The Man Who Won the Pools

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘I couldn’t help it – honest I couldn’t.’ She spoke to the tough. ‘There was a rotten guy wouldn’t let me go. And then there was a hold-up. I ran from the corner. And then I had to walk because there was a copper looking. Honest.’

  ‘Couldn’t help it, couldn’t you? There’ll be a lot you won’t be able to help, if it happens again.’ The tough made a move at the girl which he checked at some quick sign from McLeod. ‘Get along with you then. The bleeding floor’s waiting.’

  The girl gave another quick look at Phil – it might have been in a kind of bewildered unconscious appeal – and then ran from the room and down the narrow corridor past the place where Phil had done his peeping. There must be a way through to the sodding club that way.

  ‘Here! That kid isn’t going to dance, is she?’ Phil almost looked round for who was speaking. He’d hardly recognised his own voice, there had come so queer a crack in it.

  There was a second’s silence. Hannay was looking uncomfortable, as if his lines were giving out on him and it was time he’d crawled into the wings. McLeod’s tongue was flickering at his lips, and he was looking at Phil with a calculation that had gone quite icy. So it was the tough that spoke.

  ‘Dance? She’ll dance all right, if I take something to her. The lazy little bleeder! I’ll take—’

  ‘Get out!’ McLeod had turned on the tough with a soft savage fury that sent him shambling out of the room like he’d been whipped.

  ‘What does that kid do?’ Phil was facing McLeod squarely. It was the first time he’d managed it.

  ‘Go and look.’ McLeod spoke at his softest, and pointed towards the corridor.

  ‘What does she do, I ask you?’

  ‘Not dance, certainly, Mr. Tombs.’ McLeod gave a kind of still smile, as if he were confident he’d get Phil yet. ‘What she does do, she is beginning to do now. She doesn’t need to change.’ Again he made his gesture towards the corridor. ‘It is interesting. There is imagination in it. My imagination, Mr. Tombs, which is going to change London, yes?’ He paused for a moment. ‘So go,’ he said softly.

  ‘I’ll see you in hell first, I will.’

  McLeod shrugged his shoulders and glanced swiftly at Hannay. Phil thought it was the first flicker of doubt the bastard had felt that he could buy any money with what he’d got. But he was going to try again.

  ‘Then shall I tell you?’ he asked softly. ‘Yes? It would be inartistic, a dance by that little one after the other, no? So it is a small mime.’

  ‘Go on,’ Phil said. He didn’t know the word McLeod had used, but he wasn’t going to let on to that.

  ‘They will sweep London – and then the other great towns – these small mimes of mine.’ McLeod’s eyes glittered now, and for the first time Phil wondered whether he might be a bit crazy, the way so many crooks were. ‘And to discover a child like that, it is faire une trouvaille, no?’

  Phil, of course, didn’t understand this either. But he knew it was rubbish, so he didn’t mind about that.

  ‘Go on,’ he said again.

  ‘You saw the curtain? There is a little stage – very small, but sufficient. The curtain will go up, and there will be a bedroom. But not what you call a love-nest, Mr. Tombs.’

  ‘I don’t use them words. Go on.’

  ‘A very poor, a very shabby little bedroom. The kind of room in which any of those fools—’ and McLeod made a gesture seeming to indicate the members of his club— ‘might think to keep a servant – as you say a slavey, no?’

  ‘I don’t use that either. Go on.’

  McLeod shifted his little feet on the dirty threadbare carpet beneath them. He was uneasy now. But, at the same time, his own genius was possessing him.

  ‘The curtain rises and the girl comes in. Panting and frightened, just as you have seen her. So if she is really that, it is all the better! She has a little shabby suitcase. She shuts the door, leans against it, tries to lock it. There is no key. Quickly she puts a chair under the handle. She listens. She is very frightened still. But she is also very, very tired. She hesitates. She kicks off her shoes. She—’

  ‘Tell me how it ends,’ Phil said. He didn’t see that he need take more than what would get it clear.

  McLeod told. It took only a couple of minutes. And then there was a second in which Phil found nothing to say. He only knew that blood was beating up in him. He looked round and saw that Hannay had vanished. So had Hannay’s bowler and umbrella and gloves. It just showed that, beneath all that fool patter, he had a spot of common sense.

