by Thomas Burke
“No one couldn’t kill the Chink, could they?”
“Course they could. Easy. Any afternoon. All them lot goes to sleep every afternoon—Chinky, too, in a dark room. Anyone could kill ’im then. As easy! I’d like someone to do it, that I would. Taking yer ma away from you and me, dammim!”
“How’d they do it, then?”
“Why—” He caught her by the frock, and dragged her to him. The physical pain of the four days had left her half animal, and in her face, swollen with tears, was a vacant look with less of intelligent consciousness than a cat’s. She did not notice that the hand that pulled her was not cruel, but gentle. “Why, easy he’d do it. He’d go to the Chink’s house—the brown ’un at the corner—and he’d slip through the door, ’cos it’s alwis open. And he’d creep to the back room where the Chinky sleeps, all in the dark. And he’d creeeeep up to the bed. And he’d have the knife in both hands. And he’d bring it down—Squelch!—into the Chinky’s neck—so!”
He pantomimed, and noticed with delight that the child’s face was drawn, as in one who strives to learn a lesson.
“But why don’ someone do it, then, and bring ma back to us?”
“Oh—’cos they’re afraid. And ’cos they mustn’t—that’s why. It’d be murder. Killing people ain’t right. Murder’s awful wicked.”
“Don’t you wish Chinky was dead, dad? I do.”
“Not ’arf I don’t. I’d be a better man if Chinky was dead. It ain’t right to say that, but I wish he was. But there … you don’t want to think about that kind of thing. It ain’t nice. Don’t you go thinking about it. And don’t talk about it no more. Else you’ll get some more of what I just done to yer!”
Next morning, he summoned her, and tore the frock from her, and whipped her again, and tied her to the bed, suspended, so that her feet twisted and just touched the ground. And there he left her till noon. Again and again her aching head would droop, and throw the weight on her arms, and every time she raised it she would see, on the mantelshelf before her, a knife that was not there before—a large, lean knife—and a cheap “sticky-back” photograph—a portrait of the Chink. And as she swayed with the sustained torture, in her little brain sluggish thoughts began to crawl, and the golden head was moved to much strange reasoning.
At noon, he returned and released her, and let her dress, and gave her food. At about three o’clock he departed suddenly, leaving the door unlocked. He stayed away for part of an hour.
When he came back, the room was empty, and he had great joy. His heart sang; he flicked his fingers.
He squatted down by the fetid bed, chewing a piece of betel nut, and waited for her.
At four o’clock he heard the chatter of small feet in the passage, and then a little storm of frock and dishevelled stockings burst into the room, slipped and fell, and rose again, and fell yet again on seeing the Greaser’s sensual grin. Her face was whipped to a flame, and her breathing was hard. Her hands clutched the breast of her frock.
“Oh!” was the cry she gave, and for a moment she stood transfixed, expectant of an assault. And when it did not come, she ran on:
“Oh, dad, don’t beat me, don’t whip me. Daddy, I only run out just to—to do some-think. I done it, dad. I done what they was frightened to do. Dad, aincher glad? I bin and killed him. I bin and killed the Chinky. I done him in, dad. All in the dark. He’s dead all right. I put it right in … both hands. Don’t whip me no more. I thought it’d bring ma back, p’r’aps. I thought. … Oooh! Don’t look like that … dad! …”
His heart leapt. He could have howled with laughter. He wanted to kick his legs on the bed, and roll about. But he veiled all truth, and stared at the child with a face that assumed a grey terror.
“You done … what?” he asked, in slow tones of wonder. “You done … you killed someone. … Myrtle … killed that Chink. Oh—my—Gawd!”
“Yes,” she said, with stark simplicity, stupidly fingering a large knife which she had drawn from under her frock. “Yep. I done ’im proper. ’Cos he took ma away from us. Look—here’s the knife. I went right in, all in the dark. Mind—it’s wet. It went right in. It didn’t half spurt out.”
