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‘’Ere, don’t you call me a cow-child, you ’eathen swine,’ she shrilled, standing her ground pugnaciously. ‘Pig-tail!’ And as Won Chou, conscious of his disadvantage in such an encounter, advanced: ‘Oo made the puppy pie? Oo et Jimmy ’Iggs’s white mice? Oo lives on black beetles? Oo pinched the yaller duck and—’ but at this intriguing point, being suddenly precipitated further into the shop by a mischievous child behind, and honour being fully satisfied by now, she dodged out again and rejoined the fleeing band which was retiring down the street to a noisy accompaniment of feigned alarm, squiggles of meaningless laughter, and the diminishing chant of:
‘Toady, toady Jewlicks;
Goes abaht on two sticks.
Toady, toady—’
Sadly conscious of the inadequacy of his control in a land where for so slight a matter as a clouted child an indignant mother would as soon pull his pig-tail out as look, Won Chou continued his progress in order to close the door. There, however, he came face to face with a stout, consequential gentleman whose presence, opulent complexion, ample beard and slightly alien cut of clothes would have suggested a foreign source even without the ruffled: ‘Tevils! tevils! little tevils!’ drawn from the portly visitor as the result of his somewhat undignified collision with the flying rabble.
‘Plenty childrens,’ remarked Won Chou, agreeably conversational. ‘Makee go much quickly now is.’
‘Little tevils,’ repeated the annoyed visitor, still dusting various sections of his resplendent attire to remove the last traces of infantile contamination. ‘Comrade Joolby is at home? He would expect me.’
‘Make come in,’ invited Won Chou. ‘Him belong say plaps you is blimby.’
‘The little tevils need control. They shall have when—’ grumbled the newcomer, brought back to his grievance by the discovery of a glutinous patch marring an immaculate waistcoat. ‘However, that is not your fault, Won Chou,’ and being now within the shop and away from possibly derisive comment, he kissed the attendant sketchily on each cheek. ‘Peace, little oppressed brother!’
Not apparently inordinately gratified by this act of condescension, Won Chou crossed the shop and pushing open the inner door announced the new arrival to anyone beyond in his usual characteristic lingo:
‘Comlade Blonsky come this side.’
‘Shall I to him go through?’ inquired Mr Bronsky, bustling with activity, but having already correctly interpreted the sounds from that direction Won Chou indicated the position by the sufficient remark: ‘Him will. You is,’ and withdrew into a further period of introspection.
In the sacred cause of universal brotherhood comrade Bronsky knew no boundaries and he hastened forward to meet Mr Joolby with the same fraternal greeting already bestowed on Won Chou, forgetting for the moment what sort of man he was about to encounter. The reminder was sharp and revolting: his outstretched arms dropped to his sides and he turned, affecting to be taken with some object in the shop until he could recompose his agitated faculties. Joolby’s slit-like mouth lengthened into the ghost of an enigmatical grin as he recognised the awkwardness of the comrade’s position.
Bronsky, for his part, felt that he must say something exceptional to pass off the unfortunate situation and he fell back on a highly coloured account of the derangement he had just suffered through being charged and buffeted by a mob of ‘little tevils’—an encounter so upsetting that even yet he scarcely knew which way up he was standing. Any irregularity of his salutation having thus been neatly accounted for he shook Joolby’s two hands with accumulated warmness and expressed an inordinate pleasure in the meeting.
‘But I am forgetting, comrade,’ he broke off from these amiable courtesies when the indiscretion might be deemed sufficiently expiated; ‘those sticky little bastads drove everything from my mind until I just remember. I met two men further off and from what I could see at the distance they seemed to have come out from here?’
‘There were a couple of men here a few minutes ago,’ agreed Mr Joolby. ‘What about it, comrade?’
‘I appear to recognise the look of one, but for life of me I cannot get him. Do you know them, comrade Joolby?’
‘Not from Mahomet. Said his name was Carrados—his nibs. The other was a flunkey.’
‘Max Carrados!’ exclaimed Mr Bronsky with startled enlightenment. ‘What in name of tevil was he doing here in your shop, Joolby?’
‘Wasting his time,’ was the indifferent reply. ‘My time also.’
