INTRODUCES PETER, THE ROMANCIST
Amber had £86 10_s._--a respectable sum.
He had an invitation to take tea with Cynthia Sutton at five o’clock
in the afternoon. He had thought to hand the money to her on behalf
of her brother--on second thoughts he decided to send the young man’s
losses to him anonymously. After all he was adjudging those losses by
approximation. He had a pleasant room in Bloomsbury, a comfortable
armchair, a long, thin, mild cigar and an amusing book, and he was
happy. His feet rested on a chair, a clock ticked--not unmusically--it
was a situation that makes for reverie, day-dreams, and sleep. His
condition of mind might be envied by many a more useful member of
society, for it was one of complete and absolute complaisance.
There came a knock at the door, and he bade the knocker come in.
A neat maid entered with a tray, on which lay a card, and Amber took it
up carelessly.
“Mr. George Whitey,” he read. “Show him up.”
Whitey was beautifully dressed. From his glossy silk hat to his
shiny patent shoes, he was everything that a gentleman should be in
appearance.
He smiled at Amber, placed his top-hat carefully upon the table, and
skinned his yellow gloves.
Amber, holding up the card by the corner, regarded him benevolently.
When the door had shut--
“And what can I do for you, my Whitey?” he demanded.
Whitey sat down, carefully loosened the buttons of his frock-coat, and
shot his cuffs.
“Name of Amber?”
His voice was a very high one; it was of a whistling shrillness.
Amber nodded.
“The fact of it is, old fellow,” said the other, with easy familiarity,
“Lambaire wants an understanding, an undertaking, and--er--um----”
“And who is Lambaire?” asked the innocent Amber.
“Now, look here, dear boy,” Whitey bent forward and patted Amber’s
knee, “let us be perfectly frank and above-board. We’ve found out all
about you--you’re an old lag--you haven’t been out of prison three
days--am I right?”
He leant back with the triumphant air of a man who is revealing a
well-kept secret.
“Bull’s-eye,” said Amber calmly. “Will you have a cigar or a
butter-dish?”
“Now we know you--d’ye see? We’ve got you taped down to the last hole.
We bear no resentment, no malice, no nothing.”
“No anything,” corrected Amber. “Yes----?”
“This is our point.” Whitey leant forward and traced the palm of his
left hand with his right finger. “You came into the Whistlers--bluffed
your way in--very clever, very clever--even Lambaire admits that--we
overlook that; we’ll go further and overlook the money.”
He paused significantly, and smiled with some meaning.
“Even the money,” he repeated, and Amber raised his eyebrows.
“Money?” he said. “My visitor, I fail to rise to this subtile
reference.”
“The money,” said Whitey slowly and emphatically, “there was close on a
hundred pounds on Lambaire’s table alone, to say nothing of the other
tables. It was there when you came in--it was gone when you left.”
Amber’s smile was angelic in its forgiveness.
“May I suggest,” he said, “that I was not the only bad character
present?”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter, the money part of it,” Whitey went on.
“Lambaire doesn’t want to prosecute.”
“Ha! ha!” said Amber, laughing politely.
“He doesn’t want to prosecute; all he wants you to do is to leave young
Sutton alone; Lambaire says that there isn’t any question of making
money out of Sutton, it’s a bigger thing than that, Lambaire says----”
“Oh, blow Lambaire!” said Amber, roused to wrath. “Stifle Lambaire,
my Whitey! he talks like the captain of the Forty Thieves. Go back to
your master, my slave, and tell him young Ali Baba Amber is not in a
condition of mind to discuss a workin’ arrangement----”
Whitey had sprung to his feet, his face was unusually pale, his eyes
narrowed till they were scarcely visible, his hands twitched nervously.
“Oh, you--you know, do you?” he stuttered. “I told Lambaire that you
knew--that’s your game, is it? Well, you look out!”
He wagged a warning finger at the astonished young man in the chair.
