portmanteau-words.
‘Brook Green, ’Ammersmith,’ Dempsey translated promptly.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘That’s just the sort of place he would choose to
live in. I only wonder that it was not Kew.’
‘Are you going to wheel him ’ome, sir,’ said Dempsey.
‘I’d wheel him home if he lived in ---- Paradise. He’s not going to get
out of this ambulance while I’m here. He’d drag me into a murder for
tuppence.’
‘Then strap ’im up an’ make sure,’ said Dempsey, and he deftly buckled
two straps that hung by the side of the ambulance over the man’s body.
Brugglesmith--I know not his other name--was sleeping deeply. He even
smiled in his sleep.
‘That’s all right,’ said Dempsey, and I moved off, wheeling my devil’s
perambulator before me. Trafalgar Square was empty except for the few
that slept in the open. One of these wretches ranged alongside and
begged for money, asserting that he had been a gentleman once.
‘So have I,’ I said. ‘That was long ago. I’ll give you a shilling if
you’ll help me to push this thing.’
‘Is it a murder?’ said the vagabond, shrinking back. ‘I’ve not got to
_that_ yet.’
‘No, it’s going to be one,’ I answered. ‘I have.’
The man slunk back into the darkness and I pressed on, through Cockspur
Street, and up to Piccadilly Circus, wondering what I should do with my
treasure. All London was asleep, and I had only this drunken carcass
to bear me company. It was silent--silent as chaste Piccadilly. A young
man of my acquaintance came out of a pink brick club as I passed. A
faded carnation drooped from his button-hole; he had been playing
cards, and was walking home before the dawn, when he overtook me.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
I was far beyond any feeling of shame. ‘It’s for a bet,’ said I. ‘Come
and help.’
‘Laddie, who’s yon?’ said the voice beneath the hood.
‘Good Lord!’ said the young man, leaping across the pavement. Perhaps
card-losses had told on his nerves. Mine were steel that night.
‘The Lord, The Lord?’ the passionless, incurious voice went on. ‘Dinna
be profane, laddie. He’ll come in His ain good time.’
The young man looked at me with horror.
‘It’s all part of the bet,’ I answered. ‘Do come and push!’
‘W--where are you going to?’ said he.
‘Brugglesmith,’ said the voice within. ‘Laddie, d’ye ken my wife?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘Well, she’s just a tremenjus wumman. Laddie, I want a drink. Knock at
one o’ those braw houses, laddie, an’--an’--ye may kiss the girrl for
your pains.’
‘Lie still, or I’ll gag you,’ I said, savagely.
The young man with the carnation crossed to the other side of
Piccadilly, and hailed the only hansom visible for miles. What he
thought I cannot tell.
I pressed on--wheeling, eternally wheeling--to Brook Green,
Hammersmith. There I would abandon Brugglesmith to the gods of that
desolate land. We had been through so much together that I could not
leave him bound in the street. Besides, he would call after me, and oh!
it is a shameful thing to hear one’s name ringing down the emptiness of
London in the dawn.
So I went on, past Apsley House, even to the coffee-stall, but there
was no coffee for Brugglesmith. And into Knightsbridge--respectable
Knightsbridge--I wheeled my burden, the body of Brugglesmith.
‘Laddie, what are ye going to do wi’ me?’ he said when opposite the
barracks.
‘Kill you,’ I said briefly, ‘or hand you over to your wife. Be quiet.’
He would not obey. He talked incessantly--sliding in one sentence from
clear cut dialect to wild and drunken jumble. At the Albert Hall he
said that I was the ‘Hattle Gardle buggle,’ which I apprehend is the
Hatton Garden burglar. At Kensington High Street he loved me as a son,
but when my weary legs came to the Addison Road Bridge he implored
me with tears to unloose the straps and to fight against the sin
of vanity. No man molested us. It was as though a bar had been set
between myself and all humanity till I had cleared my account with
Brugglesmith. The glimmering of light grew in the sky; the cloudy brown
of the wood pavement turned to heather-purple; I made no doubt that I
should be allowed vengeance on Brugglesmith ere the evening.
At Hammersmith the heavens were steel-gray, and the day came weeping.
All the tides of the sadness of an unprofitable dawning poured into the
soul of Brugglesmith. He wept bitterly, because the puddles looked
cold and houseless. I entered a half-waked public-house--in evening
dress and an ulster, I marched to the bar--and got him whisky on
condition that he should cease kicking at the canvas of the ambulance.
Then he wept more bitterly, for that he had ever been associated with
me, and so seduced into stealing the _Breslau’s_ dinghy.