‘Do you not believe it,’ retorted Bronsky emphatically. ‘He never waste his time, that man. Julian Joolby, do you not realise who has been here with you?’
‘Never heard of him in my life before. Never want to again either.’
‘Well, it is time for yourself that you should be put wiser. It was Max Carrados who fixed the rope round Serge Laskie’s neck. And stopped the Rimsky explosion when everything was going so well; and, oh, did a lot more harm. I tell you he is no good, comrade. He is a bad man.’
‘Anyhow, he can’t interfere with us in this business, whatever he’s done in the past,’ replied Joolby, who might be pardoned after his recent experience for feeling that there would be more agreeable subjects of conversation. ‘He’s blind now.’
‘“Blind now”—hear him!’ appealed Bronsky with a derisive cackle. ‘Tell me this however notwithstanding: did you make anything out of him, eh, Joolby?’
‘No,’ admitted Joolby, determinedly impervious to Bronsky’s agitation; ‘we did no business as it happens. He knew more than a customer has any right to know. In fact’—with an uneasy recollection of the Greek coin—‘he may have known more than I did.’
‘That is always the way. Blind: and he knows more than we who not are. Blind: and he stretch out his cunning wicked fingers and they tell him all that our clever eyes have missed to see.’
‘So he said, Bronsky. Indeed, to hear him talk—’
‘Yes, but wait to hear,’ entreated the comrade, anxious not to be deprived of his narration. ‘He sniffs—at a bit of paper, let us haphazard, and lo behold, where it has been, who has touched it, what pocket it has laid in—all are disclose to him. He listen to a breath of wind that no one else would hear and it tell him that—that, well, perhaps that two men are ready round the corner for him with a sand-bag.’
‘Oh-ho!’ said Joolby, sardonically amused; ‘so you’ve tried it, have you?’
‘Tried! You use the right word, comrade Joolby. Listen how. At Cairo he was given some sandwiches to ate on a journey. He did ate three and the fourth he had between his teeth when he change his mind and throw it to a pi-dog. That dog died very hastily.’
‘Anyone may recognise a taste or smell. Your people mixed the wrong sort of mustard.’
‘Anyone may recognise a taste or smell but yet plenty of people die of poison. Listen more. One night at Marseilles he was walking along a street when absolutely without any warning he turn and hit a poor man who happened to be following him on the head—hit him so hard that our friend had to drop the knife he was holding and to take to heels. And yet he was wearing rubber shoes. It is not right. Julian Joolby; it is not fair when a blind man can do like that. The good comrade who warned me of him say: He can smell a thought and hear a look. And that is not all. I have heard that he has the sixth sense too—’
‘Let him have; I tell you, Bronsky, he is nothing to us. He only chanced along here. He wanted Greek coins.’
‘Greek coins!’ This was reassuring for it agreed with something further about Max Carrados that Bronsky remembered hearing. ‘That may be very true after all as it is well known that he is crazy about collecting—thinks nothing of paying five hundred roubles for a single drachma … Yes, Julian Joolby, if it should become necessary it might be that a hook baited with a rare coin—’
‘Don’t worry. Next week we shall have moved to our new quarters and nothing going on here will matter then.’
‘Ah; that is arrange? I was getting anxious. Our friends in Moscow are becoming more and more impatient as time goes on. The man who pays the piper calls for a tune, as these fool English say it, and the Committee are insist that as they have allow so much for expenses already they must now see results. I am here with authority to investigate about that, comrade Joolby.’
‘They shall see results all right,’ promised Joolby, swelling darkly at the suggestion of interference. ‘And since you fancy English proverbs, comrade, it is well to remember that Rome was not built in a day, one cannot make bricks without clay, and it is not wise to spoil the ship for the sake of a kopeck’s worth of caulking.’
‘That is never fear,’ said Bronsky with a graciously reassuring wave of his hand; ‘nobody mistrusts you of yourself, comrade, and it is only as good friend that I tell you for information what is being thought at headquarters. This is going to be big thing, Joolby.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ agreed the other, regarding his visitor’s comfortable self-satisfaction with his twisted look of private appreciation. ‘I shall do my best in that way, comrade.’