“Oh, Gawd,” he screamed, acting better than he knew. “Blood. Oh, Gawd!” He sank limply to the bed, his figure a question mark. Then he leapt up, dashed to the door, and rushed, in a cloud of words, to the street, crying hoarsely:
“Oh, Gawd! Police! Police! Someone tell the police. My kid’s done a murder. Our Myrtle’s bin and killed a Chink. Oh, Gawd. Oh, Gawd. Come in, someone. Someone go in to her. She’s stuck a knife in a Chink, and she’s playing with it, and it’s got blood on it. Oh, Gawd, can’t someone tell the police!”
In the space of a minute, Formosa Terrace, at that hour torpid and deserted, awoke to furious life. A small, vivid crowd surrounded him, and he stood at its centre, gesturing wildly, his hair dropping, his face working, as, fifty times, he told his tale.
Then a whistle was blown, and slowly the police came; and some went to Pennyfields, to the house of the Chink, and another took the child, and the sergeant took the Greaser and questioned him. He had it all so pat, and was so suitably garrulous and agitated, that he noted with glee how suspicion fell from him.
Yes, the knife was his; it had been given him at the docks by a Malay. Yes, he did hate the Chink because the Chink had taken his wife, the child’s mother; and quite probably he had said that the Chink ought to die. Not the right thing to say, perhaps, but quite likely he’d said it, because he felt like that then. No, he hadn’t been to work to-day, but he’d been round at old Benny’s most of the morning, and the people downstairs saw him come in about an hour ago. Yes, he had punished the child several times lately. Had had to. His missus had gone with the Chink, and left him alone with the child to look after as well as himself, and he couldn’t manage her. He’d had to whip her because she was dirty. (He brushed away a well-forced tear.) But if ever he’d have thought anything like this was going to happen, he’d never have left that knife there. Gawd help him if he would. To think that his kid—his only kid—should do a murder. It was awful. What’d he done to deserve two blows like that? His wife gone; and now his little kid to kill someone. … Gawd.
And he broke upon the arms of the supporting constables.
Myrtle and he were taken to the station, the child wondering and a little pleased with the novelty; he with his life’s work done, his Daffodil’s ravisher put to sleep. His statement was taken again, and he was told that he must consider himself detained with the child, to which he brokenly concurred.
Now there came to the station the officers who had visited the Chink’s house, and they made a verbal report of what they had seen.
And suddenly, there burst upon the quiet station a great howl—the howl of a trapped beast, as Greaser Flanagan fell forward over the desk and hammered the floor with his fists.
“Yerss,” the constable was saying; “yerss—we bin there. Found the body all right. In bed. Knife wound through the neck—left side. On’y it ain’t the Chink. It’s a woman. It’s Daffodil Flanagan!”
The Cue
Down Wapping way, where the streets rush right and left to water-side and depot, life ran high. Tide was at flood, and below the Old Stairs the waters lashed themselves to fury. Against the savage purple of the night rose a few wisps of rigging and some gruff funnels: lyrics in steel and iron, their leaping lines as correct and ecstatic as a rhymed verse. Under the cold glare of the arc lights, gangs of Asiatics hurried with that impassive swiftness which gives no impression of haste. The acrid tang of the East hung on every breath of air.
Hardly the place to which one would turn as to the city of his dreams; yet there are those who do. Hearts are broken by Blackwall Gardens. The pity and terror and wonder of first love burn in the blood and limbs of those who serve behind the counters of East India Dock Road or load up cargo boats at the landing-stag
es. Love-mad hands have buried knives in little white bosoms in Commercial Road, and songs are written by the moon across many a happy garret-window in Cable Street.
Once, in these streets, when the gas lamps glimmered and the night was stung with stars, I heard a tale.
The little music hall near the water-side had just slammed its doors on the last stage hand, and stood silent and dark. Stripped of its lights and noise, it gave rather the impression of last night’s beer: something flat and stale and squalid. It seemed conscious of the impression it created; there was something shamefaced about it, as of one caught doing unmentionable but necessary things.
At the mouth of the stage-door passage, illumined by a gas jet which flung a light so furtive as to hint that it could show a great deal more if it would, stood a man and a girl. The girl was covered from neck to foot in an old raincoat. The man wore soiled evening-dress, covered by an ulster. A bowler hat rode cockily on one side of his head. A thin cigar thrust itself impetuously from a corner of his large mouth. Approached from behind, he looked English, but his face was flat, and his head was round. The colour of his skin was a murky yellow. He had almonds for eyes. His hair was oily. He was a half-caste: the son of a Shadwell mother and a Chinese father.
