‘Why not? The masses want to read good stuff, but they dislike being bored. They all know your name, but they don’t read you, because you bore them. The fact is, my dear, you’re dull.’
‘I don’t know how you can say that, Albert,’ replied Mrs Albert Forrester, with as little resentment as the equator might feel if someone called it chilly. ‘Everyone knows and acknowledges that I have an exquisite sense of humour and there is nobody who can extract so much good wholesome fun from a semicolon as I can.’
‘If you can give the masses a good thrilling story and let them think at the same time that they are improving their minds you’ll make a fortune.’
‘I’ve never read a detective story in my life,’ said Mrs Albert Forrester. ‘I once heard of a Mr Barnes of New York and I was told that he had written a book called The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. But I never read it.’
‘Of course you have to have the knack,’ said Mrs Bulfinch. ‘The first thing to remember is that you don’t want any lovemaking, it’s out of place in a detective story, what you want is murder, and sleuth-hounds, and you don’t want to be able to guess who done it till the last page.’
‘But you must play fair with your reader, my dear,’ said Albert. ‘It always annoys me when suspicion has been thrown on the secretary or the lady of the title and it turns out to be the second footman who’s never done more than say, “The carriage is at the door.” Puzzle your reader as much as you can, but don’t make a fool of him.’
‘I love a good detective story,’ said Mrs Bulfinch. ‘Give me a lady in evening dress, just streaming with diamonds, lying on the library floor with a dagger in her heart, and I know I’m going to have a treat.’
‘There’s no accounting for tastes,’ said Albert. ‘Personally, I prefer a respectable family solicitor, with side-whiskers, gold watch-chain, and a benign appearance, lying dead in Hyde Park.’
‘With his throat cut?’ asked Mrs Bulfinch eagerly.
‘No, stabbed in the back. There’s something peculiarly attractive to the reader in the murder of a middle-aged gentleman of spotless reputation. It is pleasant to think that the most apparently blameless of us have a mystery in our lives.’
‘I see what you mean, Albert,’ said Mrs Bulfinch. ‘He was the repository of a fatal secret.’
‘We can give you all the tips, my dear,’ said Albert, smiling mildly at Mrs Albert Forrester. ‘I’ve read hundreds of detective stories.’
‘Your
‘That’s what first brought Corinne and me together. I used to pass them on to her when I’d finished them.’
‘Many’s the time I’ve heard him switch off the electric light as the dawn was creeping through the window and I couldn’t help smiling to myself as I said: “There, he’s finished it at last, now he can have a good sleep.’
Mrs Albert Forrester rose to her feet. She drew herself up.
‘Now I see what a gulf separates us,’ she said, and her fine contralto shook a little. ‘You have been surrounded for thirty years with all that was best in English literature and you read hundreds of detective novels.’
‘Hundreds and hundreds,’ interrupted Albert with a smile of satisfaction.
‘I came here willing to make any reasonable concession so that you should come back to your home, but now I wish it no longer. You have shown me that we have nothing in common and never had. There is an abyss between us.’
‘Very well, my dear,’ said Albert gently, ‘I will submit to your decision. But you think over the detective story.’
‘I will arise and go now,’ she murmured, ‘and go to Innisfree.’
‘I’ll just show you downstairs,’ said Mrs Bulfinch. ‘One has to be careful of the carpet if one doesn’t exactly know where the holes are.’
With dignity, but not without circumspection, Mrs Albert Forrester walked downstairs and when Mrs Bulfinch opened the door and asked her if she would like a taxi she shook her head.
‘I shall take the tram.’
‘You need not be afraid that I won’t take good care of Mr Forrester, ma’am,’ said Mrs Bulfinch pleasantly. ‘He shall have every comfort. I nursed Mr Bulfinch for three years during his last illness and there’s very little I don’t know about invalids. Not that Mr Forrester isn’t very strong and active for his years. And of course he’ll have a hobby. I always think a man should have a hobby. He’s going to collect postage-stamps.’
