she was with seen that she was through dancing, they begin to kick up a
row; and one young nut with about an inch and a quarter of forehead and
the same amount of chin kicked it up especial.
'No, I say! I say, you know!' he hollered. 'That's too bad, you know.
Encore! Don't stop. Encore!'
Andy goes up to him.
'I must ask you, please, not to make so much noise,' he says, quite
respectful. 'You are disturbing people.'
'Disturbing be damned! Why shouldn't she - '
'One moment. You can make all the noise you please out in the street,
but as long as you stay in here you'll be quiet. Do you understand?'
Up jumps the nut. He'd had quite enough to drink. I know, because I'd
been serving him.
'Who the devil are you?' he says.
'Sit down,' says Andy.
And the young feller took a smack at him. And the next moment Andy had
him by the collar and was chucking him out in a way that would have
done credit to a real professional down Whitechapel way. He dumped him
on the pavement as neat as you please.
That broke up the party.
You can never tell with restaurants. What kills one makes another. I've
no doubt that if we had chucked out a good customer from the Guelph
that would have been the end of the place. But it only seemed to do
MacFarland's good. I guess it gave just that touch to the place which
made the nuts think that this was real Bohemia. Come to think of it, it
does give a kind of charm to a place, if you feel that at any moment
the feller at the next table to you may be gathered up by the slack of
his trousers and slung into the street.
Anyhow, that's the way our supper-custom seemed to look at it; and
after that you had to book a table in advance if you wanted to eat with
us. They fairly flocked to the place.
But Katie didn't. She didn't flock. She stayed away. And no wonder,
after Andy behaving so bad. I'd of spoke to him about it, only he
wasn't the kind of feller you do speak to about things.
One day I says to him to cheer him up, 'What price this restaurant now,
Mr Andy?'
'Curse the restaurant,' he says.
And him with all that supper-custom! It's a rum world!
Mister, have you ever had a real shock - something that came out of
nowhere and just knocked you flat? I have, and I'm going to tell you
about it.
When a man gets to be my age, and has a job of work which keeps him
busy till it's time for him to go to bed, he gets into the habit of not
doing much worrying about anything that ain't shoved right under his
nose. That's why, about now, Katie had kind of slipped my mind. It
wasn't that I wasn't fond of the kid, but I'd got so much to think
about, what with having four young fellers under me and things being in
such a rush at the restaurant that, if I thought of her at all, I just
took it for granted that she was getting along all right, and didn't
bother. To be sure we hadn't seen nothing of her at MacFarland's since
the night when Andy bounced her pal with the small size in foreheads,
but that didn't worry me. If I'd been her, I'd have stopped away the
same as she done, seeing that young Andy still had his hump. I took it
for granted, as I'm telling you, that she was all right, and that the
reason we didn't see nothing of her was that she was taking her
patronage elsewhere.
And then, one evening, which happened to be my evening off, I got a
letter, and for ten minutes after I read it I was knocked flat.
You get to believe in fate when you get to be my age, and fate certainly
had taken a hand in this game. If it hadn't of been my evening off,
don't you see, I wouldn't have got home till one o'clock or past that
in the morning, being on duty. Whereas, seeing it was my evening off,
I was back at half past eight.
I was living at the same boarding-house in Bloomsbury what I'd lived at
for the past ten years, and when I got there I find her letter shoved
half under my door.
I can tell you every word of it. This is how it went:
_Darling Uncle Bill,_
_Don't be too sorry when you read this. It is nobody's fault,
but I am just tired of everything, and I want to end it all. You
have been such a dear to me always that I want you to be good to
me now. I should not like Andy to know the truth, so I want you
to make it seem as if it had happened naturally. You will do this
for me, won't you? It will be quite easy. By the time you get this,
it will be one, and it will all be over, and you can just come up
and open the window and let the gas out and then everyone will
think I just died naturally. It will be quite easy. I am leaving
the door unlocked so that you can get in. I am in the room just
above yours. I took it yesterday, so as to be near you. Good-bye,
Uncle Bill. You will do it for me, won't you? I don't want Andy to
know what it really was._
KATIE
That was it, mister, and I tell you it floored me. And then it come to
me, kind of as a new idea, that I'd best do something pretty soon, and
up the stairs I went quick.
There she was, on the bed, with her eyes closed, and the gas just
beginning to get bad.
