by J. P. Martin
“Who is that?” Uncle asked Battersby, who had come in to see if all was going well.
“That’s Mr Bateman, our permanent guest,” said Battersby. “He’s an invalid, but very brave.”
“He doesn’t look much like an invalid to me,” said Uncle, “and I don’t like the way he keeps dipping that mug into the soup.”
“It’s running away from you, sir,” said Battersby.
“Yes, I dare say,” said Uncle, “but it comes round my way afterwards.”
Because he found the manners of his fellow guest so unpleasant Uncle was glad when dinner was over.
Outside his door he found a group of musicians. One had a bassoon, one a flute, while a dwarfish creature, dressed in a kimono, was playing a zither. They all began to sing a song when Uncle appeared.
“We love to hear of Uncle’s deeds,
He makes us feel so glad;
His bounty makes the poor man rich,
And fills with joy the sad.
“How vast his stores of ham and lard,
How huge his vats of oil. . .”
It went on for about twenty verses, and still there seemed no prospect of it coming to an end.
“Thank you, friends,” said Uncle, “for your singing. I’m going to bed now, but you can go on all night if you like.”
He gave them some money and closed the door of his room.
“Now for bed,” he said.
The Old Monkey was there to make everything comfortable, and he turned on the bedside lamp. The moment he did so it exploded with a loud report.
This made Uncle jump and he sat down rather hurriedly on the bed.
There was a cracking noise, and at once the bed legs began to go through the floor. The boards were flimsy and worm-eaten, and before Uncle could get up he had crashed, with the bed, through a jagged hole in the floor into the room below.
The bed took some of the force of the fall as its legs collapsed under it, but he fell with a nasty jar.
Sickening clouds of plaster and dust filled his nose and eyes.
Trumpeting loudly with rage, and half-blinded, he took some seconds to see that in falling he had bowled somebody over, and that a huge roll of bandage was looping and unrolling along the floor. It only needed one glance at the sack suit and huge feet to tell Uncle who the soup-drinking invalid had been.
“So it was you, Beaver Hateman!” shouted Uncle, hurling a bed-leg at him. “No wonder the food stuck in my throat!”
Hateman hopped on to the window-sill. “Thanks for falling on me, you fat old barrel of lard,” he said. “You’ve given me a good idea which I shall use to bring about your downfall – and soon!”
Then he vanished, laughing hideously.
The Old Monkey and the cat Goodman were looking down anxiously through the hole in the ceiling.
“Oh, sir, are you hurt?” asked the Old Monkey, with tears in his eyes.
“Not severely,” said Uncle, “but my suspicions about this place have now been fully confirmed. Go to the office, ring up for the traction engine and ask for my bill.”
“I’ll help you brush yourself clean, sir,” said the cat Goodman, jumping through the hole on to the wreckage. “I’m good at that.”
When Uncle and Goodman went into the lounge Battersby came out of his office to meet them.
“I’m very sorry to hear you have had a slight mishap, sir,” he said. “Another room is, however, being prepared.”
“I am not staying. Your floors are unsafe,” said Uncle.
“Not for persons of ordinary weight, if you will excuse my saying so,” said Battersby, smiling odiously.
“If you run a hotel a person of any weight must be safe on any floor,” said Uncle. “My bill, please.”
Battersby went into his office and brought out a long sheet of parchment, very neatly made out.
Uncle took it, frowning, and began to read; as his eye fell on one item after another he felt his temper mounting.
Due to Skinner’s Arms Hotel
With a great effort Uncle kept control of himself. Then he tapped the parchment.
“Explain this monstrous bill!” he said, his trunk waving to and fro, in the way it did when he was really angry.
“It’s quite moderate,” said Battersby. “Dinner 3s. 6d., two rooms 2s. 6d. – for three people, mind.”
“This bill,” said Uncle, “is a ramp!”
“A ramp? What is a ramp?” asked Battersby.
