The Bravo of London

by Ernest Bramah

  ‘Suppose we discount the voice—frankly I haven’t a flicker of hope that it could be done, but for the sake of arguing the possibilities … Vallett at the most favourable moment appears there … He’d be walking on a mine … The man’s position is technical and detailed; all the coaching that I could give in advance would be general and superficial … He must make a false move—he must give himself hopelessly away before we could profit by it. The chances are too grotesque. And the instant the real Tilehurst appeared—when that happens not only the bottom falls out but the sides cave in and the lid comes down on whatever is left of the situation …’

  ‘Yes—when!’ Joolby dropped the word significantly and left it at that to develop the implication.

  ‘You mean—?’ Nickle stopped wrinkling his brow and biting his under lip in doubt, to challenge, wide-eyed, this masterful solution.

  ‘Again, why not? “In those godforsaken winding lanes anything may happen”.’

  ‘Quite so. But I draw the line at murder.’

  ‘So does anyone but a fool—or a successful hero. Especially when there’s no need for it. But gagged men tell no tales and we shall have plenty of nice cellar accommodation … Ten minutes ago I told you, Nickle, that we were going to get that paper—not because I had a glimmering how but simply because we must have it. We are still going to get that paper, Nickle—neither more nor less than we were before but perhaps you are not quite so cocksure now that it’s going to be impossible to get it?’

  ‘I should like to think we could—and this Vallett stunt is certainly a miracle. At the same time—perhaps because I know the ropes down there pretty well—I don’t see how we are possibly to get over—’

  ‘You are not being asked to see how now—from this point on I propose to do all the necessary see-howing. What you are being asked to do is to obey instructions to the letter and not to get the belly-ache whenever you visualise a copper.’

  ‘That’s a damned unpleasant thing to say,’ retorted Nickle—but not so warmly as he could have wished, for the excitement of the project was taking hold of him and intoxication of any kind may equally either quicken or blunt a Nickle’s amour propre.

  ‘It’s a damned unpleasant thing to have to deal with,’ was Joolby’s tart reply; ‘we must make allowances for one another—Well, comrade, really going?’

  It was Mr Bronsky who occasioned this aside—a smooth, complacent, and now wholly reassured Bronsky. Conversation with simple, respectful George Larch and that quite charming fellow Vallett had convinced him that everything was going to turn out finely.

  ‘I may now just as good, since that fool place hotel of mine—’ replied Bronsky, vague but unmistakably cordial. ‘It goes well, Joolby?’

  ‘It goes even better than we thought, don’t you fear, comrade. You shall hear at the next stage through one of the usual channels. It may be a week—two weeks—even three or four—but it goes; it goes inevitably.’

  ‘I think so too, also, and I shall let headquarter know in like strain,’ assented Mr Bronsky. He proceeded towards the shop, waving gracious adieux. ‘God be—no! no! Au revoir, comrades.’

  ‘Good night, Mr Bronsky,’ Larch called after him; Vallett bestowed an engaging smile, and Nickle’s casual: ‘Oh, go to hell—comrade!’ while conversationally given, had been just too late to create unpleasant feeling.

  Won Chou, as spiritually detached as a preoccupied cat, was there to ‘make unfast’ the outer door, and on him the worthy man bestowed a final blessing.

  ‘Hope, class-oppressed little comrade; hope and—!’ Mysteriously pressing a finger to his lips Mr Bronsky waited to make his exit.

  ‘Hope some piece silber, alle same, comlade,’ prompted Won Chou, displaying an expectant palm, but the comrade suddenly became deeply interested in his watch and passed abstractedly into the unstirring darkness.

  ‘We’ll let it go at that, then,’ conceded Nickle, reverting to the subject at the point where Bronsky had interrupted. ‘You to be solely responsible for the general campaign and the plan of battle. I haven’t the slightest objection to the strong, silent man, Joolby, so long as he is silent and doesn’t begin to shed sawdust badly towards the finish. Bring it off in whatever way you like provided it shows nuggets, and make no mistake about my being in baldheaded with you. But money I must shortly have or my address will be Young Nick, care of Old Nick, The Shady Corner, Hades. There’s one thing though—this coprolite-witted Bronsky.’