‘Extraordinary care is being take to make sure for wide and quick distribution in China, Japan and India and everywhere agents signify good prospects. The Committee are confident that this move, successfully engined, will destroy British commercial prestige in the East for at least a generation—and by the end of that time there will not be any British in the East. Meanwhile there must be no weak link in the chain. Now, Julian Joolby, what can I report to the Commissar?’
‘You will know that within the next few hours. I’ve called them for eleven. Larch is working on the plates at a safe place now and as soon as dusk we will fill in the time by going to see what he has done and approve or not according to what you think of them.’
‘Good. That sounds as business. But why should we go there? Surely it is more fitly that a workman would come and wait on our convenience at your place of living?’
‘It isn’t a matter of fitness—it’s a matter of ordinary prudence. Have I ever been what is call “in trouble”, Bronsky?’
‘Not as far as to my knowledge,’ admitted the comrade. ‘I have always understand that you keep you hand clean however.’
‘So. And I have done that by sticking to one rule: never to have anything in my place that isn’t capable of a reasonable explanation. Most things can be explained away but not the copper plate of a bank-note found underneath your flooring. That is Larch’s look out.’
‘You are right. It would never do—especially when I is here. We cannot be too much careful. Now this Larch—was he not in it once before when things did not go rightly?’
Joolby nodded and the visitor noticed that his bulging throat sagged unpleasantly.
‘That’s the chap. There was a split and Larch didn’t get his fingers out quickly enough. Three years he was sentence and he came out less than six weeks ago.’
‘He is safe though? He has no bad feeling?’
‘Why should he have?’ demanded Joolby, looking at Mr Bronsky with challenging directness. ‘I had nothing to do with him being put away. It was just a matter of luck that while Larch had the stuff when he was nabbed nothing could have been found on me if they had looked for ever—luck or good management.’
‘Good management if you say to me,’ propounded Bronsky wisely. ‘Notwithstanding.’
‘The one who has the plates is bound to get it in the ear if it comes to trouble. Larch knows that all right when he goes in it.’
‘But you are able to persuade him to risk it again? Well, that is real cleverness, Joolby.’
‘Oh yes; I was able as you say it to persuade him. George is the best copper-plate engraver of his line in England; he came out with a splendid character from the prison Governor—and not an earthly chance of getting a better job than rag-picking. I’ve had harder propositions than persuading him in the circumstances, if it comes to that, Bronsky.’
‘It is to your good notwithstanding,’ declared Mr Bronsky urbanely. ‘The Committee of course officially know nothing of details and are in position to deny whatever is say or done but they is not unmindful of zeal, as you may rely in it, comrade. That is the occasion of my report. Now as regards this business of eleven?’
‘You will meet them all then and hear what is being done in other directions. Nickle will be here by that time and we shall be able to decide about Tapsfield.’
‘Tapsfield? That is a new one surely? I have not heard—’
‘Place where the mills are that make all the official Bank paper,’ explained Joolby. ‘Naturally the paper is our chief trouble—always has been: always will be. Larch can make perfect plates, but with what we’re aiming at this time nothing but the actual paper the Bank of England itself uses will pass muster. Well, there’s plenty of it down at Tapsfield and we’re going to lift it somehow.’
‘I quite agree that we must have the right paper however. But this person Nickle—he is not unknown to some of us—is he quite—?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, there is a feeling that he appear to think more of what he can get out of our holy crusade than of the ultimate benefit of mankind. He has not got the true international spirit, Julian Joolby. I suspect that he has taint of what he would doubtless call “patriotism”—which mean that he has yet to learn that any other country is preferable to his own. To be short, I have found this young man vulgar and it is not beyond that he may also prove restive.’
‘Leave that to me,’ said Joolby with a note of authority, and his unshapely form gave the impression of increasing in bulk as if to meet the prospect of aggression. ‘This is London, not Moscow, Bronsky; I’m in charge here and I have to pick my people and adapt my methods. Nickle will fall into line all right and serve us just so far as suits our purpose. So long as he is doing that he can sing “Rule Britannia” in his spare time for all it matters.’
