Smiling Willie and the Tiger

by John Harris

  ‘Feller called Lavender?’ the barman said. ‘Drives a pony-and-trap? He was in here two nights ago with two of his pals.’

  ‘Two of his pals!’ Mace almost dropped the whisky and soda he’d bought. ‘Did you say two?

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Know where I’d find them?’

  ‘Oh, around.’ The barman was casual. ‘There are several bars where he meets Mendel to talk business.’

  ‘Who’s Mendel?’

  ‘His boss. Buys diamonds. Legal. The Tiger picks them up for him. He’s not very good at it.’

  To Mace, Mendel sounded like a man of authority and integrity and he decided it might even be possible with him to lay his cards on the table. To his surprise, however, he learned that Mendel was not the elderly authoritative man he had expected but a smart young Jew who seemed as flash as he suspected the Tiger was.

  Even the bungalow where he lived suggested sharpness and a crude mind. It was an ugly brick-and-wood construction with a corrugated-iron roof in the lost area of scrub and taibosch on the edge of the town. No attempt had been made to construct a garden and the place was shaded by eucalyptus, mimosa and jacaranda trees, and on two sides, curving round to separate it from the other scattered houses, was a thick aloe hedge. Near the hedge was a chicken run and a small tin hut which the servants obviously used for cooking.

  The house-boy was at the back of the house, sitting on the stoep with a scrap of mirror and a razor blade, scratching a parting in his woolly hair. He had on a clean shirt and clean trousers and was obviously preparing for a night out on the town.

  ‘Mr Mendel?’ Mace asked.

  The boy got slowly to his feet. ‘Baas Mendel not here, Baas,’ he said. ‘He go see lady friend in Winifred. Jig-a-jig. He come back tomorrow.’

  Mace frowned. Another of the swine, he thought. The whole population of South Africa seemed to travel light, carrying no moral baggage and usually leaving their wives and children behind in England or America or France or wherever they had come from. There didn’t seem to be a damn one of them with a shred of honour or a scrap of morality; their only concern what they dug out of the ground, the grog-shops where they quenched their thirst, and the women who satisfied their lusts. No wonder the Boers had gone to war!

  The house-boy was scratching at his woolly scalp again. He was cleaving a parting through his curls like Moses dividing the Red Sea for the Faithful.

  ‘Know a feller called Tiger?’ Mace asked, and the black man turned again and grinned.

  ‘Sure, Baas. Work for Baas Mendel.’

  ‘Are you expecting him here?’

  ‘I dunno, Baas. I go in town. I got half-sovereign, Baas. Joby give me half-sovereign.’

  Mace’s eyes narrowed. Joby, he remembered, was a Zulu who worked for Petticoat Poll and Poll’s was the place in Winifred where his quarry always seemed to be turning up.

  ‘Why did he give you a half-sovereign?’

  ‘I dunno, Baas. I go drink Kaffir beer. See lady friend. Plenty jig-a-jig.’ The black man laughed merrily.

  Mace frowned. He knew of the lawless nature of the Little Reef and the habit of householders of leaving their house-boys to stand guard over their homes when they were out. He nodded, deep in thought, feeling sure he was on to something.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he said stiffly.

  He walked away, frowning. There was obviously something afoot. Then he remembered the barman in Reinhart saying that Mendel was a diamond buyer and that the Tiger worked for him.

  Of course! He almost slapped one fist into the palm of the other hand. They were intending to rob the bloody place!

  While Mace was heading frantically back to Winifred to collect Instant and his men, a final agitated conference was taking place in the bar at Reinhart. A crisis had arisen. Fish had backed out at the last moment.

  ‘Transvaal Trots,’ he explained sadly. ‘You’ll have to do without me.’

  Willie frowned. He’d noticed a considerable falling off in Fish’s enthusiasm in the last day or two and, while he wasn’t averse to his disappearing to the States on the proceeds of Mendel’s safe, as he had threatened more than once, he in no way approved of him sitting on his backside while he and the Tiger did the work. ‘Train passes through Bushmansdorp at two in the morning,’ he pointed out coldly.

  A hired spider was tied up outside the door and he and the Tiger piled into it, the Tiger carrying a carpet bag and his book of instructions. His body bent with pain, Fish feebly waved them off. As they rolled down the street, however, he straightened up, miraculously cured, and marched rapidly towards the livery stable.

  The owner nodded to him as he appeared.

  ‘Third stall,’ he said, and Fish smiled.

  The Tiger’s limping pony stared round at him listlessly.

  It was neither beautiful nor very energetic. But it was intelligent and had been carrying the Tiger about his business so long it knew its way from one digging to the next and stopped automatically without a word from the Tiger at all Mendel’s customers.

  Fish threw a battered saddle over its scarred back and tightened the girth, then, hoisting himself up, he kicked at its flank. Outside in the street, in the last rays of yellow sunshine, he allowed it to have its head.

  Wearily the animal set off to the diggings in an automatic response and Fish was pleased to see that it made its first stop without any check on the reins. The digger, an elderly Afrikaner, came out of his tent at the sound of the hooves, but Fish merely smiled, raised his hat and flapped the reins along the pony’s back. It snorted softly in the growing dusk and shuffled off to the next stop.