“A ramp is an attempt to get money by false pretences,” said Uncle. “I refuse to pay, of course.”
“Indeed,” said Battersby, with a rascally smile. “This will look well in the Badfort News.”
Then Uncle noticed that the little creature in the kimono who had been playing the zither outside his room was sitting at a coffee-table writing on what looked suspiciously like a hating book.
“I see, you’ve got their reporter here!” said Uncle.
“Hitmouse!” hissed Goodman.
“I am not afraid of anything that may be said in that scurrilous rag,” said Uncle. “And I will make sure a strong article warning people about this hotel goes into the Homeward Gazette.”
“Oh nobody reads that boring old paper!” said Battersby.
“Meanwhile,” said Uncle, “as I am unusually heavy I will send workmen to repair the bed and ceiling. For the rest I give you two pounds – and that’s the lot.”
Battersby now lost his temper completely.
“You’ll go to prison for this!” he yelled.
At the sound of his rasping furious voice a terrible suspicion seized Uncle. Goodman must have felt the same, for he suddenly jumped on to Battersby’s shoulder and pulled off the tight red wig. At once a pair of huge ears flopped out.
“Goatsby!” said Uncle, breathing hard. “So it was you, Goatsby, trying once more to defraud me!”
“You’re defrauding me!” Goatsby was now nearly beside himself. “You’ll get six months in prison for this! No, six years – sixty!”
“Perhaps you have forgotten,” said Uncle in grave tones, “that I am the chief magistrate in this area. Can you see me sentencing myself?”
Seeing that he was likely to be involved in a vulgar struggle if he stayed longer Uncle made his way to the traction engine and they rode home.
FOURTEEN
On the Underground
IT WAS A dim winter afternoon, and Uncle was feeling slightly depressed. The morning had been quite prosperous. He had had some large cheques for maize, and had been asked by the King of the Badgers to open a sale of bananas and coconuts in aid of distressed badgers. He likes opening sales because it gives him a chance of wearing his best purple dressing-gown and elephant’s gold-studded boots.
These were cheering things, but on the other hand the Badfort News had printed an utterly false description of his visit to the Skinner’s Arms.
It had been headed: A MEAN MAGNATE.
And this is what it had said in smudgy black type:
The Dictator of Homeward Castle has a new line in crime. He stays at good hotels and refuses to pay his bills. A fine example to us all!
Yesterday he went to Mr Battersby’s new establishment, the Skinner’s Arms, and when presented with a modest bill refused to pay. In addition he conducted himself like a surly, ill-bred madman, breaking a lamp and bed and smashing through a floor.
When the long-suffering Mr Battersby told him that the only alternative to non-payment of bills was prison, he calmly remarked that he was the local magistrate and he wasn’t going to sentence himself.
Now we know what injustice really means! Rise in thousands! Surround Uncle’s mouldy castle and burn it to the ground!
It was irritating how many people had read this, while hardly anybody seemed to have seen Uncle’s truthful account in the Homeward Gazette.
He was brooding on what steps he should next take against the Badfort crowd when the Old Monkey led in the little dwarf Rugbo who keeps a small grocery shop on the top of a high to
wer called Afghan Flats, near where Uncle’s aunt, Miss Evelyn Maidy, lives with her companion, Miss Wace.
This dwarf was gulping with rage so that he could hardly speak. At last he said:
“Sir, you must come and help us. We are being robbed, robbed, ROBBED!”
“Wait a bit,” said Uncle severely. “If I remember rightly you put a frog in my aunt’s milk jug when I was visiting her some time ago.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Rugbo, “but Miss Maidy got her own back – and more, sir. I can feel her umbrella still.”
“My aunt,” said Uncle, with a steady look at the little man, “took strong and effective measures to deal with an abominable action. Still, I am always ready to help sufferers from injustice. You may state the nature of the outrage.”
“Outrage is a good word. That’s just what it is, sir. They’ve put up the fares on the Underground!”
“What Underground? I know of no underground railway in this castle.”