“You look out, Amber! Forty Thieves and Ali Baba, eh? So you know all
about it--who told you? I told Lambaire that you were the sort of nut
that would get hold of a job like this!”
He was agitated, and Amber, silent and watchful, twisted himself in his
seat to view him the better, watching his every move. Whitey picked up
his hat, smoothed it mechanically on the sleeve of his coat, his lips
were moving as though he were talking to himself. He walked round the
table that stood in the centre of the room, and made for the door.
Here he stood for a few seconds, framing some final message.
“I’ve only one thing to say to you,” he said at last, “and that is
this: if you want to come out of this business alive, go in with
Lambaire--he’ll share all right; if you get hold of the chart, take
it to Lambaire. It’ll be no use to you without the compass--see, an’
Lambaire’s got the compass, and Lambaire says----”
“Get out,” said Amber shortly, and Whitey went, slamming the door
behind him.
Amber stepped to the window and from the shadow of the curtain watched
his visitor depart.
A cab was waiting for him, and he stepped in.
“No instructions for driver,” noted Amber. “He goes home as per
arrangement.”
He rang a bell and a maid appeared.
“My servant,” he said, regarding her with immense approval, “we will
have our bill--nay, do not look round, for there is but one of us. When
we said ‘we,’ we spoke in an editorial or kingly sense.”
“Also,” he went on gaily, “instruct our boots to pack our
belongings--for we are going away.”
The girl smiled.
“You haven’t been with us long, sir,” she said.
“A king’s messenger,” said Amber gravely, “never stays any length of
time in one place; ever at the call of exigent majesty, burdened with
the responsibilities of statescraft; the Mercury of Diplomacy, he is
the nomad of civilization.”
He dearly loved a pose, and now he strode up and down the room with his
head on his breast, his hands clasped behind him, for the benefit of a
Bloomsbury parlourmaid.
“One night in London, the next in Paris, the next grappling with
the brigands of Albania, resolved to sell his life dearly, the next
swimming the swollen waters of the Danube, his dispatches between his
teeth, and bullets striking the dark water on either side----”
“Lor!” said the startled girl, “you _does_ have a time!”
“I does,” admitted Amber; “bring the score, my wench.”
She returned with the bill, and Amber paid, tipping her magnificently,
and kissing her for luck, for she was on the pretty side of twenty-five.
His little trunk was packed, and a taxi-cab whistled for.
He stood with one foot upon the rubber-covered step, deep in thought,
then he turned to the waiting girl.
“If there should come a man of unprepossessing appearance, whitish
of hair and pallid of countenance, with a complexion suggestive of a
whitewashed vault rather than of the sad lily--in fact, if the Johnny
calls who came in an hour ago, you will tell him I am gone.”
He spoke over his shoulder to the waiting housemaid.
“Yes, sir,” she said, a little dazed.
“Tell him I have been called away to--to Teheran.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On a diplomatic mission,” he added with relish.
He stepped into the car, closing the door behind him.
An errand-boy, basket on arm, stood fascinated in the centre of the
side-walk, listening with open mouth.
“I expect to be back,” he went on, reflecting with bent head, “in
August or September, 1943--you will remember that?”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, visibly impressed, and Amber, with a smile
and a nod, turned to the driver.
“Home,” he said.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Borough High Street,” corrected Amber, and the car jerked forward.
He drove eastward, crossed the river at London Bridge, and dismissed
the taxi at St. George’s Church. With the little leather trunk
containing his spare wardrobe, in his hand, he walked briskly up a
broad street until he came to a narrow thoroughfare, which was bisected
by a narrower and a meaner. He turned sharply to the left and, walking
as one who knew his way, he came to the dingiest of the dingy houses in
that unhappy street.
19, Redcow Court, was not especially inviting. There was a panel
missing from the door, the passage was narrow and dirty, and a tortuous
broken flight of stairs ran crookedly to the floors above.