  ‘What about him?’

  Nickle shrugged his shoulders to indicate the inexpressible ambit of Mr Bronsky’s obvious shortcomings.

  ‘What not about him if it comes to that, but, specifically, he isn’t in it with us. He’s got some wild cat scheme of making everybody happy by making everybody else miserable. It won’t wash, you know, Joolby; it isn’t economically sound. Now you and I and old George and Vallett and the rest are simply out to snatch the oof, I take it, and that’s a rational proposition. But Bronsky with his blasted universal brotherhood is as likely as not to queer the show if he thinks it’s to the common disadvantage.’

  ‘Leave that to me, Nickle,’ said Joolby, with a reassuring look of mutual understanding. ‘We are out to make big money this time and Bronsky will be useful. He can give us facilities for getting the stuff away and for putting it about on a scale that no one else could offer. If he fancies that we are doped by his communistic hog-wash so much the better; he won’t work for us any the worse for thinking that we’re playing his game, instead of him playing ours.’

  ‘So long as it goes at that—’

  ‘It does go at that, Nickle. As you say, what other end could you and I have in view except to line our pockets? Now I want you to take Vallett in hand and drill him stiff with everything that has to do with Tilehurst and Tapsfield. Of course he’ll have to make up quite different and go down there and work Tilehurst for himself before we put it through but he may as well get all he can from you before he goes there.’

  ‘Right you are; I’ll put him wise,’ undertook Nickle briskly. ‘After all, it’s entirely your circus. Shall we stay here and—?’

  ‘No, no; take him away now and arrange it yourselves—I’ll let you know what the next move is. Go—and take George as well—I want to be alone soon and I have a couple of other chaps due in about five minutes.’

  ‘The hell you have!’ said Nickle, glancing at his wrist. ‘At twelve? Klantz and Soapy Solomon, I suppose, but didn’t I hear you tell Bronsky that you had called them for eleven? And for the matter of that, my friend, you told me it was ten-thirty sharp and then when I was a shade behind the time chipped me for being early.’

  ‘Did I?’ conceded Joolby, discreetly vague; ‘one forgets these little things when there’s so much else needed. I think I must have done about enough for one day, Nickle. I’m feeling tired: very strangely tired.’

  It had been a full and exacting day for Mr Joolby, even touching only so much of it as has been told, and now, Klantz and Soapy Solomon conferred with and dismissed, the uncouth bulk of The Toad lay sprawling in collapse within a great arm-chair, nothing but the arresting beat of that pendent throat to say whether he was dead or living. He might have slept indeed, but Padgett Street—itself now settled down into an uneasy drowse on a night when its tarred road bubbled—Padgett Street had long averred that Joolby never slept or even closed his eyes, but this was manifestly wrong since closed they were though his restless distempered brain denied him the relief of oblivion. Flashes of memories, doubts, hopes, hates and plans stabbed broken splinters of bright light across his sanely fanatical mind and if these had been patterned into coherent thought this would have been the thread of expression it followed:

  ‘Help you to wealth and the life of easy pleasure that’s your ambition, you venal jackal! And help you to power and Soviet rule and Universal Brotherhood, you feeble mountebank!… Money! Would millions buy me an hour of happiness? Power! Would any but a clown dream that such as I would give my back to be his stepping
stone? Soviets, England, China, India, all the nations and the earth itself; capitalists, bourgeoisie and slaves; man and gods, I hate you equally! Universal Brotherhood! to me—to me!

  ‘You dogs, you curs, you fawning, whining, snarling, mongrel, human pack—ah, but I’ll use you to my end. Men, women and children—all, all, all alike: nothing to any but a soulless coldblooded, grotesque toad. No man has ever thought of me with friendship, no woman looked at me without a shudder, no child withheld a stone … And I have waited.