As I come in, she jumped up, and stood staring at me. I went to the
tap, and turned the flow off, and then I gives her a look.
'Now then,' I says.
'How did you get here?'
'Never mind how I got here. What have you got to say for yourself?'
She just began to cry, same as she used to when she was a kid and
someone had hurt her.
'Here,' I says, 'let's get along out of here, and go where there's some
air to breathe. Don't you take on so. You come along out and tell me
all about it.'
She started to walk to where I was, and suddenly I seen she was
limping. So I gave her a hand down to my room, and set her on a chair.
'Now then,' I says again.
'Don't be angry with me, Uncle Bill,' she says.
And she looks at me so pitiful that I goes up to her and puts my arm
round her and pats her on the back.
'Don't you worry, dearie,' I says, 'nobody ain't going to be angry with
you. But, for goodness' sake,' I says, 'tell a man why in the name of
goodness you ever took and acted so foolish.'
'I wanted to end it all.'
'But why?'
She burst out a-crying again, like a kid.
'Didn't you read about it in the paper, Uncle Bill?'
'Read about what in the paper?'
'My accident. I broke my ankle at rehearsal ever so long ago, practising
my new dance. The doctors say it will never be right again. I shall
never be able to dance any more. I shall always limp. I shan't even be
able to walk properly. And when I thought of that ... and Andy ... and
everything ... I....'
I got on to my feet.
'Well, well, well,' I says. 'Well, well, well! I don't know as I blame
you. But don't you do it. It's a mug's game. Look here, if I leave you
alone for half an hour, you won't go trying it on again? Promise.'
'Very well, Uncle Bill. Where are you going?'
'Oh, just out. I'll be back soon. You sit there and rest yourself.'
It didn't take me ten minutes to get to the restaurant in a cab. I
found Andy in the back room.
'What's the matter, Henry?' he says.
'Take a look at this,' I says.
There's always this risk, mister, in being the Andy type of feller what
must have his own way and goes straight ahead and has it; and that is
that when trouble does come to him, it comes with a rush. It sometimes
seems to me that in this life we've all got to have trouble sooner or
later, and some of us gets it bit by bit, spread out thin, so to speak,
and a few of us gets it in a lump - _biff_! And that was what
happened to Andy, and what I knew was going to happen when I showed him
that letter. I nearly says to him, 'Brace up, young feller, because
this is where you get it.'
I don't often go to the theatre, but when I do I like one of those
plays with some ginger in them which the papers generally cuss. The
papers say that real human beings don't carry on in that way. Take it
from me, mister, they do. I seen a feller on the stage read a letter
once which didn't just suit him; and he gasped and rolled his eyes and
tried to say something and couldn't, and had to get a hold on a chair
to keep him from falling. There was a piece in the paper saying that
this was all wrong, and that he wouldn't of done them things in real
life. Believe me, the paper was wrong. There wasn't a thing that feller
did that Andy didn't do when he read that letter.
'God!' he says. 'Is she ... She isn't.... Were you in time?' he says.
And he looks at me, and I seen that he had got it in the neck, right
enough.
'If you mean is she dead,' I says, 'no, she ain't dead.'
'Thank God!'
'Not yet,' I says.
And the next moment we was out of that room and in the cab and moving
quick.
He was never much of a talker, wasn't Andy, and he didn't chat in that
cab. He didn't say a word till we was going up the stairs.
'Where?' he says.
'Here,' I says.
And I opens the door.
Katie was standing looking out of the window. She turned as the door
opened, and then she saw Andy. Her lips parted, as if she was going to
say something, but she didn't say nothing. And Andy, he didn't say
nothing, neither. He just looked, and she just looked.
And then he sort of stumbles across the room, and goes down on his
knees, and gets his arms around her.
'Oh, my kid' he says.
* * * * *
And I seen I wasn't wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went
and saw the last half of a music-hall. But, I don't know, it didn't
kind of have no fascination for me. You've got to give your mind to it
to appreciate good music-hall turns.
ONE TOUCH OF NATURE
The feelings of Mr J. Wilmot Birdsey, as he stood wedged in the crowd
that moved inch by inch towards the gates of the Chelsea Football
Ground, rather resembled those of a starving man who has just been
given a meal but realizes that he is not likely to get another for many
days. He was full and happy. He bubbled over with the joy of living and
a warm affection for his fellow-man. At the back of his mind there
lurked the black shadow of future privations, but for the moment he did
not allow it to disturb him. On this maddest, merriest day of all the
glad New Year he was content to revel in the present and allow the
future to take care of itself.