“You don’t know the Dwarfy-Dwarftown Line from Number 1 Tower to Number 10 Tower?” Rugbo was plainly astonished.
“I don’t know every corner of this castle of mine,” said Uncle, “but wherever there is wrong-doing I make it my business to be there. I will examine the rise in fares and see if I consider it just.”
“Oh, sir,” said Rugbo, calming down a little, “thank you. I know you’ll take my side.”
“We shall see,” said Uncle, and turned to the Old Monkey.
“Tell the One-Armed Badger to get ready,” he said.
“Here he is, sir,” said the Old Monkey, eagerly.
There seemed to be a sort of bale in the doorway. It was the One-Armed bowed to the ground with necessities for an expedition.
“Tell Cloutman and Gubbins to come. That’ll be enough, I think.”
Just then the cat Goodman appeared wheeling a small trolley filled with stone clubs.
“Oh sir, look,” said the Old Monkey. “Goodman will have to come.”
So Uncle let him come.
“A stone club might be very useful,” he said. “At any rate let us go and see this railway line. But, mind you,” he added looking at Rugbo sternly, “you will suffer if I find you have led me on a false trail.”
“What you see, sir,” said Rugbo, earnestly, “will make your hair stand on end.”
“Lead the way,” said Uncle.
Rugbo led them along a stone passage they had never used before. This led to a steel gallery, and at the end of this was a lift which seemed to go down, down, down a long way into the ground.
When the lift stopped and the door slid open they found themselves in the booking hall of the dwarfs’ Underground Railway.
What a booking hall! The members of Uncle’s party were amazed, for the place was as large as a football ground and the walls went up so high they were lost in a blue mist. And it was packed with indignant dwarfs.
In front of the booking office, where the crowd was thickest, there appeared to be a single mass of flattened dwarfs. And the yell of rage that was going up from them was so loud that ordinary speech was impossible.
“You see what I mean, sir!” screamed Rugbo.
Uncle nodded gravely, and motioned to the Old Monkey to go and read the notice which was just being put up. There is nothing the Old Monkey enjoys more than running to and fro over the heads of a tightly packed crowd. He ran to the notice-board so quickly that he hardly seemed to touch their heads. He paused, read the notice, and was soon back to report.
“It says that the fare between each station has been increased from one to one and a half bananas, sir!” he shouted into Uncle’s ear.
“Get some bananas out of the pack,” Uncle told the One-Armed. “We will take a ride on this railway and see what it is really like.”
A rather greasy old wolf was acting as banana collector and porter.
“Why has the fare been increased?” Uncle asked him.
“Wages has riz,” he said, “or supposed to. Mine’s the same and too small.”
Rugbo had left them in the booking hall, for he had to get back to his shop which he had left in charge of a young errand boy who was very apt to help himself to biscuits and raspberryade, but the rest of them got into a first-class compartment. Almost at once the train started and ran through a tunnel to Number 2 Station. Here the platform was so packed with travellers it was a wonder they weren’t pushed on to the line. As it was the train seemed to pass within an inch or so of their stomachs.
Seeing Uncle, the dwarfs avoided his compartment, but the overcrowding in the rest of the train was terrible.
“There are twenty under each seat, and at least fifteen in the parcel rack next door, sir,” the Old Monkey reported.
“This is shameful,” said Uncle. “At least twice the number of coaches is needed for decent travelling.”
The guard, a shifty, depressed-looking man, came edging along the foot-board of the train. He couldn’t possibly have walked along the edge of the platform like any normal guard, for the struggling passengers were too tightly packed for that.
“No stop till Number 10. No stop till terminus!”
A howl of rage came from those on the platform and in the train.
“What,” Uncle asked the guard sternly, “about those who want to get off?”
The guard said nothing, but pointed to a notice on the station wall opposite the train. It read:
DWARFTOWN RAILWAY
If train becomes overcrowded between stations 1–10 no stops will be made till terminus is reached. Travellers may be set down at required stations on return journey by payment of 10 bananas per stop.