The day was white and wan when I reached my long journey’s end, and,
putting back the hood, bade Brugglesmith declare where he lived.
His eyes wandered disconsolately round the red and gray houses till
they fell on a villa in whose garden stood a staggering board with
the legend ‘To Let.’ It needed only this to break him down utterly,
and with the breakage fled his fine fluency in his guttural northern
tongue; for liquor levels all.
‘Olely lil while,’ he sobbed. ‘Olely lil while. Home--falmy--besht
of falmies--wife too--_you_ dole know my wife! Left them all a lill
while ago. Now everything’s sold--all sold. Wife--falmy--all sold.
Lemmegellup!’
I unbuckled the straps cautiously. Brugglesmith rolled off his
resting-place and staggered to the house.
‘Wattle I do?’ he said.
Then I understood the baser depths in the mind of Mephistopheles.
‘Ring,’ I said; ‘perhaps they are in the attic or the cellar.’
‘You do’ know my wife. She shleeps on soful in the dorlin’ room,
waiting meculhome. _You_ do’ know my wife.’
He took off his boots, covered them with his tall hat, and craftily
as a Red Indian picked his way up the garden path and smote the bell
marked ‘Visitors’ a severe blow with the clenched fist.
‘Bell sole too. Sole electick bell! Wassor bell this? I can’t riggle
bell,’ he moaned despairingly.
‘You pull it--pull it hard,’ I repeated, keeping a wary eye down the
road. Vengeance was coming and I desired no witnesses.
‘Yes, I’ll pull it hard.’ He slapped his forehead with inspiration.
‘I’ll pull it out.’
Leaning back he grasped the knob with both hands and pulled. A wild
ringing in the kitchen was his answer. Spitting on his hands he pulled
with renewed strength, and shouted for his wife. Then he bent his
ear to the knob, shook his head, drew out an enormous yellow and red
handkerchief, tied it round the knob, turned his back to the door, and
pulled over his shoulder.
Either the handkerchief or the wire, it seemed to me, was bound to give
way. But I had forgotten the bell. Something cracked in the kitchen,
and Brugglesmith moved slowly down the doorsteps, pulling valiantly.
Three feet of wire followed him.
‘Pull, oh pull!’ I cried. ‘It’s coming now.’
‘Qui’ ri’,’ he said. ‘_I’ll_ riggle bell.’
He bowed forward, the wire creaking and straining behind him, the
bell-knob clasped to his bosom, and from the noises within I fancied
the bell was taking away with it half the wood-work of the kitchen and
all the basement banisters.
‘Get a purchase on her,’ I shouted, and he spun round, lapping that
good copper wire about him. I opened the garden gate politely, and he
passed out, spinning his own cocoon. Still the bell came up, hand over
hand, and still the wire held fast. He was in the middle of the road
now, whirling like an impaled cockchafer, and shouting madly for his
wife and family. There he met with the ambulance, the bell within the
house gave one last peal, and bounded from the far end of the hall to
the inner side of the hall-door, where it stayed fast. So did not my
friend Brugglesmith. He fell upon his face, embracing the ambulance
as he did so, and the two turned over together in the toils of the
never-sufficiently-to-be-advertised copper wire.
‘Laddie,’ he gasped, his speech returning, ‘have I a legal remedy?’
‘I will go and look for one,’ I said, and, departing, found two
policemen. These I told that daylight had surprised a burglar in Brook
Green while he was engaged in stealing lead from an empty house.
Perhaps they had better take care of that bootless thief. He seemed to
be in difficulties.
I led the way to the spot, and behold! in the splendour of the dawning,
the ambulance, wheels uppermost, was walking down the muddy road on
two stockinged feet--was shuffling to and fro in a quarter of a circle
whose radius was copper wire, and whose centre was the bell-plate of
the empty house.
Next to the amazing ingenuity with which Brugglesmith had contrived to
lash himself under the ambulance, the thing that appeared to impress
the constables most was the fact of the St. Clement Danes ambulance
being at Brook Green, Hammersmith.
They even asked me, of all people in the world, whether I knew anything
about it!
They extricated him; not without pain and dirt. He explained that he
was repelling boarding-attacks by a ‘Hattle Gardle buggle’ who had
sold his house, wife, and family. As to the bell-wire, he offered
no explanation, and was borne off shoulder-high between the two
policemen. Though his feet were not within six inches of the ground,
they paddled swiftly, and I saw that in his magnificent mind he was
running--furiously running.
Sometimes I have wondered whether he wished to find me.
