Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  Mace glowered. ‘The trouble with you, Instant,’ he said, ‘is that you talk too much. Where is she?’

  ‘In the stable, sir.’

  ‘What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Probably working up a bit of clientele among the lads, sir.’

  Mace stared. ‘Better send her in,’ he said.

  The girl Instant ushered in was smartly dressed in gingham, with lace collar and cuffs, and she wore a hat with cherries on it and carried a parasol. Despite the fact that she was pretty with a warm yellow skin, her clothes were just too tight.

  ‘Captain Mace?’ she asked.

  Mace always prided himself on his politeness, no matter who was the recipient. He pushed a folding chair forward.

  ‘Please sit down, Madame. Or is it Miss?’

  ‘Well, actually, it’s Missis. I was married for a bit but it didn’t last. I call myself Miss. Miss Joey da Costa. I’m Portuguese. Delagoa Bay.’

  It didn’t delude Mace. Like so many before him, he deduced correctly she was a coloured bit from a Bree Street brothel trying for white.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  Joey looked at him. She was on her way back to the Cape. She’d had enough of Winifred and it had been a toss-up between Commissioner Street in Johannesburg and Bree Street in Cape Town, and in the end she’d settled for the south.

  ‘I have some information you might like to ’ear,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ Mace was being very cautious and Joey’s neat little bottom shifted on her chair.

  ‘I was one of Petticoat Poll’s girls in Winifred for a bit,’ she went on. ‘Then I decided to set up on my own. A gentleman I’m on good terms with acquired me a ’ouse in Scheepers Lane. I ’ad a very select clientele. Everything proper, everything polite.’

  Mace listened without much interest. He’d decided by this time that she was probably contemplating setting up an establishment in Sinai and had come to offer him special terms provided he kept his nose out of her affairs. Her next words proved him wrong.

  ‘I ’ear you’re the chap what’s in charge of catching deserters,’ she went on.

  Mace nodded. ‘That’s correct,’ he said slowly.

  She flapped her hand at him. ‘Well, I know where there is one and I want a bit of own back on ’im.’

  Mace still wasn’t very interested. With the war over, deserters would be ten a penny now. Everybody in the army had ideas of making a fortune in South Africa and there was no point in going home to come out again, when all you had to do was disappear and lie low until the army had vanished. He was just about to shrug her information off when her next words riveted him to his chair.

  ‘That blasted Dolly flim-flammed me for a fiver,’ she said.

  ‘Dolly! Dolly who?’ Mace jerked upright and his heart began to beat faster. At his very lowest moment, with disaster hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles, the man with the reprieve had come galloping up on the white horse.

  ‘Did you say “Dolly”?’ he asked. The name was burned on his heart.

  Joey sniffed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did.’

  ‘Not Dolly Poser?’

  ‘I think they call him Poser as well.’

  Mace adjusted his tunic and sat back very carefully in his chair. He drew a deep breath, fighting to keep calm. ‘Please tell me,’ he said. ‘What did this man do to upset you?’

  Joey’s black eyes flashed. She fished in her reticule and produced a label off a biscuit tin. It was the size of a five-pound note and was made of stout paper.

  ‘He paid me with that,’ she snorted. ‘We was in bed and the bastard held up a fiver and made me blow the candle out. When it was dark he switched it and gave me this. I’ll give him beans if I catch him, see if I don’t.’

  She looked so angry and so small, Mace even began to eye her with interest. He caught himself in time and leaned forward. ‘I’m interested in this man Dolly,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t know he was a deserter, though.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ Joey said. ‘I heard Pansy say so.’

  ‘Pansy?’

  ‘She goes around with that Tiger.’

  Mace’s heart walloped against the wall of his chest. His eyes gleamed and he leaned forward again. ‘That who?’ he asked.

  ‘That Tiger. He’s one, too, you know.’

  ‘Is he, indeed?’ Mace held his breath. He couldn’t believe his luck. ‘This man who – er – ah – did you out of your money. Is “Dolly” his real name?’

  ‘As far as I know. Adolphus C Fish.’

