Joe Leaver, worn out after nearly a week's work of watching the movements
of Mr. Holymead, had fallen asleep in an empty loft above a garage which
overlooked Verney's Hotel in Mayfair. He had seen Mr. Holymead disappear
into the hotel, and he knew from the experience gained in his watch that
the K.C. would spend the next couple of hours in dressing for dinner,
sitting down to that meal, and smoking a cigar in the lounge. So Joe had
relaxed, for the time being, the new task which his master had set him,
and had flung himself on some straw in the loft to rest. He did not
intend to go to sleep, but he was very tired, and in a few minutes he was
in a profound slumber.
In his sleep Joe dreamed that he had attained the summit of his ambition,
and was being paid a huge salary by an American film company to display
himself in emotional dramas for the educational improvement of the
British working classes. In his dream he had to rescue the heroine from
the clutches of the villains who had carried her off. They had imprisoned
her at the top of a "skyscraper" building and locked the lift, but Joe
climbed the fire escape and caught the beautiful girl in his arms. The
villains, who were on the watch, set fire to the building, and when Joe
attempted to climb out of the window with the heroine clinging round his
neck, the flames drove him back. As he stood there the wind swept a sheet
of flame towards Joe until it scorched his face. The pain was so real
that Joe opened his eyes and sprang up with a cry.
A man was standing over him, a man past middle age, short and broad in
figure, whose clean-shaven face directed attention to his protruding
jaw. He was wearing a blue serge suit which had seen much use.
"You are a sound sleeper, sonny," said the man, grinning at Joe's alarm.
"But when you wake--why you wake up properly; I'll say that for you. You
nearly broke my pipe, you woke up that sudden."
He made this remark with such a malicious grin that Joe, whose face was
still smarting, had no hesitation in connecting his sudden awakening with
the hot bowl of the man's pipe. It was a joke Joe had often seen played
on drunken men in Islington public-houses in his young days.
"You just leave me alone, will you?" he said, rubbing his cheek ruefully.
"It's nothing to do with you whether I'm a sound sleeper or not."
"That's just where you're wrong, young fellow," was the reply. "It's a
lot to do with me. Ain't your name Joe Leaver?"
Joe nodded his head.
"How did you find out?" he asked.
"Perhaps a friend of mine pointed you out to me."
"Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn't," said Joe. "Anyway, what is
your name?"
"Mr. Kemp is my name, my boy. And unless you're pretty civil I'll give
you cause to remember it."
"What have you got to do with me?" asked the boy in an injured tone.
"I've never done nothing to you."
"You mind your P's and Q's and me and you'll get along all right," said
Mr. Kemp, in a somewhat softer tone. "When you ask me what I've got to do
with you, my answer is I've got a lot to do with you, for I'm your
guardian, so to speak."
Joe looked at Mr. Kemp with a gleam of comprehension in his amazement. He
had had some experience in his Islington days of the strange phenomena
produced by drink.
"Rats!" he retorted rudely. "I've never had a guardian and I don't want
none. What made you a guardian, I'd like to know?"
"Your father did," was the reply.
"Oh, him!" said Joe, in a tone which indicated pronounced antipathy to
his parent. "Do you know him? Are you one of his sort?"
"Now don't try to be insulting, my boy, or I'll take you across my knee.
We won't say nothing about where your father is, because in high society
Wormwood Scrubbs isn't mentioned. All we'll say is that he has been
unfortunate like many another man before him, and that for the present he
can't come and go as he likes. But he has still got a father's heart,
Joe, and there are times when he worries about his family and about there
being no one with them to keep an eye on them and see they grow up a
credit to him. He has been particularly worried about you, Joe. So when I
was coming away he asked me to look you up if I had time, and let him
know how you was getting on, seeing that none of his family has gone near
him for a matter of three years or so, though there is one regular
visiting day each week."
"I don't want to see him no more," said Joe. "He's no good."
"That's a nice way for a boy to talk about his own father," said Mr.
Kemp, in a reproving tone. "I don't know what the young generation is
coming to."
"If you want to send him word about me, you can tell him that I'm not
going to be a thief," said Joe defiantly.
"No," said Mr. Kemp tauntingly, "you'd sooner be a nark."
"Yes, I would," said the boy.
"And that's what you are now," declared the man wrathfully. "You're a
nark for that fellow Crewe. I know all about you."
"I'm earning an honest living," said Joe.
"As a nark," said Mr. Kemp, with a sneer.