‘LOVE-O’-WOMEN.’
‘A lamentable tale of things
Done long ago, and ill done.’
The horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from
his comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the
barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun
had dried it to a dusky goldbeater-skin film, cracked lozenge-wise by
the heat; and as the wind rose, each lozenge, rising a little, curled
up at the edges as if it were a dumb tongue. Then a heavier gust blew
all away down wind in grains of dark coloured dust. It was too hot
to stand in the sunshine before breakfast. The men were in barracks
talking the matter over. A knot of soldiers’ wives stood by one of the
entrances to the married quarters, while inside a woman shrieked and
raved with wicked filthy words.
A quiet and well-conducted sergeant had shot down, in broad daylight
just after early parade, one of his own corporals, had then returned
to barracks and sat on a cot till the guard came for him. He would,
therefore, in due time be handed over to the High Court for trial.
Further, but this he could hardly have considered in his scheme of
revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of that
trial would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like
I knew even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned,
with the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half
a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till
the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah
would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his
Commanding Officer would put in certificates to the prisoner’s moral
character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the
witnesses would smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper
would lose his head in cross-examination, and the young barrister who
always defended soldiers’ cases for the credit that they never brought
him, would say and do wonderful things, and would then quarrel with me
because I had not reported him correctly. At the last, for he surely
would not be hanged, I might meet the prisoner again, ruling blank
account-forms in the Central Jail, and cheer him with the hope of his
being made a warder in the Andamans.
The Indian Penal Code and its interpreters do not treat murder, under
any provocation whatever, in a spirit of jest. Sergeant Raines would
be very lucky indeed if he got off with seven years, I thought. He had
slept the night upon his wrongs, and killed his man at twenty yards
before any talk was possible. That much I knew. Unless, therefore,
the case was doctored a little, seven years would be his least; and I
fancied it was exceedingly well for Sergeant Raines that he had been
liked by his Company.
That same evening--no day is so long as the day of a murder--I met
Ortheris with the dogs, and he plunged defiantly into the middle of the
matter. ‘I’ll be one o’ the witnesses,’ said he. ‘I was in the verandah
when Mackie come along. ’E come from Mrs. Raines’s quarters. Quigley,
Parsons, an’ Trot, they was in the inside verandah, so _they_ couldn’t
’ave ’eard nothing. Sergeant Raines was in the verandah talkin’ to me,
an’ Mackie ’e come along acrost the square an’ ’e sez, “Well,” sez ’e,
“’ave they pushed your ’elmet off yet, Sergeant?” ’e sez. An’ at that
Raines ’e catches ’is breath an’ ’e sez, “My Gawd, I can’t stand this!”
sez ’e, an’ ’e picks up my rifle an’ shoots Mackie. See?’
‘But what were you doing with your rifle in the outer verandah an hour
after parade?’
‘Cleanin’ ’er,’ said Ortheris, with the sullen brassy stare that always
went with his choicer lies.
He might as well have said that he was dancing naked, for at no time
did his rifle need hand or rag on her twenty minutes after parade.
Still, the High Court would not know his routine.
‘Are you going to stick to that--on the Book?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Like a bloomin’ leech.’
‘All right, I don’t want to know any more. Only remember that Quigley,
Parsons, and Trot couldn’t have been where you say without hearing
something; and there’s nearly certain to be a barrack-sweeper who was
knocking about the square at the time. There always is.’
‘’Twasn’t the sweeper. It was the beastie. ’E’s all right.’
Then I knew that there was going to be some spirited doctoring,
and I felt sorry for the Government Advocate who would conduct the
prosecution.
When the trial came on I pitied him more, for he was always quick to
lose his temper and made a personal matter of each lost cause. Raines’s
young barrister had for once put aside his unslaked and welling passion
for alibis and insanity, had forsworn gymnastics and fireworks, and
worked soberly for his client. Mercifully the hot weather was yet
young, and there had been no flagrant cases of barrack-shootings up to
the time; and the jury was a good one, even for an Indian jury, where
nine men out of every twelve are accustomed to weighing evidence.