  Mace’s heart almost burst with joy. He remembered the name from the bills outside Pouter’s Palace in Winifred. He’d got a name – a real name at last after all the clouds of assumed ones he’d unearthed.

  ‘He’s a pal of the Tiger’s,’ Joey explained.

  Mace began to write. Adolphus C Fish. His head jerked up. ‘What’s the C stand for?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Joey explained. ‘His pa thought everybody ought to have a middle letter, so they called him Adolphus C, intending to give him another name later when they’d thought up a good one. They never got around to it, he said.’

  Mace stared at her for a moment. He was tempted to make a comment, but he changed his mind. Adolphus Fish, he wrote down firmly. If he wrote the lot down, some bloody fool on the staff would want to know about it and he knew it would take hours to explain.

  ‘These men.’ He probed gently, his heart in his mouth. ‘There wouldn’t be a third, would there?’

  Joey’s eyes widened. ‘’Ow did you know that?’ she demanded.

  Mace affected a modest smile. ‘Guesswork,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I never did,’ Joey said. ‘That’s clever.’

  Mace smiled again, and a few ideas had just begun to stir in his mind concerning her when she spoiled it.

  ‘They always told me the army was full of ’alf-wits,’ she said.

  Mace coughed. ‘The name?’ he said hastily. ‘The name of the third?’

  ‘It’s Willie.’

  ‘Smiling Willie?’

  She beamed. ‘You are a card,’ she said. ‘You know more than I do.’

  ‘Not his name, not his name. What would it be?’

  ‘Herbillon. Willie’s a nice feller. Makes you laugh.’

  Mace was almost swooning with joy. Two names! Two real names! ‘You wouldn’t by any chance,’ he asked warily, ‘know the name of the Tiger?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Joey said cheerfully. ‘Horrie Lavender. That’s who he is. Horace Lavender.’

  Oh, God, Mace prayed silently, writing as fast as he could, let this gift from heaven be the beginning of real success.

  ‘This information’s valuable,’ he said.

  ‘I thought it would be,’ Joey said. ‘See that you give it that Dolly hot.’

  ‘I will indeed.’ Mace nodded sagely. ‘Where are these men now?’

  ‘Standerton.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘’Course I’m sure. They had a fight, didn’t they?’

  Dishonour among thieves, Mace thought gleefully. Better and better.

  ‘Poll threatened to fetch the police because of the damage they’d done. They decided they’d better off it.’

  ‘Why did they go to Standerton?’ Mace had visions of vast new criminal enterprises. The explanation was much simpler.

  ‘Because they’ve been thrown out of everywhere else,’ Joey said. ‘Haven’t they?’

  Twelve

  They had arrived in Standerton just in time to hear that the war had ended.

  A good business was already being done in Mauser pistols, field glasses, saddles, wire-cutters, ponies, British rifles, and stores, all thoughtfully provided by the British taxpayer. The hotel was full of men determined to be around when the drinking started, and a spring tide of inebriated miners was sweeping along the street. Everybody had come into town, knowing that at last it was safe to be seen there. There were subalterns, troopers, bu
rghers and farmers, all busily swopping experiences and trying to work out whether the week before they had been engaged in sniping at each other, exchanging souvenirs, Boer bibles, British cap badges and anything else that came to hand. Everybody seemed to be laughing and everybody seemed to be drinking, and a stupefied private of an English county regiment was singing ‘Please Don’t Serve My Father Gin. It Makes Him So Strange And Wild.’

  ‘I think we should join them,’ Willie said.

  ‘Might be dangerous not to,’ the Tiger agreed.

  ‘War’s over,’ Willie pointed out. ‘Soldiers going home – even Javert. Chichester Junction empty of troops. Hey presto, up with the old spondulicks! Wealthy again.’

  It seemed an occasion for rejoicing and for once they were not as short of cash as usual. Back in the fold, Fish had meekly pawned his gun again for seven pounds ten; the Tiger, begging a day off from Mendel, had received an unexpected bonus; and Willie Herbillon had come into a fortune. As they had left Poll’s, he had been handed a letter from home. The threat to appear in the family pew at Sunday service had thrown his relations into a panic and their reply consisted of a lecture on morals and a cheque for twenty-five pounds. He had cashed the cheque and thrown the letter away without reading it.