He put both hands on the girl’s shoulders. He spoke to her, and his face lit with slow passion. She shook her head. She laughed.
“Nit, Chinky, nit. You’re a nice old boy, I know, and it was real kind of you to give me all those nice things. But it wouldn’t be fair for me to lead you on, y’know. I don’t love you. Not a bit. Never did. I’ve got my boy. The boy I work with. Been with him for five years now, I have. So that’s that. And now I must pop off, else the old thing will be wondering what’s happened to me.”
The half-caste musician glared down at her. He pawed her. He told her, in his labial enunciation, that she was too pretty for music-hall work. He told her that she was a wonderful girl, and murmured: “Sweet, lovely li’l girl. Oh, my beautiful, my beautiful!”
She tittered; and when she moved away he walked by her side, stroking her sleeve. She began to talk conversationally:
“Never mind, old boy. Cheer up. Rotten house to-night, wasn’t it? I thought we was going to get the bird, specially when you missed the cue for our change. Oh, and by the way, be careful of those changes, old boy. Y’see, Johnnie’s been doing that collapsing trapeze stunt for about five years now, and he always does it to The Bridal Chorus music. You want to watch that, y’know; you changed about half-a-tick too soon to-night, and anything like that jars him. See? Well, here’s my turning. So long, kid.”
But he did not let her go. His tone of casual compliment swiftly changed. He caught her wrists and held them. “I want you!” His straight, flat lips were moist. She drew away; he pulled her to him, bent, swung her from her feet, and crushed her small body against his, bruising her little mouth with angry kisses.
But she raised a sharp hand and pushed him in the face.
“Here—steady on, Chinky!” she cried, using the name which she knew would sting him to the soul. She was disconcerted and inclined to be cross, while half laughing. “Don’t take liberties, my son. Specially with me. You’re only a yellow rat, y’know.”
Something flickered for an instant beneath his long, narrow lashes, and in another instant was gone. He bent again. “O li’l lovely girl. … My dear!” Some beast seemed to leap within him. His hands mauled her with intent cruelty, as though he would break and devour her.
“Don’t!” she enjoined. “Chuck it—you look such a silly fool!” She thrust him away, and rearranged her disordered hair. She was not by any means afraid of him; wasn’t he only a poor, wretched half-caste? But at the same time she didn’t want him; didn’t like the odour of his oily black hair which was right under her nose, or the reek of stale smoke that hung about his dress-suit. She skipped out of his reach, and cocked a little finger at him, while she sang, light-heartedly:
“I love you, little yellow bird, But I love my libertee!”
Like a yellow wraith Cheng Brander faded into the night, his face and gait calm and inscrutable. Before him danced the face of Jewell Angell, like a lamp lit by the pure candour of her character: Jewell Angell, the lady partner in the music hall acrobatic turn of Diabolo and Angela.
He walked home, suffering an overmastering desire to hurt this beautiful, frail thing that had called him Yellow Rat. To strike her physically would, he knew, be useless; these fool English did not understand that women might justifiably be struck; and also, Jewell was, by her profession, too hard and sturdy, for all her appearance of frailty, to be hurt by any blow that he could deliver on her body. But there were, perchance, other ways. His half-Oriental brain uncoiled itself from its sensuous sloth and glided through a strange forest of ideas, and Cheng Brander slept that night in the bosom of this forest.
Next evening, as musical director of the dusty, outmoded theatre of varieties, he climbed to his chair, his blinking face as impassive as ever, his hand as steady. Some of the boys in the orchestra had often objected to working under a yellow peril, but he was a skilled musician, and the management kept him on because he drew to the hall the Oriental element of the quarter. He ducked from below, slid to his chair, and, on the tinkle of the stage manager’s bell, took up his baton, tapped, and led the boys through some rag-tag overture.