Ortheris stood firm and was not shaken by any cross-examination. The
one weak point in his tale--the presence of his rifle in the outer
verandah--went unchallenged by civilian wisdom, though some of the
witnesses could not help smiling. The Government Advocate called for
the rope, contending throughout that the murder had been a deliberate
one. Time had passed, he argued, for that reflection which comes so
naturally to a man whose honour is lost. There was also the Law,
ever ready and anxious to right the wrongs of the common soldier if,
indeed, wrong had been done. But he doubted much whether there had been
any sufficient wrong. Causeless suspicion over-long brooded upon had
led, by his theory, to deliberate crime. But his attempts to minimise
the motive failed. The most disconnected witness knew--had known for
weeks--the causes of offence; and the prisoner, who naturally was the
last of all to know, groaned in the dock while he listened. The one
question that the trial circled round was whether Raines had fired
under sudden and blinding provocation given that very morning; and
in the summing-up it was clear that Ortheris’s evidence told. He had
contrived most artistically to suggest that he personally hated the
Sergeant, who had come into the verandah to give him a talking to for
insubordination. In a weak moment the Government Advocate asked one
question too many. ’Beggin’ _your_ pardon, sir,’ Ortheris replied,
‘’e was callin’ me a dam’ impudent little lawyer.’ The Court shook.
The jury brought it in a killing, but with every provocation and
extenuation known to God or man, and the Judge put his hand to his brow
before giving sentence, and the Adam’s apple in the prisoner’s throat
went up and down like mercury pumping before a cyclone.
In consideration of all considerations, from his Commanding Officer’s
certificate of good conduct to the sure loss of pension, service,
and honour, the prisoner would get two years, to be served in India,
and--there need be no demonstration in Court. The Government Advocate
scowled and picked up his papers; the guard wheeled with a clash, and
the prisoner was relaxed to the Secular Arm, and driven to the jail in
a broken down _ticca-gharri_.
His guard and some ten or twelve military witnesses, being less
important, were ordered to wait till what was officially called the
cool of the evening before marching back to cantonments. They gathered
together in one of the deep red brick verandahs of a disused lock-up
and congratulated Ortheris, who bore his honours modestly. I sent my
work into the office and joined them. Ortheris watched the Government
Advocate driving off to lunch.
‘That’s a nasty little bald-’eaded little butcher, that is,’ he said.
‘’E don’t please me. ’E’s got a colley dog wot do, though. I’m goin’ up
to Murree in a week. That dawg’ll bring fifteen rupees anywheres.’
‘You had better spend ut in Masses,’ said Terence, unbuckling his belt;
for he had been on the prisoner’s guard, standing helmeted and bolt
upright for three long hours.
‘Not me,’ said Ortheris cheerfully. ‘Gawd’ll put it down to B Comp’ny’s
barrick-damages one o’ these days. You look strapped, Terence.’
‘Faith, I’m not so young as I was. That guard-mountin’ wears on the
sole av the fut, and this’--he sniffed contemptuously at the brick
verandah--‘is as hard setting as standin’!’
‘Wait a minute. I’ll get the cushions out of my cart,’ I said.
‘’Strewth--sofies. We’re going it gay,’ said Ortheris, as Terence
dropped himself section by section on the leather cushions, saying
prettily, ‘May ye niver want a soft place wheriver you go, an’ power
to share ut wid a frind. Another for yourself? That’s good. It lets me
sit longways. Stanley, pass me a pipe. Augrrh! An’ that’s another man
gone all to pieces bekaze av a woman. I must ha’ been on forty or fifty
prisoners’ gyards, first an’ last; an’ I hate ut new ivry time.’
‘Let’s see. You were on Losson’s, Lancey’s, Dugard’s, and Stebbins’s,
that I can remember,’ I said.
‘Ay, an’ before that an’ before that--scores av thim,’ he answered with
a worn smile. ’Tis better to die than to live for them, though. Whin
Raines comes out--he’ll be changin’ his kit at the jail now--he’ll
think that too. He shud ha’ shot hemself an’ the woman by rights an’
made a clean bill av all. Now he’s left the woman--she tuk tay wid
Dinah Sunday gone last--an’ he’s left himself. Mackie’s the lucky man.’
‘He’s probably getting it hot where he is,’ I ventured, for I knew
something of the dead Corporal’s record.
‘Be sure av that,’ said Terence, spitting over the edge of the
verandah. ‘But fwhat he’ll get there is light marchin’-ordher to fwhat
he’d ha’ got here if he’d lived.’
‘Surely not. He’d have gone on and forgotten--like the others.’
‘Did ye know Mackie well, sorr?’ said Terence.
‘He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out
shooting with him in an _ekka_ for the day, and I found him rather an
amusing man.’