"I'm earning an honest living," said the boy doggedly. So much of his
youth had been spent among the criminal classes that he still retained
the feeling that there was an indelible stigma attached to those
individuals described as narks.
"How can any one earn a respectable honest living by being a nark?" asked
Mr. Kemp contemptuously. "And more than that, it's one of the best men
that ever breathed that you are a-spying on. I'll have you know that he's
a friend of mine. That is to say he's done things for me that I ain't
likely to forget. There's nothing I won't do for him, if the chance comes
my way. I'll see that no harm happens to him through you and your Mr.
Crewe. You've got to stop this here spying. Stop it at once, do you
understand? For if you don't, by God, I'll deal with you so that you'll
do no more spying in this world! And I'd have you and your master know
that I'm a man what means what he says." Mr. Kemp shook his fist angrily
at Joe as he moved away to the door of the loft after having delivered
his menacing warning. "My last words to you is, Stop it!" he said, as he
turned to go down the stairs.
Half an hour later Mr. Kemp entered the lounge of Verney's Hotel as
though in quest of some one. Most of the hotel guests had finished their
after-dinner coffee and liqueurs, and the hall was comparatively empty,
but a few who remained raised their eyes in well-bred protest at the
intrusion of a member of the lower orders into the corridor of an
exclusive hotel. Mr. Kemp felt somewhat out of place, and he stared about
the luxuriously furnished lounge with a look in which awe mingled with
admiration. Before he could advance further, a liveried porter of massive
proportions came up to him and barred the way.
"Now, now, my man," said the porter haughtily, "what do you think you
are doing here? This ain't your place, you know. You've made a mistake.
Out you go."
"I want to see Mr. Holymead," said Mr. Kemp in a gruff voice.
Verney's was such a high-class hotel that seedy-looking persons seldom
dared to put a foot within the palatial entrance. The porter, unused to
dealing with the obtrusive impecunious type to which he believed Mr. Kemp
to belong, made the mistake of trying to argue with him.
"Want to see Mr. Holymead?" he repeated. "How do you know he's here? Who
told you? What do you want to see him for?"
"What's that got to do with you?" retorted Mr. Kemp. "You don't think Mr.
Holymead would like me to discuss his business with the likes of you?
That ain't what you're here for. You go and tell Mr. Holymead that some
one wants to see him. Tell him Mr. Kemp wants to see him." Mr. Kemp drew
himself up and buttoned the coat of his faded serge suit.
The porter, uncertain how to deal with the situation, looked around for
help. The manager of the hotel emerged from the booking office at that
moment, and the porter's appealing look was seen by him. The manager
approached. He was faultlessly attired, suave in demeanour, and walked
with a noiseless step, despite his tendency to corpulence. It was his
daily task to wrestle with some of the manifold difficulties arising out
of the eccentricities of human nature as exhibited by a constant stream
of arriving and departing guests. But though he approached the distressed
porter with full confidence in his ability to deal with any situation,
his eyebrows arched in astonishment as he took in the full details of the
intruder's attire.
"What does this mean, Hawkins?" he exclaimed, in a tone of disapproval.
The porter trembled at the implication that he had grievously failed in
his duty by allowing such an individual as Mr. Kemp to get so far within
the exclusive portals of Verney's, and in his nervousness he relaxed from
the polish of the hotel porter to his native cockney.
"This 'ere party says 'e wants to see Mr. Holymead, Sir."
The manager went through the motion of washing a spotlessly clean pair of
hands, and then brought the palms together in a gentle clap. He smiled
pityingly at Hawkins and then looked condescendingly at Mr. Kemp.
"Wants to see Mr. Holymead, does he?" he said, transferring his glance to
the worried porter. "And didn't you tell him that Mr. Holymead has gone
to the theatre and won't be back for some considerable time?"
"That's a lie!" said Mr. Kemp, who had acquired none of the art of
dealing with his fellow men, and was too uneducated to appreciate art in
any form. "I've been watching over the other side of the street, and I
saw him passing a window not ten minutes ago. I'm going to see him if I
wait here all night. I'll soon make meself comfortable on one of them big
chairs." He pointed to an empty chair beside a man in evening dress, who
was holding a conversation with a haughty looking matron. "You tell Mr.
Holymead Mr. Kemp wants to see him," he said to the manager.
"What name did you say?" asked the manager in a tone which seemed to
express astonishment that the lower orders had names.
