried Mr. Fossett. “Ann Pett, sarten to say! That there blessed name as hey been what’s-a-naming itself on my heart like a thingumbob! ’Tis outrageous wonnerful! Master Murrell, you be the most scientific oad pusson in Essex; the hull world be knowed to ye like a book. An’ what will ye do next, Master Murrell?”

  “Next?” repeated Cunning Murrell, plainly gratified by his client’s enthusiasm. “Next I do what most you wish. ’Tis plain you den’t come here onny to be told what you know. You come here to ask my help, an’ my help you shall hey. I will give ‘ee your heart’s wish; her stubborn heart shall be overcome, and Ann Pett shall be drawed toward ‘ce, an’ marry her you shall. ’Tis what you’re longing, ben’t it?”

  “Ay, Master Murrell, what else?” the visitor assured him, shaking with interior mirth. “’Tis what I’m longin’ most hainish powerful.”

  “Good then. Here is more paper. Write on the one piece your own name and Ann Pett’s on the other.”

  This feat Mr.
Fossett accomplished, with a great squaring of elbows. Murrell took the two papers, and filled a glass with water. Then, twisting the papers together, he lighted them with a match and let the black ashes drop into the water till no paper was left.

  “So it must stand for two hours, and then I shall deal further,” observed Murrell, putting the glass on a shelf and covering it with a saucer. “Those words, that seem to be gone, shall be carried to the mind of Ann Pett by cur’ous an’ subtile arts. An’ more shall follow. Take you a paper more, and write as I shall tell. Write plain: ’Tis Jain Pett is my heart’s love. Have ‘ee got that?”

  “Ay, that’s down,” Fossett replied, winking genially at the paper.

  “’Tis Jinn Pelt is my heart’s love. ’Tis my wish she be my wife, and thereto I give pledge. Is’t arl down?”

  “Give pledge,” repeated Fossett, with his tongue curled at the side of his mouth as he looped the ‘g.’ “Ay, ’tis there.”

  “Now sign.”

  “Sign?”

  “Yes, full name. ’Tis naught without your own written name.”

  “There ‘t be, then. But don’t you burn that too?”

  “Not till the right time. T’other must stand two hours, as I told ‘ee, an’ I do nothen’ with this till then. How far or how near Ann Pett be at this moment I don’t know, though to find that would be easy enough for me. But far or near, north, south, east or west, these words will go to her by ways you don’t dream of an’ draw her an’ draw her, Master Fossett. ’Tis enough. I hey other work.”