Mr Birdsey had been doing something which he had not done since he left
New York five years ago. He had been watching a game of baseball.
New York lost a great baseball fan when Hugo Percy de Wynter
Framlinghame, sixth Earl of Carricksteed, married Mae Elinor, only
daughter of Mr and Mrs J. Wilmot Birdsey of East Seventy-Third Street;
for scarcely had that internationally important event taken place when
Mrs Birdsey, announcing that for the future the home would be in
England as near as possible to dear Mae and dear Hugo, scooped J.
Wilmot out of his comfortable morris chair as if he had been a clam,
corked him up in a swift taxicab, and decanted him into a Deck B
stateroom on the _Olympic_. And there he was, an exile.
Mr Birdsey submitted to the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of
the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so
popular among his fellows and such a cypher in his home. At an early
date in his married life his position had been clearly defined beyond
possibility of mistake. It was his business to make money, and, when
called upon, to jump through hoops and sham dead at the bidding of his
wife and daughter Mae. These duties he had been performing
conscientiously for a matter of twenty years.
It was only occasionally that his humble role jarred upon him, for he
loved his wife and idolized his daughter. The international alliance
had been one of these occasions. He had no objection to Hugo Percy,
sixth Earl of Carricksteed. The crushing blow had been the sentence of
exile. He loved baseball with a love passing the love of women, and the
prospect of never seeing a game again in his life appalled him.
And then, one morning, like a voice from another world, had come the
news that the White Sox and the Giants were to give an exhibition in
London at the Chelsea Football Ground. He had counted the days like a
child before Christmas.
There had been obstacles to overcome before he could attend the game,
but he had overcome them, and had been seated in the front row when the
two teams lined up before King George.
And now he was moving slowly from the ground with the rest of the
spectators. Fate had been very good to him. It had given him a great
game, even unto two home-runs. But its crowning benevolence had been to
allot the seats on either side of him to two men of his own mettle, two
god-like beings who knew every move on the board, and howled like
wolves when they did not see eye to eye with the umpire. Long before
the ninth innings he was feeling towards them the affection of a
shipwrecked mariner who meets a couple of boyhood's chums on a desert
island.
As he shouldered his way towards the gate he was aware of these two
men, one on either side of him. He looked at them fondly, trying to
make up his mind which of them he liked best. It was sad to think that
they must soon go out of his life again for ever.
He came to a sudden resolution. He would postpone the parting. He would
ask them to dinner. Over the best that the Savoy Hotel could provide
they would fight the afternoon's battle over again. He did not know who
they were or anything about them, but what did that matter? They were
brother-fans. That was enough for him.
The man on his right was young, clean-shaven, and of a somewhat
vulturine cast of countenance. His face was cold and impassive now,
almost forbiddingly so; but only half an hour before it had been a
battle-field of conflicting emotions, and his hat still showed the dent
where he had banged it against the edge of his seat on the occasion of
Mr Daly's home-run. A worthy guest!
The man on Mr Birdsey's left belonged to another species of fan. Though
there had been times during the game when he had howled, for the most
part he had watched in silence so hungrily tense that a less
experienced observer than Mr Birdsey might have attributed his
immobility to boredom. But one glance at his set jaw and gleaming eyes
told him that here also was a man and a brother.
This man's eyes were still gleaming, and under their curiously deep tan
his bearded cheeks were pale. He was staring straight in front of him
with an unseeing gaze.
Mr Birdsey tapped the young man on the shoulder.
'Some game!' he said.
The young man looked at him and smiled.
'You bet,' he said.
'I haven't seen a ball-game in five years.'
'The last one I saw was two years ago next June.'
'Come and have some dinner at my hotel and talk it over,' said Mr
Birdsey impulsively.
'Sure!' said the young man.
Mr Birdsey turned and tapped the shoulder of the man on his left.
The result was a little unexpected. The man gave a start that was
almost a leap, and the pallor of his face became a sickly white. His
eyes, as he swung round, met Mr Birdsey's for an instant before they
dropped, and there was panic fear in them. His breath whistled softly
through clenched teeth.