‘But in the cause—’
‘In the meantime we cannot be too particular about the exact shape of the tool we use to open closed doors with,’ continued Joolby, smothering the interruption with masterful insistence. ‘We are going to flood China, India and the East with absolutely perfect Bank of England paper so that in the end it will be sheerly impossible for English trade to go on there, and so pave the way for Soviet rule. But it is not necessary to shout that sacred message into every ear, even if for the time they work hand in hand with us. Let them think that they are out to make easy money. Few men work any the worse for the expectation that they are in the way to get fortunes. Does that not satisfy you, comrade Bronsky?’
‘So long as it goes forward,’ admitted Mr Bronsky with slightly ungracious acceptance, for he could not blink the suspicion that while he himself was an extremely important figure, this subordinate monstrosity would do precisely as he intended.
‘It is going forward—as you shall convince yourself completely. In the meanwhiles—you have not, I hope, made dinner?’
‘Well, no,’ admitted the visitor, with a flutter of misgiving at the prospect, ‘but—’
‘That is well—you need have no qualms; I can produce something better than kahetia or vodka, and as to food—Won Chou there is equal to anything you would find at your own place or in Soho. Won Chou—number one topside feed, me him, plenty quick. Not is? Is?’
‘Can do. Is,’ replied Won Chou with impassive precision.
‘There you see,’ amplified Joolby, with the pride of a conjurer bringing off a successful trick, ‘he can do it all right—take no longer in the end than if you went out somewhere. And,’ he added, with an inward appreciation of the effect that he knew the boast would have on his guest’s composure, ‘all that he will use for a six course spread may be a gas-ring and two or perhaps three old biscuit tins.’
CHAPTER IV
CORA LARCH IS OFFERED A GOOD SITUATION
IT was a continual matter of pained surprise to George Larch whenever he came to think about it—and owing to the nature of his work and its occasional regrettable developments he had plenty of time for meditation—that he should have become a criminal. It was so entirely different from what he had ever intended when he set out in life. All his instincts were law-abiding and moral and the goal of his ambition from the day when he put by his first saved shilling had been a country cottage (as he conceived it), some fancy poultry and a nice square garden. Not a damp, broken-down, honeysuckle-clad, spider-infested, thatched old hovel of the sort that artists loved to depict, but a really sound, trim little new red-brick villa, standing well up and preferably in the immediate suburbs of Brighton or Worthing.
As a baby, a child, a boy, he had given his mother no trouble whatever, and at school he had always earned unexceptional reports, with particular distinction in his two favourite subjects—Handwriting and Scripture History. Indeed, on the occasion of his last Breaking Up the schoolmaster had gone out of his way to contrive a test and as a result had been able to demonstrate to the assembled boys that, set a line of copper-plate, it was literally impossible to decide which was George’s work and which the copy. As it happened, ‘Honesty is the Best Policy. £ s. d.’ (the tag merely to fill up the line) had been the felicitous text of this experiment.
Very often in these periods of voluntary or enforced inaction George cast his thoughts back in a distressed endeavour to put his finger on the precise point at which he could be said to have deviated from the strict path of virtue. Possibly it might be fixed at that day in 1898 when a casual but very emphatic acquaintance gave him in strict confidence the name of an unsuspected dead cert for the approaching Derby. Not without grave doubts, for it was quite contrary to his upbringing, but tempted by the odds, young Larch diffidently inquired how one made a bet and ultimately decided to risk half-a-crown on the chances of Jeddah. Still all might have been well but unfortunately the horse did win and—the bookmaker being not only honest but positively delighted—George found himself at a stroke twelve pounds ten (more than the result of a month’s conscientious work) the richer.
Then there was Cora. That had been a wonderful thing, so unexpected, so incredible, so tumultuously sweet, and even now, at forty-three, with all that had flowed from it, he would not have a jot of that line of destiny altered if it would have involved losing that memory. Cora was as true as steel and had stuck to—and up for—him through thick and thin, but it was quite possible that her youthful gaiety, her love of pretty, costly things, and the easier views on life and conduct in which she (naïve child) had been brought up might have imperceptibly shaped the issue. It was simply impossible for him not to follow in her rather hectic round and as for refusing her anything—why, the greatest pleasure he could win had been to anticipate whatever she had set her innocent heart on. It goes without saying that no more shillings were being saved; instead there were frequent occasions when pounds had to be—on whatever terms—somehow borrowed. Meanwhile there had been other dead certs: one in particular so extremely dead that coming at a critical hour George had been hypnotised into the belief that it would be the merest form to make use of a comparatively trifling sum when it could inevitably be replaced before the accounts were looked into the following morning … So here he was, sitting in the back upper room of an ostensible rag-and-bone shop, fabricating with unmatchable skill the ‘mother plate’ of a Bank of England ‘tenner’ and at this particular moment preparing to unlock the door in response to old Ikey’s rapped-out signal that ‘safe’ visitors were below to see him.