‘Well, he’ll ha’ got shut av amusemints, excipt turnin’ from wan side
to the other, these few years to come. I knew Mackie, an’ I’ve seen
too many to be mistuk in the muster av wan man. He might ha’ gone on
an’ forgot as you say, sorr, but he was a man wid an educashin, an’
he used ut for his schames; an’ the same educashin, an’ talkin’, an’
all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that
same wud turn back again in the long-run an’ tear him alive. I can’t
say fwhat that I mane to say bekaze I don’t know how, but Mackie was
the spit an’ livin’ image av a man that I saw march the same march
_all but_; an’ ’twas worse for him that he did not come by Mackie’s
ind. Wait while I remember now. ’Twas whin I was in the Black Tyrone,
an’ he was drafted us from Portsmouth; an’ fwhat was his misbegotten
name? Larry--Larry Tighe ut was; an’ wan of the draft said he was a
gentleman-ranker, an’ Larry tuk an’ three-parts killed him for saying
so. An’ he was a big man, an’ a strong man, an’ a handsome man, an’
that tells heavy in practice wid some women, but, takin’ them by an’
large, not wid all. Yet ’twas wid all that Larry dealt--_all_--for he
cud put the comether on any woman that trod the green earth av God,
an’ he knew ut. Like Mackie that’s roastin’ now, he knew ut, an’ niver
did he put the comether on any woman save an’ excipt for the black
shame. ’Tis not me that shud be talkin’, dear knows, dear knows, but
the most av my mis--misallinces was for pure devilry, an’ mighty sorry
I have been whin harm came; an’ time an’ again wid a girl, ay, an’ a
woman too, for the matter av that, whin I have seen by the eyes av
her that I was makin’ more throuble than I talked, I have hild off
an’ let be for the sake av the mother that bore me. But Larry, I’m
thinkin’, he was suckled by a she-divil, for he never let wan go that
came nigh to listen to him. ’Twas his business, as if it might ha’ ben
sinthry-go. He was a good soldier too. Now there was the Colonel’s
governess--an’ he a privit too!--that was never known in barricks; an’
wan av the Major’s maids, and she was promised to a man; an’ some more
outside; an’ fwhat ut was amongst _us_ we’ll never know till Judgment
Day. ’Twas the nature av the baste to put the comether on the best av
thim--not the prettiest by any manner av manes--but the like av such
women as you cud lay your hand on the Book an’ swear there was niver
thought av foolishness in. An’ for that very reason, mark you, he was
niver caught. He came close to ut wanst or twice, but caught he niver
was, an’ that cost him more at the ind than the beginnin’. He talked
to me more than most, bekaze he tould me, barrin’ the accident av
my educashin, I’d av been the same kind av divil he was. “An’ is ut
like,” he wud say, houldin’ his head high--“is ut like that I’d iver be
thrapped? For fwhat am I when all’s said an’ done?” he sez. “A damned
privit,” sez he. “An’ is ut like, think you, that thim I know wud be
connect wid a privit like me? Number tin thousand four hundred an’
sivin,” he sez grinnin’. I knew by the turn av his spache when he was
not takin’ care to talk rough-shod that he was a gentleman-ranker.
‘“I do not undherstan’ ut at all,” I sez; “but I know,” sez I, “that
the divil looks out av your eyes, an’ I’ll have no share wid you. A
little fun by way av amusemint where ’twill do no harm, Larry, is right
and fair, but I am mistook if ’tis any amusemint to you,” I sez.
‘“You are much mistook,” he sez. “An’ I counsel you not to judge your
betters.”
‘“My betthers!” I sez. “God help you, Larry. There’s no betther in
this; ’tis all bad, as ye will find for yoursilf.”
‘“You’re not like me,” he says, tossin’ his head.
‘“Praise the Saints, I am not,” I sez. “Fwhat I have done I have
done an’ been crool sorry for. Fwhin your time comes,” sez I, “ye’ll
remimber fwhat I say.”
‘“An’ whin that time comes,” sez he, “I’ll come to you for ghostly
consolation, Father Terence,” an’ at that he wint off afther some
more divil’s business--for to get expayrience, he tould me. He was
wicked--rank wicked--wicked as all Hell! I’m not construct by nature to
go in fear av any man, but, begad, I was afraid av Larry. He’d come in
to barricks wid his cap on three hairs, an’ lie on his cot and stare at
the ceilin’, and now an’ again he’d fetch a little laugh, the like av a
splash in the bottom av a well, an’ by that I knew he was schamin’ new
wickedness, an’ I’d be afraid. All this was long an’ long ago, but ut
hild me straight--for a while.
‘I tould you, did I not, sorr, that I was caressed an’ pershuaded to
lave the Tyrone on account av a throuble?’
‘Something to do with a belt and a man’s head wasn’t it?’ Terence had
never given the tale in full.