Mr Birdsey was taken aback. The cordiality of the clean-shaven young
man had not prepared him for the possibility of such a reception. He
felt chilled. He was on the point of apologizing with some murmur about
a mistake, when the man reassured him by smiling. It was rather a
painful smile, but it was enough for Mr Birdsey. This man might be of a
nervous temperament, but his heart was in the right place.
He, too, smiled. He was a small, stout, red-faced little man, and he
possessed a smile that rarely failed to set strangers at their ease.
Many strenuous years on the New York Stock Exchange had not destroyed a
certain childlike amiability in Mr Birdsey, and it shone out when he
smiled at you.
'I'm afraid I startled you,' he said soothingly. 'I wanted to ask you
if you would let a perfect stranger, who also happens to be an exile,
offer you dinner tonight.'
The man winced. 'Exile?'
'An exiled fan. Don't you feel that the Polo Grounds are a good long
way away? This gentleman is joining me. I have a suite at the Savoy
Hotel, and I thought we might all have a quiet little dinner there and
talk about the game. I haven't seen a ball-game in five years.'
'Nor have I.'
'Then you must come. You really must. We fans ought to stick to one
another in a strange land. Do come.'
'Thank you,' said the bearded man; 'I will.'
When three men, all strangers, sit down to dinner together,
conversation, even if they happen to have a mutual passion for
baseball, is apt to be for a while a little difficult. The first fine
frenzy in which Mr Birdsey had issued his invitations had begun to ebb
by the time the soup was served, and he was conscious of a feeling of
embarrassment.
There was some subtle hitch in the orderly progress of affairs. He
sensed it in the air. Both of his guests were disposed to silence, and
the clean-shaven young man had developed a trick of staring at the man
with the beard, which was obviously distressing that sensitive person.
'Wine,' murmured Mr Birdsey to the waiter. 'Wine, wine!'
He spoke with the earnestness of a general calling up his reserves for
the grand attack. The success of this little dinner mattered enormously
to him. There were circumstances which were going to make it an oasis
in his life. He wanted it to be an occasion to which, in grey days to
come, he could look back and be consoled. He could not let it be a
failure.
He was about to speak when the young man anticipated him. Leaning
forward, he addressed the bearded man, who was crumbling bread with an
absent look in his eyes.
'Surely we have met before?' he said. 'I'm sure I remember your face.'
The effect of these words on the other was as curious as the effect of
Mr Birdsey's tap on the shoulder had been. He looked up like a hunted
animal.
He shook his head without speaking.
'Curious,' said the young man. 'I could have sworn to it, and I am
positive that it was somewhere in New York. Do you come from New York?'
'Yes.'
'It seems to me,' said Mr Birdsey, 'that we ought to introduce
ourselves. Funny it didn't strike any of us before. My name is Birdsey,
J. Wilmot Birdsey. I come from New York.'
'My name is Waterall,' said the young man. 'I come from New York.'
The bearded man hesitated.
'My name is Johnson. I - used to live in New York.'
'Where do you live now, Mr Johnson?' asked Waterall.
The bearded man hesitated again. 'Algiers,' he said.
Mr Birdsey was inspired to help matters along with small-talk.
'Algiers,' he said. 'I have never been there, but I understand that it
is quite a place. Are you in business there, Mr Johnson?'
'I live there for my health.'
'Have you been there some time?' inquired Waterall.
'Five years.'
'Then it must have been in New York that I saw you, for I have never
been to Algiers, and I'm certain I have seen you somewhere. I'm afraid
you will think me a bore for sticking to the point like this, but the
fact is, the one thing I pride myself on is my memory for faces. It's a
hobby of mine. If I think I remember a face, and can't place it, I
worry myself into insomnia. It's partly sheer vanity, and partly
because in my job a good memory for faces is a mighty fine asset. It
has helped me a hundred times.'
Mr Birdsey was an intelligent man, and he could see that Waterall's
table-talk was for some reason getting upon Johnson's nerves. Like a
good host, he endeavoured to cut in and make things smooth.
'I've heard great accounts of Algiers,' he said helpfully. 'A friend of
mine was there in his yacht last year. It must be a delightful spot.'
'It's a hell on earth,' snapped Johnson, and slew the conversation on
the spot.
Through a grim silence an angel in human form fluttered in - a waiter
bearing a bottle. The pop of the cork was more than music to Mr
Birdsey's ears. It was the booming of the guns of the relieving army.