  When Mace returned to the station at Winifred where he had posted his men, Instant was waiting for him. Mace had insisted his troops should remain out of sight and there was a great deal of grumbling because they had just been paid and the thought of being so close to the station bar without being able to go in for a drink was almost more than they could endure. When Mace appeared they were all in a bad temper, Instant more than any of them because he was worn out with arguing with Wooden. Mace fastened on his belt and revolver with shaking hands.

  ‘I think we’ve got them at last, Sergeant,’ he announced, walking to the end of the railway platform so they could talk without being heard. ‘The swine are plotting to rob Mendel, the diamond buyer.’

  Instant’s eyebrows rose and Mace smiled, pleased at his own perspicacity. ‘The place’s just outside Reinhart on the Paradise road,’ he said. ‘And it’s unguarded.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Obviously they can’t do the job before dark, though, or they’ll be seen. I want the men posted among the trees. Understand?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘I shall conceal myself in a tin hut at the back of the house. When they’re inside, I shall fire my revolver. That’s when you’ll close in. Fast. We’ll borrow lamps from the railway people. We might be glad of them in the dark. I want you to get the men there in small groups so they’re not noticed.’

  Instant’s lively humorous eyes were amused. ‘Wooden, too, sir?’ he asked.

  Mace gazed at him. He was so elated he was in a jesting mood. ‘I suppose you couldn’t contrive to post him in front of the others could you?’ he asked gaily. ‘So that if there’s any shooting he’ll be in the line of fire of both sides.’

  While Mace was closing on Reinhart at full speed, Willie and the Tiger were heading for Mendel’s bungalow. Arriving among the trees down the road, they halted the spider in a clump of mimosa and gave the horse a nosebag to keep it quiet. The Tiger took out his book of instructions and studied it.

  It was dusk by the time they slipped along the aloe hedge and through the hole, and in through the back door of Mendel’s bungalow. The house-boy, expecting to be physically satisfied and very happy on Kaffir beer when he returned, had already spread a blanket on the floor near the sink.

  The safe stood in a corner of the living room and Willie struck a match to read the brass plate
on the door.

  ‘Griffiths’,’ he said. ‘It’s a good ’un. Is there much in it?’

  ‘Should be. He’s been doing well lately.’

  Opening the carpet bag, the Tiger began to take out the dynamite. ‘Better use plenty,’ he said. ‘So there’s no mistake.’

  They had just unrolled the fuse back to the hedge when Mace arrived. It was quite dark by this time and he saw no sign of life. He awaited silently among the trees for Instant to appear, smiling to himself at the thought that this time there was every chance of making an arrest. Every one of Instant’s groups carried an oil lamp supplied by the railway and waited in the shadows with the wick lit and the glass shaded.

  The sergeant appeared out of the darkness – so softly he made Mace jump.

  ‘All set, sir,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. I’ll go in now. When you hear my shot, everybody rushes in. Understood?’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  Mace moved softly forward towards the front of the house. The place was in darkness, but there were a few yellow lights in the other houses scattered among the trees. But not many, because the male inhabitants of Reinhart were given to congregating in the hotel and most of the women and children were in bed. He moved softly through the bushes to the ragged grass that had been allowed to grow in front of the bungalow. Unexpectedly he found the corrugated-iron shed where the house-boy did the cooking secured by a hasp lock and he stared at it bitterly, thinking how bloody suspicious and untrustworthy everybody was.

  Unable to get inside, he took up a position alongside it and, crouching there, conscious of the disapproving cluckings of roosting chickens among the trees, loosened the flap of his holster.

  Unaware of him, Willie and the Tiger were crouched over the fuse behind the hedge. They had waited patiently until full darkness.

  The Tiger took his watch from his pocket and peered at it in the faint glow of a shaded match. ‘Ready?’ he asked in a whisper.

  Watching from the trees at the front of the house, Instant suddenly noticed a small spark moving towards the house. It came from the aloe hedge at the back and one moment it was there in the long grass and the next it was gone. He couldn’t make out exactly what it was because every now and again it seemed to disappear behind a tuft of grass, an aloe clump or one of the stones with which the garden was littered.

  He decided it must be a glow-worm. There were plenty about, he knew, but he’d never noticed them moving along the ground or in quite such a steady line before. Usually they darted about in the air. And this one seemed to give off sparks.

  Must be a new kind, he decided. On legs.

  Crouched against the side of the corrugated-iron shed, Mace became aware first of a slight hissing sound and stared down at his feet wondering if he’d disturbed a snake. There were a few about, he knew.

  Then he sniffed. He felt sure he could smell burning. Not the smell of charcoal which the Kaffirs used for cooking or in their vast hollow flat-irons, but a chemical smell – the sort of smell you got from cordite after a gun had been fired.

  He was just on the point of putting his head out to investigate when the explosion lifted the roof off the bungalow, blew out all the windows, flattened every wall – and smashed the corrugated-iron shed down on top of him. He thought it was the end of the world.