By order.
SIMON EGGMAN (Managing Director)
“This is shameful!” said Uncle, disgustedly.
“Them’s my orders,” said the guard. At that moment the train started, and the unfortunate guard, still clinging to the outside of the train, was swept into such a narrow tunnel that he had to flatten himself against the carriage. In spite of this a hole was rubbed in the back of his shabby coat, and his skin was beginning to be grazed as the train came to the next station. He did not seem unduly distressed, and went on edging down the train and shouting dismally, but Uncle was horrified.
“This is a disgraceful state of affairs!” he said. “I shall go and see this so-called Managing Director, Eggman, and ask him why he allows such bad working conditions.”
“I know where he lives,” said Goodman, eagerly. “He’s got a big house on Number 10 platform.”
“You seem to know more about my castle than I do,” said Uncle.
“Well, I get into all sorts of places while I’m looking for rats,” said Goodman.
When they got to Number 10 Station they all got out and soon saw the head office, over the door of which was a sign:
DWARFTOWN RAILWAY
Simon Eggman,
Managing Director.
Cheap bananas. Inquire within.
Goodman had as usual darted in front of the party. Now he rushed back to Uncle.
“Oh, sir, if you really want to see what Eggman is like, look in that side window!”
Uncle glanced in the side window and saw a big flabby man sitting in an armchair. Round him were gathered ten fat children, all like him, and all with beady eyes and sharp little teeth. On the table in front of Eggman was a pile of money, and all round the walls were shelves crammed with bananas.
“Another good day!” Eggman was saying. “Trains more crowded than ever, and fares up!”
The children cheered and Eggman tossed them each a banana.
Uncle looked no more, but went round to the office and rang the bell loudly.
In a few moments Eggman appeared. He had put on a thin black silk dressing-gown, and looked very respectable.
“Oh sir,” he said in a humble voice, “how good of you to patronize our little railway. Times are hard, and I’m having great difficulty in paying the staff.”
Uncle struck the wooden counter a heavy bl
ow with his trunk, a sure sign he was getting angry.
“Listen, Eggman,” he said, “I have a number of serious charges to make.”
“Charges?” said Eggman, looking shocked and surprised at the same time. He must have been a very good actor.
“Yes, charges,” said Uncle gravely. “First, you are running a railway in my castle without my permission. Second, you are running it inefficiently. Third, you are under-paying your employees. Fourth, you are defrauding the public. Answer these charges.”
Uncle twisted a stone club in his trunk as he spoke.
Eggman suddenly took an egg out of the pocket of his dressing-gown and threw it at Uncle and then tried to rush out of the door, but in a moment Gubbins had him by the leg. He might as well have struggled with a travelling crane. He was lifted and placed before Uncle who was wiping the egg out of his eyes with a towel handed to him by the One-Armed.
By this time a large number of dwarfs had collected. It was a good moment to pronounce judgment on Eggman, here in front of so many of those who had suffered at his hands. Even Goodman looked grave.
“You are guilty, Eggman,” said Uncle in slow and solemn tones. “If any proof were needed your abominable action in throwing that egg at me has stamped you as an enemy of society. This is the sentence.”
He paused to let his words sink in.
“First I shall take all your money and bananas—”
At this moment he noticed Hitmouse bristling with skewers and writing busily in a hating book.
“There is a reporter from the Badfort News present,” he said. “Catch him!”
But the little wretch was too quick. He vanished in the crowd. Uncle knew that he would make the most of the unfinished sentence about money and bananas.
“To continue,” said Uncle. “I will take all your money and bananas, Eggman, and start a fund called the Dwarfs’ Benevolent Fund.”
There were deafening cheers from the crowd.
“And you, Eggman, will work as a porter for those you have so heartlessly robbed, and lastly the railway shall be called the Homeward Railway. I shall appoint a new manager, double the number of coaches, and the train will stop at every station on every journey.”