Diabolo and Angela were fourth call, and at the moment of the overture they were in their dressing-rooms, making up. Their turn consisted of an eccentric gymnastic display, culminating in a sensational drop by Diabolo from a trapeze fixed in the flies to a floating trapeze on the stage. The drop involved two somersaults, and the space and the moment must be nicely calculated so that his hands should arrive in precise juxtaposition with the swing of the lower trapeze. Every movement in the turn and the placing of every piece of property was worked out to the quarter-inch. The heightening or lowering of either trapeze, by the merest shade, would make a difference in the extent of his reach and might turn the double fall into disaster. Everything being fixed in the usual way—and he always personally superintended the fixing of his props—Diabolo knew exactly when to fall and how far to swing out. He would wait for The Bridal Chorus, catch the tact of the music in his pulses, and the rest was automatic, or, at any rate, sub-conscious. On the first note of a certain bar, he would swing off and arrive a second later, on the lower bar. For five years he had done the trick thus, and never once had he erred. It was as easy as stepping off the pavement; and so perfectly drilled were his muscles and nerve centres that he got no thrill of any kind out of his evening’s work.
The call-boy shot a bullet head through Diabolo’s door, and cried for band parts. They were flung at him—band parts composed of a medley of popular airs. He returned ten minutes later.
“The Six Italias are on, sir.”
“Right-o!” said Diabolo, and descended the stone stairs. In the wings he met Jewell, and they moved round the front cloth, before which a girl was snarling and dancing and divulging the fact that her wardrobe was of the scantiest. They moved among their props, pulling at this, altering that, and swearing at the stage hands, who accepted curses as other men accept remarks about the weather.
“Hope that yellow pussy’ll get your changes a bit smarter to-night,” said Jewell. “Did I tell you the little perisher’s been after me? Yep. … Fancy thinking I’d take him on! Fresh little greaser! Mauled me about, too. I pretty quick dropped it across him, you bet.”
“Good,” said Johnnie. “I’ll pull his yeller face to bits if he comes round you while I’m about. Tell him from me he’d best stop trifling with suicide. Better ring through, p’r’aps, and tell him to follow our marks on the score. Here—Fred—ring the band, will you, and tell him Diabolo and Angela want him to watch out for their cues, ’cos he mucked ’em last night. Tell him we change to Number Five directly I’m up the rope.”
They drew back to the wings as
the seriocomic girl kicked a clumsy and valedictory leg over the footlights and fell against the entrance curtain. They heard their symphony being blared by the brass, and then, with that self-sufficient, mincing gait traditional to the acrobat, they tripped on.
It was a poor house—a Tuesday night house—thin and cold. They did not go well; and while Diabolo was doing the greater share of the stunts, Jewell stood against the back-cloth, with arms behind her in the part of the attendant sprite. From there she was looking into the bleak, blank face of Cheng Brander, and she thought that a baboon might wag a baton with as much intelligence. His attitude in the chair was always the same: negligent, scornful. He saw nothing from his Olympian detachment, looked at none of the turns, smiled at none of their quips, but leant back in his chair at a comfortable angle, his elbow resting on the arm, his wrist directing the beat of the baton, his glance fixed either on the score or wandering to the roof.
Following a brilliant display of jugglery with Indian clubs, Johnnie bowed and danced himself up-stage, whence, by a pulley-rope, he was hauled to the flies. Jewell mouthed at the stage manager in the wings. The stage manager spoke through the telephone, and Cheng Brander, bending to the receiver, listened:
“Number Five,” said the voice to Cheng Brander.
“Number Nine,” said Cheng Brander to his men.
“One! Two! Three!” cried the voice of Johnnie from the flies. The audience could just perceive his head, as he swung by the legs from the upper trapeze.
“Number Nine,” Cheng Brander had said, and the band blared, not The Bridal Chorus, but Stars and Stripes. Johnnie was swinging in rhythm to a melody with which he was so familiar that he was expecting it before a bar was to be heard. He was anticipating the beat of The Bridal Chorus, and the muscles of his legs had, of their own accord, slacked their hold on the bar in readiness for the exact moment of release, when his ears told him of a mistake. Something was wrong somewhere—something—something. … In a fraction of a second he realised that the beat of the music was not the beat to which his nerves were keyed. In a fraction of a second he tried to recover, to check the incipient fall. But his nerves, thrown out of gear by this unexpected rhythm at such a moment, failed to respond. The trapeze swung forward. His hands clutched air. His legs went limp. He came down on his head. One heard a muffled blow as of something cracking.