The first glass, as first glasses will, thawed the bearded man, to the
extent of inducing him to try and pick up the fragments of the
conversation which he had shattered.
'I am afraid you will have thought me abrupt, Mr Birdsey,' he said
awkwardly; 'but then you haven't lived in Algiers for five years, and I
have.'
Mr Birdsey chirruped sympathetically.
'I liked it at first. It looked mighty good to me. But five years of it,
and nothing else to look forward to till you die....'
He stopped, and emptied his glass. Mr Birdsey was still perturbed.
True, conversation was proceeding in a sort of way, but it had taken a
distinctly gloomy turn. Slightly flushed with the excellent champagne
which he had selected for this important dinner, he endeavoured to
lighten it.
'I wonder,' he said, 'which of us three fans had the greatest
difficulty in getting to the bleachers today. I guess none of us found
it too easy.'
The young man shook his head.
'Don't count on me to contribute a romantic story to this Arabian
Night's Entertainment. My difficulty would have been to stop away. My
name's Waterall, and I'm the London correspondent of the _New York
Chronicle_. I had to be there this afternoon in the way of
business.'
Mr Birdsey giggled self-consciously, but not without a certain impish
pride.
'The laugh will be on me when you hear my confession. My daughter
married an English earl, and my wife brought me over here to mix with
his crowd. There was a big dinner-party tonight, at which the whole
gang were to be present, and it was as much as my life was worth to
side-step it. But when you get the Giants and the White Sox playing
ball within fifty miles of you - Well, I packed a grip and sneaked out
the back way, and got to the station and caught the fast train to
London. And what is going on back there at this moment I don't like to
think. About now,' said Mr Birdsey, looking at his watch, 'I guess
they'll be pronging the _hors d'oeuvres_ and gazing at the empty
chair. It was a shame to do it, but, for the love of Mike, what else
could I have done?'
He looked at the bearded man.
'Did you have any adventures, Mr Johnson?'
'No. I - I just came.'
The young man Waterall leaned forward. His manner was quiet, but his
eyes were glittering.
'Wasn't that enough of an adventure for you?' he said.
Their eyes met across the table. Seated between them, Mr Birdsey looked
from one to the other, vaguely disturbed. Something was happening, a
drama was going on, and he had not the key to it.
Johnson's face was pale, and the tablecloth crumpled into a crooked
ridge under his fingers, but his voice was steady as he replied:
'I don't understand.'
'Will you understand if I give you your right name, Mr Benyon?'
'What's all this?' said Mr Birdsey feebly.
Waterall turned to him, the vulturine cast of his face more noticeable
than ever. Mr Birdsey was conscious of a sudden distaste for this young
man.
'It's quite simple, Mr Birdsey. If you have not been entertaining
angels unawares, you have at least been giving a dinner to a celebrity.
I told you I was sure I had seen this gentleman before. I have just
remembered where, and when. This is Mr John Benyon, and I last saw him
five years ago when I was a reporter in New York, and covered his
trial.'
'His trial?'
'He robbed the New Asiatic Bank of a hundred thousand dollars, jumped
his bail, and was never heard of again.'
'For the love of Mike!'
Mr Birdsey stared at his guest with eyes that grew momently wider. He
was amazed to find that deep down in him there was an unmistakable
feeling of elation. He had made up his mind, when he left home that
morning, that this was to be a day of days. Well, nobody could call
this an anti-climax.
'So that's why you have been living in Algiers?'
Benyon did not reply. Outside, the Strand traffic sent a faint murmur
into the warm, comfortable room.
Waterall spoke. 'What on earth induced you, Benyon, to run the risk of
coming to London, where every second man you meet is a New Yorker, I
can't understand. The chances were two to one that you would be
recognized. You made a pretty big splash with that little affair of
yours five years ago.'
Benyon raised his head. His hands were trembling.
'I'll tell you,' he said with a kind of savage force, which hurt kindly
little Mr Birdsey like a blow. 'It was because I was a dead man, and
saw a chance of coming to life for a day; because I was sick of the
damned tomb I've been living in for five centuries; because I've been
aching for New York ever since I've left it - and here was a chance of
being back there for a few hours. I knew there was a risk. I took a
chance on it. Well?'
