The Elder Ice: A Harry Stubbs Adventure

by Hambling, David

  “Will you look at the size of the fooker,” muttered the welterweight.

  I was in high good humour. A gallon of good English beer was singing through my veins. I would never back away from a fight. I removed my bowler and hung it on the iron railings next to me as though on a hat rack. “Gentlemen,” I declared, unbuttoning my coat. “I am a working man myself. And I do believe you have taken money to do a job tonight.” I hung the coat by my hat and unbuttoned my stiff collar. They were hanging back, a picture of irresolution. The air felt fresh and clean. “Well then,” I said cheerfully. “Let us go to our work.”

  You may say that I should have called for help or run back—the pub was just a few steps away, and if I had run, they could not have caught me before I got to the door. But I was feeling very well indeed. What lawyer’s clerk does not feel a surge of excitement when he can finally break free from pen pushing? Who does not long to meet a problem he can solve by punching it?

  “Only fools and dogs fight for no money,” Sergeant Eagleton, my Army trainer, once told me. But there’s no sense in having two good fists if you never use them.

  At a nod from one of the others, the heavyweight moved forward alone. He was fully as confident as I was, a big, raw-boned sort who could not have been more than nineteen. His stance was untutored. He reminded me of myself at the same age: a boy who had been in a few fights and never lost one. We sparred for a few seconds, finding our measure.

  “Go on, Mickey,” shouted one of the others. “Belt him one.”

  The boy let loose a right, but I backed away from it. He stepped closer and fired another right, which I blocked. That surprised him all right, and so did the left I planted in his midsection.

  Mickey tried to get closer, and I backed up against the railings. One of the others was trying to circle around me, but I could not look around.

  “Give him the haymaker!”

  Mickey was a one-punch fighter, his well-developed blows much too obvious.

  “You might as well send him a bleeding telegram and let him know a punch was coming,” Sergeant Eagleton used to tell me.

  He thrashed out energetically, but not skilfully enough to touch me. A truly skilled boxer can dodge every punch thrown by an amateur just by moving his head. I’m not so flash myself, but I can move. When Jack Dempsey answered a reporter that the man whose footwork he most admired was the ballet dancer Nijinsky, people took it as a joke.

  After six blows in a row failed to connect, Mickey started to slow, and I responded with a series of quick left jabs. The jab is a short, direct blow, with nothing from the shoulder so it gives no warning. I doubt Mickey ever saw the punches that cut his face. He swung back, hitting only air. Bare-knuckle is by no means the same scientific exercise as a bout according to the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules. But I showed that boy a few things I had been taught in the same hard way about the Noble Art.

  Mickey’s final attempt to land the solid punch that had felled every other opponent left him off-balance, his guard too low. I unleashed a full-blooded right-hander that put him out on the pavement. My knuckles would hurt next morning, but I hardly minded that.

  The light heavyweight, who might have been his older brother, stepped up and swung a length of wood at me. I blocked with my left, and backed away. He swished again well wide then aimed a blow downward at my head. I stepped inside the swing and punched him in the solar plexus with my left. A boxer tenses his muscles so such blows have little effect, but the blow took the wind out of him. Then I gave him right and left uppercuts faster than you could count one-two, and he was on the ground with blood streaming from his nose.

  “Get him,” ordered the lightweight.

  “Pogue mahone,” the fourth man said. It’s a rather crude Irish expression. With evident reluctance, he stepped into range and made unconvincing feints.

  I moved back and forth a little, adjusting the distance for a knockout blow, but the fourth man came up on my other side, streetlight gleaming off a long steel blade. It affected me like a bucket of cold water.

  It is a well-understood principle that the inferior party may pick up and use improvised weapons as convenient. A billiard cue, a bar stool, or similar blunt instrument, these are fair play when a party is sorely pressed. But never knives or other deadly weapons.