  ‘How long you had this kid going round doing this?’ Phil asked. He managed it quite like he was making conversation.

  ‘But only ten days!’ If McLeod hadn’t been the colour of an old pint pot, he’d probably have been flushed with triumph. ‘It is miracle, no? And so very, very young.’

  ‘Yes – that too,’ Phil said. ‘Just how old, do you know?’

  McLeod took a quick glance round the little room, although he must have known that he and Phil were alone in it.

  ‘Sixteen,’ he said. ‘She has—what?—say two, three, five years before she is finished. And what will she have earned by then, Mr. Tombs – perhaps for you?’

  If Phil stood still for seconds after this, it was because he was having a spot of trouble with himself on what you might call the moral plane. He didn’t really have the right to do what he was going to do – not after almost playing ball with this crowd all through an afternoon. But perhaps he could kind of buy the right back. Perhaps he would be doing that if, in doing his stuff now, he stuck out his neck as far as it would go. His hands had been in his trouser-pockets. He took them out.

  ‘You, McLeod,’ he said. ‘What’s your real name?’

  McLeod’s face changed instantly. It was as if he knew something unexpected was coming up. He took a step towards the door, but Phil got in front of him.

  ‘I call you—’ Phil paused, almost affable, and the right word came to him. ‘I been calling you that,’ he continued, ‘quite some time. Pardon me if I’m wrong. And I don’t like your face.’ He paused. ‘In fact,’ he said luxuriously, ‘I’m going to hit it, see?’

  McLeod did see. Very sensibly, he decided to get in first – and with his knee. But Phil was ready for that one. He sidestepped, and cracked his left on what McLeod had as an apology for a chin. As he expected, McLeod went down in a gutless way on the floor. Phil turned and walked from the room.

  He was hoping to find Hannay in the corridor. But Hannay was still lying low.

  Phil ran down the corridor. He had quite something to do before these chaps got organised. He went past the peeping place – and he remembered, as he did so, that there were people who preferred peeping to anything else. This whole racket was for their sort, and he didn’t see any need to disapprove of them. They’d been made that way, poor sods. But what you fed them – and to make money out of – was a different matter. He was going to find that kid. The first thing was to find that kid and get her out of the place. That was serious. The second thing was to raise hell. That mightn’t end comfortable. But it would be good while it went on.

  As he’d supposed, there was a staircase that linked the corridor to the club. He went down it, and through a door, and the place was in front of him. McLeod’s sextette. A hot-spot, he’d heard such a joint being called. Innocent dirt, it had sounded – like any of the common leg-shows he’d seen in his time. But then you’d never thought of a kid like that. Sixteen. Christ he’d hot them.

  It was going on as McLeod had said. There was the kid on the little stage, and here was the clientele, sitting at its table and drinking its champagne made out of Yorkshire rhubarb and having its sexy fling and sometimes looking at its watches and wondering about the train back to Preston. Yes, there the kid was, not knowing whether she was in horrible fear or just faking it – and the sodding mime hadn’t got very far, because she still had her clothes on. The question was how to get things moving quick.

  Phil stood for a mome
nt taking it in, making what his platoon commander had liked to call an appreciation. The point was, all these folk were feeling scared and guilty. Perhaps the Frogs in Pig Street managed this kind of thing light-hearted – but if you came from Preston there were all your chapel-going ancestors telling you it was sin. And there were the papers, too, telling you that in clubs like this there were gangsters itching to plug each other and perhaps take a shot at you incidental as Well. And finally there was the police, who had come raiding joints like this before the Hannays and the McLeods had thought up legal dodges that baffled them – but then in Preston you were a bit behind the times and weren’t sure there mightn’t any moment be a copper taking down your name and address to go in your local paper. Vulnerable, these suckers were.

  He was standing by a table had two of them at it, and there was a bottle on it covered with golden paper they’d paid a couple of quid for. He looked round for something to chuck the bottle at, and he saw a great limelight affair was playing on the kid, so he picked up the bottle and chucked it at that. There was a smash of glass, and the light went out, and Phil shouted anything that came in his head. Then he made for the little stage. The chap he didn’t want to meet yet was the tough in the monkey-suit. That would come later.