"Mr. Kemp. You tell him Mr. Kemp wants to see him on important business."
He walked towards the vacant chair and seated himself on it. He dug his
toes into the velvet pile carpet with the air of a man who was trying to
take anchor. Fortunately the man on the adjoining chair, and the haughty
matron, were so engrossed in their conversation that they did not notice
that the air in their immediate vicinity was being polluted by the
presence of a man in shabby clothes and heavy boots.
The manager despatched the porter in search of Mr. Holymead and then went
in pursuit of Mr. Kemp.
"Will you come this way, if you please, Mr. Kemp?" he said, with a low
bow.
He saw that Mr. Kemp was following him and led the way into an
unfrequented corner of the smoking room, where, with the information
that Mr. Holymead would come to him in a few moments, he asked Mr. Kemp
to be seated.
The manager withdrew a few yards, and then took up a position which
enabled him to guard the hotel guests from having their digestions
interfered with by the contaminating spectacle of a seedy man. To the
manager's great relief, Mr. Holymead appeared, having been informed by
the hall porter that a party who said his name was Kemp had asked to see
him. The manager hurried towards Mr. Holymead and endeavoured to explain
and apologise, but the K.C. assured him that there was nothing to
apologise for. He went over to the corner of the smoking room, where the
visitor who had caused so much perturbation was waiting for him.
"Well, Kemp, what do you want?" There was nothing in his manner to
indicate that he was put out by Mr. Kemp's appearance. He spoke in quiet
even tones such as would seem to suggest that he was well acquainted with
his visitor.
"Can I speak to you on the quiet for a moment, sir?" whispered
Kemp hoarsely.
Holymead looked round the room. The manager had gone back to the booking
office and Hawkins had vanished. The few people who were in the room
seemed occupied with their own affairs.
"No one will overhear us if we speak quietly," he said as he took a seat
close to Kemp. "What is it?"
"You're watched and followed, sir," said Kemp in a whisper. "Somebody has
been watching this place for days past and whenever you go out you're
followed."
"By whom?" asked Holymead.
"By a varmint of a boy--a slippery young imp whose father's in gaol for
a long stretch. I got hold of him this afternoon and told him what I'd
do to him if he kept on with his game. He's living in an old loft at
the back of the hotel garage, and he keeps a watch on you day and
night. I thought I'd better come here and tell you, as you mightn't
know about him."
"You did quite right, Kemp. What's this boy like?"
"An undersized putty-faced brat with a big head. He's about fourteen or
fifteen, I should say."
"Who is he? Do you know him?"
"Leaver is the name, sir. To tell you the truth, I don't know him as well
as I know his father. His father is a 'lifer' for manslaughter. I've
known him both in and out of gaol. And when I was coming out four months
ago Bob Leaver, this here boy's father, asked me to look up his family
and send him word about them. I went to the address Bob told me, in
Islington, but I found they had all gone. The mother was dead and the
kids--a girl and this here boy--had cleared out. The old Jew who had the
second-hand clothes shop Mrs. Leaver used to keep told me that the boy
had gone off with that private detective, Crewe, more than two years ago.
So it looks to me as if he has turned nark and Crewe has put him on to
watch you."
"Can you describe this boy more closely?"
"Well, sir, I don't know if I can say anything more about him except that
he has red hair and big bright eyes that are too large for his face."
"I thought so," said Holymead as if speaking to himself. "It's the
same boy."
"What did you say, sir?" asked Kemp.
"Nothing, Kemp, except that I think I've seen a boy of this description
hanging about the street near the hotel."
Holymead rose to his feet as he spoke, as an indication that the
interview was at an end. Kemp got up and looked at him anxiously.
"I beg your pardon, sir, for coming here," he said, fumbling with the rim
of his hat as he spoke. "I didn't know how you'd take it, but I hope I've
done right. They didn't want to let me see you."
"You did quite right, Kemp. I am very much obliged to you." He was
feeling in his pocket for silver, but Kemp stopped him.
"No, no, sir. I don't want to be paid anything. I wanted to oblige you
like; I wanted to do you a good turn. I'd do anything for you, sir--you
know I would."
"I believe you would, Kemp. Good night."
"Good night, sir."
As Kemp passed down the hall he met the manager, who was obviously
pleased to see such an unwelcome visitor making his departure. Kemp
scowled at the manager as if he were a valued patron of the hotel and
said, "It seems to me that you don't know how to treat people properly
when they come here."