Mr Birdsey's heart was almost too full for words. He had found him at
last, the Super-Fan, the man who would go through fire and water for a
sight of a game of baseball. Till that moment he had been regarding
himself as the nearest approach to that dizzy eminence. He had braved
great perils to see this game. Even in this moment his mind would not
wholly detach itself from speculation as to what his wife would say to
him when he slunk back into the fold. But what had he risked compared
with this man Benyon? Mr Birdsey glowed. He could not restrain his
sympathy and admiration. True, the man was a criminal. He had robbed a
bank of a hundred thousand dollars. But, after all, what was that? They
would probably have wasted the money in foolishness. And, anyway, a
bank which couldn't take care of its money deserved to lose it.
Mr Birdsey felt almost a righteous glow of indignation against the New
Asiatic Bank.
He broke the silence which had followed Benyon's words with a
peculiarly immoral remark:
'Well, it's lucky it's only us that's recognized you,' he said.
Waterall stared. 'Are you proposing that we should hush this thing up,
Mr Birdsey?' he said coldly.
'Oh, well - '
Waterall rose and went to the telephone.
'What are you going to do?'
'Call up Scotland Yard, of course. What did you think?'
Undoubtedly the young man was doing his duty as a citizen, yet it is to
be recorded that Mr Birdsey eyed him with unmixed horror.
'You can't! You mustn't!' he cried.
'I certainly shall.'
'But - but - this fellow came all that way to see the ball-game.'
It seemed incredible to Mr Birdsey that this aspect of the affair
should not be the one to strike everybody to the exclusion of all other
aspects.
'You can't give him up. It's too raw.'
'He's a convicted criminal.'
'He's a fan. Why, say, he's _the_ fan.'
Waterall shrugged his shoulders, and walked to the telephone. Benyon
spoke.
'One moment.'
Waterall turned, and found himself looking into the muzzle of a small
pistol. He laughed.
'I expected that. Wave it about all you want'
Benyon rested his shaking hand on the edge of the table.
'I'll shoot if you move.'
'You won't. You haven't the nerve. There's nothing to you. You're just
a cheap crook, and that's all. You wouldn't find the nerve to pull that
trigger in a million years.'
He took off the receiver.
'Give me Scotland Yard,' he said.
He had turned his back to Benyon. Benyon sat motionless. Then, with a
thud, the pistol fell to the ground. The next moment Benyon had broken
down. His face was buried in his arms, and he was a wreck of a man,
sobbing like a hurt child.
Mr Birdsey was profoundly distressed. He sat tingling and helpless.
This was a nightmare.
Waterall's level voice spoke at the telephone.
'Is this Scotland Yard? I am Waterall, of the _New York
Chronicle_. Is Inspector Jarvis there? Ask him to come to the
phone.... Is that you, Jarvis? This is Waterall. I'm speaking from the
Savoy, Mr Birdsey's rooms. Birdsey. Listen, Jarvis. There's a man here
that's wanted by the American police. Send someone here and get him.
Benyon. Robbed the New Asiatic Bank in New York. Yes, you've a warrant
out for him, five years old.... All right.'
He hung up the receiver. Benyon sprang to his feet. He stood, shaking,
a pitiable sight. Mr Birdsey had risen with him. They stood looking at
Waterall.
'You - skunk!' said Mr Birdsey.
'I'm an American citizen,' said Waterall, 'and I happen to have some
idea of a citizen's duties. What is more, I'm a newspaper man, and I
have some idea of my duty to my paper. Call me what you like, you won't
alter that.'
Mr Birdsey snorted.
'You're suffering from ingrowing sentimentality, Mr Birdsey. That's
what's the matter with you. Just because this man has escaped justice
for five years, you think he ought to be considered quit of the whole
thing.'
'But - but - '
'I don't.'
He took out his cigarette case. He was feeling a great deal more
strung-up and nervous than he would have had the others suspect. He had
had a moment of very swift thinking before he had decided to treat that
ugly little pistol in a spirit of contempt. Its production had given
him a decided shock, and now he was suffering from reaction. As a
consequence, because his nerves were strained, he lit his cigarette
very languidly, very carefully, and with an offensive superiority which
was to Mr Birdsey the last straw.
These things are matters of an instant. Only an infinitesimal fraction
of time elapsed between the spectacle of Mr Birdsey, indignant but
inactive, and Mr Birdsey berserk, seeing red, frankly and undisguisedly
running amok. The transformation took place in the space of time
required for the lighting of a match.