Mrs Albert Forrester gave a little start of surprise. But just then a tram came in sight and, as a woman (even the greatest of them) will, she hurried at the risk of her life into the middle of the road and waved frantically. It stopped and she climbed in. She did not know how she was going to face Mr Simmons. He would be waiting for her when she got home. Clifford Boyleston would probably be there too. They would all be there and she would have to tell them that she had miserably failed. At that moment she had no warm feeling of friendship for her little group of devoted admirers. Wondering what the time was, she looked up at the man sitting opposite her to see whether he was the kind of person she could modestly ask, and suddenly started; for sitting there was a middle-aged gentleman of the most respectable appearance, with side-whiskers, a benign expression, and a gold watch-chain. It was the very man whom Albert had described lying dead in Hyde Park and she could not but jump to the conclusion that he was a family solicitor. The coincidence was extraordinary and really it looked as though the hand of fate were beckoning to her. He wore a silk hat, a black coat, and pepper-and-salt trousers, he was somewhat corpulent, of a powerful build, and by his side was a despatch-case. When the tram was half-way down the Vauxhall Bridge Road he asked the conductor to stop and she saw him go down a small, mean street. Why? Ah, why? When it reached Victoria, so deeply immersed in thought was she, until the conductor somewhat roughly told her where she was, she did not move. Edgar Allan Poe had written detective stories. She took a bus. She sat inside, buried in reflection, but when it arrived at Hyde Park Corner she suddenly made up her mind to get out. She couldn’t sit still any longer. She felt she must walk. She entered the gates, walking slowly, and looked about her with an air that was at once intent and abstracted. Yes, there was Edgar Allan Poe; no one could deny that. After all he had invented the genre, and everyone knew how great his influence had been on the Parnassians. Or was it the Symbolists? Never mind. Baudelaire and all that. As she passed the Achilles Statue she stopped for a minute and looked at it with raised eyebrows.
At length she reached her flat and opening the door saw several hats in the hall. They were all there. She went into the drawing-room.
‘Here she is at last,’ cried Miss Waterford.
Mrs Albert Forrester advanced, smiling with animation, and shook the proffered hands. Mr Simmons and Clifford Boyleston were there, Harry Oakland and Oscar Charles.
‘Oh, you poor things, have you had no tea?’ she cried brightly. ‘I haven’t an idea what the time is, but I know I’m fearfully late.’
‘Well?’ they said. ‘Well?’
‘My dears, I’ve got something quite wonderful to tell you. I’ve had an inspiration. Why should the devil have all the best tunes?’
‘What do you mean?’
She paused in order to give full effect to the surprise she was going to spring upon them. Then she flung it at them without preamble.
‘I’M GOING TO WRITE A DETECTIVE STORY.’
They stared at her with open mouths. She held up her hand to prevent them from interrupting her, but indeed no one had the smallest intention of doing so.
‘I am going to raise the detective story to the dignity of Art. It came to me suddenly in Hyde Park. It’s a murder story and I shall give the solution on the very last page. I shall write it in an impeccable English, and since it’s occurred to me lately that perhaps I’ve exhausted the possibilities of the semi-colon, I am going to take up the colon. No one yet has explored its potentialities. Humour and mystery are what I aim at. I shall call it The Achilles Statue.’
‘What a titl
e!’ cried Mr Simmons, recovering himself before any of the others. ‘I can sell the serial rights on the title and your name alone.’
‘But what about Albert?’ asked Clifford Boyleston.
‘Albert?’ echoed Mrs Forrester. ‘Albert?’
She looked at him as though for the life of her she could not think what he was talking about. Then she gave a little cry as if she had suddenly remembered.
‘Albert! I knew I’d gone out on some errand and it absolutely slipped my memory. I was walking through Hyde Park and I had this inspiration. What a fool you’ll all think me!’
‘Then you haven’t seen Albert?’