  ‘A meal, I think,’ he suggested gaily.

  ‘Champagne p’r’aps,’ the Tiger agreed.

  ‘And some dames,’ Fish approved.

  The dining room was crowded. It was an unpainted corrugated-iron building on a wooden frame and had the temperature of an oven. A coloured waitress appeared, her dress damp with sweat, and they asked for the menu.

  ‘Today we got fried meat and squash with pudding after.’

  They fought the flies for the fried meat and squash with pudding after, but they washed it down with warm champagne and, collecting three frisky girls who claimed they were just waiting for their husbands to be discharged from the army, crammed them into Mendel’s trap and headed for the circus. The road was already full of Cape carts, butcher carts, coster carts, American buckboards and ox-waggons full of Boer children from the farms, but the dust wasn’t as difficult as it might have been because they’d taken the precaution of taking a case of bottled beer along, too.

  The circus was a hand-me-down affair in a patched tent with gimcrack seats made of planks set on trestles. There were two tired lions, a couple of mangy zebras and a performing bear, with a juggler, a strong man, two elderly clowns and a trapeze act twelve feet above the sawdust. The owner was a minute female ex-trapeze artiste with a foghorn voice.

  It was a leaden show, but, as everyone had been celebrating, the biggest part of the audience was drunk enough to enjoy itself and when the trapeze artiste’s foot slipped, and he almost emasculated himself on the wire, instead of sympathy there was a storm of jeers and whistles as he limped off. The owner hurtled like a bullet into the ring from her cash desk.

  ‘If you don’t shut your row,’ she roared, ‘I’ll turn the bloody lions loose!’

  It was just what was needed to liven the performance up. There was a howl of approval and the Tiger began to clap. A few beer bottles and a boater landed in the sawdust ring and the ex-trapeze artiste, her face purple, turned to the strong man who was acting as ringmaster.

  ‘Get Sandro on,’ she said. ‘Before the buggers tear the place apart.’

  The highlight of the performance was an act which went by the name of Sandro the Somersaulting Syclist, and, to the roll of a drum beaten by the strong man, a metal chute looped in the centre was brought in and erected in the ring. As the last guy-ropes were hauled taut, Sandro the Somersaulting Syclist himself appeared. He was grey, withered and terrified of the act they had devised for him. As the crowd cheered, he began to hoist up a specially made iron bicycle loaded with leaden weights and, propping it on the steep slope of the chute high up in the peak of the tent, secured the rear wheel with a clamp attached to a lever on a small platform. The juggler had climbed up beside him now and was holding the lever while he bowed at the audience who were staring open-mouthed at the great wheel-like contraption that looked like some miniature Big Dipper.

  There was a roll of drums played by the clowns and the audience fell silent.

  ‘What’s he going to do?’ Fish asked.

  ‘Break his neck,’ one of the girls suggested.

  ‘Ought to be a good show,’ her companion said, and they burst into a storm of giggling. They were shushed immediately and the audience clutched its programmes fearfully.

  ‘He’s going down the chute,’ the Tiger pointed out self-importantly. ‘Round the loop and into the net. I’ve seen it before. There’s nothing new in the world.’

  As they talked, the little withered grey man climbed into the saddle of the heavy bicycle and, as the juggler pulled the lever, the machine thundered down the chute with the noise of a truckload of coal dropping into a ship’s hold. As it reached the loop, it clattered upwards, over and down again to land safely in a net held by two Basutos. Sandro breathed again and, as they lowered him to the ground, pedalled the monstrous machine into the sawdust amid a thunderous roar of applause.

  The Tiger sniffed. ‘Not so difficult as it looks, y’know.’ He was becoming dangerously talkative. ‘All eyewash really. Like the trapeze artiste. The way they wobble. As though they’re going to fall off.’

  ‘You know about trapeze stuff?’ the girl clinging to his arm asked.

  The Tiger looked modest. ‘Once knew a feller in a circus in Bermondsey. He worked sixty feet up with no net.’

  ‘Easy money,’ Willie said.