Mr Joolby had spoken of visiting Larch ‘at dusk’, possibly on general precautionary grounds, but it did not escape the notice of those who knew him best that most of the outdoor activity of the crippled dealer was nocturnal. Padgett Street rarely saw him out at all for the rear premises of his shop gave access to a yard from which it was possible to emerge in more distant thoroughfares by way of a network of slums and alleys. A pleasantry current in Padgett Street was to affect the conviction that he burrowed.
It was sufficiently late when Won Chou’s peculiarly appetising meal had been despatched to answer to this requirement. Mr Joolby glanced up at the deepening sky of spilled-ink blue as seen through an uncurtained pane, produced a box of cigars curiously encased in raffia and indicated to his guest that they might as well be going.
‘It’s a slow affair with me,’ he apologised as he laboriously crawled about the room, preparing for the walk, ‘so you must expect a tiresome round. Now as we have some little distance to go—’
‘But is it quite safe—this place we go to?’ asked Bronsky who had drunk too sparingly of either wine or spirits to have his natural feebleness heartened. ‘It would not do—’
‘Safe as the Kremlin,’ was the half contemptuous reply, for by the measure of the visitor Joolby was a man of mettle. ‘My own chap is in charge there and so far as that goes the place is run as a proper business. Ah-Chou’—raising his voice, for that singularly versatile attendant was again at his look-out—‘we go come one two hour. You catchee make dark all time.’
‘Alle light-o,’ came cheerfully back and although no footsteps were to be heard Won Chou might be trusted to be carrying out his instructions.
‘And makee door plenty fast. No one come look-see while not is,’ was the further injunction; then piloting his guest into the lumber-strewn yard Mr Joolby very thoroughly put into practice this process as regards the rear premises before he led the way towards their destination. Leading, for most of the journey, it literally was, for much of their devious route was along mere passages, and even in the streets Mr Joolby’s mode of progression monopolised the path while Bronsky’s superficial elegance soon prejudiced him against using the gutter. He followed his host at a laboured crawl, relieving his mind from time to time by little bursts of ‘psst!’ and ‘chkk!’ at each occasion of annoyance. Joolby, unmoved, plodded stolidly ahead, his unseen features occasionally registering their stealthy broadening grin, although he seldom failed to throw a word of encouragement over his shoulder whenever a more definite phrase indicated that the comrade had come up against an obstruction or trod into something unpleasant.
‘Well, here we are at last,’ was the welcome assurance as they emerged into a thoroughfare that was at least a little wider and somewhat better lit than most of the others. ‘That is the place, next to the greengrocer. When we go back we can take an easier way, since you don’t seem to like this one, Bronsky, especially as it will be quite dark then.’
‘It will be as good that we should,’ assented Mr Bronsky, still justifiably ruffled. ‘Seldom have I been through such tamgod—’
‘Just a minute,’ put in Joolby coolly. ‘Better not talk until I’ve made sure that everything is clear,’ and they having now come to the rag-and-bone shop he rapped in a quite ordinary way on the closed door. With no more than the usual delay of coming from an inner room and turning a rusty key it was opened by an elderly Hebrew whose ‘atmosphere’—in its most generous sense—was wholly in keeping with his surroundings.
‘Good evening, Ikey,’ said Mr Joolby, still panting a little now that he had come to rest after an unusual exertion, ‘I have brought you perhaps a very good buyer. This gentleman is making up a large purchase for export and if it is worth his while—’
‘Come in, sirs, come in if you please,’ begged Ikey deferentially; the door was held more fully open and they passed into a store heaped with rags, bones, empty bottles, old metal, stark rabbit skins and all the more sordid refuse of a city’s back-kitchens. Joolby did not appear to find anything disturbing in the malodorous air and even the fastidious Bronsky might have been perfectly at home in these surroundings.