  It was a pitiful little joint. When you were down in it you saw you could hardly swing a cat in the whole place. So he was on the stage in what seemed just one jump and he’d taken the kid by the wrist and he’d kicked away that chair she’d seemed to jam against the door and he was through the door with her and that was a start.

  If the dicks couldn’t do much about vice, he thought, they could still be a bit sticky about fire, so somewhere behind these rotten bits of scenery there must be an exit that took you straight into open air. And he was right, for in seconds they were through a door and in a narrow passage that was so stacked with empty tins and bottles you could hardly get through it. Beyond that was a side-street and a van rattling cheerfully past. Phil banged the door shut and turned to the girl.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you liking what you’re doing?’

  She was blubbering and he saw that she was just a dateless silly kid as he’d supposed. Now she began to stammer. Phil could hear uproar in the place behind them, and he reckoned he had a minute or so, but no more than that, to get rid of her.

  ‘I wanted to b—b—be an actress,’ she sobbed.

  ‘I didn’t ask you that. I asked you if you liked this.’ This time he got no reply from her. But she seemed to be shaking her head. He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You got a name?’ he asked.

  ‘B—B—B—’ She gulped down a kid’s scared sob. ‘Beryl.’

  The coincidence shook him, although not meaning a thing, and he tightened his grip on her.

  ‘Got a home, haven’t you?’ he asked.

  This time she nodded. She was trembling all through her thin body.

  ‘Then get back to it,’ he said. ‘Now. Promise me.’

  She looked up at him, startled.

  ‘But I c—c—can’t,’ she said. M—My d—d—dad – he’d strap me.’

  It shook him, that, too. There was almost nothing that you could hit.

  ‘Your dad often do that?’ he asked.

  ‘N—n—no. But he’d s—s—strap me for this, he would.’

  ‘Then you be off home and get strapped.’ Something you’d call wholesome working-class realism was in charge of Phil now. It almost brought him to add, as he drew the silly little creature down the passage, ‘And tell your dad to add a good one from me.’ Instead, he said: ‘All right, Beryl. You’re not a bad kid. But it’s dirty, that—see? And it’s against the law, with a girl your age. Get Borstal, you might, if they caught you.’ He waited until she’d gulped down another terrified sob. ‘Know your way? Got money?’

  ‘Y—y—yes.’

  They were right in the open air now, and he gave her first a bit of a hug, and then a push like you might give a toy boat to start it on a pond.

  ‘Better run till you get to the main road,’ he said prosaically. ‘And so long, Beryl.’

  To his immense relief, she ran away as straight as a bird you’ve tossed into the air. But she wasn’t five yards from him before he heard the door behind him flung open, and he whirled round with his fists up. He didn’t believe they’d dare go after the kid now – or even take her back if she went asking for it. Still, he wasn’t taking chances, and he was quite ready for a bit of rear-guard stuff.

  But it was Hannay. It was the bleeding Colonel, with gloves and bowler and umbrella complete. The only thing he’d shed in the course of the day was that neatly folded newspaper. That, and perhaps a dash of the military manner. Certainly he wasn’t looking warlike now. He hadn’t come out after Phil’s blood. He’d come out pretty well on tiptoe and with nothing in his head but doing a quiet scram. When he saw Phil with his fists up he turned and scurried like a rabbit.

  The sensible thing, it was clear to Phil, would be to walk off the way the kid had run. There was nothing to stop him, and he’d be clear of this crowd with something like honours even. Only he had promised himself something else. If he hadn’t drunk their brandy, at least he’d given a sniff at it. So he wanted to tell them something. As Phil thought this, he found his legs had got ahead of his thinking. His legs were taking him after Hannay, who was haring it – or rabbiting it – back into the club. Phil, as he ran, gave a kick at a pile of tins and bottles – and the clatter sent Hannay forward with an extra bound like he’d had a boot in the bottom. There wasn’t anything too gory now for Phil’s imagination. He’d belt the hell out of them.