  He crouched in a knife-fighter’s stance, ready to dart in while the other man threw shadow punches from too far off. If I tried to hit the boxer, I'd get a knife in my guts from his comrade. I reached behind me and picked up my coat off the railing. Perhaps the knifeman expected me to whirl the coat and wrap it around my hand as a shield, as I have seen done in the pictures. Instead, I threw it at his face. The knifeman batted my coat aside, but it obstructed his vision enough for me to step in and stun him with a long left. A moment later, I had his wrist in my right hand.

  The fourth man moved in, theatrically cocking his arm back for a blow; I jabbed his chin with my left and he reeled backwards. I was minded to break the knifeman’s arm for attempting to stab me, but young Mickey was getting to his feet. I flung the knifeman into the iron railings full force; he bounced off, and went down.

  Mickey shook his head like a dog. As soon as he raised his guard, I knocked him down again with a clean right. The fourth man made to run away, but too slowly. I had him by the coattails and then by the collar. I took a fistful of his coat in my other hand and, lifting him bodily off the ground, heaved him back and threw him headlong into the gutter. He pulled himself up and scampered off down the road.

  Harry Stubbs had proven himself champion again—and I had an audience, a dozen men who had spilled out of the pub.

  “You all right, Harry?” asked someone.

  “Never better,” I said. “They didn't lay a glove on me.”

  Of course, nobody called the police, and that was the end of it. If I had my wits about me, I would have got the crowd to lay hold of my assailants. We could have twisted the arm of one of them until he told me what the thing was all about. Or I should have gone through the knifeman’s pockets and seen if anything could have identified him. He was the ringleader, though I hadn't really appreciated it at the time.

  But instead I drank a restorative brandy on the house and then another from a well-wisher, and listened to the story of the fight told and re-told. Jokes about my being the Conquering Hero were repeated endlessly. Afterwards I had to let myself in with a latchkey and tiptoe quietly to bed, but all in all, it was a most satisfactory evening.

  Round Four: The Consignment Man

  The Electric was no longer the only establishment on the street to boast electric lighting, and had not been for many years, but it retained the name nonetheless. It was the favourite breakfasting spot for those whose domestic circumstances could not supply satisfactory catering, and it also served as a kind of informal club or meeting place. Many of its clientele carried their work out by night, and a hearty breakfast there was the last meal of the day rather than the first. It was not a fancy eating-place, just an ordinary cafe; I dare say some would call it rough. But it had a comfortable, perhaps clannish, atmosphere for those of us who frequented it.

  As I anticipated, Arthur Renville was hard at work on a plate of bacon, sausages, kidney, fried eggs, tomato, mushroom, and the usual accompaniments. The Electric always served Stubbs’ Famous Pork & Beef sausages. Arthur insisted on them, and Mario, the proprietor, knew better than to disappoint Arthur Renville.

  “Wotcher, Stubbsy,” Arthur called, gesturing for me to join him.

  I had known Arthur all my life. He did business with my father and was a kind of mentor for me. I was privileged to call him by his first name. It was on Arthur's advice that I left boxing after my second defeat. He told me that in the boxing game if you’re not on the way up, you’re on the way down, and I had best find other occupation. I was not easily convinced, but he was of course right. With his assistance, I found a place collecting debts.

  Arthur had the look of a prosperous bookmaker. He was a wealt
hy man but not flash. He knew his place, though he had a certain air of command, and snapped his fingers for Mario.

  “Cup of tea and the card for Mr Stubbs here.”

  “Morning, Arthur,” I said. “I trust you and your family are in good health.”

  “Very much so, and my felicitations to your family also. But Stubbsy, I heard about this here affray outside the Conquering Hero last night. I want to assure you that it was entirely and completely outside my knowledge and without my cognisance. So help me God.”

  “I do believe and trust that to be the case, Arthur. It would never be my assumption otherwise.”

  “Well, I'm most gratified to hear it. To be frank with you, Stubbsy, it’s disturbing to me that such an occurrence has occurred where it did.”