  ‘Yes, Bronsky, you shall have your way and play your little part, and after you another, bringing you and your tin-pot state crashing to the ground, and after him another to wreck him, and then another, and another, and another, until chaos meets itself right round the earth and civilization is down at last and no one left to laugh …

  ‘And yet that blind man was happy and could smile as though he had lost nothing, while I—have I ever really smiled in all my life? No, I’ve only pulled a sort of grimace to make them think that I was like themselves. But I’ll be even with him yet—that blind man who could be happy—and with Bronsky, the hopeless fool, and with Nickle for his cursed impudence, and with Larch and Vallett and Ikey and Klantz and Solomon and that whore Cora and all the other women who have shuddered and everyone I have ever known. I’ll show them …

  ‘They’ve all laughed at me behind my back, mocked and pointed and made signs. I’ll see them burn, writhe, and shrivel up. I’ll live to see it yet, live to shout out that I—Joolby the Toad—have done it. That will be the best of all—when they look up with their foolish, startled faces and understand at last. Then I can go down among them with a sword in my hand, and stab and slash and spit as I always long to. Oh that the whole world had one single body that I might crush it, that I might tear it with my teeth, that I might smash it into atoms!’

  A sudden crash snatched Won Chou straight out of his dream of a flower-junk on the Canton river. The simple child of the East slept in a rug on the boards of the shop, wearing the dress that was his everyday garb. With stealthy glide he approached the door of his master’s room, listened, cautiously peeped in, then entered.

  Mr Joolby lay on the floor beside his special chair, his face doubly terrible in its rigid set, his body writhing this way and that with spasmodic jerks and contortions. An epileptic, like many exceptional personages of all times, he was only experiencing a visitation of his ‘old trouble’. Smashed to a thousand bits—brought down in his fall—the wreck of a rare and delicate Dresden china group lay all about him.

  Won Chou took the scene in with a face that betrayed no vestige of emotion. Silently and with neat despatch he pushed the heavy chair out of the way, spread a few draperies about the floor, forced a wad of cloth between Mr Joolby’s clenched teeth, turned out the light and left him.

  CHAPTER VI

  TILEHURST FAILS TO KEEP AN APPOINTMENT

  ‘ANYTHING interesting among your letters, Geoffrey?’ asked Miss Tilehurst, concealing a protective curiosity under this sociable wile, since she had already inspected the covers. And to show how purely conversational the inquiry was, she reciprocally added: ‘I’ve had nothing but a long diatribe from Geraldine Churt about her numerous ills. One would really wonder if the foolish woman thinks that her commonplace symptoms are unique or amusing.’

  ‘No, nothing particular, Aunt,’ replied Geoffrey, immediately putting the one letter that mattered away in a coat pocket. Then with the unpractised dissembler’s inability to let well—or, indeed, any condition—alone, he must needs elaborate it.

  ‘Just a bill and a couple of appeals and a line from Mostyn about the tournament, and—er—so on. None of them exciting. And, egad, is that the time? I shan’t half have to do some hoofing.’

  ‘Don’t hurry immediately after your breakfast, Geoffrey. You know that clock gains five minutes every day and it’s only—’ called out Miss Tilehurst, but Geoffrey was technically out of earshot then and the slam of the front door put a full stop to the unfinished monition.

  Of course, even if he had not fled, she could not have pursued the subject after his disclaimer—any more than she could have looked into the envelope with the unrecognised handwriting even if he had left it behind with the others now on the table. No—it was as she had guessed—that was the one that he had slipped away. As for the others—there was no harm in just glancing over them since he had said what they were and, for the matter of that, she had known almost as much before he told her. Ellicott’s usual bill; Barnardo’s Homes and a hospital for the mentally afflicted; a new edition of some encyclopaedia or other; a Dutch bulb grower’s list (she had better look through that) and Mr Mostyn’s letter. But the one in the unknown script and with a metropolitan post mark—could it be from some London Woman? In spite of having lived in the country all her life and for the most part in remote Devon, Miss Tilehurst had always understood that such beings really existed.

  Meanwhile, the subject of her virginal solicitude—perfectly well aware of the clock’s chronic lapse—was proceeding on his leisurely way and even finding time to take out the implicated letter again and verify its contents:

  Camperdown Hotel, London.

  Friday afternoon.