Even as the match gave out its flame, Mr Birdsey sprang.
Aeons before, when the young blood ran swiftly in his veins and life
was all before him, Mr Birdsey had played football. Once a footballer,
always a potential footballer, even to the grave. Time had removed the
flying tackle as a factor in Mr Birdsey's life. Wrath brought it back.
He dived at young Mr Waterall's neatly trousered legs as he had dived
at other legs, less neatly trousered, thirty years ago. They crashed to
the floor together; and with the crash came Mr Birdsey's shout:
'Run! Run, you fool! Run!'
And, even as he clung to his man, breathless, bruised, feeling as if
all the world had dissolved in one vast explosion of dynamite, the door
opened, banged to, and feet fled down the passage.
Mr Birdsey disentangled himself, and rose painfully. The shock had
brought him to himself. He was no longer berserk. He was a middle-aged
gentleman of high respectability who had been behaving in a very
peculiar way.
Waterall, flushed and dishevelled, glared at him speechlessly. He
gulped. 'Are you crazy?'
Mr Birdsey tested gingerly the mechanism of a leg which lay under
suspicion of being broken. Relieved, he put his foot to the ground
again. He shook his head at Waterall. He was slightly crumpled, but he
achieved a manner of dignified reproof.
'You shouldn't have done it, young man. It was raw work. Oh, yes, I
know all about that duty-of-a-citizen stuff. It doesn't go. There are
exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. When a man risks
his liberty to come and root at a ball-game, you've got to hand it to
him. He isn't a crook. He's a fan. And we exiled fans have got to stick
together.'
Waterall was quivering with fury, disappointment, and the peculiar
unpleasantness of being treated by an elderly gentleman like a sack of
coals. He stammered with rage.
'You damned old fool, do you realize what you've done? The police will
be here in another minute.'
'Let them come.'
'But what am I to say to them? What explanation can I give? What story
can I tell them? Can't you see what a hole you've put me in?'
Something seemed to click inside Mr Birdsey's soul. It was the berserk
mood vanishing and reason leaping back on to her throne. He was able
now to think calmly, and what he thought about filled him with a sudden
gloom.
'Young man,' he said, 'don't worry yourself. You've got a cinch. You've
only got to hand a story to the police. Any old tale will do for them.
I'm the man with the really difficult job - I've got to square myself
with my wife!'
BLACK FOR LUCK
He was black, but comely. Obviously in reduced circumstances, he had
nevertheless contrived to retain a certain smartness, a certain
air - what the French call the _tournure_. Nor had poverty killed
in him the aristocrat's instinct of personal cleanliness; for even as
Elizabeth caught sight of him he began to wash himself.
At the sound of her step he looked up. He did not move, but there was
suspicion in his attitude. The muscles of his back contracted, his eyes
glowed like yellow lamps against black velvet, his tail switched a
little, warningly.
Elizabeth looked at him. He looked at Elizabeth. There was a pause,
while he summed her up. Then he stalked towards her, and, suddenly
lowering his head, drove it vigorously against her dress. He permitted
her to pick him up and carry him into the hall-way, where Francis, the
janitor, stood.
'Francis,' said Elizabeth, 'does this cat belong to anyone here?'
'No, miss. That cat's a stray, that cat is. I been trying to locate
that cat's owner for days.'
Francis spent his time trying to locate things. It was the one
recreation of his eventless life. Sometimes it was a noise, sometimes a
lost letter, sometimes a piece of ice which had gone astray in the
dumb-waiter - whatever it was, Francis tried to locate it.
'Has he been round here long, then?'
'I seen him snooping about a considerable time.'
'I shall keep him.'
'Black cats bring luck,' said Francis sententiously.
'I certainly shan't object to that,' said Elizabeth. She was feeling
that morning that a little luck would be a pleasing novelty. Things had
not been going very well with her of late. It was not so much that the
usual proportion of her manuscripts had come back with editorial
compliments from the magazine to which they had been sent - she accepted
that as part of the game; what she did consider scurvy treatment at the
hands of fate was the fact that her own pet magazine, the one to which
she had been accustomed to fly for refuge, almost sure of a
welcome - when coldly treated by all the others - had suddenly expired
with a low gurgle for want of public support. It was like losing a kind
and open-handed relative, and it made the addition of a black cat to
the household almost a necessity.