The house was filled with the everlasting noise of shrill voices, the
voices of scolding women and fretful babies. At night there came a
deeper note in the babel; many growling, harsh-spoken men talked.
Sometimes they would shout angrily, and there were sounds of blows
and women’s screams, and a frowsy little crowd, eager for sanguinary
details, gathered at the door of No. 19.
Amber went up the stairs two at a time, whistling cheerfully. He had
to stop half-way up the second flight because two babies were playing
perilously on the uncarpeted stairway.
He placed them on a safer landing, stopped for a moment or two to talk
to them, then continued his climb.
On the topmost floor he came to the door of a room and knocked.
There was no reply and he knocked again.
“Come in,” said a stern voice, and Amber entered.
The room was much better furnished than a stranger would expect. It was
a sitting-room, communicating by an unexpected door with a smaller room.
The floor was scrubbed white, the centre was covered by a bright, clean
patch of carpet, and a small gate-legged table exposed a polished
surface. There were two or three pictures on the walls, ancient and
unfashionable prints, representing mythological happenings. Ulysses
Returned was one, Perseus and the Gorgon was another. Prometheus Bound
was an inevitable third.
The song of a dozen birds came to Amber as he closed the door softly
behind him. Their cages ran up the wall on either side of the opened
window, the sill of which was a smother of scarlet geranium.
Sitting in a windsor chair by the table was a man of middle age. He
was bald-headed, his moustache and side whiskers were fiery red,
and, though his eyebrows were shaggy and his eyes stern, his general
appearance was one of extreme benevolence. His occupation was a
remarkable one, for he was sewing, with small stitches, a pillow-case.
He dropped his work on to his knees as Amber entered.
“Hullo!” he said, and shook his head reprovingly. “Bad penny, bad
penny--eh! Come in; I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
He folded his work with a care that was almost feminine, placed it in
a little work-basket, and went bustling about the room. He wore carpet
slippers that were a little too large for him, and he talked all the
time.
“How long have you been out?--More trouble ahead? Keep thy hands from
picking and stealing, and thy mouth free from evil speaking--tut, tut!”
“My Socrates,” said Amber reproachfully.
“No, no, no!” the little man was lighting a fire of sticks, “nobody
ever accused you of bad talk, as Wild Cloud says--never read that
yarn, have you? You’ve missed a treat. _Denver Dad’s Bid for Fortune,
or, The King of the Sioux_--pronounced Soo. It’s worth reading. The
twenty-fourth part of it is out to-day.”
He chattered on, and his talk was about the desperate and decorative
heroism of the Wild West. Peter Musk, such was his name, was a
hero-worshipper, a lover of the adventurous, and an assiduous reader of
that type of romance which too hasty critics dismiss contemptuously as
“dreadfuls.” Packed away behind the bright cretonne curtains that hid
his book-shelves were many hundreds of these stories, each of which had
gone to the creation of the atmosphere in which Peter lived.
“And what has my Peter been doing all this long time?” asked Amber.
Peter set the cups and smiled, a little mysteriously.
“The old life,” he said, “my studies, my birds, a little
needlework--life runs very smoothly to a broken man an’ a humble
student of life.”
He smiled again, as at a secret thought.
Amber was neither piqued nor amused by the little man’s mystery, but
regarded him with affectionate interest.
Peter was ever a dreamer. He dreamt of heroic matters such as rescuing
grey-eyed damsels from tall villains in evening dress. These villains
smoked cigarettes and sneered at the distress of their victims, until
Peter came along and, with one well-directed blow, struck the sallow
scoundrels to the earth.
Peter was in height some four feet eleven inches, and stoutish. He wore
big, round, steel-rimmed glasses, and had a false tooth--a possession
which ordinarily checks the pugilistically inclined, and can
reasonably serve as an excellent excuse for prudent inaction in moments
when the finger of heroism beckons frantically.