  Dear Tilehurst,

  I hope you haven’t been thinking me an awful oaf for not writing to thank you for so many jolly games after I left Tapsfield? To tell the truth, I’ve been expecting to get down one afternoon to say ‘Good-bye’ before I sailed but instead I’ve been nearly run off my feet every day what with one thing and another. Now to top it all comes a business cable to return at once and I’m going—first part overland—tomorrow.

  Now that I am on the point of leaving—with the extreme improbability of ever seeing England again—I seem to recognise how large a share your—may I say, friendship? —has had in making my visit so pleasant.

  While looking out my route by that mysterious affair, Bradshaw, I have come across a detail that may enable me to salve my conscience—though it is really putting you to more trouble. The point is that instead of going right through by the connecting train (which stops at Stanbury Junction) I shall travel by the one before and break the journey there. This will give me fifteen minutes at Stanbury—from 2.29 to 2.44. If it is not asking too much I wonder if you would cycle across and test the dubious resources of the station refreshment room in a final? I seem to remember that you are not generally particularly engaged so early on Saturday afternoon and the whole affair need scarcely take up more than half an hour.

  The fact is, I have a small memento of my stay that I would like to hand over to you if you will graciously accept the trifle. I would also ask you to carry a little offering from me to Miss Tilehurst—not to repay her charming hospitality, which would be impossible, but to remind her now and then of my existence. But please don’t tell her anything of this until you are back again; I should like it to be a complete surprise. In fact I wish you wouldn’t mention about my going through to anyone until after—there are at least a dozen people I ought to see and although I can’t help it I feel somehow guilty.

  Sorry that you won’t be able to let me know in any case but I shall have left the hotel for good before you get this and for the rest of the time I am bung up to the eyes clearing off arrears.

  Of course if you have anything important on you must let me down but unless it’s really impossible I know you are too good-natured to disappoint me.

  Yours ever gratefully,

  ANTHONY DIXSON.

  The terms and tone of this communication made Tilehurst experience a passing sense of dereliction also.

  Had he really done so frightfully much to earn Dixson’s gratitude? Oddly enough, he had scarcely thought of him again, once he had passed on and out of Tapsfield, while the chap had apparently meanwhile been regarding him as his especial friend and mentor. Actually, it might be thought quite as much the other way since Dixson had certainly put him up to the knack of improving his back-hand game considerably. And in return? Well,
a few hours’ play each week, tea or supper if it happened to be about, and an introduction or two so as to give a stranger with plenty of time on his hands somewhere else to go to. Then—yes, he had shown him all over the works, if one could call that entertainment, and certainly these colonial beggars were pretty keen stuff when it came to technical points and wanted to see and know absolutely everything. However, since the fellow looked at it that way, the least that he himself could do would be to push along and meet him. As he said, it would scarcely mean more than half an hour’s time, while so early in the afternoon he could hardly expect to encounter Nora Melhuish about if he hung around on the off chance. An opportunity to take Nipper for a good run on a hard road as well—the dog’s claws were getting far too long, doing nothing but lying about all day in the garden. Certainly he would meet Dixson.

  Nickle had made a wry face over writing the letter but when Joolby told him, dryly enough, to think out a better way, he had to come back to the admission that he could suggest nothing better.

  ‘All the same, it’s a dog’s trick, getting a man like that,’ he commented. ‘I don’t mind cutting him out—that’s got to be done and it’s all in the day’s work, but a damned hypocritical letter like this—well, it’s about the limit.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Nickle,’ replied Joolby, glancing equably over the top of the paper as he considered it. ‘You talk like as if you were an old-established country lawyer arranging a mortgage. And let me tell you that there are good dogs and bad dogs if you think that way about it. The good dogs get the bones and pats and the bad ones get into the lethal chamber at Battersea. Now this is a pretty fair letter.’

  ‘Thanks for the pat, kind master,’ said Nickle contemptuously. ‘All the same, if it was not for the anticipated bones I might relieve my mind a little.’

  ‘If it was not for the bones indeed, Nickle,’ was the cool reply, ‘what might we not all—However, these interesting side issues are never worth exploring. What is probably affecting your humour at the moment is a sort of half suspicion that the letter may implicate you personally, eh?’