  Arthur was what is known in some circles as a Consignment Man. It is generally assumed that they all Cockneys, East Enders from round the docks, but there are some south of the river, too. His type did not deal in individual items or small quantities but in entire consignments of goods whose provenance was questionable. If a load of pineapples rotted in transit, if Chinaware smashed on a rough voyage or salt water spoiled biscuits, then the owners went through the appropriate channels with Lloyds of London to recover their losses. And as often as not, a consignment of goods of similar description appeared on the market soon afterwards.

  The consignment man was a master of logistics; he had drivers and vehicles at his beck and call. He knew of unused sheds and stables and a hundred other spaces where goods could be stored at short notice. He was on intimate terms with every criminal in the area. He knew a hundred businessmen and a thousand middlemen with an eye for good quality merchandise and cash down to pay for it.

  As a boy, I heard rumours that Arthur dealt in stolen goods. He soon put me right on that one. Stolen property was too hot for him to handle, and he turned it down on principle. The consignments that found their way to him had always been properly written off and recorded as such.

  “Then isn't it stolen from the owners?”

  “Not at all. They're happy to see it gone. You see, the insurance value is always greater than the actual value of the consignment. The paperwork is always In Order, and Lloyds of London pays out on every one.”

  “So Lloyds are the ones losing out?”

  Arthur laughed merrily at that. “Lloyds lose out! Stubbsy, you are too good for this wicked world. They don’t lose a penny. The way it works is this: Jolly Jack Tar gets a bottle of grog, his Captain Courageous gets a new coat, the ship-owners get a fat cheque, and the gentlemen of Lloyds, why, they all take winter cruises in the Caribbean. And your esteemed father, Stubbs the Butcher, he gets his supplies cheap so he can make sausages with twice the meat at half the price of the competition. My merry men make themselves a few bob on the side. And me, I dine in stately splendour at the Electric Rooms every morning.”

  “If nobody loses, where does the money actually come from?”

  He tapped his nose confidentially. “The Good Lord provides, Stubbsy.”

  The Good Lord especially helps those who keep their wits about them. The proverbial sparrow does not fall in Norwood but that Arthur knows how much meat there is on it and what its feathers would fetch. And he'll make sure it gets shared out fairly.

  Arthur had a Consignment Man’s capacity to prevent shrinkage, pilferage, and other forms of larceny in transit. Vermin were his biggest problem, he said. A consignment up halfway to perishing was a magnet for every mouse, rat, and other rodent for miles, and Arthur always kept a good supply of mousetraps on hand. And deterrents for the larger form of vermin, too.

  He was not a harsh man. Arthur's rule was that there was plenty for everybody and everybody got his fair share. The only thing that spoiled it was if certain individuals became greedy. The consignment man ensured diligence all round and no sticky fingers. Otherwise, there were broken arms, slashed faces, and other ways of expressing disapproval of those who transgressed against the common weal of the consignment business.

  Mario set down a blue china mug of tea and tried to pass me a stained menu, which I gravely declined. The tea was good, strong and sweet.

  “As I heard it,” said Arthur, “these five bog Irish jumped you as you was leaving the Hero. And you knocked seven bells out of them all. Serves them right.”

  “There were only four. And only one of them knew how to use his fists.”

  “But one of them had a knife?” Arthur shook his head at the villainy of it. He knew a thing or two about villainy, he could give lessons in it, but that was beyond the pale. His voice shook with emotion. “In the first place, that anyone should lay a finger on a personal friend of mine without the least prior consultation is a sore provocation to me. In the second place, that persons should be doing this kind of thing at all in this location is a thing not to be tolerated.” He cut up his bacon and egg with unnecessary violence.

  “I don't expect they'll be troubling me again, Arthur.”