  The girls laughed loudly, but the little grey somersaulting syclist heard the comment too, and associated it with his act. It seared his soul and he glared and spoke to the ex-trapeze artiste. She turned, studied Willie for a moment, then hitched at her skirt like an Irish navvy preparing for a fight.

  ‘Easy money, is it?’ she said hoarsely over the edge of the ring.

  The Tiger joined in assertively. ‘It’s not that hard,’ he said, made bold by the champagne. ‘The chute does it. Just like that.’ He tried to snap his fingers but they didn’t work.

  The owner’s eyes fixed him like the twin muzzles of a shot-gun. ‘If it’s that easy,’ she said, ‘how about you showing us how to do it?’

  Sensing a chance of putting on a real show, she turned to the audience and began to shout in her mammoth voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she roared. ‘We ’ave ’ere in the audience a young volunteer who has offered to outdo Sandro the Syclist.’

  There was an immediate howl of applause, and hands began to push Willie forward.

  Willie began to look alarmed. ‘Look here, old love,’ he said, ‘I didn’t offer.’

  ‘Oh, yes, you did.’

  ‘Not me. T’other feller.’

  ‘Then you should make him keep his big mouf shut, shouldn’t you?’

  A swarm of drunken soldiers surrounded Willie, Fish and the Tiger and lifted them into the ring. The roar almost lifted the roof and the ex-trapeze artiste began to grin cheerfully. The show was going like a rocket now.

  ‘One golden sovering for the young gent if he does it,’ she was trumpeting. ‘Enough to pay for a couple of bottles of cham.’

  Everyone was stamping and cheering and shouting now and, with a committee of soldiers waiting at the ringside to make sure they didn’t climb back into their seats, there was no way out. Willie decided to put on a bold front. Bluff would give him time to think.

  The tent had become pandemonium now, and the seats behind the net emptied hurriedly. Nobody wished to be on the receiving end of an iron bicycle weighted with lead hurtling towards them at sixty miles an hour in the hands of an amateur.

  Willie stared about him, his mind working fast. ‘I’ll need my own assistants, of course,’ he said.

  The bursts of applause were distinct as Mace approached the tent with Instant.

  ‘They can’t get away this time, Instant,’ he said gaily, hypnotising himself again with his own
visions of success. The coloured girl in the hotel dining room had identified his quarry without difficulty and he had set off for the circus in high spirits. ‘Champagne?’ he said. ‘Beer? Girls? On our money? Yours and mine, Instant. This shouldn’t be difficult. All we have to do is bar the entrances to the tent and the rest’s easy.’

  It cost him two gold sovereigns to get his men inside, but it seemed well worth it.

  ‘Point the swine out to ’em,’ he said to Instant as they took up their positions behind the tiers of plank seats. ‘We’ll pick ’em up as they leave.’

  ‘How about Wooden, sir?’

  Mace considered. ‘I’ll have him with me. I can keep an eye on him.’

  Leaving Instant to carry out his instructions, he began to prowl round the perimeter of the tent. The place was crowded and it was difficult to see, but in the ring through the heads of the crowd he made out one of the men he was seeking, holding a net with a Kaffir. At the top of an enormous iron chute which seemed to start in the apex of the tent, holding a lever which seemed to work a clamp holding a heavy iron bicycle at an angle of sixty degrees on the chute, was the man he knew now as the Tiger. And alongside him on the platform, bowing and beaming at the audience, was Willie Herbillon. He recognised him at once, if only from the smile which had long since become for him the symbol of depravity and devilish cunning.

  ‘Got ’em,’ he said to himself. ‘The lot!’

  As he rubbed his hands together, Wooden appeared, cocking a thumb helpfully. ‘You can see better over ’ere, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s some empty seats.’

  Willie was peering down towards the ring now, shrewdly assessing the histrionic possibilities of the scene.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here goes the last of the Herbillons.’

  Soldier and miner and Boer were silent now, waiting for the climax. The three girls were staring up, pale-faced. He cocked one leg over the saddle.

  ‘Careful with that release lever, Tiger,’ he instructed. ‘Wait till I’m ready.’