‘My dear, I forgot all about him.’ She gave an amused laugh. let Albert keep his cook. I can’t bother about Albert now Albert belongs to the semicolon period. I am going to write a detective story.’
‘My dear, you’re too, too wonderful,’ said Harry Oakland.
VIRTUE
♦
There are few things better than a good Havana. When I was young and very poor and smoked a cigar only when somebody gave me one, I determined that if ever I had money I would smoke a cigar every day after luncheon and after dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept. It is the only ambition I have achieved that has never been embittered by disillusion. I like a cigar that is mild, but full-flavoured, neither so small that it is finished before you have become aware of it nor so large as to be irksome, rolled so that it draws without consciousness of effort on your part, with a leaf so firm that it doesn’t become messy on your lips, and in such condition that it keeps its savour to the very end. But when you have taken the last pull and put down the shapeless stump and watched the final cloud of smoke dwindle blue in the surrounding air it is impossible, if you have a sensitive nature, not to feel a certain melancholy at the thought of all the labour, the care and pains that have gone, the thought, the trouble, the complicated organization that have been required to provide you with half an hour’s delight. For this men have sweltered long years under tropical suns and ships have scoured the seven seas. These reflections become more poignant still when you are eating a dozen oysters (with half a bottle of dry white wine), and they become almost unbearable when it comes to a lamb cutlet. For these are animals and there is something that inspires awe in the thought that since the surface of the earth became capable of supporting life from generation to generation for millions upon millions of years creatures have come into existence to end at last upon a plate of crushed ice or on a silver grill. It may be that a sluggish fancy cannot grasp the dreadful solemnity of eating an oyster and evolution has taught us that the bivalve has through the ages kept itself to itself in a manner that inevitably alienates sympathy. There is an aloofness in it that is offensive to the aspiring spirit of man and a self-complacency that is obnoxious to his vanity.
But I do not know how anyone can look upon a lamb cutlet without thoughts too deep for tears: here man himself has taken a hand and the history of the race is bound up with the tender morsel on your plate.
And sometimes even the fate of human beings is curious to consider. It is strange to look upon this man or that, the quiet ordinary persons of every day, the bank clerk, the dustman, the middle-aged girl in the second row of the chorus, and think of the interminable history behind them and of the long, long series of hazards by which from the primeval slime the course of events has brought them at this moment to such and such a place. When such tremendous vicissitudes have been needed to get them here at all one would have thought some huge significance must be attached to them; one would have thought that what befell them must matter a little to the Life Spirit or whatever else it is that has produced them. An accident befalls them. The thread is broken. The story that began with the world is finished abruptly and it looks as though it meant nothing at all. A tale told by an idiot. And is it not odd that this event, of an importance so dramatic, may be brought about by a cause so trivial?
An incident of no moment, that might easily not have happened, has consequences that are incalculable. It looks as though blind chance ruled all things. Our smallest actions may affect profoundly the whole lives of people who have nothing to do with us. The story I have to tell would never have happened if one day I had not walked across the street. Life is really very fantastic and one has to have a peculiar sense of humour to see the fun of it.
I was strolling down Bond Street one spring morning and having nothing much to do till lunch-time thought I would look in at Sotheby’s, the auction rooms, to see whether there was anything on show that interested me. There was a block in the traffic and I threaded my way through the cars. When I reached the other side I ran into a man I had known in Borneo coming out of a hatter’s.
‘Hullo, Morton,’ I said. ‘When did you come home?’
‘I’ve been back about a week.’
He was a District Officer. The Governor had given me a letter of introduction to him and I wrote and told him I meant to spend a week at the place he lived at and should like to put up at the government rest-house. He met me on the ship when I arrived and asked me to stay with him. I demurred. I did not see how I could spend a week with a total stranger, I did not want to put him to the expense of my board, and besides I thought I should have more freedom if I were on my own. He would not listen to me.