  “I shouldn't be surprised if they did, though,” he said darkly. “This was a put-up job, ordered and paid for, if not actually delivered to spec. They will most likely be back, if I know what's what, meaning to finish the job—ten of them, with iron bars in their hands. But I won't stand for it.” He thrust a forkful of food into his mouth. After a minute, he continued in more measured tones. “Certain enquiries are being made in quarters where our Hibernian friends are likely to be known. As soon as these are completed, I will inform you toot sweet.”

  “That's very gentlemanly of you, Arthur.”

  He looked almost offended. “Least I can do, Stubbsy. I tell you, though, I wish I'd been there to see it. What a barney it must have been, one against four! So what’s this matter you’re working on that gets this attention?”

  A vow of confidentiality sealed Latham and Rowe, but Arthur Renville was an old friend and one whom I trusted implicitly. I told him about my attempts to track down anything of value that Sir Ernest Shackleton might have secreted. He laughed aloud when I told him about my interview with Mellors.

  “I should think he did take exception. Old Frank Mellors! Didn’t you read the papers about him stealing the Irish Crown Jewels back in '07? Before your time, I suppose.”

  “I didn't even know there were any Irish Crown Jewels.”

  “There aren't any more,” Arthur chuckled. “Mellors and his cronies made off with them. But it was all covered up.” His voice dropped. “It seems they were all part of a… well… they say… a ring of homosexuals.”

  I had known odd individuals in boxing circles pointed out as “homosexual”. But I had never heard that a man's approaches might be acceptable to another man, or that there were whole groups of them.

  Arthur lowered his voice. “There was orgies, so they say. Men with men. With titled persons present and all.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “That's why he changed his name and moved to England. He’s on his uppers.”

  “No wonder he was offended when I was asking him about jewels.” I wished I had known the story before the interview.

  “Don't worry, Harry. It doesn’t do to be too clever. And this Dr Evans woman—anything suspicious about her?”

  “She would have kept talking about her tar-di-grades for as long as I cared to listen. But I'm blowed if I can see what they have to do with anything else.”

  “Did you think about gold? One gold nugget would be worth a king’s ransom.”

  “But the weight of gold...”

  “It is not the value of the sample; it’s the vein of gold it points to. The Antarctic could be the next Klondike, except it’s a sight harder to go prospecting there. It could be worth millions.”

  “I’ll look into that. I did have one thought of my own. The other evening I was reading an account of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition of 1912.”

  “I don't think anyone ever actually says 'ill-fated', Stubbsy.”

  I paged through my notebook to the section I had
copied out. “What caught my attention was what was found on Scott after he died. It seems he had been collecting some particular stones.”

  “What sort of stones?”

  “That great explorer filled his pockets with fossils. Even though they had to shed as much weight as possible, those fossils were of the greatest value. Scott collected these fossils from the Beardmore Glacier the behest of a Dr Suess, who I understand to be an Austrian geologist. The reason being, these fossils prove the theory of continental drift, inasmuch as they are the remains of tropical plants. This proves that Antarctica once enjoyed a warm climate, a finding of not inconsiderable significance.”

  “Maybe so,” said Arthur. “But how do you convert that into pounds, shillings, and pence? I never heard of a trade in them, not like artworks and gemstones. Fossils are more what you call curios. On the other hand, those four Irish weren't set on you for curios.”

  “I suppose not.”

  The bearded man who had been following me must have put them up to it. They thought either Brown had handed me something or had given me some information that made it worth attacking me. If only I knew what they thought I had.

  Arthur must have been thinking along the same lines. “There’s money in this,” he said. “You keep your eyes peeled, Stubbsy, and mind what you’re up to.”

  Round Five: The Summerhouse

  I was most concerned about the possible repercussions when I submitted my report. I agonised about whether I should mention the brawl outside the Conquering Hero. In the end, I felt it must be relevant to the case. I feared Mr Rowe would be shocked that an employee should be engaging in a fracas, even cloaked in the terms with which I expressed it. Scuffles whilst collecting debts were common, but that was another case entirely.