In her flat, the door closed, she watched her new ally with some
anxiety. He had behaved admirably on the journey upstairs, but she
would not have been surprised, though it would have pained her, if he
had now proceeded to try to escape through the ceiling. Cats were so
emotional. However, he remained calm, and, after padding silently about
the room for awhile, raised his head and uttered a crooning cry.
'That's right,' said Elizabeth, cordially. 'If you don't see what you
want, ask for it. The place is yours.'
She went to the ice-box, and produced milk and sardines. There was
nothing finicky or affected about her guest. He was a good trencherman,
and he did not care who knew it. He concentrated himself on the
restoration of his tissues with the purposeful air of one whose last
meal is a dim memory. Elizabeth, brooding over him like a Providence,
wrinkled her forehead in thought.
'Joseph,' she said at last, brightening; 'that's your name. Now settle
down, and start being a mascot.'
Joseph settled down amazingly. By the end of the second day he was
conveying the impression that he was the real owner of the apartment,
and that it was due to his good nature that Elizabeth was allowed the
run of the place. Like most of his species, he was an autocrat. He
waited a day to ascertain which was Elizabeth's favourite chair, then
appropriated it for his own. If Elizabeth closed a door while he was in
a room, he wanted it opened so that he might go out; if she closed it
while he was outside, he wanted it opened so that he might come in; if
she left it open, he fussed about the draught. But the best of us have
our faults, and Elizabeth adored him in spite of his.
It was astonishing what a difference he made in her life. She was a
friendly soul, and until Joseph's arrival she had had to depend for
company mainly on the footsteps of the man in the flat across the way.
Moreover, the building was an old one, and it creaked at night. There
was a loose board in the passage which made burglar noises in the dark
behind you when you stepped on it on the way to bed; and there were
funny scratching sounds which made you jump and hold your breath.
Joseph soon put a stop to all that. With Joseph around, a loose board
became a loose board, nothing more, and a scratching noise just a plain
scratching noise.
And then one afternoon he disappeared.
Having searched the flat without finding him, Elizabeth went to the
window, with the intention of making a bird's-eye survey of the street.
She was not hopeful, for she had just come from the street, and there
had been no sign of him then.
Outside the window was a broad ledge, running the width of the
building. It terminated on the left, in a shallow balcony belonging to
the flat whose front door faced hers - the flat of the young man whose
footsteps she sometimes heard. She knew he was a young man, because
Francis had told her so. His name, James Renshaw Boyd, she had learned
from the same source.
On this shallow balcony, licking his fur with the tip of a crimson
tongue and generally behaving as if he were in his own backyard, sat
Joseph.
'Jo-seph!' cried Elizabeth - surprise, joy, and reproach combining to
give her voice an almost melodramatic quiver.
He looked at her coldly. Worse, he looked at her as if she had been an
utter stranger. Bulging with her meat and drink, he cut her dead; and,
having done so, turned and walked into the next flat.
Elizabeth was a girl of spirit. Joseph might look at her as if she were
a saucerful of tainted milk, but he was her cat, and she meant to get
him back. She went out and rang the bell of Mr James Renshaw Boyd's
flat.
The door was opened by a shirt-sleeved young man. He was by no means an
unsightly young man. Indeed, of his type - the rough-haired,
clean-shaven, square-jawed type - he was a distinctly good-looking young
man. Even though she was regarding him at the moment purely in the
light of a machine for returning strayed cats, Elizabeth noticed that.
She smiled upon him. It was not the fault of this nice-looking young
man that his sitting-room window was open; or that Joseph was an
ungrateful little beast who should have no fish that night.
'Would you mind letting me have my cat, please?' she said pleasantly.
'He has gone into your sitting-room through the window.'
He looked faintly surprised.
'Your cat?'
'My black cat, Joseph. He is in your sitting-room.'
'I'm afraid you have come to the wrong place. I've just left my
sitting-room, and the only cat there is my black cat, Reginald.'
'But I saw Joseph go in only a minute ago.'
'That was Reginald.'
For the first time, as one who examining a fair shrub abruptly
discovers that it is a stinging-nettle, Elizabeth realized the truth.
This was no innocent young man who stood before her, but the blackest
criminal known to criminologists - a stealer of other people's cats. Her
manner shot down to zero.
'May I ask how long you have had your Reginald?'
'Since four o'clock this afternoon.'