Peter, moreover, led forlorn hopes; stormed (in armour of an impervious
character) breached fortresses under flights of arrows; planted
tattered flags, shot-riddled, on bristling ramparts; and between
whiles, in calmer spirit, was martyred for his country’s sake, in
certain little warlike expeditions in Central Africa.
Being by nature of an orderly disposition, he brought something of the
method of his life into his dreams.
Thus, he charged at the head of his men, between 19, Redcow Court,
and the fish-shop, in the morning, when he went to buy his breakfast
haddock. He was martyred between the Borough and the Marshalsea
Recreation Grounds, when he took a walk; was borne to a soldier’s
grave, amidst national lamentations, on the return journey, and did
most of his rescuing after business hours.
Many years ago Peter had been a clerk in a city warehouse; a quiet
respectable man, given to gardening. One day money was missing from
the cashier’s desk, and Peter was suspected. He was hypnotized by the
charge, allowed himself to be led off to the police station without
protest, listened as a man in a dream to the recital of the evidence
against him--beautifully circumstantial evidence it was--and went down
from the dock not fully realizing that a grey-haired old gentleman
on the bench had awarded him six months’ hard labour, in a calm,
unemotional voice.
Peter had served four months of his sentence when the real thief was
detected, and confessed to his earlier crime. Peter’s employers were
shocked; they were good, honest, Christian people, and the managing
director of the company was--as he told Peter afterwards--so distressed
that he nearly put off his annual holiday to the Engadine.
The firm did a handsome thing, for they pensioned Peter off, and Peter
went to the Borough, because he had eccentric views, one of which was
that he carried about him the taint of his conviction.
He came to be almost proud of his unique experience, boasted a little I
fear, and earned an undeserved reputation in criminal circles. He was
pointed out as he strolled forth in the cool of summer evenings, as a
man who had burgled a bank, as What’s-his-name, the celebrated forger.
He was greatly respected.
“How did you get on?”
Amber was thinking of the little man’s many lovable qualities when the
question was addressed to him.
“Me--oh, about the same, my Peter,” he said with a smile.
Peter looked round with an extravagant show of caution.
“Any difference since I was there?” he whispered.
“I think C. Hall has been repainted,” said Amber gravely.
Peter shook his head in depreciation.
“I don’t suppose I’d know the place now,” he said regretfully; “is the
Governor’s room still off A. Hall?”
Amber made no reply other than a nod.
The little man poured out the tea, and handed a cup to the visitor.
“Peter,” said Amber, as he stirred the tea slowly, “where can I stay?”
“Here?”
Peter’s face lit up and his voice was eager.
Amber nodded.
“They’re after you, are they?” the other demanded with a chuckle. “You
stay here, my boy. I’ll dress you up in the finest disguise you ever
saw, whiskers an’ wig; I’ll smuggle you down to the river, an’ we’ll
get you aboard----”
Amber laughed.
“Oh, my Peter!” he chuckled. “Oh, my law-breaker! No, it’s not the
police--don’t look so sad, you heartless little man--no, I’m avoiding
criminals--real wicked criminals, my Peter, not petty hooks like me,
or victims of circumstance like you, but men of the big mob--top-hole
desperadoes, my Peter, worse than Denver Dick or Michigan Mike or
Settler Sam, or any of those gallant fellows.”
Peter pointed an accusing finger.
“You betrayed ’em, an’ they’re after you,” he said solemnly. “They’ve
sworn a vendetta----”
Amber shook his head.
“I’m after them,” he corrected, “and the vendetta swearing has been all
on my side. No, my Peter, I’m Virtuous Mike--I’m the great detective
from Baker Street, N.W. I want to watch somebody without the annoyance
of their watchin’ me.”
Peter was interested.
His eyes gleamed through his spectacles, and his hands trembled in his
excitement.
“I see, I see,” he nodded vigorously. “You’re going to frusterate ’em.”
“‘Frusterate’ is the very word I should have used,” said Amber.