‘I’ve got plenty of room,’ he said, ‘and the rest-house is beastly. I haven’t spoken to a white man for six months and I’m fed to the teeth with my own company.’
But when Morton had got me and his launch had landed us at the bungalow and he had offered me a drink he did not in the least know what to do with me. He was seized on a sudden with shyness, and his conversation, which had been fluent and ready, ran dry. I did my best to make him feel at home (it was the least I could do, considering that it was his own house) and asked him if he had any new records. He turned on the gramophone and the sound of rag-time gave him confidence.
His bungalow overlooked the river and his living-room was a large veranda. It was furnished in the impersonal fashion that characterized the dwellings of government officials who were moved here and there at little notice according to the exigencies of the service. There were native hats as ornaments on the walls and the horns of animals, blow-pipes, and spears. In the book-shelf were detective novels and old magazines. There was a cottage piano with yellow keys. It was very untidy, but not uncomfortable.
Unfortunately I cannot very well remember what he looked like. He was young, twenty-eight, I learnt later, and he had a boyish and attractive smile. I spent an agreeable week with him. We went up and down the river and we climbed a mountain. We had tiffin one day with some planters who lived twenty miles away and every evening we went to the club. The only members were the manager of a kutch factory and his assistants, but they were not on speaking terms with one another and it was only on Morton’s representations that they must not let him down when he had a visitor that we could get up a rubber of bridge. The atmosphere was strained. We came back to dinner, listened to the gramophone, and went to bed. Morton had little office work and one would have thought the time hung heavy on his hands, but he had energy and high spirits; it was his first post of the sort and he was happy to be independent. His only anxiety was lest he should be transferred before he had finished a road he was building. This was the joy of his heart. It was his own idea and he had wheedled the government into giving him the money to make it; he had surveyed the country himself and traced the path. He had solved unaided the technical problems that presented themselves. Every morning, before he went to his office, he drove out in a rickety old Ford to where the coolies were working and watched the progress that had been made since the day before. He thought of nothing else. He dreamt of it at night. He reckoned that it would be finished in a year and he did not want to take his leave till then. He could not have worked with more zest if he had been a painter or a sculptor creating a work of art. I think it was this eagerness that made me take a fancy to him. I liked his
zeal. I liked his ingenuousness. And I was impressed by the passion for achievement that made him indifferent to the solitariness of his life, to promotion, and even to the thought of going home. I forget how long the road was, fifteen or twenty miles, I think, and I forget what purpose it was to serve. I don’t believe Morton cared very much. His passion was the artist’s and his triumph was the triumph of man over nature. He learnt as he went along. He had the jungle to contend against, torrential rains that destroyed the labour of weeks, accidents of topography; he had to collect his labour and hold it together; he had inadequate funds. His imagination sustained him. His labours gained a sort of epic quality and the vicissitudes of the work were a great saga that unrolled itself with an infinity of episodes.
His only complaint was that the day was too short. He had office duties, he was judge and tax collector, father and mother (at twenty-eight) of the people in his district; he had now and then to make tours that took him away from home. Unless he was on the spot nothing was done. He would have liked to be there twenty-four hours a day driving the reluctant coolies to further effort. It so happened that shortly before I arrived an incident had occurred that filled him with jubilation. He had offered a contract to a Chinese to make a certain section of the road and the Chinese had asked more than Morton could afford to pay. Notwithstanding interminable discussions they had been unable to arrive at an agreement and Morton with rage in his heart saw his work held up. He was at his wits’ end. Then going down to his office one morning, he heard that there had been a row in one of the Chinese gambling houses the night before. A coolie had been badly wounded and his assailant was under arrest. This assailant was the contractor. He was brought into court, the evidence was clear, and Morton sentenced him to eighteen months’ hard labour.
Now he’ll have to build the blasted road for nothing,’ said Morton, his eyes glistening when he told me the story.
We saw the fellow at work one morning, in the prison sarong, unconcerned. He was taking his misfortune in good part.
65 Short Stories Page 61