  Thus obscurely compelled to expiation, Phil ran on.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The place looked pretty well wrecked, so that at first Phil thought the clientele must have rioted. But they’d had no call to do that, and when you’d looked around, you saw they’d merely panicked and bolted, knocking over a lot of tables and glasses as they went. Not that Phil had much time to observe this, for now a bottle went past his head and smashed on the wall behind him. Somebody who didn’t like him much had been pretty quick to see he’d come back again.

  For some reason this manner of assault angered him greatly.

  ‘Bottles!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll learn you to fight with bottles, you bleeders!’ It wasn’t a dignified way to talk – but neither, fortunately, had it to be an empty threat. For there was a whole crate of bottles, as it happened, straight under his hand as he stood. He hauled one out and chucked it, more or less at random, where he thought the other had come from. It smashed harmlessly – not to the accompaniment of the howl of agony he was hoping for – so he yanked out a second and chucked that. This one was a spectacular success as far as uproar went. It landed where the rotten place must have kept its band, and scored a hit on the cymbals, the triangle, and the tubular bells before coming down with a crash on the drum. That was just the job, Phil thought. He was going to make a racket which would bring in not only the police but the Salvation Army and the fire brigade and the guard from Buckingham Palace as well.

  But now another bottle went past his head so close he felt the wind of it. So many of the little lamps on the table had gone over that the whole place was nearly in darkness, and he could just see three or four figures moving warily near what must be the main entrance opposite him. Perhaps they weren’t very confident about holding their ground at all. They might well think he wouldn’t have ventured back like this without the law with him. Not that perhaps he wasn’t breaking the law more than they were. Well, that was all right by him. He flung another bottle – low, this time. There was a yelp of pain in the near darkness that went to his head like wine. He started shouting things, including the rude name he’d called McLeod. And then they rushed him.

  If you’d been there with a stop-watch you’d have had to admit, perhaps, that he didn’t last very long. But then a ruck or a rough-house wasn’t particularly his line. He wasn’t scared of such things, only they weren’t, you might say, him
. Not ordinarily. But this wasn’t ordinary, and he enjoyed it right up to the time it began to hurt far more than was bearable. He didn’t much care about McLeod now. He’d had a kind of settlement with him. And Hannay – for some reason that seemed wholly unfair – it would be no fun to hit at all. But he did want a swipe at the tough in the monkey-suit. And he got it in – a hard crack on the jaw that left his whole arm tingling – before someone kicked his legs from under him and he was down on the floor with a table on top of him. He struggled to his feet, for a second saw the bogus chauffeur Hotchkiss’s face in front of him, and before he could take a swipe at that he was struck in the stomach so expertly that he was down again and this time helpless. Then again he was yanked upright, but only so that McLeod could knee him twice where it was agony. Then somebody was knocking his head from side to side, and he could hear Hannay calling out like a scared kid for God’s sake stop or they’d be topped for it. Then he was on the floor again and they were kicking him till he passed out.

  But the unconsciousness was only partial, or something that came and went. It didn’t help much with the pain. And once he heard Hannay protesting again, and McLeod saying to hell but that’s what he was going to do, and Hannay, like a ghost of the Brigadier, saying it was madness and outrageous, and McLeod screaming with laughter and saying they fixed it in Chicago that way. Then Phil lapsed again – and then he had a flickering notion that Hotchkiss was carrying him somewhere. His mind even struggled with the impression that Hotchkiss was carrying him rather tenderly because he had professional fighting behind him that had left him with a bit of contempt for this business of beating a guy up. And then Phil fell on something soft that he dimly thought might be a bed. But just after that there came a jerk, and he knew that he’d been shoved into a car that had been got moving. They were taking him somewhere well clear of their sodding club – which was only sense. Perhaps they were going to chuck him in the river. He tried to remember if there was a river in Chicago. But, not being educated, he’d never known. And he went dead unconscious this time. Later, he had a weird impression of opening his eyes for a moment and seeing his own distorted face swimming in a black shining darkness that slid aside and vanished. After that again, he might have been asleep. And when he stopped being asleep, it was to see that Jean was bending over him.