  Part Three

  ‘Everything’s got a moral,

  if you can only find it.’

  Lewis Carroll

  Alice in Wonderland

  One

  ‘Three houses down,’ Willie said, ‘and there was the safe – untouched.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have drilled holes or something,’ the Tiger observed.

  ‘And there was that feller again, too.’ Willie’s voice was full of awe. ‘Being dug out of the remains of the cooking shed.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘No.’ Willie grinned. ‘Bet his head was ringing a bit, though.’

  The Tiger stared gloomily at his drink. ‘I suppose we couldn’t just give ourselves up to him and say it was all a mistake, could we?’ he suggested.

  They were sitting on the kitchen stoep at Poll’s Hotel, and the weather was getting hotter. And, while Poll – resigned by this time to the fact that Pansy seemed old enough to look after herself – slipped them an occasional bottle of beer, they had no money to buy anything more. Things were growing desperate, and Willie’s songs were plaintive these days.

  ‘The days rolled on and the weeks became years,

  But the coffers were empty still;

  Coin was so rare that the Treasury quaked

  If a penny should drop in the till.’

  ‘Where d’you get ’em?’ the Tiger asked admiringly.

  It would soon be Christmas again. Another year was finished and their last spell out on the veldt – rather longer than normal – sleeping on the ground, eating tinned food and drinking soot-blackened coffee, had broken their spirits.

  ‘Nearly eighteen months now,’ Willie said gloomily. ‘Sitting in the ground all that time. It’ll go bad.’

  They were restless and uneasy, and distrust had continued to grow. The Tiger was short-tempered these days, and Fish, for some reason best known to himself, had started to make vehement demands that they attempt another foray to Chichester Junction. The idea was hopeless, however, because every road was full of troops in the last weeks of 1901. The army was going home to England and day after day regiments were gathering at the Junction to entrain for the Cape.

  They had tried their hands at a variety of things to raise money but none of them had been very successful. There were too many people at the game now – even the departing soldiers – and with the only project that still paid, the disposal of the army rations to Poll’s kitchen that Vechter, the Dutchman, bought in Sinai, they were largely reduced to doing odd jobs for Polly.

  The Tiger was gloomy and depressed. He hadn’t dared to go back to work for Mendel in case questions were asked, yet curiously Pansy seemed suddenly to have lost interest in the idea of marriage and moved about the house white-faced and sharp-tempered.

  ‘A girl’s got to think of her future,’ she had told him when he brought the subject up. ‘And there isn’t much with you, Horrie Lavender. Not in this measly rat-trap of a house miles from anywhere. A girl gets lonely, I can tell you.’

  ‘Don’t let’s go into that tonight,’ the Tiger had pleaded. ‘I feel dead.’

  ‘You look it,’ Pansy had responded sharply, her lips as unrelenting as the railway track from the north.

  The Tiger sighed. Conversation with Pansy was suddenly a desert. Something had come between them and she never responded these days to his suggestions. The perfunctory sparring that seemed to fill his life now depressed him. He had expected life with her to be one long riotous naked romp between the sheets, interspersed with more dignified periods on the stoep, with him reading the works of Dickens while she knitted and listened with awe to his pronouncements. It hadn’t turned out that way and he had been picked over and sorted out to within an inch of his life. Sometimes he found himself struggling with a desire to hit her over the head with an axe, consoling himself with the thought that if he did there was a small bag of Mendel’s chips to pay for his defence. He had hidden them under the water-butt near the grey pony’s stable some weeks before in disgust after bringing them home as a gift and running into a blast of nervous temper that had set him rocking on his heels.

  She seemed, in fact, to be suffering from some form of guilt that brought her to occasional tears yet still didn’t stop her making plans of her own that didn’t include him. She talked these days about Cape Town and even about Europe.

  Once even, he found her looking dispiritedly at a map of the United States with her fingers on the State of Texas.

  ‘That’s where the Poser comes from,’ he pointed out.

  She hadn’t heard him arrive and she jumped about a foot in the air. ‘You gave me a start,’ she accused him.

  ‘No harm do
ne.’ He tried to put his arm round her, but she slipped from his grasp. ‘What were you looking at the Poser’s home town for?’

  Pansy sniffed. ‘I’ve heard they make a lot of money over there.’

  ‘They do over here.’

  ‘You’re not so hot at it, Horrie Lavender, so there.’

  ‘I will be,’ the Tiger said indignantly. ‘Given time.’

  ‘How much? A million years? You don’t even try to lay your hands on what belongs to you.’

  The Tiger sighed, suddenly exhausted. Life was turning into a perpetual squabble and he almost began to wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to let Fish move in, while he found someone else with whom he could put into practice all the wonderful things he’d learned with Pansy.

  He eyed her, his eyes hot. His loins ached for her still and he grinned like a Maiden Lane masher in an attempt to win her round.

  ‘How about it, Pansy?’

  ‘How about what?’ Her eyes were tragic but her face was stony, her mouth a grim line.

  ‘You and me.’

  ‘You and me what?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘That!’ Pansy sniffed. ‘Nothing about it, far as I can see.’